Sepulchre

“How you mean there’s no docking at the bloody gangway? I’m lookin’ right at the bloody thing and it’s clear as the bloody void itself. Bloody hell...”

Captain Wilmott Carver glowered at his own reflection on the reinforced canopy windscreen of the Tignish-class cargo ferry Shuttlecock. The glowing yellow ember at the tip of the slender black e-cig clutched between his teeth flared, casting a pallid glow over the meaty topography of his face. He exhaled with a frustrated snort, microgravity causing the cloud of glycerin vapor to coalesce into a fuzzy sphere directly in front of him before slowly streaking off into the rattling air cyclers and overtaxed filter system.

“Sorry, Shuttlecock,” a tired and unsympathetic voice buzzed through the comm speaker. “Stationwide power spike a few hours ago. Some systems are still offline. We have a tech crew working to restore the gangway’s guidiance system, but it’s gonna be a little while. As soon as we can send you a marshaling signal, you’ll be clear to dock.”

A burly bald man with a chest-length salt and pepper beard leaned back in the acceleration chair to Carver’s right, propping his bare feet on the console. “Gonna miss our window, cap.”

Carver tossed a sneer the other man’s way. “Are we? Are we gonna miss our window, Mercado? Thanks for the reminder, that was the last thing on my mind at the moment. Get your bloody hooves off the atmospherics,” He kicked Mercado’s feet back off the console before returning his attention back to the outbound comm system.

“Listen, Cantera, hows about we skip the marshaling signal and I bring her in manual, hey? You got my piloting credentials, you know I’m blue clearance. I can swoop this bird in on a dime, latch in, offload and be on my merry way before your marshaling AI can make out which end of my ship goes which way.”

An exasperated sigh preceded the reply over the comm. “Can’t do that, Shuttlecock. No manual docking anywhere on Cantera Destrellas. AI-guided docking only. Gonna have to wait for the marshaling signal. Couldn’t bend the rules for you if I wanted to, it’s an insurance thing. Exotech regulations.”

Carver clenched his teeth around the well-gnawed base of his e-cig. They weren’t especially good teeth. The combination of an almost completely carnivorous diet and a lackadaisical approach to vitamin supplements had him in the beginning stages of scurvy. “You got an ETA on that signal, or you gonna keep me in suspense, hey?”

“Techs guess it at two hours, maybe longer. Best estimate.”

“Definitely gonna lose our window,” Mercado grumbled.

“Already lost it,” said the stocky, blonde, pug-nosed woman manning the sensor station to Carver’s left. “Unless they can slip us in within the next half hour, we won’t be able to offload in time. The window’s shrinking faster than projected.”

Carver swung his chair to face her, an arc of smoke following his head’s movement and hanging still in midair before trailing away into the vents. “Tish, love. I know you live to please me. I know you’d never bring me news that sordid if you weren’t about to make my bloody day with the next words out your lovely lips. Words like ‘Don’t worry, Carver, turns out we got another window comin’ right up in, say...?”

She cast him a humorless gaze. “Three days, plus.”

Carver narrowed his eyes and blew a sphere of vapor into the air between them. “How dare you.”

“See for yourself,” She spun her monitor to face him. “Gravel’s too thick to head back now. Told you this could happen. Cantera’s deeper in the rocks than most rigs. Clear patches are few and far between out here.”

Carver glared at the monitor through the haze of aerosolized chemicals that now permeated the cabin. Tish’s analysis was correct, of course. The Shuttlecock’s rear sensor suite was now tracking several thousand minor meteoroids drifting through the space they’d have to cross to make their return flight to the Anzio, the Chiavari-class megafreighter holding at the far edge of the Scartaris debris field. The Shuttlecock could shrug most of them off with its ablative ceramic hull plating, but some of the drifting rocks ranged from bowling ball to beachball-sized: more than enough to cause serious impact damage. They couldn’t plow through it. They’d missed their chance to unload their cargo and leave in one quick trip; if the tracking sensors said there wasn’t going to be another opportunity to pass through a clear patch in the debris field for three days, they were going to be stuck on Cantera for three days. There was no way around it.

“Bloody hell...”

**********

“Three days...three bloody days on Cantera Destrellas! God above...four hundred and some odd rock-chopping rigs in this system and we get beached on Cantera bloody Destrellas!”

Carver had been going on like this for most of four hours. The first three had been dominated by alternating patches of swearing and grumbling at his misfortune and staring hatefully at the asteroid processing station in fuming silence. He’d glared at every square foot of Cantera Destrellas at least once, from the three huge rotary habitation drums, to the vast open mouth of the asteroid intake chamber, to the network of pipelines, covered walkways, and scaffolds that sprawled across the surface of the hollowed planetoid.

Carver’s dissatisfaction did not abate when the marshaling signal was given, nor when the Shuttlecock completed its docking procedure with Cantera Destrellas’s gangway umbilical, nor when his crew and the ship’s hauler drones started floating pallets of cargo off onto the station. If anything, his ire only grew as he watched the ship’s original departure window pass them by.

“Never been before,” Mercado muttered around the straw of a juice pouch. “What’s so bad about Cantera, exactly?”

“It’s an antique rattletrap, is what,” Carver snarled. “Just look at the bloody thing. Don’t even have sim-grav, it’s a spin-grav rig, and even that’s just in the drums. Most of the thing is just microgravity rock tunnels and smelting furnaces. Like floatin’ around in the devil’s own boiler room. Whole rig’s at least fifty years old. Ex-Tex limped it out here after the Kuiper dried up, but how they managed to get it all the way out here without it fallin’ to bits on the way is beyond me. Gotta be the oldest rig in the system. Gonna be hot, cramped, greasy, dirty, and loud in there, and for amenities got maybe one canteen and a less’n half-decent mess hall. That’ll be it. For three bloody days.”

“Don’t be a diva,” Tish said. “Three days is nothing. We’ve been holed up on the Anzio for more than a year now, you can handle three days on Cantera.”

“Sure I can. Assumin’ the whole bloody rig don’t crack in half while we’re here. Don’t change the fact it’s their fault we even have to. We could be back on our way to Hatshepsut by now. Could be, should be, would be, if their prehistoric tech hadn’t stroked out on us.”

“It’s not gonna crack in half. These old shell rigs are tougher than any of the new ones. That’s why Exotech’s got them trawling the denser fields. They can take a beating.”

“Bah,” Carver grumbled, lighting his e-cig for the fourth time since docking with Cantera. “Ain’t it just the way, though? Ninety-five deliveries without a snag, only to get waylaid on the last and worst drop of the trip.”

“Seem to recall a twelve-hour delay at Stakhanova. And an eight-hour delay at the Outdelver. And another twelve at the Kabandha platform.”

“We were two days late getting to Nickelhead,” Mercado added.

Carver released a long, slow, smoky declaration of contempt through his nostrils as he glared at his shipmates. “See...I know I didn’t ask for your commentary.”

“Captain?” a male voice called through the Shuttlecock’s internal comms.

“What is it, Buchner?”

“Done offloading cargo. Inventory guy wants to see you.”

“Of course he does,” Carver extinguished his e-cig and pocketed it. “Is it Carranza?”

“It’s Carranza.”

“I’ll be right down.” Carver turned to Mercado with an atypically serious expression “Magwell’s on the charger, yeah?”

Mercado raised an eyebrow. “Yeah, ‘course. Expecting trouble?”

Carver’s cracked lips parted across his uneven yellowed teeth and red gums. “Nah. But what’s the point of having a toy like Magwell if you never show it off?”

**********

“Christian!” Carver called, beaming with his equivalent of a charismatic grin as he floated out the Shuttlecock’s cargo bay hatch and into Cantera’s gangway corridor. He activated the mag clamps in his boots as he crossed the threshold to set his feet on the same wall the other man stood on. “Good seein’ you, mate. Been way too long.”

Christian Carranza, chief inventory officer of Cantera Destrellas, was an unassuming man of average height and build. He bore a thick black Chevron mustache that sought to add personality to a face that was otherwise incapable of making an impression. A pair of round-rimmed glasses marked him as a man who likely could not afford corrective surgery or recursive gene therapy, or lacked the nerve for it.

“Carver. It’s been...exactly long enough, I’d say,” Christian said, arms crossed, making no motion to approach Carver.

“Trust everything’s in order, hey? Everything good on the manifest.”

Carranza gave Carver a patient look. “Let’s skip the song and dance, Carver. You know what’s up. You’re short an entire pallet of refecdronate and rizeparatide.”

Carver shrugged. “Short’s a relative term, ain’t it? It’s all accounted for. Happens that maybe that one pallet found a better home somewhere else, yeah? I made the acquaintance of a comet chaser captain in dire straights back on Hatshepsut willing to pay high over market worth for the whole pallet. See an opportunity like that, you gotta go for it, hey? No need to make a thing of it. Got your split for ya, just like the usual. You’re gonna like it.”

Carranza pinched his forehead, massaging a germinating migraine. “Carver, I turn a blind eye to a lot of what you do, and it’s gone fine so far, but you’ve really overstepped this time. You’re shorting us two months’ worth of vital bone loss supplements. How am I supposed to cook the books and hide this when people’s bones start snapping?”

“Bah. Come on. You know they always have you order more’n you really need. I know you got reserve. Dig into those. Spread it out however you gotta, I know you can cover it. I’ll bring in extra on my next run out here, it’ll all work out fine.”

“I’ve already got our reserves stretched. You really think It’s easy to cover two months of missing medication for a station this size? You know how tight Exotech is about everything. And your next run here isn’t going to be for what, sixteen months? This is a mess, Carver. You got too greedy, and it’s gonna get us both fried.”

Carver walked up to Carranza and placed a hand on the other’s shoulder. “Listen, mate, I got faith in you. You’ll make it work like always. Look after this, I’ll look after everything on my end, we’ll both be gold. I think when you look at the sum I got from that comet chaser, it’ll brighten your mood right up.”

Carranza sighed, shook his head, then cast a nervous glance behind him before leaning closer to Carver and lowering his voice. “Doesn’t matter. I might have something for you that could set us both.”

Carver arched a wiry eyebrow. “Got me intrigued. Go on.”

Carranza glanced around nervously before proceeding. “Okay. So...we found something. Rock jockeys brought it in a couple days ago. Big iron-heavy asteroid they dredged up from the inner range. We’re talking a chunk of mantle rock, maybe even outer core”

Carver rolled his eyes. “Christian, you know most of my brain falls right asleep when you rockheads start going on about geology.”

“Fine, doesn’t matter. Point is, rock’s from deep in. Before Scartaris blew up, this chunk was miles beneath its surface. Those are the rocks we want the most. Have the heaviest metals and the most of them. So it looked like a good find right away, but when we started cracking it open...” he leaned forward, almost nose to nose with Carver, “...we found something inside.”

A smile twitched at the corner of Carver’s mouth. “From the dramatics, I’m guessin’ weren’t no copper vein.”

“You’ve...you’ve been around, right? You’ve heard things. Rumors and such.”

Carver nodded. “Not a lot gets by me, I’d say.”

“You’ve heard...I’m guessing you’ve heard some of the rumors about the Tantalus expedition, right?”

Carver smirked. “All kinds. Too many to buy into any of them. Still, figure something happened out there. Gotta be a reason the whole system’s quarantined now.”

“Well...” Carranza took a deep breath before checking the room again. “I’m here to tell you, some of those rumors are true. Have to be. What we found in that asteroid...it’s not natural. It’s made. Artificial, has to be. It’s an artificial object encased in a chunk of rock ejected from a planet that exploded five thousand years ago.”

Carver’s eyes narrowed. “You’re trying to tell me you found something made by aliens? You’re punking me. Or you been punked.”

Carranza shook his head. ”I’m dead serious. It’s a black sphere, some kind of carbon lattice. It seems to be indestructible. Like, it was inside a planet that blew up and doesn’t have a scratch on it. It’s big. Fifty-meter diameter. It’s dense too, but we think it might be hollow. We haven’t been able to open it yet.”

Carver licked the inside of his teeth. “Alright...I’ll play. So you got this thing. Fact this place ain’t swarming with Ex-Tex scientists and corporate troops tells me you’ve not passed this up the chain, then?”

Carranza shook his head again. “Exotech doesn’t know, no. Only a few of us do so far. Just me, the rock jockeys who hauled it in, and a few of our cutters. We’re keeping it hush for now until we learn more. This is big, Carver. It’s really, really big.”

“Would be, yeah,” Carver pulled out his e-cig once again and took a long, thoughtful drag. “You’re thinkin’ I know people. You’re thinkin’ of draggin’ your weird alien ball onto the Anzio and shippin’ it back to the frontier worlds. You’re thinkin’ of leavin’ Ex-Tex none the wiser for what they never knew they lost. You’re thinkin’ a weird alien ball will fetch a better price on the black market than even a proper Corsica relic. And you’re thinkin’ of how to split that price as few ways as possible, hey?”

“I’d say you’re following my train of thought pretty well, Carver.”

“Mhmm...” The hazy gray cloud from Carver’s e-cig hung around his face, a yellow gleam like a devil’s halo shining from the tip of the cig. “I know of a fella on Earth. Name’s Descartes. Discrete bloke, hard to get a hold of, cuts a hard bargain, but pays fair and plays fair, long as nobody asks too many questions. Think I could get in touch, know he’d be interested. Yeah, I’d say he’d go for it.”

A conspiratorial smile crept over Carranza’s face. “I knew you wouldn’t disappoint.”

“But,” Carver jabbed a finger against Carranza’s chest, smog pooling against his shirt from the e-cig between Carver’s fingers. “That only takes care of one end. Gotta tend to this one first. Getting’ that weird alien ball out of your chopping bay and onto my ship ain’t gonna be easy. Leastways not without drawing the wrong kind of attention. Or any kind, rightly.”

“We’ve got three days to figure that out. Best to do it sooner than later, before more people figure it out. And when you leave, you’re taking me with you. I’m not sticking around to deal with the aftermath of whatever happens. Or to explain why we’re so short on bone loss supplements, for that matter.”

Carver chuckled. “No one’s gonna care about that after we’re done here.”

Carranza nodded. “Yeah. Now...it’s...it’s entirely possible that we won’t be able to pull this off without trouble. Violence. Discretion is better, but things could hit the fan. Are you ready for that?”

Carver chuckled again, tilted his head backwards toward the Shuttlecock’s cargo bay and gave a long, shrill teakettle whistle, complete with an accompanying plume of vapor. “Maggie! Come out here!”

A series of resonant, clanging stomps sounded from the cargo bay, echoing down the metal hallway of the gangway umbilical. A few seconds later, a gargantuan titanium monstrosity stormed out of the bay.

Four massive armor-clad, crablike legs slammed into the metal floor in rhythmic succession, anchoring and un-anchoring themselves with magnetic talons that extended and retracted with each step. Above the bulky legs rose a centauroid torso, clad in layer upon layer of heavy ablative armor. Where a neck and head should be was instead a partially recessed sphere housing a cluster of five yellow lenses, which swiveled methodically to keep the entire room in focus. Two massive armored limbs jutted from its shoulders, each culminating in a bulky crab-like gripping claw, while two slightly smaller lower arms ended in snub-nosed submachine gun barrels. The entire construct towered at least eight feet high and had a stance nearly as broad.

“What in God’s name is that thing?” Carranza whispered roughly, his throat suddenly dry.

“Oh this? Eh. It’s just Magwell. Nothin’ God would want anything to do with.”