His words ring out shockingly loud in the small space. It’s nothingKane, Lourdes, and Nysus don’t already know, but hearing the facts spoken aloud brings a new level of humiliation.
Shame heats my face, and I can’t meet Kane’s eyes. If he needed any more proof of what I was contemplating out there, on my last space walk…
“I say, if it’s not on the emergency channel, it’s not an emergency.” Voller raises his hand. “Who’s with me?”
“Voller,” Kane begins, shaking his head in disgust.
“Except this is not a goddamn democracy,” I say, startling myself with the fervor in my tone. I’m not one for forcing my authority down anyone’s throat. Being team lead was never my aspiration, just a side effect of my desire to stay out here as long as possible.
Kane’s head jerks up, his mouth open in surprise.
“Actually,” Lourdes speaks up, “about that. I think itisan emergency channel.”
“But you just said—” Kane begins.
“It’s just not the one we use now,” Lourdes says. “They’re on the old channel.” She holds up her tablet. “I looked it up. When Verux did the last big upgrade, after they bought out CitiFutura, they changed the emergency channel designation. Fifteen, maybe twenty years ago. Before our time.”
Beforetheirtime, but not mine. Possibly not Kane’s, either. He’s only a few years younger than I am, I think, and fifteen years ago, I was eighteen, walking out of a Verux-sponsored group home and on board my first Verux sniffer for a training assignment.
“I remember that,” I say. “The merger.” That was big news even in the home.
Nysus speaks up. “She’s right.”
“Why would anyone use an old channel?” Kane asks.
“I’m not sure it’s a deliberate decision. I mean, we learned about it in class. Automated distress beacons are… automated. They get triggered, they go off as programmed. Old channel, new channel.” Lourdes lifts her shoulder in a shrug. “Just means someone’s out there pretty far with some seriously old hardware.”
That rules out a Verux exploratory vessel. They were all top of the line when they left a few years ago.
“How far?” I ask.
“According to these coordinates? Into the Kuiper Belt, for sure,” Lourdes says. “Ninety-some hours from our current location.”
“No,” Voller says, shaking his head. “No way. That’s the opposite direction we need to go to meet theGinsburg,and way the hell outside our assignment.”
“That’s no one’s assignment,” I remind him. The last of the commweb beacons stop well before the asteroid belt. It’s the end of the road, so to speak. Just a bunch of rocks, ice, and dwarf planets too small to be of interest. Billions of kilometers away from everything else. Which doesn’t sound so bad at the moment.
“Exactly,” Voller snaps. “It’s in the middle of fucking nowhere, and it’s dangerous. We’d be off charted and tagged space, and there’s all kinds of random shit floating around out there. The company doesn’t want a commweb maintenance team messing around with that. If you’re so worried about the signal, contact Dispatch and tell them to send somebody else.”
“It’ll be months before they can get another ship out here, though,” Lourdes points out. “If they have to launch a—”
“They’re not going to launch anything,” Voller says. “I’m telling you, it’s a ghost signal.”
The sound of them arguing makes the steady ringing in my left ear worse. I have limited hearing on that side. Childhood illness. The only sounds that come through loud and clear are the perpetual buzz and crackle of tinnitus. Verux doctors tried to correct it when I was a kid, but all they succeeded in doing was making the tinnitus louder and clearer. They wanted to try again, but I was done.
Lourdes straightens in her chair, flicking the braided ends of her hair over her shoulder. “So you’re the communications expert now, Voller? Is that it?”
“Oh, come on, you’re basically a goddamn trainee and—”
“Enough,” I say sharply.
The three of them look to me, and I sense the expectant silence on the open channel from Nysus.
“Someone is in trouble. We’re obligated to try and render aid. Chapter five, regulation thirty-three.” Of course, those same regs also suggest contacting Verux Dispatch first, if at all possible. But that wouldn’t be the first regulation that we ignored out here, away from the corporate types who made the rules without ever leaving Earth gravity. We’re also supposed to be in Verux uniform and strapped in at all times. As if there’s anyone else out here to see us. As if there’s anything we might run into. And if our micrograv generator fails, we’ll be in more trouble than safety restraints could help.
Besides, if we contact Dispatch, they’ll just hold us up to get permission from succeeding layers of management, each passing the buck until they reached someone actually willing to make a decision. If someone’s really in trouble, every minute counts.
“Voller, set a course to the coordinates Lourdes gives you,” I say.
