CONNIE
Connie Hunter winced as the overhead strip lighting burst into life above her. Her overzealous case manager, a lumbering oaf of a man, stopped in his tracks. He was hauling a stack of what were clearly new files in a disorganised clump in his arms. As usual, a few old food stains were hitching a ride on his time-to-be-replaced t-shirt.
“Oh, great. You slept in here again.” Zane Nikos shuffled from side to side awkwardly, betraying his inability to actually manage people with any confidence, before he dropped the files into a somewhat neater pile on Connie’s desk.
Connie had been resting her eyes, one heel planted firmly up on the metal table that held a ‘Ship Sheriff’ placard, the other leg dangling from her seat. She hated the title Ship Sheriff. She made a point of telling people that it had too much alliteration and that she’d rather everyone just used her name instead.
Zane had already shuffled around her desk and was kneeling beside her. “Let’s get this over with, shall we?” As he spoke, Connie caught a whiff of Zane’s proclivity to inhale Earth snacks – some kind of weird, puffy orange crisp – and retched. He produced the biggest needle Connie had ever seen – though she’d gotten used to seeing it daily – and immediately slid it into the flesh behind her ear. She yelped as he pumped the icy liquid into her veins.
“Done,” he said.
“Lovely. And can you shut that off on your way out?” Connie said, rubbing her eyes and gesturing towards the lights. Nursing a fierce hangover, she whipped her leg down and span her chair to face the coffee machine behind her desk. A vintage piece of kit with only a dwindling supply of coffee beans remaining, it was Connie’s prized possession and her favourite thing on the entire space station.
Zane killed the lights as he rounded her desk. “Rough night?” he said with more suggestion in his tone than Connie would’ve liked. With a clubbed hand, he swiped a trim of sweat from the hairline above his forehead. Droplets scattered across the rim of Connie’s desk, much to her disdain.
“Rough life,” she retorted, filling a steel mug with black tar. A phantom pain flocked through the empty space where her right calf should’ve been. It sent shivers through her spine that reached as far as her skull. She fished a handful of loose pills from the second drawer down beneath the drinks machine, without counting them, and necked the lot with a mouthful of awful coffee. Though she hated the taste, the caffeine was a lifesaver.
By the time she’d turned around, Zane was gone, his thundering footsteps echoing down the hallway.
“Oh, thank God.” Connie winced as she reached for the prosthetic propped up against the corner of her desk. Made from chromed metal, it was a basic piece of gear, and far more primitive than the capabilities of the ship’s technicians. Still, it at least allowed her to get around the ship as opposed to being permanently stuck behind the desk, and for that, she was thankful.
She eased the socket of her prosthetic around her residual limb and attached the lower half of her leg and foot with an audible click that echoed off the hull. The fit wasn’t perfect and pinched at her skin, but the pain pills sure did take the edge off.
Beads of sweat tracking down her forehead, Connie span back to her desk and hauled over the fresh stack of case files that Zane had dropped off, immediately thumbing coffee stains onto the corners.
What kind of mundane investigations has he brought today?
There were 4 or 5 new files stacked together, and she flicked the first of them open across the desk. It was another case of vandalism. Something far too unimportant for the soldiers of the Cell — the ship’s military elite — to deal with. The usual details were rattled off at the top of the page; the location within the ship where the damage had been done, the likely cause of the incident, and the date that it was discovered. But there were no suspects.
It was business as usual to Connie. The Cell only dealt in serious and severe crimes, or military combat – though there had never been any conflicts in the history of the station. They didn’t care much for petty crime and simply tossed the cases onto the trash pile.
And as a now-defunct soldier, Connie fulfilled the role of trash pile daily.
It was a far cry from her Squad Leader days, that’s for sure. Connie wanted desperately to be useful, but picking up the dregs of the ship’s petty crime slush pile wasn’t exactly scratching her itch. Hell, she only still had a job onboard thanks to her track record in service to the ship. The title hadn’t even existed before they created it for her.
In a box halfway down the page of the first file, there were more details about the incident, scrawled in a manner that made them nearly impossible to decipher. Explosive damage to the hangar bay doors in Sector M. According to the report, “It appears to have been caused by energy discharge roughly approximate to the power level we’d expect to see from an Academy student.”
There were few other details to go on, as was the case for most of the files tossed Connie’s way. Students were not expected to practise any kind of energy discharge outside of their training, and it was usually left up to Connie to prove whether unauthorised use had taken place.
She rapped her knuckles against the desk and stared into the free space above the bay doors, stroking her chin. Explosive damage … we have at least 2 students in the Academy right now with those powers. Connie scowled at the prospect of a hull breach because of a careless kid showing off. In the wrong place, that could trigger a chain reaction that would kill thousands of people.
Whoever thought that nurturing that kind of energy aboard the Osiris was a good idea needs a swift kick to the head.
She pushed the vandalism report aside and thumbed open another case file, hoping for something more interesting. Her hope was immediately quashed by a tagline that read ‘Missing feline’. Her third AWOL animal this week. Connie was all for keeping a few extra species going aboard the station, but animals just made the already-chaotic atmosphere even more nuts. And it wasn’t the first time that the ship had had a spate of missing pets either. Last time, it transpired that a maladjusted kid was blasting them.
‘Blasting’ was the slang the kids gave to boosting unwanted junk out of the airlock. Actually, it’s how the entire space station dealt with refuse. Right now, the Osiris didn’t have the kind of power left in her that would be needed to efficiently burn or recycle the trash, but then those in charge have never bothered considering it as an option. Nope; Earth’s already dead, so why not fire a few empty cans of soda her way?
That fortnight had made Connie feel physically sick, though – the one with all the Space Kitties. She’d eventually tracked down the offender and was reprimanded for dislocating the kid’s arm when she pinned him to the ground to be cuffed. She’d wanted to suit him up in a Volt suit, give him a day or two of oxygen, and blast him until he came back with the cats, dead or alive.
Connie swigged another mouthful of coffee, emptying the mug to its dregs as she opened the third file in the stack. The beverage smelled foul, but the caffeine helped to soften the hangover that was sweating out of her pores like bullets.
Staring back at her from the pages of the newest case file were the photographs of two young students who she recognised immediately, with names displayed beneath both.
Nylar, read one. Kelsey, the other.
The tagline read: ‘Missing, presumed dead.’
Connie sprayed coffee across the file and gagged into her hand.
She gripped the paperwork and flung her chair backward, half-leaping across the corner of the desk, belting through the door and out into the hallways of the Osiris space station. Pain clawed at her leg with every step.
With concerted effort, she managed to force her legs, still stiff from a night spent in the chair, around the zigzag of bends that separated her office from the busier inner sanctum of the military sector. Through the crossroads that led off to the restricted sectors on the left, along with the fusion reactors and storage hangars, and the civilian quarters on her right. She passed straight across and onward toward the staff mess hall and ship hangars.
Her operations in the tiny box room of sector U were relegated to the farthest corners of the habitable zone of the space station. To Connie, it felt like yet another reminder of her lack of usefulness since she was removed from the Cell. In the civilian sectors, conditions were at their worst. Smog polluted the hallways and permeated almost every room. You could practically chew it – and at least you’d be eating something that day. Smoking was illegal, but who was going to follow up violations? It was far too unimportant for the military, and she was a lone Sheriff. Besides, she’d never take away one of the few outlets that civilians had left onboard the station.
Not to mention, the prison cells are already filled to bursting point.
You might be reading a stolen copy. Visit Royal Road for the authentic version.
Conditions were markedly better in the military quarters. Air was filtered and pollution-free, with pristine corridors that displayed no dirt and grime. It felt surgical, but it was much more pleasant. As for the restricted quarters at the centre the station, well … she had no idea.
Nobody did.
Those areas were restricted for the upper echelons of the ship’s government and any senior members of the military who made the cut.
And they were sealed behind four endless walkways – one jutting out and connecting from the outer ring – that would kill pretty much anybody who tried to cross them without permission.
She rounded another corner, the solid heel of her prosthetic punctuating every step on the hollow walkways of the ship. Up ahead, Zane was rounding the final corner into the mess hall, presumably for his usual breakfast of synthetic meat and rehydrated eggs, his elephantine footsteps reverberating off the walls. Connie thought it was a miracle anybody could be carrying that much weight on board a station where people are starving. But she pushed the thought from her mind as she caught up to him; she had more important things to worry about.
“Zane!” she yelled, half running, half walking towards the mess hall with the missing persons’ report clutched in one hand.
Connie was still adjusting to life with her leg and hadn’t yet managed a stable pace at anything faster than a rapid walk. She’d been pestering the ship’s technicians for months now on getting a better replacement. Hell, their tech could easily manage it, but no; they were too preoccupied with crafting bigger and better ways to obliterate their enemies.
Not that the Osiris space station had any enemies, which just made it all the more infuriating for Connie.
Zane didn’t reappear around the corner and mustn’t have heard her yell.
Connie stopped short of the mess hall entrance, panting and cursing the decision to sink a half of podka the night before.
Podka was the illegally brewed alternative to something called vodka that they had in abundance back on Earth. Of course, it was the teenage academy recruits that had taken to discreetly brewing it up in one of the only places they could easily avoid scrutiny and detection: the pods of their Volt spacecraft. It was just another case file that routinely fell onto Connie’s pile instead of being dealt with by the Cell. Truthfully, Connie found it hilarious and had a huge amount of respect, particularly as to her knowledge, they lacked half the kit they’d need to make alcohol on board. She was only putting any time into that case because of the risk it posed to the ship’s integrity.
Surely the Cell should be interested in an operation that could blow up their most valuable spacecraft? Heck, blow a hole in the Osiris?
The last time she’d found a stash, she let the recruit off with a warning and confiscated the lot. Stashed it away in her office for safe keeping.
And last night, she drank it all. It wasn’t a particularly bad day – it needn’t have been, not with her condition. She’d just woken with that all-consuming red mist that visited from time to time, and nothing she did would shake it. Nothing except removing herself from reality.
Connie hated setting foot in the military mess halls. She routinely saw her old colleagues and crew, which just fuelled her jealousy and embarrassment. Instead, she’d power through the day on awful coffee and snacks secreted from vendors, though it was rare to see much of an offering populating the now-barren vending machines. Supplies were running ever shorter. But when she slept in her office, the civilian mess hall was a good half-hour trek across the Osiris, so sometimes she had no choice but to show her face.
Leaning into a hull wall to catch her breath, Connie swept two sweaty palms across her face and re-parted her bangs either side of her forehead. Brushed her shoulder-length, black hair back down to flatten out flyaway hairs, and grunted. “Nggggh. Come on, you can do this.”
She took her first step into the mess hall, which was surprisingly empty. There were 3, maybe 4 tables occupied by a mix of academy cadets, Cell soldiers in full garb or pilot suits, and a few older staff that Connie presumed were lecturers, engineers or scientists.
It must’ve been earlier than Connie thought. By nine a.m., everybody’s usually in a lecture hall or laboratory. As her footsteps echoed through the room, each of the tables wasted no time in dropping their current conversations and focusing on her noisy arrival.
Zane was sitting alone at a table in the corner. He had already piled a tray high with breakfast and was clearly employing his usual tactic of preventing anybody else from sitting with him. The briefcase in which he ferried his case files sat occupying the seat opposite, and he was quietly leaning face-first into his food.
Connie approached Zane’s table, drawing hushed stares from another adjacent seating area, a young group of students that couldn’t have been beyond their first or second month of training. She swept Zane’s briefcase aside, which clattered onto the steel floor, though Zane didn’t even flinch. It only made the staring and hushed whispers worse.
“Don’t think I’ve ever seen you move so fast with a hangover,” he said through muffled munching.
Connie wasted no time. She slapped the open missing persons’ file onto his table and twisted the photographs around to face him, still glossy with droplets of spilled coffee. He barely looked up from his plate, yet he wore a knowing grin. “I just knew you’d have something to say about this one.”
Connie furrowed her brow and placed two branching fingers on the photographs. “Well, they’re not a missing cat, a kid vandalising the ship, or any one of another hundred mundane activities that you normally throw my way.” She grappled the glass of orange juice sitting on Zane’s tray and glugged it in seconds.
That got his attention. “Jesus, come on Connie!”
“Sorry,” said Connie, juice dribbling down her chin. “Insatiable thirst.”
Zane snatched the glass back off her and heaved himself over to the drinks station. He scanned an ID card and after a few seconds, the machine flashed green and dispensed a new glass of juice. “Yeah?” he said, returning to his seat. “Maybe you shouldn’t drink so much then? These things cost 10 credits a piece.”
“Waste of credits if you ask me,” she spat. “It doesn’t even taste like real oranges.”
“Oh, and you’d know what a real orange tastes like?” Zane waved to his plate through another mouthful of food. “Can I maybe finish my breakfast, before you start giving me shit? I’ll remind you that you’re still on probation.”
Connie grimaced. “Fuck probation. If you ask me, anyone who blasts animals deserves to have both their arms dislocated,” said Connie, licking droplets of juice from the corner of her mouth. It was artificial shit, and she bet it didn’t taste half as good as the real thing.
Zane reached for his briefcase and produced a pen, alongside a battered notepad. He flipped it open halfway, thumbing for a specific page, and narrated, “Lack of remorse for crimes, questioning the decisions of a probation officer–”
“Case manager.” Connie grinned.
Zane slammed his pen down, clearly pissed, and glared at her over his half-eaten breakfast. Connie knew exactly how to push his buttons. He’d also been a member of the Cell, albeit a final-year cadet. He never made the cut, instead being booted out for failing multiple tests that were mandatory for graduation into a fully-fledged Volt pilot or solider. Much like Connie, he’d been relegated into a useless position that was created solely for him, managing the cases that were sent her way.
And sure, eventually, there would be no jobs if people had one created every time they failed the academy. But they didn’t. People did not fail the academy. While tough, it wasn’t exactly training for the Marines – no, Connie and Zane shared a special kind of torturous embarrassment that was reserved for very few.
After the mishap with the kid blasting pets from the ship, he’d been told to scrutinise her actions more closely. He liked to pull his little power trips wherever possible and had suggested himself, officially, as her case manager – a suggestion that the Cell immediately lapped up. But she felt it her job to yank his head out the clouds and bring him back down to Earth. Or rather, the Osiris.
Zane lifted his fork again, piling it high. Connie tapped the files on the desk once more, attempting to defuse. “Look, you can’t just drop something like this on my desk and waltz off. When have you ever brought me something at this kind of level before? This is a Cell investigation if I ever saw one –” Connie stopped. “Wait … am I – am I being brought back onboard?”
A loud clattering cut through the air as the group of rowdy cadets sat beside them knocked a tray to the floor. Three boys and a girl hunched over their food, a fifth student gingery leaning over to retrieve the spillage. Evidently first-years in the Academy, they were eagerly discussing their anticipation of classes kicking off. One of the boys in the group shushed the others and raised a palm over quietened whispers, white energy circulating the veins that tracked around his wrist, ebbing up into his fingertips.
“CUT IT OUT,” Zane yelled, staring down the biggest of the group with the energy coursing in his palm, and attracting the full attention of the mess hall. The kid lowered his hand, albeit slowly, extinguishing the light.
“It’s alright,” he said, a cocky half-smile edging from his lips, holding up an arm as if his friends were raring to jump to their feet and defend his honor. “The idiot just obviously has no idea who I am.”
“You should report him, Cassus,” chirped a girl sat beside the boy, as she gripped his forearm.
As a six-foot-four giant that was practically as wide as he was tall, Zane could cut quite the imposing figure. He swallowed hard, his Adam’s apple bobbing like a buoy in water, and placed his fork back down on the plate. But rather than rise to the challenge, he shrivelled into his seat and picked up his fork.“Connie, you know that’s not how it is anymore. The cell needs soldiers who can fight, not has-beens that can barely walk at a brisk pace anymore.”
Almost immediately, the teens lost interest and went back to their hushed conversations. Connie shifted uncomfortably in her seat. “Wow, thanks.” But she knew he was right. They’d already made it perfectly clear that she was no longer of any use to the military. “And yet… can you explain this?” Once again, she focused back on the file and shoved it closer to Zane, jarring his breakfast tray.
The man huffed. “I just want an easy life, Connie. I get the files, I bring the files, I give the files to you,” he said, gesturing the process with his hands. “Look, I get it. You’re bored, you’re sick of the job and the desk, but I don’t know what to tell you. At least you’re not starving down in the lower sectors without a purpose. I don’t know why this has ended up with me to be honest. If you want any more than that, you’re going to have to go and speak to the Highcliffes yourself.”
Connie grunted. “No thanks.”
Darcy Highcliffe and Z Highcliffe were all that remained of the Osiris’ senior command. Z Highcliffe was High Commander and captain of the Osiris; Darcy was his daughter. When she first joined the Cell, Connie had thought that his name was ‘Zed’. It was not. He was simply known as Z, or High Commander. Nobody knew whether the initial stood for something longer. She’d never seen the man in person, only his appearance that materialised on the regular broadcasts that were sent to every holo-screen on the ship at routine internals. He did most of his work through guards and the military, but if they were anything to go by, he probably wasn’t the most pleasant of men to deal with up-close.
Silence descended over the table, spoiled only by the occasional slurp and snap of Zane munching his way through breakfast. Connie had had enough; he clearly knew nothing about the case file. She grappled the folder and paperwork back together and kicked her chair back. It hit the floor with a clatter, and she immediately regretted drawing the unwanted attention from the room. Then, she left the table without so much as a goodbye.
“Good talk!” Zane yelled after her. “And don’t forget to be back in a few hours for your next shot!”
Connie flipped a finger over her shoulder and headed out the other side of the mess hall without so much as a look behind her.