The Bohemia Incident

THE BOHEMIA INCIDENT

Nobody can hear a scream in the vacuum of space, or so they say. However, no one thinks they’ll ever find out, least of all the two men sharing a yawning porthole more ample than the dimensions of the narrow room should allow. The tranquility and grace of the starry Van Gogh depths of space beyond that luxurious window contrasts the utilitarian canisters and supplies that crowd the hemming shelves in drab hues as equally reminiscent of a penal facility. Facing knees to knees in bleak uniforms consistent with the setting, the two men wait on the upload that will dictate the tedium of their shift. Embroidered badges on the shoulder of their sleeves display the BluLinque emblem encircled with DELV Bohemia 42 while similar threadwork on the left breast of their uniforms reveal their station and individual designations.

The elder of the two, with thinning gray hair and a face weathered by decades, looks from the duty roster in his freckled hand into the reluctant eyes of his young counterpart. “Crew waste or galley waste? Your turn for first choice.”

“Shit or slop,” the pimpled sophomore says with a cringe. “How can you be so… blah about it?”

The lines in Custodian Twenty-Two’s face crease into a pattern of resignation. “Living the dream -or the closest I’m going to get to it.”

“Dream?” his junior shipmate echoes incredulously, surveying the man’s time textured features for the betrayal of sarcasm. “Living the dream would be retiring to the tropics on home world, not cleaning up after this lot for the next four years.”

A philosophical grin exaggerates the deep crow’s feet around the older man’s somber gray eyes. “I’ve dreamt about being in space ever since I learned about the world before the Great Collapse as a kid in Utopia City. We’d been out here before, back when everyone lived on Earth, and suddenly being from Mars felt exotic. So did all the colonies in The Sphere, and it fired my imagination. Now I’m here and I don’t care what I have to do to stay.”

“I don’t get it,” Custodian Forty counters with a propitious smirk. “What took you so long?”

Custodian Twenty-Two checks the time on the personal interface pad integrated into the forearm of his uniform. “We should start gearing up.”

He shifts his weight to stand, but is stayed by the litany of unspoken questions scrolling behind the hazel irises of his young counterpart’s eyes. Surrendering to the penalty of his personal history, the elder crewman sighs as he leans back against the locker. “By the time I was eligible, I was too old to enlist and too poorly educated to enroll.”

“You’ve been a starship janitor for thirty years?” the junior custodian blurts with much more vigor and volume than he had intended.

Custodian Twenty-Two’s brows rise while his lips purse tightly against animating his shame with a rash reply. Although reconciled to such scurrilous reactions, upon each retelling, the insinuation of failure only chafes the wound that has festered across long years in the recesses of his psyche. He stands quickly, as if attempting to shed the consequences of his past.

“Sorry,” the young man amends quickly, his cheeks and ears reddening brightly, “I mean, you never said… I don’t understand. Your generation had all the programs and funding and stuff.”

The atramentous melancholy of the senior janitor’s countenance escapes the bulwarks of his soul to taint the atmosphere like a looming shadow as he casts a pensive gaze into the eternal expanse beyond the great porthole. “Life… can deal crushing blows even in the best of times and decisions that seemed so innocuous when you’re young…”

“Yeah,” young Custodian Forty concedes in a low and pensive tone, “I know.”

“Is that why you’re here …in this cramped little room?” Custodian Twenty-Two checks sharply, surveying the spiritless station with a swift gaze that alights pertinently upon the startled youth.

“What do you mean?” Custodian Forty deflects defensively.

“There are enough opportunities out there to give you a better future than this,” Custodian Twenty-Two admonishes in a knowing tenor.

Custodian Forty stands abruptly, turning his back on his elder in favor of the shelves where he arranges supplies absently under a brooding mask. “You’re not the only one who’s made mistakes.”

“The difference is,” the prosaic sage begins, the depth of his tone drawing his young friend’s attention, “it’s not too late for you. Live. Live your best life.”

The abrupt opening of the narrow door to their utility station startles the two and shatters the morose moment.

“The artificial grav in the power plant has been skipping,” an officer interrupts brusquely without stepping into the supply closet. “There’s vomit. We need clean up asap.”

The ghostly air of unspoken tragedies evaporates as the officer disappears behind the closing door and the two men look at each other in fresh readiness.

“First choice,” the elder says extending the duty roster to his young shipmate.

The junior sanitation engineer scratches the outcropping of hairs on his chin thoughtfully. “We’re fucked either way, but I think you’ve already had enough shit.”

“Don’t you think we both have?” Custodian Twenty-Two replies with a checking glance.

• • •

Custodian Twenty-Two shrugs under the weight of the maintenance pack on his back and the deeper burden of stirred memories. Visions laced with violence, loss, and regret tumble through his mind like a pummeling avalanche of jagged boulders, yet he has no time to indulge the haunting. Pausing at the entryway to the ship’s power plant, he closes his eyes and engages a favorite, and useful, indulgence. Settling his weight evenly, he focuses on the vibration of the ship’s engines reverberating through the soles of his boots. The soothing sensation is an idiosyncrasy particular to the standard issue magnetic footwear for his vocation and a small, yet entertaining balm. The subtle rhythm reminds him of introducing his young counterpart to the resonance and Custodian Forty’s resulting mirth. The memory coaxes a bemused grin and frees his hostage mind from the residue of lingering remorse. With a cleansing breath, he opens his eyes and reaches for the access panel next to the door to gain authorization to enter the engine room.

Pressing his thumb against a scanner his ears suddenly plug to the point of piercing pain and he falters, his fingers fanning out on the smooth white wall as he catches himself.

“Custodian Twenty-Two to Ops,” he pants into the comNet terminal on the entryway’s access panel, struggling to remain conscious. “I just got hit by a sonic discharge. I’m outside the power plant.”

He is answered only by the flickering and failing of the access control’s lighted keys. The overhead lights quickly follow suit leaving him unsettled in the soft blue glow emanating from the faceplate of the personal interface pad on his sleeve. Before he can process his bewilderment, his stomach swims uneasily and his fingers move swiftly to his PIP to activate his magnetic boots before the loss of the gravity can lift him from the floor.

“Custodian Twenty-Two to Ops,” he repeats urgently, using the independent comNet on his PIP.

His brow furrows when the “no signal” text pulses on the small monitor, inviting a creeping foreboding into his already unsettled mind. The hope of comfort in the company of the engineers prods him to collect his wits and get past the door.

Reaching into his utility belt, he retrieves a small device and places the head of the tool on the door’s control panel. A faint electro-magnetic charge ripples from the portable power feed as it adheres itself to the terminal. The access panel reactivates, the light of its keys competing with that of the custodian’s PIP as the door lurches and stalls ajar just enough to provide a grip. The seasoned gaffer slips his strong fingers into the gap and, with some effort, pushes the door back and into the wall.

He is greeted by a blackness that only a deep space can provide, the sour smell of vomit, and a pungent stench that evokes the echoes of his scarred youth. Although the power failure has robbed the engineering stations completely, the voice of the ship’s autonomous computer resounds in the blackness. “Transfer feed malfunction; reactor compromise in three minutes, ten seconds."

• • •

On the far side of the power plant deck, unseen in the sheltering envelope of artificial night, a nebulous figure stands before an indistinct console. Fingers dressed in sable gloves press a palm size disk against the inactive computer console. The disk grips the computer with a faint blue glow and the console instrumentation blink and flicker to life. COMPTUER CORE: POWER PLANT MAIN TERMINAL scrolls across the dim monitor.

“Transfer feed malfunction; reactor compromise in three minutes,” the voice of the ship’s computer resounds, filling the darkness.

• • •

“Hello?” the custodian calls, dread opening his pores as he steps over the threshold into the stygian void. His trembling fingers tap his PIP. A flashlight emerges from his personal interface pad and rotates into position before throwing a powerful beam into the dark chamber. Panning the deck, the ray of light finds each station vacant. Consternation tightens his face as a reflective shimmer overhead catches his eye. As he lifts the beam into the obscured heights of the chamber, a thunder of metallic footfalls explodes onto the dark corridor behind him.

“Transfer feed malfunction; reactor compromise in two minutes, fifty seconds.”

• • •

At the other end of the deck the silhouette in the darkness manipulates the keypad of the computer core’s power plant terminal, ignoring the sweeping beam reaching across the deck. COMPUTER CORE: MEMORY ARCHIVE: ENTER ENCRYPTION CODE. The shadowy figure’s head turns slightly to gauge the clamor of rushing footfalls pouring from the main entry. Moving closer to the wall, the agent presses a tile on the disk fastened to the computer console. MEMORY ARCHIVE DIRECTORY replaces the words on the monitor and is followed by ACCESSING. Illuminated digits appear on the face of the disk which, in a flurry of scrolling numbers, increases with the device’s pirating of the archive data.

“Transfer feed malfunction; reactor compromise in two minutes, forty seconds.”

• • •

“Oh my gods!” Custodian Twenty-Two gasps from lips pale with horror. His hands flail in the abyss for an anchor as his feet scramble on heel in an instinctive retreat. The constriction of fear stabbing his heart has barely subsided when he is shoved clear of the entryway by the surging storm of security soldiers. Above them the bodies of the power plant engineers drift weightlessly amid the colossal power plant components entombed in the black shroud of murder.

“Transfer feed malfunction; reactor compromise in two minutes, thirty seconds.”

• • •

As the numbers on the cartridge continue to skyrocket, the agent turns to assess the bold infiltration and retrieves a small, metallic sphere from a hidden pocket. Looking back at the disk and then again to the deck filling with troopers, the inky figure twists the hemispheres of the orb with both hands and tosses it into the dark expanse of the open chamber beyond. Before the agent can return to work, however, a stealthy soldier rushes into the alcove with his rifle aimed to fire. “Hands where I can see them!”

“Transfer feed malfunction; reactor compromise in two minutes, twenty seconds.”

• • •

Still gaping at the nightmare overhead, Custodian Twenty-Two is pulled from the paralysis of terror by a strong thud vibrating through the soles of his boots. His foreboding presumption is relieved by the lack of an emergency notification from the ship’s computer. The source was not an explosion, yet is quickly followed by the pedal absorption of a second explosive rumble. Throwing the beam of light to his side to find the wall, he shuffles quickly to lay his palm against it.

The escape pods!

“Transfer feed malfunction; reactor compromise in two minutes, ten seconds.”

• • •

Undetected by the security teams taking strategic positions across the engineering deck, the small chrome sphere in the center of the benighted chamber hovers to a standstill. With the abruptness of a supernova, it erupts in a blast of white light that tears away the veneer of pitch obscuring the cavernous chamber. The source of the brilliant energy expands into a vortex, dazzling and violent, that throws the soldiers off their mark.

At the entryway Custodian Twenty-Two shields his eyes from the blast, overwhelmed by dismay and indecision. Processing through a tempest of instinct, training, and will, he forces his gaze across the deck to the escape pod airlock where the inconsistency of the churning light makes the hatch coaming dance against the chamber wall.

“Transfer feed malfunction; reactor compromise in two minutes.”

• • •

In the split second the security officer is distracted by the burst of light and energy, the cunning agent crushes his esophagus with a lightning strike punch to the throat. As the trooper falls to his knees the agent swipes the bayonet from the soldier’s own belt and coolly sinks it into the man’s chest. In the chamber beyond, a shrill, blood-curdling screech pours from the churning vortex to pierce the fetid air. The agent turns back to the disk and the computer console unconcerned with the unfolding nightmare on the deck of the power plant.

“Transfer feed malfunction; reactor compromise in one minute, fifty seconds.”

• • •

A barrage of stringy mucus, like slimy cords of steel, rockets from the center of the blazing gyre to strike the troopers from their marks. With a lethal grip, the viscous tendrils snake around arms, necks, waists, and chests with swift and vile dexterity. Futile artillery blazes wildly at the convulsive hands of snipers in the throes of strangulation and the doomed triggers of their comrades firing on the unseen monster at the heart of the maelstrom. Like epoxy, the slimy tendrils adhere to the armor and skin of the unfortunate men and women still breathing and pulls them flailing into the devouring vortex.

“Transfer feed malfunction; reactor compromise in one minute, forty seconds.”

• • •

Twenty-Two’s quaking turns to nausea as the artificial gravity suddenly returns and his heavy body slumps under the weight of the fatigue of mortal terror. As he falls against the wall and slides to the floor, a ghastly cacophony of breaking bones and flesh impacting metal rises as the corpses of the power plant crew fall from their weightless heights. The stark light dancing from the vortex exaggerates the silhouettes of the bloodied and twisted carcasses littering the open floor. Limbs snapped in unnatural positions, skulls crushed and spilled, and bodies strewn in grotesque clumps play on the scene like macabre art in contrasting white, pitch, and crimson. Custodian Twenty-Two rolls into the corner and vomits.

“Transfer feed malfunction; reactor compromise in one minute, thirty seconds.”

• • •

In the terminal alcove the numbers on the face of the disk clinging to the computer panel stop scrolling and the ebony hand removes the implement of espionage. The agent turns and evaluates the situation beyond the alcove before stepping casually over the body of the murdered warrior. At the threshold of the recess, the harbinger of this horror pauses to survey the fruition of carefully laid plans. A congregation of gruesome corpses litter the deck, spared a fate which the ranks snatched into the spinning starburst will not.

“Transfer feed malfunction; reactor compromise in one minute, twenty seconds.”

• • •

The overhead lights return, but do little to diminish the intensity of the tourbillion of energy. A familiar voice seeps through Custodian Twenty-Two’s stupor. Swooning, he traces the disconcerting audio to his PIP where the earnest face of Custodian Forty is pleading from the comNet monitor.

‘Run!’ pierces his mind like a shooting star, slapping him to alertness. Custodian Forty’s emphatic, “Get out of there!” rallies Twenty-Two to his feet with clearer eyes locked on the escape pod airlock. The startling emergence of a figure at the other end of the deck, however, arrests his intention suddenly.

The agent, disk in hand, is surprised to find someone still alive and stares in cold stillness at the paltry janitor. The saboteur is confident that the old man is harmless otherwise the monster in the light would not have overlooked him.

“Transfer feed malfunction; reactor compromise in one minute, ten seconds.”

The custodian returns the calculating stare as his anxious fingers move to the holster of his belt to find only the tools and cleaning utensils thereon. His hand clenches into fist.

The black Machiavelli extends the pirate disk on fingertips, as if taunting the old man.

Custodian Twenty-Two glances to the airlock and back to the agent. The saboteur’s eyes follow suite, panning from the janitor to the airlock with lips curled in a grin that sends ice down Twenty-Two’s spine.

A tremendous boom! jolts the power plant, knocking out the artificial gravity once again. The great bulk of the Bohemia sinks abruptly in its cosmic orientation causing the corpses and biological debris throughout the deck to float weightlessly at chest level. Both the custodian and the saboteur, however, remain firmly footed on magnetic soles.

“Decompression breach level thirty-one starboard,” the ship’s computer announces. “Transfer feed malfunction; reactor compromise in one minute.”

Custodian Twenty-Two bolts for the escape pod airlock, racing against the countdown and the saboteur surely in pursuit. Struggling through a sea of broken corpses, his hands are quickly drenched with the warm blood and gore of the power plant crew, as he pushes them frantically out of his path. Each shove testifies to the brutality of the crew’s murder. Sharp bone and squishy brain, and firm flesh meet his fingers with every stride. Anguish and revulsion feed his despair over the desecration of such valiant comrades yet stark survival instincts allay the full impact of the travesty.

“Transfer feed malfunction; reactor compromise in fifty seconds.”

Releasing the constraints of gravity, the malevolent saboteur circumvents Custodian Twenty-Two’s lead by bounding over and across the horizon of the dead. The force of the agent’s airborne sacking throws them both sprawling through the dead and onto the floor. Despite his age, Custodian Twenty-Two writhes and kicks like a wild boar beneath the weight of a lion. Before the saboteur can get a firm grasp on anything but the custodian’s utility backpack, Twenty-Two slaps a button on his chest straps and slips away, leaving the villain to wrestle past the appliance.

“Transfer feed malfunction; reactor compromise in forty seconds.”

Every circumstance that ever held him back in life batters his brain, stoking the fires of his determination and desperation, and crystallizing his focus and agility. Under a cast of the strobing vortex, Custodian Twenty-Two deactivates his magnetic boots and, in one smooth gesture, lunges for the airlock. The elder crewman sails through the queer light with a thrill of liberation that crescendos with the palm of his hand, painted in hemic gore, landing squarely on the airlock hatch release pad. Devastating relief and absolute exhilaration erupt from his wintered core as the inner hatch snaps open and he slips fleetly into the airlock. Without a backward glance Twenty-Two closes the transparency behind him just as the architect of destruction reaches the inner hatch coaming.

Spinning weightlessly in a cocktail of frenzied panic and his own mad cackling, Custodian Twenty-Two’s mind and fingers grapple and scratch for the control panel which will open the outer hatch to the waiting escape pod. With each confused tumble he can feel the seconds slipping away as his fingers lash the whirling interior with stripes of blood while the luminous keys swim obstinately out of reach like skittish koi.

“Transfer feed malfunction; reactor compromise in thirty seconds.”

A concise and thunderous roar rattles the airlock and Custodian Twenty-Two’s mania falls away with the escape pod now jetting uselessly into space. Grabbing the handle of the transparent outer hatchway, his harrowed eyes follow the empty pod as it falls silently into the glittering expanse. Cold terror gushes from his pours. Behind him, on the other side of the transparent inner hatch coaming, the agent’s finger remains pressed against the launch command.

The sobering realization of the saboteur’s intent consolidates Custodian Twenty-Two’s legacy of defeat, reducing him to anguished and bitter tears. With unabashed sobs, he reaches for his PIP. Every step towards achieving his dream of being in space mocks him as he deactivates the comNet monitor on which the young Custodian Forty’s face continues to plead desperately. The defeated janitor turns to the dispassionate eyes of his murderer while the image of his young friend’s face fades to gray glass.

“You can’t do this to me!”

Framed in the bizarre churning light, the saboteur gazes coldly on the terror contorting the old man’s face.

“Transfer feed malfunction, reactor compromise in twenty seconds.”

The vacuum of space muffles Custodian Twenty-Two’s scream almost instantly as the outer hatchway blasts open, sucking the only surviving witness to the strategic travesty into the icy oblivion of outer space. His brain reels in suffocation as his fingers grapple for his PIP until his veins and organs rupture in the final grip of the most horrific death known to space-faring man. Blood and fluids seeping from his broken body vaporize as his freezing silhouette floats listlessly against a backdrop of fleeing escape pods and the ill-fated starship drifting toward a serene blue belt of stars.

• • •

“No!” Custodian Forty screams. “No!”

Bludgeoned by grief, Custodian Forty looks up from the blank monitor on his sleeve, desperate for a measure of solace from any of the other nine survivors sharing his escape pod. The shocked and stricken casts staring back at him only compounds the palpable agony of utter helplessness ransacking his soul. In a vacuum of destitution, he turns a forlorn gaze past the porthole at the scores of escape pods and emergency responders swarming expanse. His permeating grief is twisted into surreal confusion as the hulking fuselage of the Bohemia buckles abruptly.

“What’s happening?! What’s happening?!” a survivor erupts in a sudden siren shriek; her attention fixed beyond the window as cries of dismay fill the pod.

Custodian Forty presses his hands and face to the window frantically as the cityscape portholes of the starship surge to nearly solar brilliance. A sharp and blinding blast assaults his pupils before he can shield his eyes as the Bohemia is consumed in a colossal explosion. Radiation and shrapnel rock the escape pod with frenzied screams. Custodian Forty slumps against the porthole, crushed beneath weight of loss and remorse as searing tears sting his calamity-weary eyes.

Sinking in despair, he slumps into the back of his seat and surrenders to fate. Through the soles of his magnetic boots can feel the vibration of the escape pod’s engines. The bittersweet sensation prods his beleaguered mind to comprehend the tiny flashing light on his forearm. With weak and trembling fingers, he activates the screen on his PIP:

“…LIVE.”