This was the zone where comets were born. This was where the darkest objects slept, the kinds of things that lurked until, all of a sudden, they smashed into a planet like Earth. Once every hundred thousand years or so, they caused great destruction and even extinction. One incident had extinguished the dinosaurs forever.

  Something about man’s makeup causes us to forever fear the unknown. We all knew we were so far from home, there was no hope of rescue if things went badly. The region was unknown and virtually unexplored.

  One day, four months and ten days into the journey, we received a fateful order. “Red Company, move to your stations.”

  I heard the alert come over the ship’s public address system. “Green Company requests assistance. All Red Company is ordered to report for duty.”

  “That’s our call,” Sergeant Cox said, standing up. His gut knocked over a checkerboard in front of him as he stood. We’d been stuck within the confines of the ship for so long that he had grown a bit of a paunch.

  The rest of us scrambled to the lockers, and we shrugged into our riot gear. Whatever was happening, it had to be pretty bad. Normally, Red Company was above problems like breaking up fights. We didn’t often get out our batons and metal-studded gloves, but shipboard incidents had been increasing.

  On this particular day, a riot had broken out upstairs, and it seemed Green Company was in over their heads.

  We didn’t bother with our laser carbines. We had pistols on our belts, but they were mostly for show. Our orders didn’t allow us to shoot anyone unless we were shot first. Accordingly, we wore body armor, stern expressions, and held what amounted to good old-fashioned clubs.

  Charging through the ship, I followed Cox, as only he seemed to know where the altercation had taken place. I hadn’t bothered to check in and read the maps inside my helmet. What was the point? The ship wasn’t all that big. We would be there soon enough.

  My eyebrows raised just a little when I noticed we were marching upstairs rather than down. Most fights broke out on the lower decks, but not today.

  We marched to the entertainment deck. The old salts called it the Lido Deck, harkening back to cruise ships of the past. Here, most of the officers consorted together, got loaded, played games, got into arguments—and once in a while, they threw a few fists at each other.

  A full squad of ten men, led by Sergeant Cox, busted into the barroom. There, my eyes were met with the biggest brawl I’d seen since I’d left Earth slums years ago.

  Two of Green Company’s men were already on the floor. It looked like they were unconscious—maybe worse. The place was crowded with both officers and enlisted men—all involved in the fight. Somebody had set off the automated fire suppression system. It did smell like smoke, but I didn’t see any flames.

  Fire retardant foam, along with gasses like halon and INERGEN, were spraying wildly out of control. This added a lot of confusion to the scene and caused Sergeant Cox to order us to turn on our oxygen systems seal our helmets, just in case.

  We waded into the melee, swinging batons at anyone who was swinging a fist. This settled down the crowed pretty fast. A squad of organized, sober marines in body armor and swinging batons was enough to convince most of the rowdies to flee just at the sight of us. Corporal Tench, in particular, took great pleasure in kicking the rumps of various ensigns and even one lieutenant who was scrambling to get away from him.

  He laughed and declared his life to be a good one. “Where else are we allowed to kick officers in the ass?”

  His attitude was uncharitable, but it brought a grin to all our faces.

  “When these prigs are drunk and disorderly, we’re in charge,” he said. “If they don’t like it, they can go talk to Commander Kaine and explain why they participated in this riot in the first place.”

  As the room was clearing out and the various foam-spraying devices were shut off, I spotted someone I knew. Yeoman Carter—my Freya.

  She was at the back of the bar, and she was up close and personal with someone—a man in a fleet officer’s uniform.

  I breathed out a big sigh inside my helmet. A hand came down and slapped me on the shoulder. I saw Ledbetter’s face—he’d spotted Freya, too.

  “Sorry, man,” he said. “Better luck next time.” He walked away, trampling over fallen officers who were drunk and either crawling for the exit or simply sprawled on the floor.

  The medical teams were arriving now, and the Green Company losers dared to show their faces. They’d been in over their heads to begin with, but now they were wandering back, raining blows upon the drunks they hated the most.

  Soon, there would be nothing in here but broken glass and lost service caps on the deck, and I knew I should leave. If Freya had made her choice, so be it.

  I knew I should walk out—but I couldn’t quite do it. I kept nosing around, checking on the men, lifting a few of them, getting them to their feet and ushering them out of the place. All the while I was glancing toward that corner where Freya was making out with some dude whom I hated, even if I didn’t know his name.

  Finally, I couldn’t help myself. I took a few steps closer. That was when I noticed she was moving a bit oddly. In fact, if I had to describe it, I would say she wasn’t moving much at all.

  Frowning, I marched over and laid a big armored glove on the shoulder of the man who, as it turns out, was pinning her in the corner of a booth.

  He turned around, his eyes wide, and right then I knew what was happening. There was a guilty look in those eyes. They were also wider than they should be, a certain sign that he’d consumed too much of the narco drinks.

  “Let me help you up, sir,” I said.

  I picked the ensign up off his feet, lifting him by the armpits. He grunted and complained.

  “Get your hands off me, Marine,” he mumbled. “I’m Ensign Lacroix. Don’t you know who I am? I’m Lacroix.”

  I remembered him. I had seen him a few times before. The first time he’d had been on the space elevator at Mars. He’d been the one leading the group that was encircling Yeoman Carter way back then.

  The second time had been upstairs in the captain’s quarters. We’d discussed the mutiny of various officers. He was only a junior officer, but he clearly thought he was a big deal—a bigger deal than he was.

  I glanced back at Freya. Yes, as I thought, she was essentially in a stupor. He had been pawing at her when she was more or less passed out.

  This made me angry. I didn’t have the best upbringing back on Earth, and sometimes, my darker instincts from those early days came back to haunt me. Accordingly, my ankle somehow found its way in front of Lacroix, and he went crashing down on his face.

  “Whoa, whoa,” I said, reaching down and dragging him up to his feet again. Or at least, halfway to his feet.

  He was cursing and mumbling, and when I got him up to a good height, I dropped him again. This time I made sure his face went into a hard, upright stool. He cut his cheek on that somehow, and the blood began to flow.

  “Damn, sir, you’re clumsy today,” I told him.

  “You fucker,” he mumbled, turning around. I saw that he had a hand on his pistol, which was holstered at his belt. He hadn’t managed to get the gun out yet, so I reached down and closed my hand over his.

  There was a safety strap, which his half-numb fingers were fumbling over. I used my Earth-born strength to squeeze hard, crushing those fingers down onto the gun.

  “Now, you don’t want to go do that, sir,” I told him.

  “I’ll have your badge,” he told me, which brought a smile to my face for the first time since I had seen Corporal Tench kick another ensign in the ass. I was fairly certain at that moment that Ensign Lacroix barely knew where he was or who he was talking to.

  “I’ve got my cameras on, boy,” I told him. “Don’t screw this up, or you’ll get busted down into the ranks.”

  Ensign Lacroix gaped and gawked at me for a moment. “Cameras?” he said.

  That single word seemed to strike through everything else. It caused him more concern and possibly pain than slamming his face into various chunks of metal had done so far.

  “That’s right,” I said. “They’re rolling right now. Everything you’ve been doing tonight is on camera.”

  He gave me a look like a fish. All of a sudden, he scrambled away on all fours and ran out of the bar.

  I straightened up, laughed a little, and headed back to the corner of the bar to check on Freya. She was coming awake now, and I think she had witnessed a bit of what had just occurred.

  “Devin?” she said. “Is that you?”

  “It sure is, ma’am. Do you need some help?”

  “I think I do. I’m really tired. I’m over-drunk. I don’t know how much I had.”

  “Too much,” I said, “that’s my guess.”

  She shook her hair out of her eyes and massaged her face. “I guess I’m used to alcohol—but not these narco things. Maybe I blacked out. Did you see?”

  “You were with that Lacroix guy. He was all over you when I came in.”

  Freya looked alarmed. “Really? We were just talking… That prick.”

  “Maybe he slipped you something extra. Maybe you want to get a blood test?”

  She thought about it. She shook her head. “I’m okay. I’ve just got a headache. Can you help me get out of here?”

  I put an arm around her waist, lifted her up, and helped her out of the bar in a much gentler fashion than I had anyone else this evening.

  “Devin,” she said.

  “What is it?”

  “I’m really sorry,” she said.

  “It’s okay. It’s a long voyage. Everybody’s freaking out a little bit.”

  “Yeah, that’s what it is. This mission. All those maps on the walls. We’ve got months to go, still. Back in the old days on Earth, naval ships could at least visit a friendly port now and then. We’re in the middle of nowhere.”

  I thought about what she said. I had to agree, the maps on the walls were working on people’s minds. They always showed the same thing, that we were heading farther and farther out into the dark.

  “It’s freaking me out,” Freya said.

  “I think it’s freaking everybody out,” I told her.

  Once we were outside in the main passageway, the decks had pretty much emptied out. There were only a couple of Marines standing around, looking tough. One of them gave me the thumbs-up, probably thinking I scored myself a date for the evening.

  I frowned back at him then turned my attention to Freya. With careful effort, I got her out of the place and back to her quarters.

  There at the doorway, she lingered and put her hands on my gloves, examining them.

  “There’s blood on here,” she said.

  “Yeah, I suspect so,” I told her.

  “Were you in that fight, too?”

  “Only at the end.”

  “Yeah, the crew started it, but you guys finished it,” she laughed. “Devin, could you take off your helmet for a minute?”

  I reached up and pried open the baseplate, unscrewing the whole thing. Then, Freya kissed me for a long time.

  It was probably the first real, honest-to-God makeout session we’d ever had. We’d had a kiss or two back on Mars, but this was different. It was real, and it was passionate. I didn’t think it was all due to her state of mind, either.

  “My lips are bleeding,” she said, touching herself on the mouth. “Do you think that asshole bit me or something?”

  “Could be,” I said, and my mood darkened all over again.

  She looked at me and read my expression carefully. “He’s lucky you didn’t kill him, isn’t he?”

  I shrugged. “I might have had an accident,” I said. “It was a close thing.”

  She smiled. “Thanks for helping me out. I’m going to pull myself together. We all have to. We’re only a third of the way through this trip. God, I can’t imagine the six months on the way back.”

  “Yeah…”

  “I bet we’ll find nothing out there,” she said, staring at the wall screens. One of them glowed nearby, showing how distant we were from any source of humanity. “There’s going to be nothing out there at all. Then, we’ll have to turn around and fly all the way home.”

  I nodded. I had to admit that she might be right.

  Chapter 22: Accountant Blackwood

  The fifth and sixth months went better. I think it was because someone had a flash of ingenuity. They’d put a big, round green circle on the map. That put a positive spin on our destination, which as everyone knew by now was the dwarf planet Eris.

  Normally a dark, essentially invisible ball of frozen rock out in the farthest reaches of the Solar System, Eris definitely looked more friendly as a bright green circle. When you animated just about anything with a green blob of color, it made it seem like a much friendlier place. Instead of a deadly rock, it looked like we were flying toward the Garden of Eden.

  Everyone’s imagination ran wild as we came ever closer. The nearer we got to Eris, the more people felt the journey wasn’t hopeless. Instead, we were going to be let loose on a new unexplored world.

  Rumors ran rampant through Borag, describing vast secret treasures to be found. Palladium, radioactive platinum, and spikes of diamond that grew like hoarfrost. Of course, it was all hogwash. No one knew what we were going to find—if anything—but it gave us hope. In this dark time, we really needed hope.

  As the grand flight came to an end, I thought about the kind of an ordeal it would be to fly to the stars. A voyage like that would take years—possibly centuries. It seemed like an impossible thing for humans to accomplish, at least not at the speeds our ships were capable of now.

  Maybe we would never get to other star systems, or at least not ones that were worth colonizing. They were just so far away, so remote, and when humans were crammed together on a ship, I doubted they could hold it together that long. There would be a civil war long before we spent the decades it would take, flying in some hopelessly crowded Ark, to reach such a distant goal.

  By the time we were in the final days of our long journey, Red Company had been assigned shifts to patrol the passages. There had been several serious incidents, like the bar fight that I’d helped break up. The officers up on the bridge had decided to make the marines more visible, to use us for the purposes of prevention rather than as a cure.

  This approach worked to some extent, but it was annoying for my fellow soldiers. After all, we hadn’t signed on with Red Company to be marching around, grim-faced, with our laser carbines held against our chests like ceremonial guards at some dead Emperor’s tomb back on Earth.

  But I did it because I was ordered to, and at the very least, it gave me a chance to wander around the ship and see what was what. One day, on the mid-decks, I came across a person whom I hadn’t seen for months. He was looking at an astronomical chart that depicted Borag as she drew close to Eris. He was staring at it as if fascinated.

  It was Accountant Blackwood. I glanced his way but took no special notice of him. I marched by with my gun held to my chest.

  Blackwood, for his part, said nothing to me as I approached. But just as I was about to pass him, he spoke to me privately.

  “Starn?” he said.

  I paused, turned on my heel, and looked at him questioningly. “Can I do something for you, sir?”

  He nodded, his head tipping forward, lowering his chin on that long, stick-like neck of his. “Indeed, you can,” he said. “Did you know that I reviewed your performance on several different occasions? We have videos… and I took a special interest in your unusual case.”

  “I didn’t know that, sir,” I replied. “But I guess it makes sense.”

  He nodded again. “Yes,” he said. “I found you’ve spent an inordinate amount of company time pestering women who are, quite honestly, above your station.”

  I knew then, he must be referring to Freya. I bristled a bit, but he took no notice.

  “However,” he continued, “when you are actually on point and on duty, you do a remarkable job. Do you know why I’ve been investigating you, Private Starn?”

  “No, sir.”

  “Because I was curious as to what exactly it was Captain Hansen saw in you—not to mention that piece of fluff.” He flapped his hand for a moment. “What was her name? The yeoman?”

  “Her name is Freya Carter, sir,” I replied evenly.

  “Right, right. Whatever. I think I understand what these women find so fascinating. You come off like an ignoramus. An unimaginative thug—and you’re all those things. But, you’re also an obedient brute. When an order is given, you carry it out. So far, in every instance I can think of, you’ve been successful.”

  I did my best to maintain a stony expression. I didn’t smile at him, I didn’t nod to him, I didn’t even acknowledge his backhanded compliment. Nor did I argue with it. I just gave him a flat stare. I didn’t like the man. I never had, and I probably never would.

  “The short version of this is that I believe I can use a man like you,” he said. “We’re coming into what might be a dangerous situation.”

  “That’s true, sir,” I admitted.

  “We don’t know what the hell’s out there. You saw the smile on that colonel’s face back on Mars. He was looking smug, even as he pretended to be ignorant of the fate of the previous ships he sent out here on this goose-chase.”

  I didn’t answer. I just stared at him. Eventually, he continued.

  “The colonel knew more than he was letting on. I don’t believe the ships that came out here before us simply disappeared. I believe, perhaps, they were destroyed. Perhaps the colonel even heard their distress signals—and I would wager they were strange ones.”

  Finally, I nodded. Blackwood’s suspicions matched my own. No company would forgive a stack of debts as tall as the one Borag had accumulated without having grim intentions.