I recorded my entire 1 hour and 37 minute session, with the idea that maybe I could turn it into bonus content for Swords Against Madness; I would record me figuring out the game Extemporanneously, and then redo it as a story and cut them together in the style of one of my favourite RPG podcasts: P.J. Sack's A Wasteland Story.
That is a podcast well worth your time if you like the older Black Isle / Van Buren Fallout setting, by the way.
As it was, Death in Space lived up to its name, and I didn't make it more than five encouters into the game before my PC died horribly. And you know what? It was incredible fun, but I just don't have enough for a good podcast episode, so Instead I decided I would write it up as a short story to share with you all.
The story includes a couple of horrible torturous deaths, exsanguination, piracy, and inappropriate treatment of a corpse... but I don't think I need to sell it too hard.
51 Ehlee
Tenebris
The Tenebris system is the Broken Heart of human civilization. It was here, on the moon Inauro that the gems were found. The gems, organic, beautiful, and unique made bridging between star systems possible. they refined computer and manufacturing technology. They pushed forward tech a millennium in a few short years... And they brought the War.
The War for control over the Gems lasted millennia. Endless bloodshed, a forever war. The flow of gems stopped, the economy of the entire galaxy seized. Civilizations fell like dominoes, Starved of the gems they had become addicted to.
By the time the winner had been decided, there was no point anymore. No one was making anything new. the universe was run on recycled, repurposed, barely functional tech. Interstellar commerce all but lost. And the slow heat death of the universe, and the big crunch had already begun, bringing with it the dark alien influence of the Void.
Ixx
Matteo walked through the crowded, stinking, steamy corridors of Nonac Sector. Hawkers and vendors lined the corridors on mats and kiosks calling wares.
Non-phys experiences! Inject a better world!
The memories of a non-dead velocity cursed! He remembered the future! Maybe he remembers you!
Extruded targeting computers! Made with food waste.
Grilled novadog!
Second-hand eyes! Finest manufacture, built to last. Taken from augmented soldiers of the Yathi Combine. They saw the dawn of the War and are as good as they were six thousand years ago! When the ship was found they were all dust, but the eyes still saw!
Matteo cut a dashing figure in his mirrored robes, and flamboyant neon-lit bouffant. He loved watching the merchants subtly preen as he passed by. Vanity was a beautiful contagion. One woman mistook his smile for interest in her wares.
"You have good taste, Cirra, I sell the best AI concubines. I programmed them myself, based on my own considerable skills. And I tailor their non-phys bodies to your exacting desires. Although I find it hard to believe you cannot find a warm woman."
"Maybe I was considering you."
She smiled coyly at him, teasing her dark, grubby tresses. He chuckled and kissed her hand, savouring the rare taste of soap mingled with engine grease. Then moved on.
His destination was a torrent of light and sound at the end of the corridor. Had video arcades still been remembered across the gulf of Aeons, anyone would have thought of one. Dozens of screens flickered with simple maps on 8- and 16-bit displays. A trio of ancient holographic displays suspended others hovering in the air, glitching and flickering with the age of the ancient technology. Great glass tables displayed maps to would-be explorers as they sat and moved tiles representing ships and resources to plan their trips.
Mattaeo became a bright technicolor storm in the light of the maps. He paused by a cracked panel displaying maps of the known sectors of the Iron Ring to admire the his reflection.
The purveyor of the shop stood suspended from a moving frame that held his torpid body. An elaborate non-phys headset encased his head and dangled from a spiderweb of dingy cables, feeding him all the eyes and ears of his store. Hissing pneumatic arms turned the shopkeeper to him; a tinny simulacrum of his voice crackled from a damaged speaker on the litter.
"Welcome to Ixx Cartography, Cirra. it is my pleasure to help you find your path, and I will happily trade maps for maps, if you have travels to share."
"I am meeting someone."
"Very good," the litter turned to indicate a man at a neaby table. A light changed color above his head by way of a gesture. "I believe this gentleman is waiting for you."
Matteo bowed politely to the body in the litter, and it tilted in return.
"Mr. Baker?" Matteo pulled up the old reused auditorium chair. "I am Matteo Helm. Captain of the 51 Ehlee. We talked over the BBS."
Mr. Baker looked over Matteo with obvious doubt. He was a tall; fading muscle; a belly just beginning to go soft; scars of the war painting a once-handsome face. His clothing was curious; a crisp white suit, made slightly dingy by the soot and steam of the Iron Ring, a pendant of pale blue stone in silver at his throat, and a wide, white hat. He spoke with a thick, slow drawl that Matteo did not recognize.
"How do, Captain?" he reached out for a hand clasp, squaazing Matteo's hand hard, as if looking for weakness. Matteo refused to wince, which seemed to satisfy Baker well enough. "Might as well finish pullin' up that chair."
"I hope you have not been waiting long?"
"Naw, Ah've been enjoying taking in the maps. A man ought to take an interest in the evah-changin' chape of the cosmos, ain't that so?"
"If one is to get anywhere in it. I pride myself on knowing many star systems and their people," Appeal to Vanity. "I must say, I don't recognize your accent or dress. Will you expand my knowledge?"
The question had the desired effect, if not as intensely as he had hoped. Mr. Baker was a man with trust issues, but he couldn't help but smile.
"I am a Texian. Maybe the last of the Texians, for all I know. We were a proud people with a history all the way to the Birthworld. We have herded giant and terrible animals across the deserts plains, and jungles of a dozen worlds. Rode worldships across the night for millions of years with our beasts alongside us."
"You sound like you miss your people."
He sighed. "We were Men who were not afraid to be alone. Time is a bitter thing, though, ain't it? I am two hundred seventeen subjectively, but it's been eight million years since I was born. My home star burned away centuries ago."
"I didn't mean to bring up sad memories. I'm only thirty nine subjective. But I've been captain of 51 Ehlee for three thousand years. Nothing is like I remember."
Something twitched in the man in the suit. His face went suddenly hard.
"Can I trust you Captain? You seem good at making fellas feel soft."
"I have savoir-faire, Mr. Baker. But it is worthless without also having a work ethic to keep the reputations I make."
"I was unable to get much info on you."
"I've been travelling on a slow-chem burn from Lassata to Tenebris for the last 500 years. I was gone long enough to be forgotten. I've only been working in Tenebris again for a decade, and my jobs have been long."
"Do you have any experience navigating the Messier belt?"
"Yes. I used to run supplies to belters there during the War."
"Whose side were you on?"
"My own. No offense, Cirra, but every other side was stupid."
Mr. Baker stopped to contemplate this. Could his trust be bought with brutal honesty if vanity was not enough?
"Tell me about your ship."
"51 Ehlee is a Freerunner. She was made by the Catspaw Anarchist Collective to be the first of many ships that would be free to move about and do business in Tenebris and beyond without being sucked into factional disputes. She's about eight thousand years old, and she's seen better days. She's partially living, but she eats standard fuel. I consider her family. I love her, even if she's slow."
Baker nodded, and then reached into a pocket and handed Matteo a crystal.
"I'm lookin' for a gem. A very unique one." The crystal displayed a hologram of a gem of strage colour and exceedingly fine facets. "They were only found once in the deepest digs on Inauro. The fellas that found them sold a few for a fortune, then kept a few as prizes.
"I've managed to pinpoint the last known location of one of them in the Messier 51 belt. I've prepared a map to the wreck of the gem hauler Candescent. the captain got rich on that find. I believe he kept one as a prize."
"How long has the Candescent been wrecked?"
"Seven thousand years."
Matteo leaned back and sighed.
"I know the odds're good that she's been picked clean. But she is in a pretty dangerous section of the belt. It would've been high risk salvage. Besides, I ain't expectin' the Gem."
"Then what are you expecting?"
"I am going to pay in navigation data to several other lost Gem hauls and ships I am privy to. All of them potentially profitable. All of them with contracts attached, All I want is the next clue to its location. I get that it has been probably scavenged; I want to know who by. If, somehow, you did find the gem, that would be worth 4,000 holos to me. And an endoresement to my contacts."
Matteo thought for a moment.
"Do I need to be watching my back for other people trying to beat you to this gem?"
"No. It only that valuable to me."
"I am going to need some supplies to make the journey. Ehlee is slow, and this mission will take a year at least. Possibly more. I am either going to need food enough to last me that long, or two doses of Pentamicetic Milk and some parts to repair my cryochamber."
"You feel confident you can navigate the Messier belt?"
"Sir, it is my favourite part of space."
"You have a deal."
Matteo reached out his hand again and accepted the crushing handshake.
On his way back through the market he stopped and purchased a cassette of future memories of a velocity-cursed, and spent some time with the seller of virtual concubines before returning weary, and sweaty from pleasurable activity to the airlock where the 51 Ehlee clung to the Iron Ring.
As he approached the ship, he watched the strange isopods that lived on the skin of 51 Ehlee scuttle further onto the hull anticipating his departure. He marvelled at their rat-like cunning every time he saw them. They had lived on, and perhaps even evolved on the outer hull of Ehlee in the centuries since she had been built. Time was stranger the closer it came to an end. Not even humans were quite the same. but at least Vanity remained a constant.
Harlan Rose
The bridge of the 51 Ehlee was a tangle of wires meeting at ancient computers rebuilt a hundred times of salvaged parts. The interior wall plating had long ago been used to patch the outside. Clear tubes of liquid pulsed with the heartbeat of the ship's cybernetics, weary, old, congested, caked with plaque. Murals of the Anrachist heroes of the past, shrouded by hanging components, faded on the walls.
In the silent six month's voyage from Inauro to the Messier belt, frost had caked any surface not coated against it. The lone nav computer display turned every surface to a glittering field of blue and green diamond. Had there been anyone awake to see it, the flare of colour as systems jumped to life, it would have been spectacular. Dazzling. The frost melted away in ribbons of liquid light as the heater roared to life, and were blaseted into reclamation drains on the floor.
Matteo staggered from the cryochamber onto a floor still steaming from the blast of heat. He shrugged his robe on, and blearily pulled a caffeinated nutri-beer from the fridge, popping the cap off on a jagged bit of console as he tried to make sense of the readouts beneath the narrow trans-aluminum viewport.
Three days away from his destination, and only hours from the edge of the Messier belt. He was up early, but only by a half-day or so. Another screen explained why: A ship out at detection range. barely moving and emitting a weak distress signal.
Matteo finished dressing and downed his beer as he waited for his chance to learn more. As data poured in he could see the ship was a damaged solar barque; and beautiful old ship of glass and crystal from the days before the war. Its solar panels shattered and cracked beyond use. It hung loosely in space in a cloud of shards.
Matteo attempted to enhance the signal, and scanned for life signs as he slowed his approach. The ship had abundant life - too much: a geenhouse, or perhaps a massive infestation of dense mold. Perhaps insects? The harder he tried to get the data the more confusing the reading became.
And as he pushed harder to clarify the signal the more and more of the Void started to pour in over his speakers. The static of a dying universe flooded the bridge sddenly overhwhelming his senses. Underneath it, voices whispered mad things he could barely understand. Something in him revolted as if fingernails were on a chalkboard, and he was forced to turn off many of his sensors, before collapsing on the floor to vomit his nurtient beer.
Wiping his face, he grabbed hold of an old microphone sitting on a console and adjusted the dials on an ancient transmitter spliced into the console.
"Unknown ship, can you hear me? This is the 51 Ehlee. I've heard your distress signal. Do you read me?"
Silence. Static. A hint of void-whispers.
"Repeat, this is the 51 Ehlee; do you read me?"
Matteo considered the vessel carefully. He could use the parts, but this seemed ill-omened.
He redirected his ship and began warming his thrusters.
"51 Ehlee, this is The Beagle. Wait up. Sorry, I needed to get a good scan to make sure you weren't a scavenger ship."
"This is Matteo Helm, of the 51 Ehlee, who am I addressing?"
"This is Harlan Rose of the Beagle. I sure could use the help. All of may panels got smashed in a micrometeor storm. I have battery only, and I'm running low. It's just... a fella's got to be careful out here."
Matteo agreed: this felt... off. he had no idea how many people were on that ship. And they definitely knew how to think like pirates. But then, so do I, he reminded himself. Did he want to risk docking with this ship?
His hand reached for the contrild for his thrusters.
What would he want someone else to do if he were dead in the water?
He sighed, and lifted the mic again.
"Listen, Mr. Rose. I want to help. But I don't exactly have a spacesuit. And I am not feeling confident about the condition of my docking umbilical right now. Do you have a means of attaching a tow cable between out ships? I am willing to take you to CON-PM28, but it might be a hard trip, If you can share provisions, it would be a big help."
"I have a tow cable, and I can manage going EVA for a few minutes."
"I will get in position, then. And I suppose I don't need to tell you that if anything funny happens I am going full burn to get the hell away from you,"
"I would expect nothing else."
Matteo took hold of the joysticks that commanded the 51 Ehlee, and after a moment of tinkering to make them responsive again. Slowly he edged closer to the Beagle. She was a beautiful ship and well outfitted, but she was dingy. Her translucent hull was clouded and the outside dusted with sulfur. Matteo knew the look all too well. It was the look of a lonely nomad ship. If there were anyone other than Harlan Rose aboard, he'd be damned.
As he matched her position and brought the ship to a stop, he watched the Beagle from an external camera. Slowly, the airlock rattled open and a man stepped out into space, Harlan Rose wore a heavy coat, taped shut; goggles and head wrappings from which a ragged beard floated free. His limbs were long and thin, his torso short and rounded. A Solpod, Matteo noted... Men who spent eternities sleeping between periods of wakefulness to observe slow cosmic events. Eternal scientists.
Plasticated skin on Harlan's neck distended, opening up biomechanical vents beneath: a void gill to let a man survive without air, if not without heat.
Harlan Rose walked along the hull of the Beagle, and retrieved a thick and heavy braided tow cable with an electro-magnetic head the size of a trash can. And then, with careful aim he tensed, released his boots, and leapt across open space.
Matteo watched as he flew in a slow tight line towards the 51 Ehlee, then past. As he sailed overhead, Matteo swore. Through the viewport, he could watch the man aim the magnet and attempt to pull himself in, a moment too late. He curved off on a tangent into space, losing his grip on the cable.
The 51 Ehlee's maneuvering thursters whined to life. The ship groaned as Matteo grit his teeth and locked his eyes on the monitors, mad whispers hissed in a speaker suddenly forced to life as Matteo struggled to place the 51 Ehlee close to the tumbling man, without splattering him across the hull. His teeth itched and his eyes burned as he listened to the hissing madness through the coms. A moment later there was a satisfying double-thump as Harlan Rose fixed himself to the hull of the 51 Ehelee and began the terrifying walk across the hull, as isopods scattered from him.
He was shivering, caked with frost when Matteo opened the airlock. The perverse on the comms whispers dying down of their own accord.
His coat was covered with patches from the old botanical corps, farming colonies, planetrary life-science scouts, etc. An old Punk look that Matteo remembered from his own childhood.
He helped Harlan peel the frozen wrappings from his face. He was ugly, middle aged, and blotchy from the cold. Matteo appreciated a man with no call for vanity.
"You alright?"
"Fuck. I thought I was dead for certain. I - I ain't had anybody push themselves to see me through a hard spot in a long time. I owe you my thanks, Captain. And an apology for being so damned suspicious."
"I was suspicious, too."
Matteo offered him a cup of tea.
As Harlan Rose stopped shivering they worked out a plan. They would manouvre the 51 Ehlee back to the cable with Harlan waiting on the hull of the ship He'd attach it and they'd bring it back to the Beagle before docking the two ships and aim for CON-PM28, the trade hub of the Belt.
"I've got a good hydroponics bay, and I have enough tubers, berries, and edible moss to keep us going 'till you can get me to the station. After that, I will make sure people hear what you did, and I will make the fuel up to you."
At that moment, company seemed the best possible payment.
"I appreciate that. I don't expect too much, but I will take what I can get. Personally, I just asked myself what I would wish someone else would do if I were in your position."
"You're a good man, Helm. I thought that was an extinct breed."
"Not me. I'm just narcissistic enough to play hero when it suits me."
"Fair enough."
An hour later, Matteo watched through the window as Harlan stood on the nose of the 51 Ehlee. The ship crept at a snail's pace toward the tip of the tow cable. Tiny pulses... hold your breath, don't touch the accelerator for more than a nerve twitch at a time.
The end was visible to the naked eye now. The docking floodlights of the 51 Ehlee showing it like a black serpent snaking out towards the distant speck of the Beagle. Harlan's arms stretched out.
Just as Matteo swore they were nearly in reach a resonance rattled the hull and the vessel was bathed in raibow light. A ray-like creature arched out of the nearby asteroid belt, impossibly huge, impossibly graceful. They both watched it swing a lazy arc above edge of the Messier 51 belt, and then dive below, creting an aurora around the silhouettes of the outermost asteroids.
Harlan's voice cracled over the intercom "It's beautiful..." That was followed by a horrid crunch and the screech of a shorting radio, as the end of the cable struck him in the head as the magnet lept for the hull.
Matteo's gut churned as a plume of blood erupt from Harlan's void gills and froze in ruby plumes. His body went limp, still rooted to the hull by his magnetic boots. Moments later the isopods swarmed over his corpse, drawn by exposed moisture.
He was still sitting in mute shock as the two ships coupled automatically.
CON-PM28
Over the next three days, Matteo scavenged the beagle as best he could, claiming usable parts and technology. She had been set up with scanners designed to take astrochemical readings across space, and a generous hydroponics lab full of food enough for travel. Harlan Rose had owned little else; a few tools, a pouch of ancient metal discs, and supplies enough for one more journey in cryo-sleep. The 51 Ehlee's hold was brimming with parts for new modules, ship repairs, and food stripped from the old vessel.
He had hoped, briefly, that he and Harlan might have been friends, for at least the months it would have taken to reach CON-PM28. The Void could be lonely, and he had been alone since... god... had it been centuries now?
He'd taken to talking to Harlan's corpse as he passed by the window. Apologies, commisserations, questions.
Harlan was still standing outside on the deck of the ship. a grotesque ornament when Matteo set course for CON-PM28 in hopes of selling the hulk of the ship and finding a way to get Harlan off the ship.
Six months later, as he staggered out of his cryo pod, the figure was still standing there reaching out to space, glittering with a layer of stardust.
"Good morning, Harlan, I hope you are still looking at something wonderful."
CON-PM28's transponders marked it as a few hours off as he took a dust shower and ate a breakfast of dried fruit from the Beagle's stores. he watched with melancholly as the great station emerged from shadow behind Harlan Rose's figure.
He was typing in a sales advertisement when the first detonation shook his ship. The warning shot was timed almost perfectly with the radio transmission.
"Unidentified starship, cut your engines and heave to for boarding. You will submit to an inspection on suspicion of piracy."
"CON-PM28 this is the 51 Ehlee, hold your fire! I am unarmed! I have committed no piracy! I am bringing a legitimately salvaged vessel in."
The wait betweeen transmission and response was agonizing.
"We have received distress calls from the vessel identified as the Beagle, and identified its Captain... whose corpse has been seen by advaned observation probes on your ship."
Matteo spat a curse.
"Listen, I have recordings of Captain Rose's death. He was killed in an accident during an attempt to couple our ships to bring him in. After he was killed, I was unable to remove the body. I chose to salvage the ship, and hopefully arrange for his safe interrment."
He scrambled to load cartridges with his ship's footage as he waited the painful time for a response.
"51 Ehlee, you will decouple with the Beagle and leave CON-PM8's space. You will not return. you have one hour to comply."
So it's like that. Wearily he crossed the airlock into the Beagle and loaded the cartridge into the computer. He placed the playback of Harlan's death on a loop, before returning to the Beagle.
"I hope you choke on it" he grumbled, as he pushed free of the Beagle.
"Harlan, I've got to get you off of there."
Weary, he considered the state of his supplies. He had enough Pentamicetic Milk to allow him to survive stasis for one more jump. He'd have to either spend the next three months in space alone, talking to a corpse, or go into cryosleep and hope that when he found the wreck of the Candescent there would still be some aboard. Otherwise, he would have to hope that the provisions remaining on the ship would be enough to feed him for the 5-month journey back to Inauro.
The safe money was on eating through his supplies now, and sleeping to Inauro, but something told him that by the time he found the Candescent, Harlan would be talking back.
"And as much as I like your company, Cirra, I don't care to have you tell me all the ugly stories I know you might dig up in the back of my head."
On the way back, before he climbed into the pod, he finally dared scan the future-memories he had bought from the hawker on the Iron Ring.
He saw himself in a memory, and did not like what he saw.
He wiped the cartridge, and prayed it wasn't true... and took hope from it, too.
Pirate
Few peple remember their dreams in cryosleep. Those that do often come out changed. When the 51 Ehlee woke Matteo up, he woke up screaming and pawing at his face before crashing to the steaming deck plates. It was the barest mercy that he could not remember why.
Shivering in spite of the heat, the pulled on his robe and pulled moonshine from the refrigerator to burn the sleep from his brain. Somewhere static and whispers were wafting faintly through the ship. the Void calling out, trying to get its fingers into his brain. The alcohol seared his throat and brought tears to his eyes pushing it all away.
Somewhere an alert was flashing.
He staggered to his feet and grabbed hold of some of his clothes. the old office chair he had bolted into place after the last one had broken squealed in protest as he sat and called up his sensors. He was less than 0.2 Au from where he found the Beagle. that didn't seem coincidental, and it didn't seem good.
There was a ship closing in on his position, already entering identification range. He rushed to plug and unplug various connectors to get the full range of scans that he could manage.
An interceptor, heavily modified. He could see boarding harpoons on an extensive list of armaments on the ship. His fillings suddenly snapped and sparked, his mouth filled with the taste of metal. Gooseflesh rippled across his skin; the infernal whispers and static were drowned out momentarily by a squawk of radio noise; they were running a very deep scan.
He could see the isopods skittering across the hull of the sip, away from the dessicated corpse of Harlan where he still stood his arms out in welcome as he stared in wonder and horror at the universe through cavernous eye sockets.
No communication yet. Pirates.
Matteo's heart pounded in his chest.
"What now, Harlan?"
'Join me.'
He swore he heard the old nomand's voice answer somewhere in the Void whispers. For a moment he stared at the open radio, and then it barked to life with a living man's voice.
"51 Ehlee, cut your engines and submit to boarding, We'll be taking that hold full of ship parts. If you don't make us wait, we might leave you with life support and enough fuel to get home."
Matteo's eyes drifted from the radio to Harlan and back for a moment before he turned his ship and pushed hard into firing range. Close enough for them to actually see the dessicated corpse and frozen blood smears on the ship.
"I'm guessing you fuckers have no idea who you're playing with. I am the pirate Alonso Thorne, and you've interrupted me. I will give you ten minutes to cut your power, or my little pets will happily chew through your hull and shred your carcasses before I take every drop of fuel in that ship."
He could feel the buzz of their scans. The human corpse, the Isopods on the hull. Please let them still have a little of Harlan's DNA in their stomachs.
He gunned the thrusters, and polarized the hull, causing the creatures outside to become agitated, and swarm across the Ehlee's superstructure.
"I still don't see those engines cutting. You will make a fine pair of ornaments for my ship."
He watched with satisfaction as they fired retros, and shut down power to their harpoons.
"Our apologies, captain. Can we parlay?"
"I will give you ten minutes to state your case."
"We are in dire need of anything that can be used to replace our damaged navigation core, and parts for cryo. We see you are full up on ship's parts. Perhaps we can arrange a peaceable trade?"
"You're damned fools for talking peace second after demanding a heave-to first. But at least you have to be slinging a couple of brass ones." Vanity, vanity. "In honor of your brass balls, I will give you a chance. I'll be needing four bottles of Pentamicetic Milk, an EVA suit, and three units of chemcal fuel. You give me those, and I will give you the parts you need, and give you advice on how to survive longer if you're going to keep playing pirate. It's the best deal you'll get. A damned sight better than being eaten by my pets and clipped to my ship like a parade streamer."
Silence. Had he overplayed the role? He braced himself for making the most gutsy escape maneuver he had ever put the 51 Ehlee into.
"Sorry, Captain, we can't afford that trade."
"Then fuck off while I am stll entertained."
Matteo watched with satisfaction as the ship fired thrusters and pulled away at a hard burn. Once they had vanished from the screen, he finished pulling his clothes on and stared out the window.
"Thanks, Harlan."
Candescence
The 51 Ehlee was built in the Messier 51 belt, and proved there. Matteo Helm was practically raised on board. he had no fear of the asteroids arond him, as he deftly steered through the floating debris.
This section of the belt had been chewed out long before the War. Many of the asteroids were empty shells, hollowed out by ancient machines that now rusted away in the heart of the rocks they had long emptied. Here and there, the scraps of temporary shelters could still be seen clinging to the largest asteroids... the waste of another time. Had he the equipment, Matteo could have mined the old mining rigs and sold them for scrap back on the Iron Ring for a fortune almost as grand as the one they had once torn from the asteroids.
But his prize was embedded in mostly-whole ball of silicate ahead of him; the Candescent had been a Gem hauler in the early days of the War. Big, fast, and bristiling with turrets to hold off corporations who would have rather destroyed the precious Gems than let their rivals outproduce them.
So much Vanity.
So much waste.
The Candescent was cracked and bent nearly in two. Seven millennia of sitting in the asteroid field had battered her, peppered her with holes, and half buried her under glittering dust. And she was not alone.
Latched onto her was a salvage ship trailing by a bent and torn umbilicus. She, too, was full of holes from centuries of being battered by the Belt. She was cold and dead, without a transponder to identify her.
Perhaps he was not been too late to find Baker's Gem?
Carefully, Matteo docked with the scavenger, pulling on several layers of clothing, and on a three-hour breathing mask that had been gathering dust in the guts of the Beagle since it had passed to Harlan.
Through the airlock was bitter, brutal cold. The ship glittered with frost under his flashlight. For a moment he took a freeze-dried corpse of a woman floating in the ship to be a sculpture. She had been suiting up when the hull had gone. Her lips shone red with frozen blood. She had probably been beautiful, judging by the frozen features.
How bitter Time.
The ship was a trove of goods; a space suit, preserved rations for a crew of four, cutting torches, magnetic boots, scrapping gel, twelve bottles of Pentamicetic Milk... At least he would be safe to get home.
Like the 51 Ehlee, the scrapper ship had been built in the late days of the War, as the stars had started to go out and the wise had realized that the War had been lost by everyone long before. That the Gems had become worthless: Totems and talismans, chits for marking grudges and taking blood. That the fighting had been Vanity for Vanity's sake.
The ship bore the marks of that time. Mismatched parts: recycled, repurposed, rewired. The command computer was a mass of marked ribbons and slots with a sheet of stamped metal on one side (once a chest-plate of a suit of armor) directing which ribbons to swap where for various functions, as they had needed at some point to replace their central computer with what looked like the brain of a probe.
Cracked cryotubes where held together by epoxy, plastic film, and prayer. Given the white board notes on who had won or lost the use of "Pod 4", Matteo guessed that they had had limited success.
The woman's spacesuit'heater was long gone. Instead it was stuffed with an electric blanket wired into life support. This made it such a tight fit for Matteo, that he was forced to strip the blanlet, and replace it's fabric exterior with a bedsheet he'd torn from one of the empty bunks of his own ship.
Once he'd scoured this ship for everything he could take without unbolting parts, he lay the woman to rest in a bunk, and climbed out a hole in the hull. isopods scattered as he trod heavily across the metal skin of the 51 Ehlee and knelt down next to Harlan Rose.
"Harlan, you've dragged me out of my way, got me shot at, and made me half crazy. But you've also saved my ass, and kept me from being lonely. I think it's time I said goodbye to you, and sent you on your way. At least you didn't die lonely."
He unclipped Harlan's boots and sent him drifting up into the asteroid belt.
"I hope you find that ray again, Harland. It was beautiful."
And then he turned off the radio in the suit for fear of an answer under the static.
He'd seen his own death on the cartridge. He was with the mad Velocity-Cursed who was neither dead nor alive when it remembered his death in the future. It had been horrible... but he had not been alone.
And he had not died here.
The climb down the umbilicus was slow and difficult. At the bottom he found where the scavengers had fused the umbilicus to the ship and cut through to make their own airlock. It took him only a few minutes to hook up a battery salvaged from the Beagle to get the door open.
The corridor of the old Gem hauler lit up in a rainbow of colours as he shined his flashlight: the walls densely covered with graffiti from some previous visitor. Was it the crew from above, or someone even older? Seven thousand years was a long time. Who knows how many looters had come and gone?
As he crept down the hall his flashlight flared brightly over a bright yellow object. A space suit much like the one he was wearing. Just as patched and mismatched. A body slumped against the wall. He crouched low and examined it.
A grinning skull met his gaze through the visor of the helmet. Below, the chest and abdomen of the suit was in shreds, and beneath it a frozen corpse, still flesh. The helmet had been well enough sealed that bacteria had been able to live within long enough to strip the skull, even as the body below the neck had frozen.
The wounds were curious, conical tunnels into the flesh with strange blobs of crystal peppered around them, or jutting out of them. Matteo siezed one and pulled, drawing out an icicle of white-and-crimson smeared glass.
Centiglass. the ship had been trapped either by the original crew, or some previous scavenger team that had to leave something they'd wanted behind.
Matteo stood up quickly to look around, There was a flash of light as he alerted a motions sensor down the hall, and ten rapid flashes as glowing-hot molten glass projectiles collided with his torso. He managed a bitter scream, that turned into a laugh, and tears.
This wasn't the end he had seen on the cartridge. It wasn't how he was supposed to die. He had seen himself laughing, catousing with a salvage crew aboard the ruin of an ancient starliner. He'd toasted his crew with a bottle he'd taken for brandy until he poured it into his mouth, and it had burned straight down through him to the floor. A final moment of joy and companionship. And he had believed what he had seen, too. So much so that he allowed himself to be brave and careless.
Vanity.
And now, he was going to die alone.
Somehow as he struggled with the searing pain of simultaneously buring and freezing, the radio of his suit turned on, and his helmet became awash with static, And there, again, where the whispers. And perhaps they were worse still than being alone.
He tried shutting them out, to hold onto a memory. A too-tight handshake, Tea with the shivering Harlan Rose. The brief, sweet encounter with the AI programmer whose name he had never caught.
And then all was static.
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