Destination Europa: Chapter 16

The Writing on the Wall

Aug 16, 2024

Previously, Quill’s stakeout at the water dispenser ended in arrest by Safira, followed by a conversation in which she revealed her true identity as an agent of the Martian Ministry of Intelligence, and informed him about an imminent terrorist threat to the Leifr.

The light in the cabin had the buttery sheen of early afternoon. Quill pushed himself up on one elbow and forced his eyes open.

“AiLeifr, what time is it?”

“It is currently 1407 by ship’s time, Dr. O’Neill.”

Quill unclipped himself from his bunk and sat upright, swinging his bare feet onto the cabin floor. His mouth was dry and his breath stank. He reached for his water flask and found it empty, then leant his head on his hands, massaging his pounding temples. Lord, last night really happened. It wasn’t a dream, was it?

He activated his optics. His inbox was blinking. He ignored it while he pulled on yesterday’s t-shirt and overalls and staggered out of the cabin, hoping the corridor would be quiet. He refilled his flask at the water dispenser and took a long drink, the cool filtered water softening then sluicing away the sour crusted mucus from his throat and palate. Who was the person I saw at the Deck 12 dispenser? The ghost, the figure with no aikon… Was that a chamaeleosuit? Are they a terrorist? The cold sick feeling pooled and knotted in his stomach again. Lord, if I’m going to die here, let it mean something. I don’t care what Safira said, I need to do something.

Jules Wong was washing her hands in the bathroom when he went in. She looked up and saw his reflection in the mirror, then turned to look at him face-to-face.

“•, Quill, are you OK?”

He looked at his own face in the mirror, his eyes puffy and gummy at the edges, his greying stubble rough as shingle. There was a stain on the front of his t-shirt suspiciously like dried vomit. He tried to hold his breath so as not to let her smell him.

“Fine,” he grunted, and darted into a cubicle until he heard her leave.

He felt a little better after washing his face and brushing his teeth, though he wished his allocated shower slot was sooner than two days away. Although who knows, two days from now, we might not care any more. He saw again the vision of the Leifr shattering and scattering into vacuum like the exploded view of an engineer’s diagram, the panels and pipes and cables uncoiling, gases venting, blood and tears and urine boiling. Jules and Bowen and Demas and Alex and a hundred other frozen corpses floating, tiny new moonlets for ever-closer Jupiter. How can someone do such a thing? How can Safira stay so calm?

He checked his messages while changing into fresh clothes. One from Tark, which he expected. How did the rest of the night go? See anything? One from another of the colonists in his Habitat Engineering class. Hi Dr. O’Neill, was there homework this week? I don’t remember you setting any. He groaned, and made a mental note to cancel that week’s class. A third message, from Bowen, asking if he was going to lunch. He cleared it and went back to Tark’s. Safira had warned him not to tell anyone and not to trust anyone, even Tark. But Tark is so.. reliable. So straightforward. She might have reason to doubt the FSS, but I don’t believe she’s a killer. And I can’t lie to her. He spent half an hour swithering, composing and deleting replies, before settling on Sorry for the late response, can’t talk right now, catch you later.

His head was still pounding, and a rumble in his stomach reminded him he hadn’t eaten yet, though he had little appetite. He made a hasty foray to the mess, grabbed a coffee and a cardamom bun, and slipped back to his cabin, avoiding eye contact with those he passed.

The bun was slightly stale, but he crammed a bite into his mouth anyway, washing it down with the hot bitter coffee as he opened an interface. It took him a couple of minutes to find what he was looking for: his own visual feed from the night before.

Quill had never enjoyed re-watching his own experiences; he was glad most systems deleted visual feeds within a few days of acquisition, and even gladder that most of the Martian States had banned personal visual feed storage. He swiped through the video, looking for the moment the ghost had appeared. It had been around 0200. He held his breath as he watched the display, seeing again the narrow band of dim light beyond the door of the cleaning cupboard. What if there isn’t anyone? What if I really did imagine the whole thing?

There. A darkness flitting past. He kept watching. The yellowish strip of corridor expanded as his eye came closer to the crack in the door. The figure at the water dispenser filling the canteens. Quill paused the feed. He forced himself to breathe out then in, out then in. He zoomed in on the figure then zoomed back out. It was difficult to make out details in the dim light. A dark suit, relatively close-fitting but somehow baggy around the legs, like a flight suit that was slightly too big, not like the snug fit of Safira’s chamaeleosuit. A close-fitting hood. He tapped to move the video forward, watching in slow motion as the figure bent to place the full canteen on the floor and pick up the empty one. He couldn’t tell whether it was a man or a woman; someone about his own height, he thought. He paused again at the point where the figure turned to retrace its steps down the corridor and zoomed in on the dark mask that hid the face. Is that what’s blocked their aikon? Maybe not a full chamaeleosuit, but a Faraday mesh around the head at least? Is that possible? He skipped forward to where he was trying to follow them, but he had kept so far back that there was little to see even in the brief view he got of the figure slipping down the ladder to the Green Ring, before Safira’s arm was round his throat and he could only see the floor. He skipped back to the start and watched the few minutes of footage again at normal speed, then in slow motion, then at normal speed again. There’s something there, though.. something I’m not seeing. The feeling nagged him like the bone-deep chill before a fever, but he could glean no more from the feed, and after watching it another couple of times he closed it.

A ping from Tark. Talk over dinner?

He hesitated. Tark was about his height, only a couple of centimetres shorter. She had been the one to find the water anomaly, and the oxygen anomaly. She had encouraged him into the stakeout. The figure had appeared on his shift, after enough time had passed for Tark to have been able to get away and change clothes if she had wanted. What if it’s actually her? Setting me up for something? But why? And Safira said all personnel were accounted for during that time. It doesn’t make sense.

Sure, he replied. He would just have to figure out how to be evasive without lying outright.

Before closing the interface, he opened a secure shell and checked his Alliance messages. Nothing from Patrick and Pamela yet. Another reminder from HQ that his quarterly finance report was overdue. A message from Rob. Subject: you doing ok? He opened it eagerly, hungry for some words of encouragement, something to lift him up.

Hey Quill,

Haven’t heard from you for a while, bumped into old Auntie Li at the prayer meeting the other day and she was asking after you, said she’s looking forward to your next letter. A little pointedly, I might add. Don’t forget to keep your supporters updated, brother. It’s so important to keep building engagement for the Work. We can’t afford to lose more people, especially after what happened with Priska.

I’m sure it’s not easy, out there on your own, but that is the providence we have received. He is with you. Keep on fighting the good fight, brother!

In fellowship,
Rob.

P.S. Kristi joins me in sending her love.

A swell of bitterness rose in Quill’s throat. Thanks a bunch, Rob. Way to show me your priorities. How about actually asking how I really am, for once, instead of guilt-tripping me? Sod this. Sod the Alliance. One thousand, nine hundred and six more days and I’m out. Fight the good fight.. brother, you have no idea. He closed the interface without re-reading the message.

The waters of the fjord are glowing and pulsating with pale phosphorescence, a spectral shade of algal green. Quill is treading water, watching helplessly as the darkness uncoils from below and twists its tentacles around her. Lord, why is she not fighting it? Her head slips beneath the greasy surface. He feels something sliming against his leg, intimate as a lover’s touch, and screams. The water is seething and churning with eels or maggots, he can’t tell which, and they are emitting the dead light that illumines the depths. He looks desperately towards the shore, but the indistinct crowd he sees shuffling there don’t see or hear him, though he hears the bluebottle buzz of their conversation, muffled as if he were already under the water. He sees the darkness stretching towards him, and screams again, but no sound comes from his mouth and anyway nobody’s listening.

Quill woke up, his heart racing. He felt heavy despite the one-third g in his cabin, arms and legs melding into the bunk like molten lead into a mould, dense and clammy with the salt and wet of sweat. He forced his eyelids open, fighting the weight of the dream water, lungs panting and burning. The cabin light had the hopeful glow of sunrise, but when Quill moved his head, it shimmered with ghostly haloes. He reached for water, clumsily, and knocked his flask onto the floor. He pushed himself upright. The cabin rotated and dazzled. He saw the empty twist of paper beside his pillow, and groaned. Bowen’s shrooms, the ones he’d got a few days earlier. Did I take all of them? I remember deciding to take one, after dinner. Dinner with Tark. That was a mess. I think she knew I was hiding something. He groaned again.

The muffled buzz of the crowd in his dream hadn’t stopped. He blinked, trying to clear his head, and took a drink, the usually insipid filtered water tasting sweeter and cleaner than usual. The noise was still there. Voices murmuring, footsteps bouncing. He blinked again. There was something going on in the corridor, right outside his cabin door. He checked the time. 0649.

When he slid the door open, the bulk of Kiran Singh nearly fell backwards into him.

“Sorry, mate,” said Kiran, turning round. Like Quill, he was still in his sleepwear, though Kiran favoured loose striped pyjamas. Quill straightened his own crumpled vest. Beyond Kiran, there seemed to be a loosely shuffling cluster of people, some in uniform and some not yet dressed for the day.

“What’s going on?” asked Quill. He blinked hard to try and get rid of the coruscating aura he saw wavering around Kiran’s turban and the edges of the doorway.

“Look at that,” said Kiran, gesturing beyond the crowd to the wall opposite Quill’s door. Quill pushed between a couple of light-blue SymbioNor uniforms and looked.

There were words painted on the wall, starting at head-height, in letters the size of a man’s hand. The text spread raggedly across wall and doors, scrawling right across the door of Quill’s neighbour opposite. It had been done in a deep red paint, the red of fresh blood or sea anemones or the ship on the FSS flag. Some of the paint had streaked and bled while it was still wet, and the effect against the pale green of the corridor was grotesque.

Quill began to read, the letters shivering and slithering in his still-shaky vision. The words were written in English rather than Norsk, and they were sickeningly familiar.

Come out of her, my people,
lest you take part in her sins,
lest you share in her plagues…

“Who did this?” he asked.

“I think people are hoping you might have some idea,” said a voice in his ear. Quill jumped, and turned to see that Demas and Bowen had squeezed in behind him.

“Me?” he asked. He felt sick.

“Yeah,” said Demas. “From the Bible, innit? Sin and all that. That’s your jazz, innit?”

“Well, it’s a reference from Scripture, but that doesn’t mean…” Quill’s voice trailed off as Safira reached them. Her face was grim.

“Morning, lads,” she said, her eyes running over the text. She leaned in close to Quill and nudged his elbow, drawing him out of the knot of onlookers, then stretched up on her tiptoes and whispered in his ear. “Get dressed. Meet me for breakfast. 0730.” Out of the corner of his eye, Quill saw the dark blue of FSS uniforms approaching from around the curve of the corridor. He nodded and moved back towards his cabin door.

“Alright, Quill?” said Bowen. “What’s that about?”

Quill shook his head in a gesture of helplessness. “I got to get some clothes on,” he muttered. The cabin door closed behind him, damping the hubbub. He activated the lock and sat down on his bunk. His hands were trembling. Safira wanted to meet in twenty minutes. He drank some more water, draining his flask, trying to clear his head, and prayed. Lord, from the depths I call to you.

A ping from Tark. Just seen you-know-what. Let’s talk? My office? After breakfast?

He got dressed and ran his fingers through his hair, spiky with grease. 0723. No time to shave. He was pulling his boots on when another ping arrived, flashing an urgent red. He stiffened, one boot half-on. He knew what that red meant, though it hadn’t yet been used on this voyage. Urgent, All Hands. He pushed his boot the rest of the way on and opened the message.

All Hands, Security Alert. Due to a security incident, movement of all non-essential personnel is restricted until further notice. You must remain in your quarters, other than necessary visits to the mess, bathrooms, and allocated gym slots. A ship-wide security investigation is underway. Please co-operate fully with all officers in the course of this investigation. Captain T. Strand.

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