Content warning: suicide (mentioned)
Inspired by The Decemberists’ “The Mariner’s Revenge Song”
Seven parsecs edgeward of Delta Lupi, in the Gwynian-3 sector, a small fleet of ChemEx asteroid harvesters were mining debris in the AS17-Lagrange-3 cluster. In the vacuum of space, they had to cling to their targets like barnacles to have any chance of gathering the valuable minerals they were using their lasers to vaporize in the first place. Every few hours, when their tanks filled, they would fire their small booster rockets to float over to where the loadship waited outside the debris field. They’d trade the contents of their mineral tanks for fresh air in their oxygen tanks, then glide back to their target and resume the work once more. The harvesters had found a particularly rich seam of technetium in the Q68 asteroid of the field, and so at the moment the whole fleet was gathered cheek-by-jowl along the seam’s length.
A satisfying ding sounded in the cockpit of harvester Alpha Niner, signaling that its tanks were full. The senior pilot, Scarsdale, dialed some instructions into the NavVex, flipped a few switches, and then flicked the pair of dice that dangled on strings from the radio overhead. He was answered by the vacuum seals around the harvester’s mining port releasing, initiating the vessel’s drift. Then the boosters engaged with a low hum, and Alpha Niner began to move steadily away from Q68. While Scarsdale leaned back and watched the receding asteroid through the window, the junior pilot, Hayashi, monitored a large map of the debris field so they could direct the weaving journey back to the loadship.
The cockpit was quiet except for Scarsdale’s whistling as they followed their routine loadship protocol. Then, without warning, the asteroid they’d left surged forward in the window, consuming their vision.
The pilot grabbed the yoke and slammed it to the right. Alarms blared from the NavVex at the switch to manual override and from the boosters as they protested their maximum acceleration, only to be joined by the chorus of belated warnings from the sensors. The vision of both pilots swam with spots as the G forces pulled their blood toward their feet. Their worlds collapsed to just the view of the asteroid looming before them. But there — was that open space in the corner of the window? Were they going to make it?
The asteroid slammed into their left side. The cockpit jumped violently, throwing the pilots against their restraint belts, as a crunch like thunder drowned out all noise, even all thought. The lights — overhead illumination, indicators, displays — all flickered out. Then the thunder was gone, and all the wailing alarms with it, leaving only an oppressive silence that made Hayashi’s head throb. The G forces intensified as they spun outward, and Hayashi’s eyes began to tilt back in his head. The view through the window, if either pilot could have seen it, was a blur of starlight.
Then the spinning slowed. A single emergency light sputtered to life, washing the cabin in a dim red glow. But the alarms did not return, nor did the hum of the boosters. There was nothing but the silence of space.
Scarsdale reached out to pull at the yoke. Nothing happened. He tried a few buttons and switches. Nothing happened. The displays and the NavVex screen remained dark no matter what he pressed. He spun the radio dial through local and interstellar channels alike, but it stayed dead.
Their only connection to the outside world was the front window. They were still moving with speed, judging by the way the debris slid past their view. One asteroid was moving faster — much faster — than the others. Presumably, it was the one that had hit them, yet already it appeared so small and far away that it seemed incapable of the violence that had rocked the ship only a moment ago. It was hurtling in the direction of the loadship, Hayashi noticed. He could just barely see the ship through the debris field, but even as he watched, its engines flared to life. Not to come get them, Hayashi realized, but to move away from a potential impact of its own. It shrank even further into the distance, losing its silhouette among the other debris and the glow of its engine burning among the sea of stars.
“So,” Scarsdale said. “That was unfortunate.”
As he spoke, Hayashi’s dazed expression cleared. His gaze snapped to the face of his older copilot, and then he barked out a laugh.
Scarsdale frowned. “You doing all right, kid?”
“Couldn’t be better.” Hayashi had stopped laughing, but a wolf-like smile remained on his face, painted red by the emergency light. “Do you know who I am, Scarsdale?”
“You, Hayashi? Not really. Just that you’re a youngster, haven’t been around too long, and your first name’s what, Akira?” He managed a smile. “But what better way to get to know you than a few hours alone in an enclosed space?”
Hayashi’s own smile disappeared. “Your first name is William. You’re thirty-eight years old. You’ve been working in asteroid mining for two years, part of a settlement to pay off debts you’d accumulated playing at professional gambling. Except that’s a little misleading, isn’t it?”
Scarsdale tried to speak, but Hayashi cut him off.
“Because your records get awfully hazy about five years ago. Hazy because they’re fabricated, aren’t they? But five years ago, there was another gambler named William Redford who died in an asteroid mining accident while also working for ChemEx. And before him, there was William Wight, who was in the interstellar police before he was shot in riots on Seldar. And before him, there was William Grey, a young cadet training to be a frontier pilot until he crashed his plane in a routine exercise — a presumed suicide on account of his gambling debts.”
Scarsdake looked at the dead radio, at the debris field spinning by them, and then back at his copilot. “My name is William Scarsdale.”
“Don’t play that game with me,” Hayashi snapped. “We’re in an immobilized capsule, four hours of oxygen remaining — assuming the impact didn’t spring any leaks — and our only hope of rescue just lit its engines and fled. You’ve faked your death plenty of times, William. No need to fake your real one.”
Scarsdale — William — inclined his head and sighed. “It’s a pity it wasn’t the fast way.”
“A pity?” Hayashi’s smile returned. “Oh, this is a gift. I thought I was going to have to disconnect the harvester myself somehow. Hayashi’s not my real name either, you see. It’s Sato. Masuo Sato. Ring any bells?”
“Masuo…” William’s eyes widened. “Masuo!”
“It’s been a long time, stepfather,” Masuo spat.
“You found me,” William breathed.
“Of course I found you! I’ve been tracking you ever since you left my mother with your debts and ran. She died the next year, you know? Had to take a job at a nuclear plant, then came down with radiation sickness she couldn’t afford to treat. She died in pain. Physical pain. Emotional pain. I was six years old, but I swore by her bedside as she wasted away that I would find you. So I found you. Every ounce of pain she felt on your account, I will wring from you as well.”
Masuo’s hand strayed to the lock on his restraint belt and pressed it open with a click. He floated free from his seat, eyes trained on William. But there was no fear in William’s eyes — only a strange mix of sorrow and joy.
“All I wanted was to see you again,” he whispered. “Masuo. You look so different now.”
“Don’t lie to me,” Masuo’s voice and body alike shook with his anger. “You left us with your debts. You killed her.”
William’s chin fell against his chest, and his eyes shuttered. “I did. I did. I must seem like some predator to you, but I was just a naive kid. You’re twenty-three, now, aren’t you? — I was younger than you are now. I was a fool, in debt over my head that was going to take you and Aiko — oh, Aiko — down with me. What could I do? I thought if I died, or at least if I seemed to, then it would at least spare you and your mother.”
“Stop with the damn lies! You faked your death, don’t pretend you meant it for us!”
“I faked it because I’m a coward!” William’s chest shook. “I knew what I had to do, and I couldn’t do it. If I’d known they would still hang the debts on you, I’d have done something different. But the casino agents were coming in three days. I was afraid.”
“You could have come back. You could have sent money. You could have apologized.” Masuo’s voice had quieted, but it still burned with emotion. “You didn’t.”
“I might have been naive, but I knew I couldn’t contact you if I wanted you to be spared. I knew I had to disappear, so I fled to the Outskirts. The Hypermail ships take their sweet time getting the dataloads out that far, so it was months before I found out what had happened. I started on my way back, actually, but then soon after, I heard Aiko had died and that you were cleared from the debts. So then I stayed away, that they might at least never touch you. I owed you that much.”
Masuo hung suspended in the air, his whole body perfectly still. Some trace of momentum, however, kept him drifting ever so slowly toward William.
“I didn’t dare hope that I would see you again,” William said, lifting his head. But then the light in his eyes faded. “To see you in my last hours, that I could have accepted. But for you to die too…”
He held out a hand, and Masuo flinched. Pain flashed across William’s face as he drew it back.
“You wouldn’t be here if it weren’t for me, would you? So I suppose that now, I’ve killed you, too.”
William buried his face in his hands, several ragged breaths rattling through his throat while Masuo watched in silence. Then he looked up again.
“But at least you’re here. I won’t ask you to forgive me. Aiko died for my mistakes; I can’t deny that. But… If these are your last hours as well, then I want you to be happy. Maybe you want to hurt me. Go ahead — I won’t stop you. But maybe I can help you remember back when things were good. You loved collecting rocks; do you remember that? Big rocks, little rocks, round rocks, sharp rocks, rocks from the garden, rocks from the street…”
A tear ran down Masuo’s cheek. “I used to ask you to put them up on the high shelf for me,” he said. “The one that only you could reach.”
“I told you that one day you’d be big enough,” William said. “Now look at you.” He unclipped his own restraining belt and drifted to meet Masuo in the middle of the cockpit. “You got big, in the end.”
William placed a hand on Masuo’s shoulder. This time, he didn’t flinch. For a few moments, the two floated in silence.
Then there was a thump from the back of the vessel. Unrestrained, the two floating men were thrown together into the front console. There was a hum, and then the lights flickered on, and the chorus of alarms began to chime again. Then there was the rush of air that signalled the unsealing of the back door.
A figure in a full body pressure suit hovered in the door opening, their face obscured behind the reflective glass of the helmet screen. They held a shock pistol in one hand.
“Clear yourself, Will,” the figure said in a voice somewhere between alto and tenor.
Without another word, William pushed off from Masuo’s shoulder, sending the two to opposite sides of the cockpit. As Masuo opened his mouth to ask what was going on, the figure in the door raised their gun and fired.
Pain burned through Masuo’s body as his limbs went rigid, paralyzed by the voltage of the shock gun. He could only watch as his stepfather snatched the dice hanging from the radio, then crossed the cockpit and joined the figure at the door frame.
William paused in the airlock. Paused, for just a heartbeat. But he didn’t look back. Then he crossed to the other ship and closed the door.
And Masuo was alone.