Drifting Dark

"Where the hell is everyone?" Cassie muttered to herself as she ducked through an open doorway. Her footsteps echoed through the long passage as she stepped onto the metal grating on the floor. This section of the ship looked exactly the same as the last. She wouldn't have even known the difference if not for the regularly spaced emergency doors.

Reading the schematic was one thing. Being inside the thing was completely different. She'd never felt the scale of a ship this large before. It was making it impossible to get her bearings. The lack of any kind of signage or markers wasn't helping either.

She'd been wandering around for half an hour and all she'd discovered so far was that the ship looked as ancient on the inside as it did on the outside. Which didn't mean that she hadn't seen a lot of it so far.

Lots of wires, some completely covered in electrical tape. Lots of pipes marked up with handwritten notes in illegible script. Lots of cables. Lots of rust. Lots of dust. An apparent endless collection of bare, grey-orange corridors that looked exactly the same.

But no people.

No one to ask for directions, and she was certain that she was completely, utterly lost. Her first day was not going well so far.

The grating creaked as she took another step. She glanced into an open doorway. Another empty room. Another room without anyone inside.

She tried to tell herself that the lack of people was the only reason why the whole place felt so empty.

It was goddamn spooky.

She made a right turn, to enter another almost identically looking corridor. Without any markers, or even sounds, she had no idea if she was going in circles. She could make out the faint humming of the artificial gravity generators, the high pitched fans in the ventilation shafts and even the soft hum from some of the old fashioned warm lights, but none of that was helpful. Her exasperated sigh was soon added to the audible mix.

And the loud hiss right above her.

"Ah!" Cassie nearly jumped out of her skin, her hands shooting up to protect herself, as the blast of air brushed by her hair. The air jet died down a second later, leaving her standing there frozen, her heart pounding a million miles a minute, and completely unharmed.

"Just air. Totally normal. Nothing to be afraid of. It's just the ship," Cassie muttered to herself nervously. She squinted upwards to look at the air pressure release valve. Manual setting. Not digital. Ancient.

"This thing should be in a museum," Cassie complained aloud as she started walking again. She figured that as long as she kept walking, she'd have to make it to the front eventually. This place couldn't go on forever.

It just felt like it did.

"Hey!"

The voice echoed through the hollow corridors. Cassie would have heard it easily even if he hadn't been shouting at the top of his lungs. She stopped and turned around to see a tall man jogging towards her, hopping over the airlock frames sticking out of the floor as if he'd memorized them.

The first thing she noticed was that he wasn't wearing a standard uniform like her, not with a red shirt like that. The only colours they came in were brown-green and teal-blue, even though the grease stains made Cassie's look a little browner than usual. Her pants were bordering on a dress code violation, but his grey ones were definitely out of bounds.

Grey and black were space born colors. Green and blue were planet born. Those were the only two sides that mattered.

Only civilians didn't have a dress code. She frowned, slightly confused. This was unexpected. She hadn't known they had passengers on board.

The Saint Joan was a military cargo ship, after all.

But he was still someone. Maybe she'd finally get some directions through this maze. "Hi, um—"

The man interrupted sharply. "This is a restricted ship, you can't just wander on board."

Cassie bit her lower lip nervously. She'd barely gotten on board and already managed to get in trouble somehow. "Um, sorry—"

He eyed her uniform, clearly searching for a rank that didn't exist. "Who do you report to?"

Cassie shifted from foot to foot, unconsciously adjusting the straps of her heavy backpack. "Um, I don't know?"

It was obvious that he didn't believe her, even though it was the truth. She opened her mouth, about to explain.

"Give me your ID," the man snapped, towering a full foot over her.

Cassie knew that tone.

She shut her mouth and quickly searched through her numerous pockets, trying to remember where she'd put the thin metal card. She was in such a rush, that it fell right out of her side pocket, right towards the metal grating below. The holes were probably too small for it to fall through.

Cassie didn't want to take any chances.

She quickly grabbed it out of the air, throwing her off balance for a moment. She stood up straight, readjusting her bag, and handed it to him.

He took it and looked at it closely, making no attempt to hide that he was verifying it's authenticity.

Cassie stood there awkwardly, unsure if she should say anything else. She'd barely said two words and apparently that had already caused problems.

"Cassandra Wylen?" He eyed her skeptically. "Wait, aren't you our new mechanic?"

"Um, yes, trainee mechanic, actually." Cassie shifted from foot to foot. "And you can just call me Cassie, everybody does."

"Sure, Cassie." He handed her ID card back. "I'm Mike. Welcome on board the Saint Joan."

"Thanks," Cassie mumbled. "Sorry, I know I'm a little later than expected, but the space station is really big then I got lost and this ship is really big."

Mike chuckled. "Oh, we were expecting you, I just wasn't expecting you to walk right onto the ship."

"Um, if you don't want people walking in, then you should probably close the big open doors." Cassie gestured vaguely behind her.

"The cargo bay is open?" Mike asked seriously.

Cassie nodded, a tiny motion.

Mike swore under his breath. "Shit. Idiot needs to stop doing that." He hit the button behind his ear to turn on the radio. "Geoff."

Cassie stood there patiently, wondering if she ought to be turning on her radio as well.

"You left the bay door open," Mike continued. "Well, close it."

Cassie reached up to her earpiece, tuning into the active channel, the same channel as Mike, in seconds.

A new, gruff voice came through the tiny speaker. "We're still loading up."

"Either watch it or close it." Mike glanced at Cassie. "Our new crew member just walked on board completely unobstructed."

"The greenie's here? What's he like?" Geoff asked immediately. "Tell me it's not another Danny. One is insufferable enough."

Cassie stood there uncertainly, silently as a smirk grew on Mike's face.

"I don't think she's going to be anything like Danny."

"Ohhhh." Geoff fell silent as Mike winked at her.

"Get that door closed, then you can join the welcome party," Mike ordered, an edge of finality in his voice.

"Fine, fine," Geoff grumbled lowly.

Mike reached behind his ear to turn the radio off, turning his attention to the new recruit. "Let's go, you should meet our captain, and it's a long walk."

Cassie followed his lead, struggling a little to match the much taller man's pace. "Um, you don't seem very worried about that door, or, well, stowaways?"

Mike chuckled. "Stowaways aren't really a risk. Nobody wants to go where we're going."

"The dark zone," Cassie whispered.

"That's right," Mike answered plainly. "The rumours are wild enough to keep any uninvited guests away."

"So... is there any truth to them?" Cassie asked hesitantly.

Mike laughed. "No, absolutely not."

Somehow that didn't calm her nerves. "Then you've crossed dark space before?"

"Plenty of times," Mike answered with a smile, acting as if crossing the warzone spanning the solar system was no more dangerous than a regular ferry run between Earth and Mars. "It's nowhere near as scary as everyone makes it sound."

Cassie fiddled with the right strap of her bag. "I heard only half the ships make it."

"That's an exaggeration," Mike replied, rather amused. "Propaganda to make the rebels seem scarier than they really are."

"But a passenger freighter was just taken out last week, it was on all the news feeds." Cassie glanced about at the uncovered wiring and taped up pipes. "And this ship is way... older."

"That's a good thing. Older is better. These ancient systems may be outdated, but they are impossible to pick up on sensors once we go dark," Mike explained. "But our dark generator is new, if that makes you feel any better."

Cassie rushed to catch up to him. "I don't think they even had invented energy cloaks back when this ship was built."

"Possibly." Mike slowed his pace a little. "And speaking of ancient technology, you should know that this ship does have a gravity flip in the middle." He took a left turn. "Have you ever seen one of those before?"

"Um, no," Cassie mumbled.

"Just be careful, you'll be fine." Mike smiled knowingly. "And don't try to do a backflip the first time you go through the switch zone."

Cassie tried to smile through her nerves. "Uh, why do I get the feeling you're speaking from experience?"

Mike chuckled. "Because I am." He grinned. "In my defense, it was on a dare."

Cassie gave him a worried look.

"You'll get used to it," Mike added. "I'm sure Aqeel will make sure you're very familiar with every inch of this place."

"Who—?"

"Our engineer," Mike clarified. "It's pretty safe around here. Just watch out for the depressurized sections, the cargo hold preserves everything in zero atmo."

"I read the manuals," Cassie said confidently.

"I don't know how accurate those are going to be," Mike replied uncertainly. "The area we depressurize has sort of... expanded over time."

"What?" Cassie exclaimed worriedly.

"You'll figure it out." Mike shrugged. "The doors are locked anyways. Don't want just anyone walking out into space."

Cassie's eyes lingered on the frame of the emergency airlock as she stepped over the raised metal on the floor. Her gaze flickered up to the next one, only a hundred meters in front of them. "Um, okay."

"It's not as bad as it sounds. Really," Mike said confidently. "This is a good ship, you got lucky with your assignment."

Cassie felt exactly the opposite of lucky. She tried to avoid looking at everything around her that was in a state of disrepair, or half-repair, or barely-held-together-with-duct-tape repair. The last one she'd never even considered as an option before today. But this was the ship, the mission, she'd been given.

It was still going to fly. She still had a mission to complete, a mission that she would complete. She wasn't a coward, she wasn't about to quit just because the place was a little rusty.

After all, fixing things was what she was good at.

Even so, she couldn't help glancing about skeptically as they made their way through the ship.