Outcasts of Gideon

The Whiteness of the Whale : Part 1

Lieutenant Ulkos stirred from his sleep, opening his eyes to dark surroundings. He was still on the Aion, not more than a few hours out of Titan. The chair he slept in wasn't very comfortable despite the absence of gravity.

He felt an anxiety overcome him. It was something he'd first noticed a few months prior. It manifested then as his heart racing. Cold sweats and sleeplessness were later added to the symptoms. Doctors offered no explanation. They blamed anxiety.

He rejected the diagnosis. After all, he was the most successful and feared lawman in this system. Other people became anxious because of him. He'd faced down countless hard cases. Why develop anxiety now?

Then it came to him. He was slipping. He was relaxing. When he did, he opened himself up to danger. He was taking risks he'd never taken before. It was months without cases. It was shrinking responsibility. It was the encroaching Damasos. The list of reasons was getting longer each day along with the symptoms.

This mission was a prime example. When he was younger, he wouldn't have dared step away from the controls of a ship while alone in space, much less doze off. He'd once gone two days without sleep. That was him retrieving a stolen cargo vessel near Iapetus. It was decades ago, when he was just as idealistic as he was young. The years wore him down, as had the Patrol. Now it took too much effort to maintain constant vigilance, especially in the void.

He assumed proximity alarms were required on all shuttles. Rather than confirming this, he went with that assumption. Damn stupid thing to do.

The more he thought about it, the angrier he became. The least he could have done was sleep in the pilot's cabin. Then he could have responded if the alarm went off. Down here, he would be out of luck. He didn't care about the ship itself but he knew it was reckless for his own safety.

Maybe Lieutenant Royintan was right. Maybe I should think about where this ends. He wasn't doing himself any favors out here in the blackness.

He stretched, his arms reaching into the darkness. The lights were still on in the pilot cabin. They gave him just enough illumination to make out his surroundings. Straining against the straps, he released the buckle and pushed himself upward. Grabbing hold of the ladder, he guided himself up. There he found the view screen still trained on Titan. He was near the point of applying a braking burn.

Strapping himself in, he again cursed the awkward design of the controls. Before falling asleep, he'd spent an hour puzzling over them. He could find no rationale for their placement. Even as a prank, it made no sense. But this was certainly not a prank. The regular pilot of this shuttle was accustomed to stretching their arms this way. It was an unjustifiable discomfort.

As he regained his bearings, he noticed something that had escaped him. On the vid screen he could make out the system McAfee. It hovered below Titan's southern pole. The device was lit up. He watched a cargo vessel enter the space between the lights. He'd watched ships pierce the empty before, and always found it fascinating to watch. The cargo ship on his vid screen disappeared into a sphere that was too faint for him to make out from this distance.

He reached for his comm bracelet and activated it. The face of a young woman appeared before him. "Sergeant Tori speaking," she said, staring directly at him through the device.

"Tori, where is Montri?"

"The Sergeant's shift ended several hours ago. How can I help you, Lieutenant?"

"You can start by telling me why the system McAfee isn't locked down."

"I wasn't given an order to lock it down, sir." She scanned something out of his view.

"I just spent the last day chasing some system jumpers. Why wouldn't it be locked down?"

"I'm sorry, Lieutenant Ulkos. I don't see any order here."

"Giving them access to the McAfee makes catching them much more difficult. You understand that, don't you? The prisoner told us they were heading to Earth." As he said the words, he felt another shock of anxiety flow through him. It took him a moment to understand why. This time it was because his chase would end. If the people from Odyssey Omega made it through the empty, he couldn't follow them.

"Yes sir, I do understand that. But I don't have an order to restrict access."

Lieutenant Ulkos closed his eyes and took a breath. When he opened them, Sergeant Tori was still staring at him. From her expression, he guessed she was getting anxious herself. "Please initiate a shutdown of the system McAfee on my order."

"Right away sir." She extinguished the video feed.

He executed a spin using the maneuvering thrusters. When oriented, he applied a breaking burn that approached 1.5 G's. This pushed him backward, though he remembered to use the handles. The shuttle rattled around him. He closed his eyes against the strain.

After a moment, his comm lit up. This time, there was no holographic projection. "Sir, Sergeant Tori here. Captain Aram rescinded your order."

"Is Captain Aram available?"

"No sir, she says she is not available."

"Did Captain Aram offer any reason for countermanding my order?"

"She did, sir. She said you lack the authority to order a shutdown of transport devices."

Staring at the vid screen, he took in a deep, audible breath. The cargo ship that had just gone through meant traffic would have to wait at least 30 minutes. He would not be able to interfere with the next in the queue. When he was close enough, he could insert the Aion in the path to at least slow the flow of traffic. He'd done it before.

"Lieutenant Ulkos, she also asked me to remind you not to interfere with the queue. She wanted you to know that interference was not authorized."

He closed his eyes and leaned his head back. Of course, he knew she was right. He'd never had the authority to shut down traffic in the area. That hadn't always stopped him. He'd shut things down dozens of times in the past. Those days had passed. "Please inform Captain Aram that I will file a formal complaint when I return."

"She expects that you will, sir." He wasn't certain, but he thought he detected a smile with those words.