Butterfly Cocoon
A.R. Norris
Copyright 2010 A.R Norris
Marie Hadner shut down her console for the night. Leaning back in the chair and pinching the bridge of her nose, she let out a self-pitying sigh. It had been a long shift, on an outskirt colony, and nothing had happened as with the last thirty-two shifts...
Well, to be fair, stuff had happened -- just not the kind of stuff she thought was important. Hank and Todd's community garden feud, a long standing part of the colony's history, had yet again boiled over. This time over how many rows each vegetable should receive. The disagreement resulted in a sword fight of sorts, hoe versus shovel, with two concussions, a cut ear, and severely bashed up knees.
Oh, her old patrol unit was surely laughing at her now. Marie thought miserably. Of course, it was her own fault. Pride and ego had stuffed her foot one too many times into her mouth and her superiors had put her into her place, reassigning her to the furthest remote colony in the civilized galaxy. Pluto-C, or more formally Pluto Sector Colony, was a collection of die-hard space colonists with a generalized characteristic of reclusive, eccentric, and...well odd.
Heading out of the dinky compartment that was the hub for Colony Patrol Division she moved down the connecting spoke passage to the colony's core sphere. There were exactly four hundred and fifty such spokes leading to the core sphere. At the end of the spokes were civilian quarters, classrooms, science labs, a medical ward, and even three for a small community theater, game room, and exercise facility.
The core sphere held the community garden, food processing unit, community shower, a mid-size nature preserve, and the docking bay. The whole station was shaped like a circular disk that rotated to provide medium grade gravity. Any transporters had to arrive or depart from the top or bottom of the core sphere.
"Hey, Officer Hadner," a high-pitched male voice called as she entered the main core parlor hall. She recognized the prominent Facilities Director, Peter Morris.
Leaving the group near the Community Nature Preserve, Peter scuttled over. He had been the only person she could've used that term for, but, well, that's exactly what he did. Always hunched slightly, he walked with his right hip leading a little. This caused his left leg to take big, long steps and his right, little baby steps. His hair the color of silver reached the middle of his back, worn in a single thick braid. His eyes twinkled a bright deep green and his face was long and narrow with over prominent cheekbones, bushy black eyebrows, and a pointy chin.
"Lieutenant Hadner," he repeated after he'd reached her, a little winded from the effort. "I'm glad I caught you. We have a bit of a dilemma."
Marie ensured her eyes didn't roll by sheer force of will but did let her head cock along with her right eyebrow. "Don't tell me Hank and Todd are at it again."
Peter shook his head solemnly but the twinkle in his eye gave away his obvious enjoyment of the long standing Hank versus Todd drama. "Oh no, not since we put them on opposite sides of the ward."
"Good." She waited a couple beats lightly tapping her fingers on her thigh. "Well, what's the dilemma?"
Peter snapped his fingers, just remembering there was a dilemma. "Oh, yes." He leaned into her, his breath smelled like onions and mint. "Bill, the engineer, is missing." Popping back up and widening his eyes Peter threw out his hands to emphasize the huge proportions of the crisis.
Marie sorted through her mental files until she came up with a visual of Bill. William Scoland, aka Bill the Engineer, as everyone called him. Small -- petite, even -- man, with blue eyes and blonde wiry hair. Very pale complexion of a long-time colonist, with visible veins.
"How long has it been since anyone's seen him?" she inquired while pulling out her handheld.
Peter rubbed his temples with his fingers and closed his eyes in deep concentration. "Leah last saw him two days ago. They had plans to go together to the community theater showing tonight. It started two hours ago and he never met up with her nor was he at the event." He waved over another man, tall and slender with narrow shoulders and a long neck. "Nick here stated he didn't perform any of his engineer requests today."
"Nope, and he's always one to stay on top of his requests," Nick confirmed in a deep baritone rumble. "Never let them sit longer than necessary." He methodically picked at his short beard and stared at her through hawk-like eyes, deep set and very close together. His large, narrow nose only added to the effect.
Two hours later, her and her team finished their preliminary work. Well, team was a big word for what she had. The team consisted of one full-time and three part-time Patrol Division personnel.
"Okay, what've we got?" She propped a hip on the table and looked over her team. They were in her quarters due to the fact that the division office was too small to accommodate all of them at once.
Gerry looked over his handheld. "I grabbed a couple of civilians," he smiled broadly at the ability to use the official wording for his neighbors, "and we systematically checked the colony, compartment by compartment. Nada, he's gone, unless he found a way to fit in a space the size of a ration pack."
Nearing fifty, Gerry was a scientist who moonlighted for her on odd shifts. He was very thin, to the point of bony, with little hair on top and bushy ears. His voice was nasally and a little pinched. He was smart, one of the smartest people Marie had met, and he got a charge out of being a Patrol Division personnel.
Timothy nodded. "I scoured over his quarters and there didn't seem to be anything wrong. The only weird thing was a powder covering a small section of the living area. I picked some up and Gerry sent it to his lab for testing."
Timothy was the youngest and had taken the job part-time while he finished his educational courses. He was little, barely over five feet tall and still gangly from late puberty. His hair was shaved off, leaving his small head looking even smaller. His whole goal was to finish his courses and move to a center galaxy station where, as he put it, the action was. She had to sympathize with the objective.
Gerry transmitted his lab report to the other handhelds. "The lab results are inconclusive. They are ashes of some sort, too dried out and lacking any determinable substance to identify. There's organic material, but nothing you wouldn't find in a sample of particulates from anywhere on the colony."
Frank leaned forward and rubbed his neck, the fatigue was all over his face. "I've checked the transport logs and nothing came or went. We're not expecting any shuttles for two more weeks and the last shuttle we had was a month ago." He pressed his lips together, hesitating.
Frank, her other part-time patrol officer, was a docking bay control technician and covered for her a few nights a month. He was married with two twin toddlers, age four. He worked extra shifts at Control and for the Division just to take a break from his quarters. He was chubby, tall, and very dark. His skin was a dark espresso color and his eyes a bright blue. He wore his hair long and in a Mohawk style.
"What?" she prompted wearily. She hadn't slept in almost thirty-five hours. "Go ahead, there's no stupid observations."
Frank half-shrugged. "Okay, well, on a side note while I was working earlier this week at docking control we started getting a beacon?"
Don's face scrunched. "A beacon? From which direction?"
Don was her most experienced soldier and her only full-time person. At thirty-five, he was a discharged military soldier who had posted here for light duty patrolling to accommodate his injury from an outland skirmish. He was quiet for the most part, very concise and detail-oriented when he gave report and very reclusive when he wasn't on shift.
A beacon, or sound blip, from the Control Monitoring System was an indication of non-tagged objects in the surrounding area. The CMS was a warning system for colonies to prepare and av
oid collision and provide awareness of possible threats.
"That's the anomaly," he stated, pulling up the grid from his handheld and checking his data before continuing. "It's coming in from the outer region and is natural in origin. We thought at first it was a new comet or a thick gaseous bubble but the flight pattern is...irregular, at best."
Marie moved behind him so she could look over his shoulder at the grid. "What do you mean irregular?"
"When we first tagged it, four hundred miles out, it was going slow. Only moving at forty-five kilometers per second with an angled projection of positive thirty degrees. Positive degrees are angles moving away from us and negative degrees are those angles heading towards us. After we pinged and tagged it for GATS..." At everyone's blank face Frank blushed, from his neck rising up