[chapter four: asteroids]

Annika: 2300 hours, somewhere between Mars and Jupiter. 

The light over my head was annoying me, the blinking was inconsistent as my scanner picked up on the same set of asteroids every time it completed a loop. The dim glow from the control panel at the front of my Valkyrie and the distant red shimmer of Mars rising off my portside lit up the wall of the starfighter. The ship hung steady in the vacuum. Some people make the mistake that space is empty, like a dark void that swallowed all surrounding it. The truth is space is pretty busy now with everything that's going on. I knew I wasn't the only patrol fighter lurking out here but where the others were was clearance I didn't have. There's odd pieces of space junk and rock constantly flying around and that's not even to mention the squadron and battalion ships scattered throughout the galaxy ready at a moment's notice for action – apparently. I sat and chewed on the end of my hair, I tried to cut it last time I was back on the Saturn V but it had just ended up shoulder length and choppy – and frankly I was lucky I was stationed solo in the middle of nowhere until my bangs had time to grow out again. I adjusted my seat back so I could lie down looking at the roof of the ship and pulled off my jacket laying it over my lap. I had a few patches on the sleeves, my pilot academy patch and my team patch sat over the breast pocket: SPIERS – HARVEY – WARNER. 

I wondered where the other two were, hopefully not having their system trigged by the same patch of space rock every three to seven minutes. I closed my eyes for a few moments to block out the light of Mars softly dying the walls, the control panel, and everything else red. Silence meant nothing, silence is good, but it also leaves open the door in my brain for other thoughts and processing to creep in uninvited. This job required a lot of time alone with my thoughts and so I'd got decently good at keeping that door firmly shut however tonight beyond the canopy of my ship space stretched infinitely, the black sea breaking against the surface of mars far enough away that if I held her thumb up in front of my face I could almost block it from view. The vastness was usually relatively peaceful but for some reason tonight it felt like it was resting on my shoulders. I felt like Atlas, except no one had tricked me into holding up the sky, I had scribbled my name on a sheet and signed up to do it. 

I briefly wondered if I died out here whether it would even make a ripple in the darkness; if a tree falls in the forest and no one is around to hear it, does it still make a sound? I closed the door rapidly on that thought. The hum of the Valkyrie's life-support system was the only sound, the blinking light in the control panel a quiet reminder that I was still alive out here. I was waiting for something to happen: waiting for something to appear, for a call from command, for a sign of the rest of my team, for anything to break the monotony of my watch. Space however, remained silently and stubbornly indifferent to my need for a distraction. I adjusted my seat back into an upright position and drummed my fingers against the console flicking my eyes between the empty window in front of me and the empty radar screen. Nothing but static and the occasional flicker of cosmic dust. Then again, I had two years of experience now and I knew better than to trust the quiet. Space had a way of lulling pilots into complacency, right before it turned on them. 

The door in my mind found its way open and sent a surge of thoughts of out last skirmish to the forefront of my thoughts. The colourful fireworks that were sent out of the Saturn V after we had cleansed the last crawling scum from our surroundings exploding red and blue and gold against the contrast background of space, the colour fireworks of my fellow pilot's ship as it erupted into flame, burning bright gold, for a breath a star before it exploded. Valkyrie-5, gone in the blink of an eye, no ejection, no warning, no distress signal, just fireworks against the void. I reached for my flask under my chair, a small metal cannister with a flight academy sticker on it. I took a couple of sips, cool water calmed my thoughts, regulation doesn't stronger whilst on duty much to all our protests. 

Ping. The sound echoed through the cabin: a sensor check-in. Automatic. Expected. Predictable. 

I sighed leaning my head back against the headrest and tried to smooth out the thoughts from my brain like wrinkles from a shirt with a hot iron. Routine patrols were supposed to be boring I reminded myself, that was why I had volunteered to take this shift, just a few hours in the dark sitting on the perimeter then back to the carrier. I tried to relax, after all that's what routine patrol is for - some time to relax between deployments. My hand out of habit hovered over the weapon system but there was nothing on the scanners, space had never felt this empty before. 

Blip. My eyes flicked to the radar display, for a split second a dot flashed up in the middle of the screen that hadn't been there a moment before, then it vanished. A faint spot, too brief to lock onto, too weak to even register a full signature on the system, a shadow. I drummed my fingers once more on the console. Mars still hung on the horizon tiny curls of red coming off its thin atmosphere, the distant stars blinked unchanged, nothing moved. 

"GUNNR, scan for anomalies please." 

The ship's AI responded in its usual calm, slightly patronising tone. "No active threats detected in sector." 

GUNNR – Guided Utility for Neutral Navigation and Reconnaissance – the Valkyrie-classes' weapons and navigation AI and also somehow my best friend nowadays. The more I hyper-analysed that thought, the sadder is sounded. 

"What was the blip in sector 227 just now?" I queried; eyes still glued to the screen. 

"Likely debris or a sensor ghost." GUNNR being rational as usual, not that she knew how to be irrational. 

I frowned again at the radar, nothing else lit up the pixels on my dashboard. 

GUNNR's neutrality to all situations didn't ease the way my breathing had spiked. I'd seen ghost signals before of long-dead ships or the static echoes of a rogue electromagnetic wave colliding with the asteroid field at an odd angle. 

Blip. Same place. Same pixel even. 

"GUNNR-?" I didn't have to finish my sentence as GUNNR's voice whirred to life. 

"Calculating... object exhibits non-random drift." A short pause as the ship hummed around me then: "no known transponder signal detected." 

My hand rested back over the weapons panel hovering above the safety switch. Non-random drift GUNNR had said - that meant controlled movement. That meant someone, or something, was out there. 

I glanced back at the radar but the blip was gone again. 

I tried to relax once more, keeping a slightly closer eye on the radar, I took another few sips of ice-cold water. That was one benefit of space, kept things cold. I exhaled quietly into the silence, the blip was probably nothing, it was probably just Spiers or Harvey straying into my sector by mistake. 

A gnawing feeling deep in my gut plead otherwise. An anxiety that I couldn't shake no matter how much I counted my breaths or the blinks of the sensor that the silence wasn't just silence. That there was something out there. Waiting. Watching me. Just out of sight.