Chapter One
All Kendra could see were waves of red. She squinted through crusted eyes against the brightness of the strobe. The drugs that kept her asleep in deep space hadn’t burned off and they aided and abetted her fugue state. Kendra couldn’t decide if the strobing red light came from the nightmare she’d just been torn from or something in the waking world. She wanted the incessant shrieking of an alarm to quit hammering at her ears. Her name was Kendra Omen, that much she knew. The dream of blood – an impossible amount of blood – faded, but the red strobe and shrieking alarm did not.
A voice next to her ear said, “Lieutenant Omen, your assistance is required in the infirmary.”
She should know about infirmaries, but everything lay in a fog, as if her mind couldn’t find its way to the knowledge it once possessed. A jet of cold vapor plumed out and over her and Kendra felt the damp shroud wrap her body. The clear panel above her opened and exposed the red strobe while it cast reflections off the ceiling and walls. Then she knew. I’m in a sleeping berth. On the Marietta. The cold fog filled her lungs and she coughed until her ribs hurt. The sensation passed, and she sat up. Still groggy, her limbs heavy, Kendra finally managed a coherent thought. The mission.
“Lieutenant Omen?” It sounded like a member of the security team. She couldn’t remember who.
“Yeah,” she said, her voice scratchy from the retching cough. “Are we there?”
“Nearly,” the voice said. “However, your presence is requested in the infirmary. Something related to your…assignment.”
My punishment, you mean. “What is it?” Her mission was to investigate a mass disappearance of personnel in Hellweg’s Keep on the seventh moon of Imperial Prime, not to attend to personnel in the Marietta’s sick bay.
The voice paused, then a sigh. “You should really see for yourself.”
“Fine,” Kendra said and lifted herself out of the sleeping station. They called it sleep but it felt more like crawling out of hibernation. Goosebumps rippled the flesh of her neck, breasts, and rib cage. A fresh FBI uniform lay neatly on the table next to the sleeping chamber, a welcome sight.
The sleeping chamber was designed to keep her clean, her bowels vacated, and otherwise healthy during the long sojourn from Earth. It purportedly used chemical washes and the administration of vitamins and nourishment as needed, yet she could still smell herself. Not an unclean smell, but one of antiseptic and artificial hygiene. Remembering the training video, Kendra unlocked the waste collection unit around her middle and allowed it to clatter to the floor. More of the chemical smell wafted upward. She quickly donned the uniform and wished for a real shower with hot water. She opened the storage locker next to her chamber and slipped on the shoulder holster and Glock within. Less groggy now, Kendra strode toward the hatchway leading to the main service corridor.
“Are you on the way?”
“Affirmative.”
“Good. Prepare yourself, Kendra. It won’t be pretty.”
“I’m always prepared,” Kendra said. “And it’s never pretty.” She’d seen plenty of not pretty things in her career. And my personal life. Sometimes those two blended. More goosebumps rippled her flesh, and she disliked the sensation. The corridor was silent – so silent all she could hear were her footsteps as they echoed. The shrill skull-splitting alarm finally stopped – thank God – but the red strobe continued to whirl. She wondered what could have happened while they all were out. It must be bad if they woke me early. And if it had to do with Hellweg’s Keep, plenty of bad possibilities existed. Maybe somebody had died in mid slumber. Besides crew, the Marietta currently held five guests, all scheduled for sleep throughout the duration.
A sign illuminated with red LED bulbs pointed the way to the infirmary. Kendra walked swiftly and when she reached the final junction, noticed smears of red as if someone with bloody heels had been dragged along the corridor. The smears disappeared around the corner to the left.
Reaching the cross-corridor, Kendra heard mumbled speech from the right. A glance told her that’s where the security team had congregated. However, the blood trail led in the other direction. She could catch up with security later. Better get to the infirmary.
What the hell? Kendra followed the trail, careful not to get blood on her FBI-issue boots. Not like she’d been deprived of the sight of blood in her career. Or when her professional and personal worlds bled – no pun intended – together to make her life a living purgatory. She fought the urge to pull her Glock. Blood meant trouble and trouble required her sidearm. This was her experience. It also got her in trouble.
The steel door lever moved smoothly against her palm. It felt cool to the touch. The door hissed open, and Kendra slid inside the infirmary. The amount of blood on the floor made her stomach lurch. Too soon. Way too soon for this. Three people she had only met in passing before hitting the old sleeping chamber, two men and a woman, stood around a fourth, who lay on a hospital bed, slightly elevated. A medic worked furiously at the dark-haired woman’s throat with a tube of adhesive and a large gauze bandage that barely covered an ugly jagged gash. The angry red of the cut waged war with the woman’s chalky complexion. It wasn’t difficult to understand where the blood had come from. It still dripped from the wound and the saturated bandage onto the floor. The crimson puddle rippled with each drop.
The woman’s eyes were red and held the glaze of shock. Kendra wondered if she’d been attacked. If so, then by whom? She again fought the urge to draw her weapon. A weakness. One she needed to improve on. Then she noticed the smaller cuts and nicks on the woman’s hands. The woman coughed up a red mist which settled to the sheet covering her otherwise obviously naked form.
“What happened here?” Kendra asked.
The medic looked up but didn’t answer before resuming efforts to contain the woman’s blood. One of the men, the blond, and the woman next to him only stared at Kendra as if in shock themselves. The third, a twenty-something wearing a black trench coat, pursed his lips and looked Kendra
in the eye. He motioned with his head for her to follow him somewhere more discreet. Kendra didn’t usually respond favorably to such a summons, but she obliged.
The woman with the ravaged neck moaned something unintelligible yet urgent.
Reaching the far wall, Kendra stuck the palm of her left hand onto the smooth surface, cocked her head in a pose which represented impatient curiosity, and arched her left eyebrow until it formed an upside-down V. “Well?”
The man spoke in a low tone, close to Kendra’s right ear. He smelled of mint and an herb she couldn’t identify. Cloves perhaps. “Suicide attempt.” He glanced at the concrete floor, a somber expression on his face. His eyes held a look of concern and perhaps intellect. Or, Kendra thought, confidence at least. “Something about one of her visions.”
“Visions?”
The man shrugged. “She’s a psychic medium. She taps into the stream of consciousness usually reserved for the dead. Or, in some cases, the never alive.”
“Great,” Kendra said. She rolled her eyes. Visions of her own flashed behind her eyes – red visions. So much blood – too much. “What did she see?”
“Who are you again?”
“FBI. Special investigations.”
The man pondered the title, then nodded. “That’s right. I remember from orientation.” He held out his hand, elbow bent to keep the shake close to their bodies. A discreet gesture, which Kendra found comforting. “Zak.”
She accepted the hand. It felt warm but firm. “Kendra. What’s going on? I mean, in layman’s terms.”
Zak let go of her hand and allowed his to drop to his side. “Roxie experienced a vision that shook her up.”
Kendra’s eyes darted toward Roxie, who didn’t fight the medic yet did nothing to assist either. Her dark brown eyes looked dead. “I presume that’s an understatement.”
The reply from Zak, nothing but a hiccup of air past his thin lips, could have been levity. Or what passed for it in the situation. After a long bout of silence, he finally said, “Understated, yes. But she hasn’t exactly been forthcoming.” He nodded sideways toward her. “She’s seen some…gruesome, disturbing stimuli in the past. So, I can only assume this was somehow worse.”
“What would a medium need to see to attempt suicide?”
“Psychic medium.”
“My apologies.” Kendra paused and waited for Zak to speak. She remembered most of the other guests were part of a paranormal team called in by the mining company with the missing employees. She herself had been requested by a different entity, the Imperial Prime space station, which housed local government and the dock for the Marietta. They were concerned the troubles with the company might spill over. When he didn’t continue, she asked, “You the team leader of this shit show?”
Zak laughed outright at this, his lips parting just enough so Kendra could see an incisor. His dark brown hair swept across his forehead when he lowered his head. “Not even close.”
The paramedic glanced over with a disapproving scowl. The woman coughed up another spatter of blood.
“No games,” Kendra said. “Who are you?”
Zak’s lips flatlined and he nodded, all business again. “Zak Underhill.”
“Short for Zacharia?”
“No.”
Kendra shrugged so he’d go on.
He seemed reluctant, perhaps sheepish. He finally said, “For media purposes, they call me the Paranormal Protector. My job is to keep paranormal investigators safe from the things that plague them.”
Kendra’s turn to smile, just a slight upturn of her lips. She glanced at Roxie on the bed. “Epic fail, then.”
“Yes, one might say so.” He sounded hurt. “I might argue the one point of contention that she wasn’t mine to protect
just yet. My role, as far as I see anyway, is still undefined. None of us knows exactly why we’re here. Not even you, I’d wager.”
“Never wager on me,” Kendra said. “Unless you want to lose.” She glared at him and expected him to shrink back from her bright blue gaze. Zak did not. Unsure how she felt about that, Kendra proceeded. “The station called the FBI in, because it’s a United States protectorate.” She paused and Zak only stared in his off-putting way, obviously waiting for more. “Anyway, since they picked you specifically, your reputation must precede you. What’s your claim to fame?”
“For the record, I was also called in by the station. Apparently, they don’t trust the mine or its stewards.” He smiled and ran a hand over his dark, nearly black, coif of short hair. “I once was on a famous network TV show. My job: to protect the arrogant lead paranormal investigator from himself. And from the menagerie of violent spiritual detritus that followed him around.”
Spiritual detritus? Is that what they called it now? Is that what ruined me? “What happened?”
Zak smirked and his eyes shone with levity. He stayed silent, probably to make her guess, to play his little game.
“Another epic failure?”
“Probably, but only because the man was unprotectable. Network canceled the show after he went berserk on the live Halloween special.”
“I presume you have some kind of superpower.” Kendra’s turn to smirk.
“Just a little arcane knowledge and a propensity, of unknown origin, for irritating spirits enough to leave where they are not welcome.”
Kendra wrestled with her past, keeping it from erupting up and out of her mouth. If she began a monologue, it wouldn’t stop. She wanted desperately to hear what this guy knew of the spiritual world, but that could wait. “I see. Sounds sketchy.” She upturned one side of her mouth, so he knew she was half-kidding.
“I’m sure it is.”
Roxie made gurgling noises, which made Kendra turn her head.
The medic shouted into an intercom on the wall, “Get Jerry in here! I can’t get the internal bleeding stopped.”
Like a fish, Roxie flopped around on the bed. Kendra wasn’t sure if the movement was born from panic because she couldn’t breathe or to protest further help. Maybe she still wanted to die.
Kendra abandoned Zak by the wall and strode to the bed. She stood, hands on hips, in observation. Things didn’t look good for Roxie. The bandage around her throat had failed and a steady stream of blood ran out of her and to the floor like a faucet turned to its lowest stream. Her lips were painted crimson like she was ready for a nightclub. Lipstick only a vampire could love. “What did you see?” Kendra asked. “In your vision.”
Roxie shook her head, eyes bulging. The whites were so red they looked about to burst like ripe fruit. She mumbled something Kendra couldn’t make out.
“Take it easy. If you plan on living, you can tell me later. But if you’re gonna check out, at least tell me what drove you to this. Zak said it was something you…saw.” Kendra pointed to her forehead.
With a nod, Roxie confirmed this. “Don’t go,” she said.
“Go where?” When Roxie paused and didn’t answer, Kendra said, “It’s okay. I know about the disappearances. I’m FBI agent Kendra Omen. You can speak with me.”
The blond man still standing next to the bed finally spoke up. “It’s okay, Roxie. You can tell her.”
Roxie coughed blood all over her already-saturated sheet, but never broke eye contact with Kendra. Her pupils were all but lost within the red. “Hellweg’s Keep.”
“Why? That’s my job, to investigate. Why would I stay out of Hellweg’s Keep? Will I die?”
“Worse.” Roxie coughed once more and broke into a barrage of strangled hacking and gagging. Blood dribbled down her chin and dripped to her chest. “Better to die,” she managed.
Flashes of memory invaded Kendra’s headspace. Images of her husband…her daughter. Better to die. Yes, Kendra understood that situations existed that were worse than death. “What did you see?”
Roxie blinked, eyelids slow and lazy. A tear escaped and traversed her cheek. “The eternal….” She didn’t finish the thought.
“Like hell…heaven…another
dimension?” Kendra asked. “That kind of eternal?”
A shake of Roxie’s head increased the small stream of crimson. The paramedic fought with it, waiting impatiently for the surgeon. Roxie whispered, “Eternal violation, pain, suffering…without the relief of death.”
“What form did this suffering take?” Kendra asked. Could it be any worse than her own? The grief, feelings of loss, and now an unending fear of the unknown that Kendra would not allow to paralyze her. She would plow forward in her pursuit. Someday soon she would find the answers she sought, and Kendra’s instincts told her Hellweg’s Keep held them.
Roxie shook her head back and forth like a dog playing with a toy. She even growled in her desperation to cut her life short. Blood flew in every direction and landed in mosaic patterns on walls, the floor, and the paramedic’s scrubs.
The paramedic fought to hold the psychic medium’s head still, but the blood made everything too slick to grasp.
“Roxie, please,” the blond guy said. “Stop this. It’ll be okay. I promise.” He fidgeted, stretching his arm out and then retracting it, confused as to how to help.
“Where the hell is Jerry?” the paramedic screamed into the intercom. “For fuck sakes, I’m gonna lose her.”
The monitor next to the violently shaking bed screeched like a banshee. A flatline now played out where Roxie’s erratic heartbeat once arced. The bed went still. Blood continued to pour to the floor.
Oh shit. Kendra took a step backward.
The red-haired girl next to the blond guy leaned closer. Tears filled her eyes. “Is she…?”
The paramedic shook her head as if to cast off bad feelings or ill will. She glanced toward the guy and gal and nodded. “Time of death fourteen hundred hours.”
Zak walked over and stood next to Kendra. She could feel his heat beside her, warming her still-chilly rib cage. She didn’t feel the need to move away. Something about seeing someone die, and her own memories, required company…someone to share the experience with.
Chapter Two
Damn good thing she was strapped into her seat, because the whole ship shook like it would break apart around them. Her training on the Space Coast in Florida had only simulated the docking process and hadn’t done the event justice. Her teeth rattled together inside her mouth. Next to her, Zak squeezed his eyes shut and his lips formed unheard words. You’d think they would have perfected this shit by now. In the movies, producers made docking to a moon-orbiting space station look like a walk in the park. Not so much in real life.
Kendra glanced at the other two, the ghost hunters, the blond guy and the redhead. They too gripped the edge of their seats but with open eyes. Those eyes were red-rimmed and haunted. They’d witnessed the suicide of a colleague…a friend. Death had a way of staying with you. How well Kendra knew this.
One last thunderous clang, steel grating and screeching like the coitus between ship and station would destroy both. The incessant shaking stopped, and a sudden silence fell like a curtain. Kendra could still feel the vibration deep in her core, and she wondered how long her body would harbor the sensation. The sound of rushing air roared past them and then died away. Kendra thought this meant the seal was now intact, that they could breathe the air generated by the station. It also meant they could pass back and forth between ship and station without being sucked out into the void of space. She imagined floating around out there, untethered, without hope. Dead.
“I could do without experiencing that ever again,” Zak said. The words shook Kendra from her imaginings. “I think I’m a land lover, after all.”
“Copy that.” Kendra took deep breaths to dispel her feelings of despair. She couldn’t quite shake them, as if they were generated somewhere besides her mind. An outside stimulus.
An electric noise, a crackle of energy, then the circular handle on the door leading outside the room initiated a counterclockwise rotation. It made no sound until the door slid open softly and a medical attendant stepped inside wearing a white latex suit. A security officer followed, a firearm at his side. Kendra figured they must have waited just outside the door.
After a thorough scan and a nod from the medic, the security officer said, “You’re free to disembark.” He looked at Kendra from behind glasses that made his eyes appear big. “In case you didn’t know, we head back to planet in two weeks. Not a day later. Be here.” He turned and left.
The medic smiled. “Welcome to Imperial Prime. We call it Perri for short.” She held her hand to her mouth and whispered, “But Kirkland, the boss-man, hates it.” A nod. “So, we keep at it.” Her eyes twinkled with amusement and Kendra thought she would like the woman. Bureaucracy would never be her thing, and Kendra could always appreciate a good confidante.
Nobody laughed, so Kendra made a point to smile. “Then I’ll be sure to call it that. Local flavor is never dull.” She reached for the buckle and released the locking mechanism. “I’m supposed to find a guy named Kroll…Winston Kroll. The sheriff.”
“Lucky you,” the medic said. “I’m sure you’ll have no problem.”
“Larger than life?”
“You could say that.”
Kendra watched as the two remaining members of the paranormal team unbuckled and then embraced. They still looked disturbed by the recent events but now, perhaps, harbored a hint of relief. She felt it also, the desire to walk off this spaceship onto…what? A bigger spaceship? Basically, yeah.
“I need to meet with Kirkland,” Zak said. “He hired me and gave me instructions to speak with him directly.”
Kendra glanced at him. He didn’t appear smug about speaking with the boss-man. Just all business and ready to collect his fee. Kendra was sure he would want to depart at the two-week juncture as much as she did. Better to get the proceedings underway.
“I’m sure he’ll meet you at the arrival deck,” the medic explained. “He enjoys eyeballing new arrivals to Perri. Probably gets off on it.”
The blond guy stared at the medic who had turned to greeter in the blink of an eye. “Geez, how many people work at this place? Ramee and I were hired by Bernard Hellweg. The dude who owns the mine where people are disappearing.”
The medic looked grave. “Glad I have no reason to jettison down to Zeta One. Creepy as fuck. I hear it’s eerie quiet down there now. Nobody goes out and about anymore.” When Ramee and the blond guy just stared at her, the medic said, “I’m sure someone will be waiting with an arrival sign for you.” She smirked. “Definitely not Hellweg, though. He’s one of the biggest recluses you’ll find. Even his own staff rarely see him except on a monitor. A big-time introvert. But a rich one. Lunar will probably fly you down there. You’ll dig her.”
Kendra wanted to get going and took a couple steps forward. “No time like the present.”
The medic-cum-greeter led the group down a passage that looked exactly like every other passage on the Marietta. Only now, instead of the dead silence, Kendra could hear bangs and knocks, dock attendants tending to the refueling efforts and minor repairs dictated by the Marietta’s maintenance team. The noises were comforting, signs of life, indicators she wasn’t alone in the vastness of black space.
“Right through here,” the medic
said with a sweeping gesture of her arms. “Prepare to be amazed.”
Kendra allowed the others to take the lead, despite Zak’s efforts to usher her forward. She heard Ramee’s intake of air as she disappeared through the air lock. For a reason she didn’t understand now but would later, Kendra turned and looked back down the shadowy corridor. She stopped breathing when one of the shadows stirred, then morphed into a humanoid shape. It stood and watched. Her heart thumped behind her breastplate. Kendra felt the goosebumps on her arms and neck, tingles of angst on her scalp. When she blinked, the shadow was just a shadow again. Her imagination. She’d just witnessed a bloody suicide and her mind didn’t want her to forget. She hoped that was all it was. Kendra took a deep breath. She wanted to dismiss the phenomenon, but it reminded her of a time she could never forget. She didn’t want to, yet she did want to. It was complicated. Kendra dwelled on a shadow from her past – the shadow who took her husband and daughter from her.
“You coming?” Zak asked. He stood outside the air lock, his head stuck back inside the Marietta. “It’s amazing out here. You won’t believe it.”
With a nod, Kendra pushed herself toward him. Something like relief flooded her to walk away from the rogue shadow, whether imagination or something else.
“Look like you seen a ghost,” Zak said. A knowing glint lit up his eyes, with a twisting of his lips. He was no stranger to shadows, Kendra sensed. Kinship often made her uncomfortable, yet she felt it. He continued to stare at her when Kendra didn’t bother to answer him.
She really didn’t want to address the issue. Just wanted to disembark and get acclimated. When she finally exited through the airlock, Kendra knew how mistaken she had been. ...
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