Free Beacon 23: Part Two: Pet Rocks by Hugh Howey Page B

death.
    To keep my mind off things, I go over the scans I managed to get of the aftermath. I caught a lot of the debris expanding and ricocheting, and I got great vid of the two scavenger ships that caused the wreck in the first place. Grabbed their signatures and hull IDs before they could zip off into the FTL yonder. I’m sure the sigs are bogus, but it made me feel useful. And with the full zoom on the viz scanner, I can sit and watch the little bastards in their spacesuits as they sift through the drifting cargo, getting what they can, stuffing their holds, then leaving.
    Somewhere out there, six crewmembers are dead and drifting—unless the navy found the bodies or one of the rubberneckers thought a corpse would suffice as a souvenir. Somewhere out there, a bunch of TVs are switching over to news of the war, and how it’s edging into sector seven right now, and which planet might fall next. Pretty much everywhere but here, six dead is old news. Nothing to see. Guess you’ve got to be pretty lonely to care about the loss of a handful of strangers.
    And I suppose my view is shaped by the portholes around me. Six people probably died from slipping in their showers in the time it took me to have this thought right here of them slipping in their showers. But it’s more than the deaths I saw; it’s the destruction . The noise with which we go seems to make it count for more. I think of my buddies who checked out via hand grenade versus those who died from MRSA back in the VA. We barely notice the latter. They’re statistics. Go quietly, and you’re a number. Go in spectacular fashion, and you’re a name .
    I never wanted to be a name. I think of how I nearly went out, with the rest of my squad. I think of the people who want to make a movie out of that last stand. The publishers with their book deals. The ghostwriters who clamor to write of ghosts.
    Everyone wants me to relive that. I just want to get lost. I asked for a post somewhere where no one would find me, where no one would know my name.
    So they gave me a number. 23. My little beacon.
    But then the bright flash came for me anyway, and a squad drifts dead in space, and the war is creeping closer.
    I can’t sleep at night.
    And maybe that’s a good thing.
     

 
     
    • 2 •
     
    An alarm is going off up in the command station, four flights away from the airlock wing. I’ve truly crawled into a hole. Now I climb out to see what in the world is beeping. With the walk suit on, the ladder is a bitch. I climb with one hand, my helmet in the other, which thumps up the rungs by my hip. This is me losing my shit. This is NASA’s investment in me gone to waste.
    I crawl through the power and life support pod, through my old living quarters, and up into what I like to think of as my office. One of the scanners is flashing. I’m lumbering that way when the QT beeps with a message. I decide to check that first, knowing it’ll be a message from NASA, probably asking me to check whatever’s beeping on the scanner. These little messages from Houston are the only company I have. The contact is nice. Too bad Houston is full of assholes and taskmasters. Maybe prisoners in isolation feel what I feel: they hate their guards, but a beating now and then is at least some human contact.
    I check the readout. I am their trained monkey.
     
    Picking up life sig
     
    This seems so unlikely that I assume the station is still glitching from the reboot. A second message beeps through before I can even turn to check the scanner:
     
    Check scanner
     
    “I am,” I say. “Jeez.”
    Sometimes I wish the QT weren’t quite so instantaneous.
    Letting out a sigh, I cross the command room to check the bio scanner. It’s one of the more sensitive instruments on the beacon, and that’s saying something. If lichen or viruses start collecting on the outside of the hull, the scanner sounds an alarm, like it’s doing right now. I acknowledge the alarm to shut it off, but the light keeps