Free Beacon 23: Part Four: Company (Kindle Single) by Hugh Howey

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    A billion stars in the night sky—and one of them is winking at me.
    Except this flashing light is not a star. A hundred or so klicks away, it belongs to what looks like another beacon, similar to mine. It appeared a month ago when a tug came out of hyperspace and parked it there. I wasn’t sure if it was going to stay or move on—sometimes these commercial tugs use my remote bit of space as a waystation. But this morning, the beacon went operational. It seems I have a neighbor.
    I pinged NASA on the QT, but all they’ll say is that the cargo wreck a few months back signaled the need for some redundancies . It reminds me of an intersection in my hometown in Tennessee that got by just fine with stop signs until a chicken truck plowed into that young couple. Our first stoplight went up a few weeks later. That stoplight blinked yellow all night, in deference to the quiet, and the adults about town discussed with grave voices what this unwanted intrusion might mean.
    A hundred klicks away, a light blinks at me. I know what it means. It’s a cold reminder of my failure. Of wreckage spilled and lives lost. If stop signs could feel shame, I imagine that one in my hometown felt something like this. Standing there, frozen, watching in horror as that young couple got killed, feathers and dead chickens everywhere, all that squawking, until weeks later someone in an orange vest pulls that sign out of the ground and strings up the newfangled.
    My warthen nuzzles against me, probably because of these guilt-laden thoughts. Her name is Cricket. She’s like a cross between a Labrador and a leopard, with moods just as wild as those two extremes. There was a time when she wanted to kill me, but now she just follows me around like a puppy. I’m pretty sure warthens are empaths, that they pick up on moods and even some thoughts. When the bounty hunter who owned her died, she glommed onto me. That’s probably not a good thing, with thoughts as dark as mine.
    I’d love to know more about these creatures, but there’s scant information in the archives, and I can’t exactly send off a research request to Houston. Here’s how that conversation would go:
     
    Station Operator: “Sir, could you come here for a minute? I’ve got . . . well, let’s just say it’s an unusual re-rec from 23.”
     
    Chief of Ops: “Lemme see. Hmm. Wants to know about warthens, eh? Hey, isn’t this the guy with the pet rock?”
     
    SO: “Yessir. Same guy. I’ve also got this completely unrelated issue with his beacon. I mean, I’m sure these two things have absolutely nothing to do with one another, nothing whatsoever, but O2 consumption has gone up fifty percent throughout his beacon, and our boy is going through food packs twice as fast as usual.”
     
    CO: “And now he wants a feeding and care guide for a large alien quadruped known to be in the employ of bounty hunters?”
     
    SO: “That’s right, sir.”
     
    CO: “Didn’t this guy have a run-in with some bounty hunters recently?”
     
    SO: “I believe so, sir. He’s had quite a shift.”
     
    CO: “Any chance the O2 and food pack problem started right around the same time as the bounty hunter thingy?”
     
    SO: “You know, sir, now that you mention it, I do believe both issues started around the same time. Same day, in fact.”
     
    CO: “I see.”
     
    SO: “…”
     
    CO: “…”
     
    SO: “…”
     
    CO: “Yeah, I got nothing either. Send him whatever he wants.”
     
    Okay, that last bit is wishful thinking. And yeah, I have conversations like these in my head a lot. But at least I don’t have them out loud anymore. Not as much, anyway.
    Cricket rubs her nose against my arm, and I lift it so she can tuck her head against me. I point at the blinking light. “There,” I tell her. “Do you see it? What do you make of that?”
    The two of us watch as the black of space swallows the light, spits it out, then swallows it again. I stare at the beacon,