Spook

Shhhhhhhhhhppp.

With a shudder that ran through the deck plates under Aaron's feet, the airlock slammed home and air hissed to signal the lock being sealed. Aaron winced as his ears popped, and looked up expectantly at his father, waiting at the door control as the pressure equalized. To Aaron's surprise, his father wasn't smiling.

"Aren't you excited, dad?" Aaron asked. "New people!"

Aaron, or anyone else on Lubar Station for that matter, barely ever got to see new people. Not in person, anyway. There were occasionally video messages delivered through Waypoint, but they almost always showed some researcher droning on about new research and numbers his parents or the dozen other station workers had to update. Talking to the same handful of people about the same slipspace distortions over and over again got old quick, and growing up the only kid on the station made it even worse.

That's why he made sure to be around for every new arrival, and stuck by them every second he could until they passed through. At least some of the other crew members would usually do the same, but today it was just Aaron and his dad in the airlock corridor. He couldn't figure why; it'd been at least five months since a ship had even used their position as a jump point without stopping in. Maybe it had something to do with all the 'weird distortions' everyone had been whispering about for the last few weeks.

His father only nodded slowly and said, with no excitement at all, "Sure, I'm excited."

Aaron glanced at the porthole window in the door his father was glaring through, but he was too short to see what he was looking at. "So why isn't anyone else here to see them?"

"It's only one person, Aaron." His father slipped him a brief glance as pistons clicked and primed. "And that person, is a spook."

Before Aaron could even ask, the controls lit up green, and his father punched open the door's control.

The door split in half and rolled into the walls, revealing a figure on the other side Aaron couldn't have expected. Their limbs were all bulky, covered with armor plates like the ODSTs Aaron had figures of, and the same went for their chest. The plates were painted grey, same as the sleek helmet encasing the person's head, with a yellow visor in the shape of an inverted triangle on its front.

The sight was one altogether alien to Aaron, but he couldn't help feeling somehow cheated. He'd wanted to see what this new person really looked like.

"Welcome aboard." His father said as the person stepped through, offering a hand. The person didn't take it.

"Do you have your findings ready?" The voice was male, and didn't need the radio speaker clicking on and off to punctuate his words for the voice to sound husky.

By the way his crewman's jumpsuit slacked, Aaron's father looked relieved the stranger was being so short. He swept an arm to invite him further down the corridor. "On a chip, and still plugged in if you want to download anything else."

The stranger nodded, and started walking past without another sign of noticing either of them, when Aaron stepped sideways into the center of the corridor, blocking his path. He wouldn't be so casually denied.

"Hi!" Aaron half-yelled in his most obnoxious, cheerful, impossible-to-politely-ignore voice.

The helmet tilted down, orienting itself so the yellow triangle was directly on Aaron. He hoped the stranger would take off his helmet to smile at him, maybe ruffle his hair a little bit. Aaron hated that, but he'd suffer it just to see a different face. Maybe he'd only get a greeting, but that'd be enough. He'd at least excuse himself, and hearing his voice a bit more could help Aaron to imagine what his face looked like, but. . . nothing. The stranger's stare lingered on him, a voiceless leer that made Aaron only more and more uncomfortable as it went on. It had just gone on long enough for Aaron to start thinking he'd missed a cue in how grown-up conversation worked when his father interjected.

"Okay, well, this is Aaron. I'll take care of him and be right behind you, Lieutenant, you go on ahead."

The helmet turned away, and Aaron resumed breathing. He hadn't realized he'd stopped.

"Right." the stranger grunted. He stepped around Aaron, and as his father knelt beside him, continued up the corridor, his bootsteps still receding after he was out of sight.

Still looking the way he'd gone even as his father rested his hands on Aaron's small shoulders, Aaron didn't understand. Had he done something wrong? Had the stranger? Something sure hadn't seemed right.

"Aaron, you know, you don't see one every day, but I think we need to have a talk about talking to strangers." His father said, drawing Aaron's attention back.

"What's a spook, dad?" Aaron asked.

His father laughed and shook his head just a bit. "Not a what, kid, just a who. It's what people like your mother and I call the people who work for Naval Intelligence. They're always looking for trouble, so they always show up when trouble does. So, we call 'em spooks."

"Are we in trouble?"

"Nah, but someone out there is. That's why he's around. So don't you worry about it, just run along. I'll see you in a while."

His father ruffled Aaron's hair the way he hated, then stood up and walked down the corridor after the spook. When his footsteps had faded, Aaron waited just a moment more to be sure he was gone.

Trouble was a word that meant about the same as 'fun' in Aaron's book. This spook was the most interesting thing Aaron had been around in months. He wasn't about to let the chance to see what one looked like pass him by, and he knew just how to get that look. The moment he was sure it was safe, Aaron turned the other way up the corridor, towards the open airlock, and ran right through.

Most of the time strangers came aboard, all the grown-ups wanted to talk to them about grown-up things, boring stuff like what was on the news, and they always wanted Aaron out of the way while they talked. So to get a look at new people, Aaron had gotten really good at hide-and-seek over time. There were places he'd found in the station, little alcoves and crawl spaces just small enough for someone his size that he was sure no one else on the station knew about. The spook's shuttle would be the same way.

The shuttle's inside looked a lot like the station's. Same regulation-height ceiling of the same metal plating, but the layout was different, like a whole new room added on to the ship. Just one room, though; it was cramped, with just one aisle cleared to run between a personal quarters fit for one and a small pilot's cabin. It smelled funny to Aaron, but he figured that was normal. He was so used to the station's same air recycled over and over, he could tell the difference when someone new came aboard. Maybe it was a different soap they used.

Most of the shuttle was tightly-packed with all the supplies a spaceship needed in compact forms, but there was a perfect place for him to hide beneath the perfectly-made bed, where he couldn't be seen, but had a clear view of the cabin at an angle where the pilot's chair wouldn't get in his way. He wouldn't need to wait long. Spacers on ships this small were always eager to stretch their legs, and stayed on the station for a few days before moving on. They'd be back in a while, done with whatever business they had to get out of the way, and then, Aaron was sure, they'd be back to take the armor off so they could relax in the station a bit.

While he waited, Aaron found himself stifling a giggle. The spook must've been a funny kind of person. If Aaron had a spaceship all to himself, he'd never have to make his bed.

He wasn't sure if it was an hour or half an hour, but eventually, he heard one set of footsteps coming back up the corridor. Aaron steeled himself against squirming in anticipation and wedged himself further back into his hiding spot.

The spook walked in and halted, standing straight-backed as the door closed behind him. Aaron expected him to slouch like all the other grown-ups did when they were done working, but he didn't. It almost seemed like the spook couldn't relax, his posture was too rigid.

He turned and went to the pilot's seat, sitting down a little awkwardly with his back still straight, and just as Aaron predicted seated himself just so Aaron could see the side of his yellow visor. He rolled his head one way and the other, some uncomfortable-sounding pops issuing from beneath it, and reached up to remove his helmet.

His patience about to be rewarded, Aaron didn't even blink as the helmet's rim lifted over its wearer's head, and found abruptly he couldn't have blinked if he wanted to. And he wanted to desperately, just for the split second of relief looking away for that long would have given him. He struggled not to gasp at what he saw.

As the helmet lifted, it didn't reveal skin on the spook's neck, but a sleek, iridescent shell. As it cleared his chin, it revealed a jagged pair of lips cutting too far back along his cheek, and jagged, serrated teeth protruding out at odd angles. Above them, a glistening, black nose like a dog's flared as it inhaled the shuttle's air for the first time, and Aaron could see just the very edge of one bugged-out yellow eye with its slitted pupil fixated out the window at some point in deep space. The crown of his head, as the helmet cleared it, revealed the chitinous shell breaking up into an overlapping mail of scaly plates. The shuttle's alien smell was suddenly worse, and Aaron had to clamp his own jaws down to keep from being sick. The person—no, the spook, Aaron decided—refocused the predatory intent of its gaze upon the console, and lifted a hand to the console, removing a glove to free its backwards-bending fingers for typing.

Instinct rose in Aaron's stomach, yanking at his nerves to get his limbs moving, running for the door as fast as he could, but the fear of those slitted eyes fixing on him even for a second held him still. It's better if I don't move. Aaron rationalized. He'll leave in a minute, and I can slip out again.

Shhhhhhhhhhppp.

Aaron had heard that sound at least a thousand times, but in that moment, it frightened him almost as much as the sight of the spook did. Air flowing through tubes, being sucked back out of the airlock seal. The horrible realization finished the job his fear had started, rendering him utterly paralyzed.

There was a rumble, and with a shake in the floor under Aaron, the little shuttle kicked free of his home station. Empty space now cut him off from everything but this tiny steel room, and the spook seated at the controls. He felt engines kicking on to widen the gap, but he was sure a meter or a lightyear, any distance between him and safety, had no difference to him now.

Aaron wondered how long he could stay hidden—and how long it would take that nose to sniff him out.