by Kelly Gay
The anguish of the infected, lumbering Flood forms and those humans whose bodies broke under the strain, like mine, endured until it was done. All fodder for the Primordial in his deep prison somewhere below us, delighting in the exquisite unified suffering of so many at once.
I REMEMBER!
And the wounds remain fresh.
In the worst of it, Bornstellar, now the IsoDidact, arrived, shut down Mendicant Bias, and linked with me to finish guiding us through the worst of the passing.…
He had come.
But it was too late to save me.
War, Mendicant Bias, the Master Builder, the Primordial, the Librarian, the Didact. All had taken pieces of me.
And yet… I am still here. And they are not.
Does that make me the victor?
The main chamber housing the Cartographer bleeds light as we approach. But it is the wrong kind of light. I know before entering that it is destroyed.
The enormous vault in the cliff is now an old ruin broken open to the sky. The land above has collapsed inward, depositing dirt and rubble and great blocks of gray cliff inside the space, creating a loose cross patch of stone above us. Daylight and dust motes fill the air.
Ram has gone ahead, slowly picking his way along a path that still edges one side of the chamber, while Rion stays where she is. She watches me, concern written in her dark eyes and around the tight set of her mouth. “Anything salvageable, you think?”
Oddly, laughter is the reaction that springs to mind. I attempt a shrug instead.
Ram’s whistle echoes from the opposite end of the chamber. “Hey! Come see this!”
We follow in his footsteps, moving carefully around boulders and debris, to find that the far side of the chamber has been completely shorn away, creating a crude balcony of sorts where metal and rock and land should have been.
It is a lovely view from up here on the edge, the landscape spread out like a great canvas. A pair of birds with brilliant fiery wings dipped in blue hold the span of their three-meter wings horizontal, riding thermal currents across a sky backdropped by jagged mountains and the dramatic, sweeping curve of the ring, drawing the eye up and up and up. It is a sight like no other.
From the foot of the jagged mountain range, alpine forests fan out in our direction in a great wave, which eases into a plain of green that butts close to the base of the cliff we currently stand on. Below, a wide river flows around the curvature of the base and disappears. A short distance away, a blue lake glistens beyond its pebbled beach and an abandoned campsite overlooks the view. Farther, beyond the human eye, lie the spectacular ruins of a once-great human city, ancient even before my time on the ring.
Our comms suddenly crackle, startling us. It is Lessa, her words broken by static. “Cap!… any—… There’s something… the hu—”
“Less!” Rion tries to reconnect, but there is no reply. She turns and hurries past me, pale. “I thought you were staying linked to the ship?!”
I was. I certainly meant to. I did not realize I had lost the connection at some point. Very strange, indeed.
CHAPTER 14
Ace of Spades
The ship rocked violently as Lessa held on to the table. “Niko! What is it?!” The noise reminded her of the time Ace was pulled into the gravity well of Jeren X. They’d barely escaped the barrage of graphite rain in the upper atmosphere.
She tried reaching Rion through comms again, but all she got was static and a few choppy bits of dialogue, then nothing.
“Hold on! Michelle is coming back!” Niko switched the viewscreen to show Michelle’s camera and they watched intently from the drone’s perspective as it flew along the pathway and then lit on the ship’s position.
Lessa’s jaw went slack. What the hell?
Ace’s hull was covered in large patches of black… and whatever it was… moving? Wait—were those wings? A sudden flash of what might have been open claws appeared in Michelle’s camera feed a second before it tumbled wildly. The screen blitzed and shifted to black. Quickly Lessa initiated takeoff procedures.
Ace’s thrusters were spooling up for lift, but it seemed like it was taking forever. Come on, come on. Suddenly the ship lurched. A piercing metallic echo followed. Ace moved again.
Lessa’s heart dropped. As crazy as it seemed, it sure as hell felt like they were being pushed or dragged. “Keep trying to raise the captain; tell her we’re leaving!”
“I am!” Niko yelled over the din. “Those things are all over the sensors! I’m not getting a response.”
Stunned and growing more terrified by the second, Lessa stared across the table and met her brother’s wide eyes as the ship continued to rock and groan. The thuds and the dragging didn’t stop. It was becoming clear they were in a world of trouble.
Ace rocked hard again, tipping violently. Lessa left the main tactical table and headed for her chair. “Buckle in!”
Dammit. Her fingers fumbled with the attachment as the ship continued to tip over. The world turned slowly upside down as the Ace of Spades went weightless over the platform.
Thank God her buckle finally snapped into place. Lessa’s stomach rolled and her vision distorted as she tried like hell to hold on to the NAV console, using everything she had—abdominal muscles, arm and hand strength… But forces were working against her. It was difficult to focus on the interface. Niko shouted her name. She dodged a loose datapad just in time. It slammed into the wall behind her. If she could just reach…
As free fall continued, Lessa finally made it forward enough to focus on the controls. Immediately, she engaged the ACC, before being shoved back into her seat, hoping… praying the ship’s auto anti-collision sensors could read proximity through the passengers on the hull. But she wasn’t finished with procedure. Thrusters locked, she saw the green light. Her eardrums rang with the pounding of her heart and the shrill alarms. Reaching for the console again took all her strength.
Got it!
Auto engaged. Thrusters fired, full throttle.
Lessa released her hold and was flung back as Ace rolled right side up, pulling deeply at her insides. The speed of their fall was now countered by the firing of thrusters. She opened her eyes, a hopeful zing spreading through her limbs.
Without any warning at all, Ace hit the ground.
The force sent her legs up and her torso down. Her face slammed into her knees.
Then… blackness.
* * *
It was the awful sounds that woke her.
At first they sounded underwater, a slow muted thunder that grew from low bass to a high-pitched treble. Her gut rolled again, shoving bile into her throat. A hot, throbbing pressure radiated through her face, and her eye sockets and sinuses were on fire. Lessa tried to crack her eyes open, but they were heavy and uncooperative.
She tried clearing her throat to speak, but was hindered by the sharp tang of nausea. Finally, she managed a strangled word; the only one that mattered. “Niko.”
The nausea was nearly as bad as the pain in her face, and she feared opening her eyes and trying to focus, only to see the world spinning. If that happened, she’d definitely barf. No, don’t think about it.
She had to push through. Niko wasn’t answering.
As sleepy as she felt, she fought the blackness edging in on her. One of the keys to survival was how quickly a person recovered and defended themselves—or removed themselves from harm’s way before another blow landed and sank them further into oblivion.
She reached down and pulled on those old reserves. Her head weighed a ton, but she managed to lift it and open her eyes. The flashes on the bridge seemed to come in every color of the rainbow. One of the consoles had shorted, and sparks crackled into the air. Niko’s head was on his console. He wasn’t moving.
Tears sprang fast as she fumbled with her buckle. “Niko. Hold on.”
Irritating buckle wouldn’t—there we go. She was free. Standing on her feet was another matter. As soon as she tried, her head exploded with p
ain, and dizziness nearly overwhelmed her. A cold sweat broke out on her forehead. She was shaking inside and out. “I’m coming, Niko.”
She took one step, using her console for support, then another, until she was balanced on her own two feet. At that moment the ship gave another violent lurch. Lessa fell forward. She hit the floor, her hand nearly touching Niko’s heel.
Her vision began bleeding black. She couldn’t lift her cheek off the floor.
Well, I almost made it.
A loud metallic scraping echoed throughout the bridge.
The Ace of Spades was being moved once again.
CHAPTER 15
Establishing a steady signal to comms was a fruitless endeavor, making the pod ride back to the ship interminable. Rion’s inability to contact Ace was an open invitation to imagine the worst, but they’d been through situations like this before. It was a big part of the job—going into the unknown, dealing with whatever came at them. Years of salvaging had taught her to check her emotions and handle things in a calm, assertive fashion.
Still, she couldn’t stop her finger from tapping impatiently on the side of her assault rifle as the pod dropped the five-story descent, then made swift passage past the pod bays, through the tunnel, around the debris, and finally on the pathway back to the ship.
Most of it went by in a blur.
The hard-light conduit that Spark had restored earlier now flowed through much of the area, making it easier to see as the pod came to what should have been Ace’s position. Rion’s gut knotted itself into a tight ball as she shot to her feet. As soon as the door appeared, she was out, heading to the only evidence that her ship had been there at all.
Deep scratches in the metal alloy led to the edge of the pathway. Any calmness she might’ve gained in the pod evaporated. Even if she had let her imagination run wild, it wouldn’t have imagined this. In disbelief, she stepped right up to the edge and peered into a great ocean of darkness.
Ram appeared beside her, dropping to his knees. “Hang in there, Forge. We’ll find them.” Quickly, he removed his rifle, set it aside, then retrieved a small monocular from his vest, usually used to get a closer look at wreckage. She wanted to rip it from his grasp, but bit her lip instead and joined him on the floor as he shifted to his stomach to get a good vantage to see over the edge.
“Anything?”
Seconds ticked by before he finally answered. “Yeah… yeah. Right there. Look.” He handed over the monocular and pointed.
It wasn’t easy to orient or spot anything in the blackness, especially when impatience ate away her composure, but eventually her eyes adjusted and she finally saw it—a dot of faintly illuminated lavender-gray haze. No way to tell if the haze and Ace were one and the same, but it was the only thing that seemed to exist down there.
She pushed to her feet. “Spark—” He was already guiding the pod to the edge. Without delay, they filed in and began a rapid descent. The pod walls were translucent once more, and Rion took full advantage, anxious to get a look at that light.
They didn’t talk. What could they say? Even though it appeared her ship had been pulled over the edge, Rion wasn’t going to assume anything. For all they knew, Ace had recovered and was making her way into the atmosphere by now.
Rion hit her comm link. “Ace, you read me?” Just static. “Less? Niko? Someone please copy,” she said in frustration.
Finally the hazy outline began to take shape, at first distorted like a spotlight covered in a nighttime fog, but as they drew closer, a cloudy violet glow emerged.
She had thought they were approaching something small.
They’d gone much farther into the substructure and that tiny light was now becoming something monstrous, something completely staggering and unfamiliar. As the distance shortened, the haze diffused, revealing the tips of colossal, jet-black towers, densely packed in clusters and on a scale that rivaled some of the biggest cities in the colonies.
The glow hadn’t been coming from Ace at all, but from patches of violet bioluminescence that stuck on the towers like thousands of dim neon splatters flung from an artist’s paintbrush.
“Look at the shape,” Ram said, his voice shaken. “Are those… crystals?”
“Yes. A core cluster—a leftover feature from the ring’s original design.” Spark delivered this observation in a flat tone. He was not impressed. “The bioluminescence is new, however.”
“Could Ace be in this core?” she asked.
“The ship could be anywhere,” he said evenly.
“Helpful,” she shot back.
The pod slowed as it neared the highest tower. Rion tried comms again with no result. “Let’s not get too close.”
“There!” Ram pointed to a small mote in the shadow of the crystals. “That has to be her.”
“Let’s check it out. Hand me that monocular again.”
The pod altered course and headed for the tiny smudge resting on the same platform as the crystal cluster. Rion held her breath, laser-focused on the sight until finally she got a clear view. Oh, thank God. That was Ace all right, a few hundred meters outside the cluster. “It’s her,” she breathed, the relief making her knees weak.
“Thank all the gods,” Ram said, then tapped her shoulder for the lens. After he took a quick look, his voice turned cautious. “Well, it is Ace, but what the hell is covering her?”
A spike of dread hit Rion hard. “Spark, let’s do a quick flyby.”
“Fascinating,” Spark said as the ship came into full view.
That wasn’t the word she’d use. Hers were colorful and mostly four-lettered and directed at the blanket of black that covered the Ace of Spades. Thousands of tiny eyes lifted as the transport pod flew overhead. The pod was entirely silent, so the sound Rion heard could only be attributed to those… things below. It was a hum, an insect-like vibration.
“Set us down. Put twenty meters between us.”
The pod executed a gentle arc and eased down in front of the ship. The buzz was louder now, accompanied by the nerve-tingling screech of Ace’s belly intermittently being pulled along the platform. As they exited the pod, Ram tried comms again. Still random static. It occurred to her the sound might well be disrupting Ace’s signal. Whatever it was, whatever they were, needed to get the hell off her ship.
With a deliberate calm, she checked the chamber of her rifle again—a comfort gesture more than anything else. Ram mirrored her movements. She gave him a quick nod, grateful to have his skill set on her side, then approached the ship to get a better handle on the situation.
“They don’t seem too interested in us,” Ram remarked.
“No, they got their claws full with my ship.”
Keeping her cool was difficult when all she wanted was to fire her rifle and scatter those things. But hasty decisions could very well backfire and cause the herd to attack en masse, and there was no way they’d outrun or defend against that many.
The platform beneath Ace was burned black. Spent fuel was thick and hot in the air, the smell overwhelming and unmistakable. Thrusters had been engaged when she hit. Safety protocols would have shut them down moments before impact. From what Rion could tell at this distance, the Ace had hit hard: landing gear had been sheared off or crushed, no doubt some damage to the undercarriage.
“Spark, can you pick up anything inside?”
“It appears an electromagnetic field is disrupting our signals. The hum you hear are sound vibrations created by those creatures. It’s… somewhat similar to electromagnetic induction—their combined kinetic energy converted into electricity.” His head tilted in thought. “Perhaps an aspect within their biology allows the body to act as a transducer.…”
That would explain why Spark had lost his connection with the ship and comms were dead. Still, it didn’t solve the problem of how to get those things off her ship. Rion nudged Ram for the monocular.
Once focused, she got her first good look at what they were dealing with. Filling the lens were strange goat
-size creatures with short black fur, foxlike faces with round black eyes, and long, thin snouts similar to some type of nectar feeder. Their wings were insect-like, membrane thin, and shot through with bioluminescent veins, and they had two long tails. They had significant sets of claws, but also some kind of sticky or suction-type pad beneath their flat paws. They weren’t attacking the ship, but seemed intent on using their combined force to pull it toward the city of crystals, which loomed behind the Ace of Spades.
“Thoughts?” she asked, handing the lens to Ram.
“Warnings shots might be too risky,” he said, taking a look.
“They appeared to show no aggression to our flyover,” Spark said. “They must be familiar with pod technology.”
“Makes sense. Ace is the foreign entity and the transport pod might be something they’re used to.”
“Is it familiarity or respect?” Spark said thoughtfully, his head cocked. “Let’s find out, shall we?” He didn’t wait for an answer, just strode forward with purpose.
“He doesn’t— Jesus.” Rion hurried after him. “Dammit, Spark—wait!”
She only went a few steps before stopping, watching in horror as Spark continued forward, the hard light that powered his armiger shifting from blue to red.
“Shit.” Ram joined her, raising his rifle. “He better know what the hell he’s doing.”
At his approach, the creatures lifted their heads in unison, a slew of tiny eyes reflecting the approaching red.
Rion raised her rifle. But it wasn’t Spark that had drawn the creatures’ attention; it was the blue streak of silvery orbs passing overhead at a high rate of speed. One departed from the group and swung around while the others scattered the creatures. A massive black cloud took flight and moved toward the safety of the crystal city with the orbs at its heels.
The one that swung around settled in front of Spark, hovering eye level with the armiger as he shifted from red to blue.