The Dark Places

by D. Martin

  “Only to persons unauthorized by Shipmaster Lorins. Please present the proper ident-item in order for this information to be released.”

  My mouth was dry and my brain went blank. What ident-item was the comp demanding? I watched in frustration as a small transparent square flared to life on the console’s top, highlighted with soft blue light. Moments fled before I impulsively tugged off the thick ring Matt had given me before we landed on Rikin. It fit more snugly on my finger after I’d wound some plastafiber around it. Just in case the navilog comp might reject it with the fibers, I swiftly unraveled colorless filaments. Then I held the unfettered ring up before my eyes and stared hard at it before leaning forward to position it carefully upon the lighted square.

  I pulled the long fiber strands back and forth and then wound it around a finger while I willed the ship computer to speed up its functions.

  A violet-tinged glow suffused the ring and the light vanished. “You have been cleared for information release under code name A’lia, Mistress Lorins.”

  I retrieved the ring from the console top. Restoring my makeshift security wedge would eat up precious moments. I’d do it later. I stuffed the salvaged threads into a coverall pocket. My hands trembled as I slipped the ring back on while praying Matt continued sleeping as soundly and long as he had of late.

  “Please stand by on visual terminal screen for the requested information.”

  I swiveled with eagerness to the indicated terminal and then sat with every muscle tensed while scanning the long list of numbers and words that made no sense. If only I was a ship navigator—would I understand this then? My sight blurred with frustrated tears. Matt had entered the information in either an encrypted script or a language I didn’t know. Probably some language spoken by his people on Drakis.

  “Could you direct the flight course to this planet from this information feedback and release, navilog computer?”

  “Negative, Mistress Lorins. This can only be done upon Shipmaster Lorins’s voice command and personal code release.”

  I slumped back in the chair, defeated. A bitter taste curdled my tongue, a lump formed in my throat, and disappointment knifed through my heart. All there remained for me was to key in the release that allowed the ship to proceed to the Bileth System.

  “Navilog computer, identify me.”

  My heart slammed in my chest and I jumped, badly startled, but didn’t turn. I dared not.

  “You are Shipmaster Matt Lorins,” the ship softly named him.

  “What flight course was Mistress Lorins requesting to be run through and released to your directive function?”

  “The code name A’lia flight pattern files, sir.”

  I cringed into the chair and wished both it and the deck beneath would swallow me.

  “You may, upon my voice command, read that file and release it into your directive functions for course computation. Your code release is Fire Dawn.”

  My face burned and I had difficulty breathing. I felt no relief at his command to the Stardancer’s comp to seek a course and return to the planet where he’d lost and buried his first wife and prematurely born child.

  I swallowed and stared at my tightly clasped hands on my lap. I could not look at Matt. Hot mortification engulfed me at my actions in trying to sneak around him in that matter. I felt like a port rat—one of the petty pocket thieves, who inhabited space ports, looting hapless, unwary visitors.

  He was silent for so long that I felt compelled finally to rise and turn around.

  Matt’s expression was unreadable. “I’ve never gone back there until now. What do you expect to find, Kailiri?”

  I shook my head and stepped away from the navicon chair just as the ship said, “Course plotted and locked in upon coordinates found in the code name A’lia file, Shipmaster Lorins. Course correction being made for the next vortex leap point. Acceleration is imminent.”

  “Approved, navilog computer. Proceed.” Matt held out a hand. “Come, Kai.”

  His stern, closed expression promised no easy forgiveness. I dropped my gaze to the deck and hesitated before taking tentative steps. Shivering had started in my body.

  Matt drew me close and placed a hand under my chin to lift my eyes to meet his. “Are you certain that this is what you want, doll?” he asked in low tone. Solitary, icy-green glints filled the centers in his dark eyes. “If you go along with my original flight program, I shall be gone, and you’ll be financially independent and free to design your life and its contents. This other course that you’ve launched the Stardancer upon will bring us both much pain before the end. Nothing shall change, except that the bitter bite of past memories will consume us and taint our relationship before I die. Is this what you want? You are actively seeking the dark places now. Beware.”

  “No…,” I croaked out a whispered thread. “Timirshil-ka—or another like it—I seek that for you.”

  Matt studied me long seconds before releasing me and turning away. I trembled in the cold wind of his disapproval. He strode toward the living area, and I trailed behind him and stood at a couch’s end while he eased his long limbs down upon the cushions, as if in pain.

  My heart wrenched watching his careful movements to settle back on the couch. When he didn’t glance at me, I gathered my courage and approached with tentative steps. I perched on the cushion next to him, ready to flee if he ordered me away and careful not to touch him in his present mood. How far have I fallen beneath his grace? Can he ever forgive me?

  “I’m not sorry that I’ve done this, Matt. Only for the way I’ve gone about it…. I’ll never regret trying to help you, my lord.” I gave him his inherited courtesy address for the first time, hoping to placate him. “I will risk walking through the shadows of the dark places for you, because I could do nothing else when my heart is this closely bonded to yours.”

  His eyes closed and winced as if in pain. “Do you speak the truth, Kai? I sense animosity and trepidation in your soul for those dark places.”

  There was nothing I could think of to deny that. Instead, I dared lean across the brief distance separating us. I touched my lips to his cool cheek, which had become hollow in the past few days. He turned, wrapped me in his arms, and returned my kiss with a fierce intensity that pulled at my emotions. Was I forgiven? My arms clung onto him. If only this moment could go on forever.

  The Stardancer chimed a vortex leap warning before she gradually accelerated and aimed herself toward Lord Mattin Sian Rakeda’s planet of darkness.

  Chapter Nine

  The planet the Stardancer settled in orbit around ten standard days later was indeed a dark gray globe of depression. And it had no moons to comfort it. The planet’s entire image in the view screens engendered rising despair within me. Where on that large, gloomy globe would we find the creature that had imparted bits of its self to help Matt survive? The ship’s initial planet sector scans revealed no indications of radiant energy sources, either biological or mechanical. The planet was uninhabited. No colonies or indigenous civilizations. And no animal or plant life, although the ship sensors showed there had been such until recently. The planet was as void of life now as was the entire doomed sunstar system.

  I glanced over at Matt and then averted my gaze. The pained expression on his face ripped at my heart, as did my own barely conquered envy and resentment at knowing the memories causing his anguish. I’m a fool! I further berated myself. Why did I ever conceive this wild, destructive notion to come here? I focused my glare upon the planet displayed on the screen while I twisted the Matt’s band on my finger. I’d rewrapped plastafiber around it to make it fit again.

  The Alliance Patrol had never officially explored or rated this system, despite sending an emergency shuttle in response to the Fire Dawn’s distress beacons. I had elicited a few details from Matt over the ensuing ten standard days of our flight course. The Alliance Patrol had placed a ban on exploration in this uncharted system and had unimaginably logged this system only as MX-21ZG. Didn’t i
t at least deserve a real name, since it was dying? However, they’d never named the planets, so Matt’s dark one bore no designation either. The Patrol had listed the planetary system as uninhabitable because of its unstable, contracting dwarf star. The system was off limits.

  Indeed, as the Stardancer had approached the star system’s boundaries, an automatic Patrol warn-off recording had begun broadcasting through the ship’s comm system at several minute intervals, from small beacon satellites placed there by the Alliance Patrol ship years ago after Matt’s rescue. Matt had dialed the comm volume down to a whisper to preserve our sanity. Twenty standard hours and several small vortex leaps later, the Stardancer bypassed the system’s frozen outer planets and sped on course toward a planet occupying the fourth orbit around a tiny, red dwarf sun. The warn-off broadcast finally ceased.

  “Is the system’s star stable in its present form, Matt?” I asked to direct his obvious sadness onto present concerns. He had seemed to regain some stamina over the past few days and moved with more energy. The bad episodes had decreased in frequency. Maybe he’s gathering his strength to lay old regrets to rest down below.

  He keyed my request into the Stardancer’s long-range scanners. “Something must have happened…. Internal instability of the star has accelerated and caused deterioration in the surface photon luminosity. According to the instruments estimates, it has decreased by 1.2 percent in the past thirteen standard months.”

  Matt reported the ship’s findings with a concerned frown. “The ship’s comp extrapolated from this data that the planet’s climate experienced an unseasonable decrease in average surface temperature by twenty degrees Celsius in the same time period. She’s also confirming the earlier reports about a drastic decrease in all vegetation and animal life forms. However, an oxygen atmosphere still exists. It’s thinner but breathable. We won’t need air packs, but I’m taking them along, just in case.” His face was expressionless. “The planet seems to be undergoing the initial stage of glaciation common in dying systems. We’d better wear environmental protection suits if we venture out down there.”

  I nodded and kept silent, knowing he was thinking about his family’s remains beneath the slowly changing world’s surface.

  Matt abandoned his seat abruptly. “Let us go seek that which you think we’ll find,” he said in a rough-edged voice, “and then we’re leaving here as soon as possible. I’ve no desire to die here again.”

  I glanced up in surprise at his anger-narrowed eyes. His lips had compressed into thin, straight, disapproving lines. His body was taut with unexpressed emotions.

  I pushed to my feet. “Should we program the Stardancer to start landfall?” When I said “we,” I meant Matt. I merely watched while he piloted the ship and preferred it that way.

  “We suit up first,” Matt said in through clenched teeth. “I will not chance an aborted landing a second time on that accursed planet and risk losing you too.” He strode off, frowning at his dark thoughts, toward the environment suits’ charging station, where they hung in the emergency supply compartment located on the living area’s port side.

  I followed while trying to ignore the tight knot in my stomach at our imminent planet rendezvous. Will the strange entity be there after all this time? Or has it vanished long ago? Have I brought him for naught?

  I stripped off my thin-bottomed slippers and blue coveralls, leaving me clad in magenta underpants, a matching cap-sleeved, tight undershirt, and thick pink socks. Four environment suits, ranging from medium to large, lay on four separate long shelves. I detached the power-pac charger on a medium one that wouldn’t completely engulf me.

  I’d reached for the gray formfitting-but-flexible plastalloy suit when Matt’s cool touch grasped my hips. Surprised, I turned, pulling the suit with me. It slid from the low shelf and scraped briefly along the carpeted deck. Flecks gleamed in Matt’s pupils and then dissolved into a green glow that entirely obscured and filled his irises. Seconds later the eerie glow vanished and his eyes resumed their normal appearance, with only the central flecks visible once more. This occurrence no longer alarmed me as much, but it always made me pause and forget to breathe.

  Matt had removed his tunic top, and he drew me against his chest. His lips captured mine. My feeling for him hadn’t changed. I wanted Matt inside me with all my being. His hands warmed as they passed over my body with urgency. His lips grew more demanding and our tongues locked. His rigid erection pressed against my stomach.

  He pulled the gray environment suit from my lax hand where I still grasped a sleeve, tossed it aside, and led me to our cabin. On our sleep couch, we rediscovered our abiding need for each other. He drove his shaft into me with fevered urgency. Craving more, I straddled him.

  When we lay replete at last in each others’ arms, Matt kissed my throat. Sudden tears prickled at my eyes and then spilled over. He held me until they ceased falling upon his chest. The he subjected me to somber scrutiny. His gentle hand soothed back my mussed curls that had fallen forward, gotten drenched, and then had plastered onto my cheek.

  “Always remember this, dear lady: I love you here and now…. A’lia will always occupy a special place in my heart. I cannot do otherwise.” He drew a deep breath before continuing. “But you are everywhere within me, Kailiri. You’ve imprinted yourself indelibly upon my consciousness and awareness. You’re a vital part of me…. I loved A’lia, and yet I was never as intensely aware of her being and presence as I am of yours. Can you accept and believe this?”

  How does someone tally up if they loved one person a little more or a bit less? It was complex heart math. But people did it all the time, prioritizing and evaluating their time investments and intrinsic returns on relationships.

  I nodded miserable at his revelations and my negative thoughts.

  He gently cupped my face between his hands. “Do not continue fighting shadows you cannot see, dear heart. Walk in the freedom of the knowledge that you’re here and now always in my thoughts and affection. Let not my moods shake that knowledge from you. They’re only concerns and regrets for what occurred in the past, and my guilt at not somehow preventing it.”

  He kissed my temple. Then he moved away and rolled onto his back. He lay contemplating the smooth metal ceiling. Moments later, he left and disappeared into the cabin’s small bathroom unit, leaving me alone with remembrances of his words and our feverish lovemaking.

  He did love me. That I’d come to know during our close confinement within the Stardancer. But did Matt Lorins, once Lord Mattin Sian Rakeda, love me enough to fight against the alien impossibility within him that was slowly dispersing his own life force?

  I eased onto my stomach and frowned down at my rumpled pillow. I puzzled at the paradox and improbability of the conjunction inhabiting Matt’s body. I couldn’t understand the actual biological mechanics of how an alien life force could fuse portions of itself within a Human’s physiology to provide limited life energies. I’d devoted much thought to that since Matt’s recounting upon Rikin. I’d wondered how much of his personality came from alien derivation and how much of it was uniquely his own. It was important because I loved all of him—the dark places and the places where the light of his being shone.

  Matt emerged from the bathroom and covered my back with a soft, warm towel. I turned to look up. He appeared much stronger, and after the freshening unit’s pressurized spray, his skin glowed beneath his lingering tan left over from his previous planetary forays with sunnier climates.

  He sat beside me. “Forgive me, doll, for delaying our descent by carrying you off to our cabin like this.” A sad smile lurked in his dark eyes. “I had to make certain you understood the difference between a buried love and a living treasure. Do you understand now?” He ran a possessive hand along my bare legs where the towel didn’t reach.

  “I think so, Matt,” I whispered and sat up. I caressed his cheek and laid a light kiss upon his lips. Then I rose with the towel clasped to me as I headed toward the bathroom cubicle for
my turn in the shower.

  Chapter Ten

  The Stardancer touched down on solid ground with only a slight shudder vibrating throughout her frame. Good landing, I thought, with my inexperienced opinion, but Matt looked grim as he secured the ship for our departure for a brief planetary exploration trek.

  “We’re sitting on top of ice,” he muttered. “The ship will melt it, but I don’t like this. This planet used to have seasons, but from the sun’s position, the ship comps indicates that this should have been the warmer, growing season. We will look around and then we’re leaving as soon as possible.” His glance shot over and settled with a meaningful, heavy frown on me. “If I’d known the Universe was conspiring to send me a heart-bond mate with a wild explorer spirit, I would have bought a terrain-rover to save us much time scouting around out there.”

  I turned away like I didn’t know what he was talking about and slung the dark green weatherproofed supply bag straps over my shoulder. The insulated bag bulged with water canteens, food rations, a medical kit, and some light survival utilities that Matt had insisted we carry along.

  “I will not chance anything happening to you on this death planet, Kailiri,” he’d grated through clenched teeth when I’d questioned these thorough preparations, which seemed more suited to an Alliance Patrol planet scouting expedition.

  I was inclined now to agree as I stared out the wide observation port at the low, gray skies scowling over snow- and ice-covered ground, amid which twisted trees and shrubbery floundered. They lay bent in defeated submission to the heavy ice glaze that weighed them down.

  Matt came and stood behind me. He slipped the supply bag from my shoulder and lowered it onto the deck. His arms circled my waist and drew me against him. I leaned back into his embrace and felt secure while we stared out the port window. We didn’t speak as we both wrestled our private demons and emotions.