Dark Age

by Pierce Brown

  “Why are we following Fig?” I ask.

  “She knows her way better. She’ll be going for a ship too.”

  “Not to kill her…”

  She looks over at my pistol. “Do you want to kill her?”

  “Yeah,” I say, surprised at how natural it feels. “Yeah, I wouldn’t mind.”

  Volga glances at me before going back to her search, her face unreadable.

  I squint and search lower than Volga. Sure enough, I find blood droplets floating just over the floor, seeming to head off to the right. We set off in pursuit.

  The ship grows eerily quiet except for the blaring alarms. It worries me how silent our movement is without gravity. Anything could be waiting for us around any corner.

  A mechanical roar greets us at the next intersection. We scramble to reverse as a big Gold in gravBoots and a nightgown tears down the hall toward us with a bloody razor.

  He locks eyes with Volga as he passes.

  His voice trails down the hall. “Run…”

  We look at what lies in his wake. The hallway stretches like a pulsing red throat, bending a hundred meters down. Shadows move.

  “Oh shit…” I mutter, and push off the wall after the Gold faster than Volga. I’m numb. Vision constricted. Don’t even know if I should follow. But Volga is right behind me. And that gives me some comfort. Still, we’re not going fast enough, but we can’t look back without throwing our forward motion off. Volga shouts for me to grab her. My instinct is to trust her. I snag her leg and she fires behind us with the pulseRifle. We accelerate with its recoil just as the hall stutters black again. A mournful horn echoes down the hall like a whale song.

  “Catch ’em!” someone shouts.

  Two armored men in gravBoots zip forward to collect us. They bring us to a cluster of heavily armored Sol Guards led by two Golds. They form a defensive circle around the hall where it meets a gravLift station fed by multiple levels.

  Blue light from the lift illuminates the soldiers. There’re more than thirty, not all armored, about a dozen sailors amongst them. Some look like they’ve just woken up. Though they know who we are, they make no effort to take our weapons.

  Not reassuring.

  The leader, a huge Gold man, hangs upside down looking at a Gray’s datapad. “Thermal is bunk. Go motion.” A heartbeat comes from the device as white waves ripple over the image in a circle. He moves a wand about. “They’ve stopped.”

  “What’s—” I begin.

  “Silence,” the Gold snaps. Aside from his nightgown, he wears only gravBoots. His eyes flick to Volga. “Might need your help, Obsidian. I hear you know how to use that.” He looks at her rifle. She nods and he motions everyone to be quiet. “I hear them down the hall. Lucia…secure our flank in case they come from the vents. If they reach the central gravLift, they can spread through the ship. We hold them here.” Lucia watches him evenly, speaking in a private, silent language I don’t understand. “Backup is imminent.” Lucia nods and departs.

  I try to get the Gold’s attention again. “Sir—”

  “Shut up, girl,” he snaps. “Germanicus, I need you to take the hostages to Madam Julii in the—”

  “Listen to me!” I shout. The Gold wheels, dark with anger. “They’re already in the rest of the bloodydamn ship,” I say.

  His eyelids flutter. He knows what I mean.

  “How do you know this?” he whispers.

  “I saw them from outside. There were hundreds all over the ship.”

  “It is true,” Volga says. “She was far enough out.”

  “Tongue,” the Gold commands. I stick mine out. “Boil burns,” he says, and goes still. He knows I’ve been in vacuum.

  “Expect hostiles,” he tells the group.

  Ping…

  The motion sensor displays a single dot traveling down the hall toward us. A Gray shoots a flare. The red light illuminates a single warrior. He swims down the hall like a shark, using what looks like a grapple gun to build velocity. “Germanicus, at one hundred meters, bring him down.”

  But the alien warrior stops. He swims back and forth between the walls. “Naka, rheket zü Fá!” he bellows. A stunted metal crown seems to be fused to his naked head. “Naké, rheket zï Uud.”

  A low groan rolls down the throat of the hall from his fellows.

  “Fáaaaaaaaaa.”

  Ping…Ping…Ping. Pingping­pingping­pingping.

  Dots swarm the motion sensor, coming from all directions. “The ducts!” a wolfguard grunts. They shift their defensive position.

  “They’re too big,” the Gold corrects. “They’d never fit.”

  “They have small ones,” Volga says.

  Even in panic, the Gold is impressive. He wheels, face absolutely still. “How small?”

  Volga puts a flat hand above my head, and lowers it to my clavicles.

  The Gold’s lips tighten and he draws his razor and pushes toward the ducts. Then blue light bathes us as the gravLift doors open from behind. No lift presents itself from inside the shaft. Only a single warrior floating in the blue dark.

  He is the biggest human I’ve ever seen.

  A long white tail of hair writhes like a pale snake over his head in the null G. His armor looks too heavy for any man to use in gravity, even him. It is weightless now—thick, rough, and jagged, festooned all over with spikes that are almost as long as those that make the crown atop his skull helmet.

  “He’s real,” Volga whispers, gripped with awe. The dark fairy tale of her letters appears. “Volsung Fá.”

  His voice is a deep vibration. He’s looking right at me. No. Through me to Volga.

  “Volga. I offer you these Stains.”

  He springs through the gunfire into the Gold leader. He bats aside the Gold’s razor with a long spear. Then they collide. Four of the spikes of his helmet pop through the Gold’s head like needles skewering a strawberry. Two from his shoulder punch out the man’s lower back. He slashes at the Gold’s neck with a crescent fist-blade, half severing the strong bone of the Gold’s spine. Using the man’s body as a shield, he pushes off the floor to find his next prey, his helmet spikes crowned now with the decapitated head of the Gold.

  The giant kills everyone.

  Some with his spear, some with his fist-blade, others with the spikes of his armor. And those he kills or wounds on his armor, he carries with him like a screaming crab shell made of the dying.

  Volga fires her pulseRifle in quick bursts. The pulseblasts that find him sizzle on the armor, and send him ricocheting to kill more. The gun isn’t powerful enough. The monsters swim now down the main hall coming not to help the spiked man, but to watch him kill and drone that horrible sound. Volga shoots three in the head with blinding speed, but more are coming.

  “Fáaaaaa.”

  Volga and I run as soon as the second Gold is killed. Fá tries to come after us, but his own slaughtered victims weigh his spiked armor down as gravity returns to the ship with a downward jerk. Julii’s men restored it.

  Not just Martian standard, but something far surpassing Earth’s gravity.

  Clever.

  It’s agonizing to run. I feel leaden. Volga stumbles with me, tearing through the maintenance corridors, until we reach a manual transit chute that runs between decks.

  Volga grabs me before I slide down it. Her eyes survey the level-map beside the entrance. We’ve lost Fig’s trail. We’ll have to find our own way. Gods, she’s cool as ice. “Those are Ascomanni,” she says as she studies the map.

  “Ascomanni are just pirates.”

  “These are real Ascomanni. Far Ink,” she says. “What else could they be?”

  “Could we talk about this later?”

  She nods and jams a finger on the map. “Pilot ready room. Ten down.”

  I go first down the chute. Gu
nfire and explosions echo as we descend between levels. Or ascend. I’m not sure which way’s up in space. Is there even an up? The more I think about it, the more disoriented I get. The Pandora is a floating city. With districts, maybe a dozen fire departments. How many others will be rushing to the hangars?

  There’s no time to think about it.

  We blur past little worlds of slaughter. Julii soldiers kneeling and firing out of a communications room. A scalped Silver sitting very still at a doorway holding his intestines as shadows make grunting sounds inside. Two Golds in business apparel being hacked to death by blood-covered maniacs. The maniacs won’t stop laughing. They’re massacring a ship, and they act like they’re at a fucking party.

  I pinch my legs on the ladder to slow above the ready room. I come to an easy stop. Volga bowls into me from above, kicking my face and sending me sprawling. “Sorry. Weird gravity.”

  The ready room is quiet. Lockers opened, gear missing. Pilots must have been fast to the hangars. “How did he know you?” I snap at Volga as she peers back up the chute, wondering if we were followed.

  “I don’t know,” she says, looking back with wide eyes.

  Not so calm now, eh? Her monster knew her.

  “How the bloodyhell did he know your name? Why does he want you?”

  She shakes her head, at a loss. I leave her, whatever she’s hiding will have to wait. I’m not going to die like those soldiers. I head to the pilot chute to take it down to the hangars. Volga stops me.

  Her eyebrows crawl upward. “What?” I ask.

  “I dropped…something.” She acts with incredible conviction as if she’s searching the ground for something. Her path takes her to a metal EVA suit locker. Volga steps back and then lunges forward to kick it. The metal crumples inward. I hear a grunt and a familiar gunshot. The top of the locker divides. Light bends in the room. A half meter of bulkhead parts like butter pushed apart by two fingers.

  Volga kicks the door until it falls off its hinges and crumples into the person hiding inside. Volga shoves her hand in and wrenches out a translucent ghost. The translucence ripples over Volga’s arm until the arm itself disappears. Volga grabs something with her other arm and the ghost materializes, revealing Fig dangling from her throat at the end of Volga’s outstretched arm.

  “Figment!” Volga growls. “We meet again!”

  “Ogre. Broke…my…ribs…” Fig tries to bring her gun up, but Volga grabs it and tears it from her hands, almost taking her fingers with it. It drops to the floor. I reach for it.

  “Don’t! Coded for her.” I pull my hand back, and use a towel from the broken locker to wrap it up.

  “You left us to die!” Volga slams Fig against the wall hard enough to dent it. “You shot at Ephraim at the Adonis Casino!” She slams her again. “You stole the Crown of Cortada! You stuck a needle in my chest!”

  “And mine,” I add.

  “And Lyria too!” Volga slams her the hardest for that one. “I’ll pop you like a zit. Justice for both of us.”

  Fig clenches her jaw. Something pops. She spits it at Volga. Volga twitches to the side. A stream of green spit slashes across the floor and melts through it. Volga laughs. “I know your tricks, Fig! No calibrated acid this time.”

  Apparently, she doesn’t know all of Fig’s tricks. The white lines on Fig’s skin throb. Volga starts to convulse. Her hair stands on end. Miraculously, she holds on. Then Fig presses down on her middle finger’s nail with her thumb and a long needle jumps out from her middle knuckle. I press my own pistol straight against Fig’s head just before she plunges the needle into Volga’s shoulder.

  Maybe it’s the soldier gore on my face. Maybe it’s my race’s habit for bad tempers. Maybe it’s the muzzle digging into her skull, but Figment freezes. “Soft head, hard bullet. Bad combination, bitch.” I twist the muzzle. “Drop it.”

  “I…can’t,” is all she manages with Volga squeezing her neck. Her face purples. “Fused…onto…metacarpal.”

  “Drop the hand then, ya dumb slant. And stop…whatever you’re doing to Volga.”

  Fig’s hand drops to her side, and whatever her skin was doing stops. Volga whimpers a little in pain, then snaps the needle off with a grunt.

  “What was that?” she asks, relaxing her hand on Fig’s throat.

  “Nerve agent.”

  “With the skin.”

  “NEDS.”

  Volga’s eyes narrow. “What is this NEDS?”

  “Nanotech emergency defense system.”

  “Really?” Volga’s eyebrows do a little dance. “Slick.”

  “I know, right? I had it installed in—”

  “Quiet.” Volga squeezes her throat tight as the public address system crackles to life.

  Lady Barca’s voice comes over the coms.

  “All factors and clients of House Julii-Barca, this is your patronus, we have been boarded by an unidentified enemy force of unknown strength. While they share traits with Obsidians, their skin appears to be polyextremophilic: resistant to vacuum, radiation, low-velocity rounds, and thermal imaging. They are also under heavy psychotropic influence. Pain does not register, but headshots do. They have penetrated the core lifts. We have zero containment. They are climatized to null G, so I have retaken the gravity generator personally. We cannot hold it, but the gravity will give you a chance.”

  She takes a deep breath.

  “The enemy appears to have limited working knowledge of our systems. Thus, I am ordering total evacuation of the Pandora, to be followed by a purge protocol. In ten minutes achlys-9 nerve agent will be dispersed. You have until then to get to your pods. Victra out.”

  The Pandora is a legend. The Julii twice as famous. She doesn’t just abandon her family flagship.

  It feels like the world is upside down.

  Volga looks bewildered. “What do we do?”

  “Still looking for orders,” Fig says with a laugh. “Poor puppy needs a—ack.” Volga squeezes her throat.

  “Should we find the pods?” she asks me.

  “You gonna kill her or not?” I ask.

  “To be determined.”

  “Well, if you’re not, I reckon she’s our best chance of getting out of here. Maybe put her down?”

  “Why not. I will kill her if she is shifty.” Volga releases Fig. The small woman falls to the floor hacking for air. “Without her pistol. It is much easier.”

  “I can help you…” Fig says, massaging her throat.

  “Can you fly a ship?” I ask.

  “Of course I can fly a ship.” I raise an eyebrow at Volga. “But you do not want to go to the hangars,” Fig says. “I just came from there. It’s a slaughterhouse. Trust me.”

  Volga and I both laugh.

  “You two are part of my contract. I don’t get paid my second half till I hand you over to Sefi.” Her eyes flick to Volga. “What did the monkey mean when she said one of them knew your name?”

  Volga shakes her head.

  “You don’t know? Of course you don’t know. I fucking hate Mars,” Fig mutters. “All the weird shit happens here. Makes no sense.” She makes that same distant expression she made in my cell, almost like taking a step out of the physical world. When she reverts, she says one word. “Xenophon.”

  “What’s a Xenophon?” I ask.

  She ignores me to wipe blood from the needle hole in her hand.

  “Where are the escape pods?” Volga asks.

  “You want to die? The pods will become murder pens.” Fig sighs, irritated she has to explain to us idiots. “The small ones are moving through the maintenance tunnels like they built them. Big ones prefer the halls. They’re not driving to objectives. They’re hunting. What do you want to bet they know where the prey will go? It’ll be a massacre.”

  “Then you have a backup plan,” Volga says.

/>   “Doll, I’m a freelancer. I always got a backup plan. There’s an emergency escape craft beneath the bridge level. Which is not in the schematics. If our luck holds, the freaks won’t know it’s there. I’m headed there myself, after a little detour.” She grins at us. “So, ladies. Whaddya say?”

  THE PANDORA IS A HIVE of corridor fighting. A mass exodus flows through the ship. It isn’t just Julii’s soldiers on the Pandora. It is her entire household from Luna, which she was moving back to Mars. A miniature civilization of cooks, academics, researchers, accountants, and horse trainers floods to the escape-pod levels. I watch in wonder as a dozen of the beasts are herded through the corridors by old Obsidian women.

  Fig’s detour took us to her stateroom, where she grabbed a backpack and a more peculiar item, a glossy black globe that contorts over the back of her neck to attach somewhat like a tick or a parasite. I’ve no idea what it is, but it makes her look like a hunchback. Volga stares at it in awe. Obviously she’s given up the pretense of Fig being our captive if she let her have that.

  “Can I have my pistol back now?” Fig asks as we float upward toward the bridge through a maintenance corridor.

  “No,” Volga says. “It is ours, for damages.”

  “Takers keepers,” Fig says, giving the pistol a longing glance.

  * * *

  —

  The closer we get to the bridge, the more sounds we hear. Twice, Fig saves us from running straight into one of the roving Ascomanni or whatever they are. We wait in the shadows of an armory amongst dead Grays as a pack passes.

  When we hear them call to each other in joy, we know they’ve found their next victim. Fig motions us into the hall. It is empty. The gravity reverses as we run, growing lighter and lighter until we reach a security door marked with radioactive symbols. Fig reaches for something on her belt and pulls out a thin plastic container. Inside is a small gelatin disk. She inserts it into her eye. It expands and turns her irises Gold. A scanner appears in the door. Blue light flickers over her eye. The door opens.