Standing by the door was her father, his eyes narrow as he and Astrid argued. Argued about Ida, probably. But every time the old man opened his mouth, nothing but white noise came out. Astrid screamed and ran off down the corridor.
Ida woke with a start, thinking there was someone standing over the bed, watching him. The cabin was silent, the playback having stopped apparently by itself. Ida sat up and watched the blue light of the radio set for a while, thinking he’d probably turned it off sometime during the night and didn’t remember.
He got up, showered, and headed to the bridge, subspace recording in hand and the silver Fleet Medal insignia shining on his breast pocket. As he walked, it crossed his mind that his self-imposed isolation was bad for his health. The last thing he needed now was to have some kind of breakdown.
It was the recording; he knew it. The mystery woman was becoming an obsession. Something mysterious but trivial to ease the wait until the interference on the lightspeed link cleared and he could try again to get some real answers about his missing past.
Ida picked up his pace. He was nervous, and more than once he checked over his shoulder, and more than once he thought he saw someone disappear just out of sight. Someone with blond hair, wearing a blue survival suit, like the one he’d last seen Astrid in.
Ida took a deep breath and shook his head, trying to snap himself out it.
He felt better as he entered the busier part of the station. Here the lining of the corridors was intact, and the station’s remaining crew went about their duties, none paying him much attention as they rushed around. As he got closer to the bridge, he kept an eye out for his special friends, DeJohn and Carter, but he didn’t see them among the green- and blue-uniformed personnel.
* * *
Normally the bridge of a U-Star was out of bounds except for those with explicit permission to be there or those of a high enough rank to make such a formality meaningless. Ida wasn’t sure he had either, not anymore, but the elevator didn’t protest as he requested his destination, and as he stepped out of it he fingered the Fleet Medal on his tunic, making sure it was still in place. Its constant presence made him feel a little better, anyway.
Despite the customized design of the space station, the bridge of the Coast City was fairly standard: the regular semicircle layout common to all Union-Class Fleet Starships was here extended around to form a completely circular room, with the elevator rising in a column in the center. The column continued up through the ceiling, leading ultimately to the top of the station’s main spire.
Ida stood quietly by the elevator, jiggling the recording disk in his hand, scanning the half of the bridge he could see. It looked like only the minimum regulation crew were manning their stations: two pilots, who on a station had damn-all to do; two other officers Ida didn’t recognize, both of whom were several rungs down the ladder from him; and a marine-engineer, recognizable in his olive green T-shirt and combat pants, checking something at the science station.
Ida frowned. The marine was DeJohn. But his expansive back was turned, and if Ida went left around the central elevator column, he could reach the unmanned comms deck, placing the column between him and his rival. He wanted to talk to DeJohn at some point, but it could wait.
“Can I help you, Captain?”
Ida jumped. He turned, finding his nose not two inches from Provost Marshal King’s face. Ida smiled, trying to ignore the man’s garlic breath.
“Comms deck free?”
King’s eyes flicked sideways toward the side of the bridge that housed the communications station and then back to Ida. “The comms deck?”
Keeping his smile fixed, Ida casually strolled over to the comms deck and rested his hands on the back of the vacant chair. “May I use the communications deck?”
King stood stock-still near the elevator column, following Ida with only his eyes. He looked nervous. Ida could see it in his face, no matter how hard the bullethead tried to assert his authority. It was like the whole thing was a façade, one the man was desperate not to let slip.
“It won’t make any difference,” said King finally.
“What won’t?”
King clasped his hands behind his back and slowly walked over, a ghost of a smile playing lightly over his lips. “The lightspeed link is down, ship-wide. Interference from our friendly neighborhood star.”
Ida frowned. “Happen often?”
The provost marshal shrugged. “Sometimes. The star has unusual properties. It’s what this station was built to study, after all.” King’s smile tightened. “That comms deck will be needed when the channels have cleared.”
Ida nodded. “Oh, no doubt. But while the lightspeed link is out of action, maybe I could borrow it for a little while?” He jammed one hand in the back pocket of his fatigues and offered the small black rectangle of plastic that held the subspace recording toward King. “Won’t take that long. I just need to run some data from my little radio shack through the mainframe. You know, crosscheck some of my programming. I’m not as good as I used to be.”
“Oh yes,” said King. “I heard you built a radio set.”
Ida grinned and waggled the disk in front of the marshal’s face. “You did say I needed a hobby.”
King’s lips twitched, the tic pulling at one side of his nose. Ida widened his eyes expectantly.
“Very well.” King had barely snapped out the words before he turned and marched swiftly back to the elevator. He pressed the call button, but as the elevator indicator light above the door began counting the floors toward the bridge, he turned back to Ida.
“One more thing, Captain.” King folded his arms and took a few steps closer.
“Marshal?”
“I know you have relocated from your assigned quarters without authorization.” King unfolded a hand from his arms and held it up, stopping Ida’s protest before it had started. “And while I would normally issue a reprimand and insist you go through the regular channels, I’m prepared to overlook it for the moment. So long as our mission runs its correct and proper course, I don’t care where you sleep at night.”
Ida huffed a laugh. King’s expression tightened.
“However, the station will be receiving VIPs in the next few cycles. If you could add your new cabin to the list of occupied spaces, I will add that stretch of the hub to the security detail.”
Ida nodded. Anything for a quiet life. “Fair enough. I’ll do it now.”
“Thank you, Captain,” said King. “Also, for the duration of the visit, all personnel will be required to wear their station tags and have them turned on at all times.”
Ah. There it was. Always a catch. “So you can track my movements?”
King nodded. “So I can track everyone’s movements, Captain. This station may not be in active Fleet service, but it is now a construction site. A dangerous construction site. For the safety of both our crew and the visiting party, we will need to keep security tight and to restrict access to some parts of the station.”
“Don’t want any important people stepping through the floor and floating away?”
King ignored the comment, turning away to head back to the elevator. The door slid open with a pleasant tone.
Ida called out after him. “Who’s coming anyway? Anyone I know?”
King turned back, arms still folded, and the tight smile returned to his face. Ida didn’t like it. Whoever was coming must have been a big deal, the way the provost marshal walked slowly back toward him. It was just short of a swagger. “You’ve heard of Zia Hollywood?”
Ida frowned and then shrugged. “Can’t say that I have. She must be a hell of a VIP, name like that.”
King drew an index finger along the bottom edge of his mouth. “She’s a starminer.”
“Ah,” said Ida. That explained the name, then.
“You’ve been out in the black too long, Captain,” the marshal said. “She’s the most famous woman in Fleetspace. Hollywood and her crew will be stopping here to refuel on the wa
y to that field of slowrock debris on the other side of Shadow.”
Ida nodded, but he didn’t care. He had no interest in the so-called celebrities of the Stellar Gold Rush. To have reached the top, she would be young, pretty, and 90 percent silicone, and she would spend her whole stay aboard the Coast City peeling frustrated space apes off her. Good luck to her. He’d register his cabin, wear his ID tag—turned on—and stay in his cabin for the duration of this special visit.
Apparently satisfied, the marshal stabbed the elevator button again to open the door and disappeared inside. Ida watched the indicator above the door begin to move again, King heading up the station’s main spire.
“Zia Hollywood,” said Ida quietly, shaking his head. He dropped himself into the comms chair, slammed the recording disk into one of the free slots in the console, and set to work.
11
The control room of the Coast City’s solar observatory was circular, very similar to the main bridge far below but condensed, with only enough room for a half dozen personnel at most. The provost marshal was the only one in the room, but he knew he was not alone.
The screen in front of him showed a view of Shadow, the image filtered with software so only certain wavelengths were displayed at the operator’s request. King cycled the view through each in turn, and much as he expected, the image did not much change. The star was violet, light at the center and dark purple at the circumference, and stubbornly remained so no matter which wavelength he selected. The only change was in the corona, a shifting, diffuse halo that streaked off into space from the star’s surface. As the images changed, so the corona changed with it, shifting in shape and size.
It was a failing of the solar observatory systems. It had to be. Although the systems were fitted and customized as best as possible for this particular mission, observing Shadow was a difficult task. The light from the star degraded the sensors and cameras with surprising speed, resulting in a constant need for replacement and recalibration.
The light that will fuck you up. King allowed himself a smile. It was a common refrain around the station. Nobody liked being out here, not within touching distance of a star so foreign, so alien, that it felt like it was alive, like it was watching. Maybe the Coast City wasn’t watching the star; maybe the star was watching the Coast City.
King reached the end of the available filters, and he paused. He knew the truth, thanks to the book hidden in the desk, but he had to check for himself. Commandant Elbridge’s notes may have been written in some personal code, but the comms deck had translated it without any difficulty.
The final filter would show it. King held his breath. He wondered if Elbridge had known what he was doing. Then he turned the selector switch.
The view of Shadow changed, the colors reversing, the bruised black of space a brilliant violet white and the star itself now black.
And at the center of the star, the blackness swirled, spiraling inward, black moving on black moving on black, like darkness being pulled in on itself, tumbling into a whirlpool. Darkness falling into an abyss.
King stiffened. The lights in the solar observatory were on low, twilight normal. The observatory was mostly run on automatic, the systems gathering data and piping it back to Fleet Command via the lightspeed link, while researchers who had until recently been stationed on the Coast City did their work in more comfortable surroundings down in the hub.
In the reflection on the screen in front of him, in the depths of the black star, King saw her standing behind him. Her eyes were blue, and the hand on his shoulder was as cold as the hull on the dark side of the space station.
“I know what you want,” said King. He didn’t move, but his jaw clenched as the pain of the cold crept into his bones and made him ache from head to toe. He closed his eyes. “You cannot have him. Will not have him.”
When he opened his eyes, he was alone, and the observatory control room wasn’t as dark as he’d thought it was. On the screen before him was displayed the regular view of Shadow in the visible spectrum, the violet white star a featureless globe, a purple halo licking out around it.
King turned off the display. He walked backwards until he was up against the opposite wall. Then he sank to the floor and wept.
12
“Fuck, Sen, you’re a stone cold killer. Remind me never to—”
DeJohn’s words were lost as the marine gunner next to him opened fire again with her heavy automatic rifle. Aboard a U-Star, all arms were switched from plasma pellets to soft ceramic shells so the hull wouldn’t get punctured should a firefight break out. The shells were safe to use but made a hell of a noise, which made the practice range a popular place during a tour. Marines liked to make a lot of noise, and today the range on the Coast City was nearly full, the marines left aboard the station taking advantage of their light duties to get some practice time in.
Serra watched Sen’s back as the gunner emptied her weapon at the target a hundred meters down her lane, reducing the somewhat dramatically drawn two-dimensional representation of a Spider groundcrawler to so much shredded fiberboard. Beside her, DeJohn had his hands clapped over his ears, the protectors hanging uselessly around his neck. He was laughing as he watched Sen practice. Heavy weaponry was her specialty, and leering at female troops was his.
A buzzer sounded and green lights lit above each firing point as the range commander called a halt. As the Coast City’s complement of marines was lower than normal, a roster had been drawn up; today the range commander was Corporal Ahuriri, and aside from punching the buzzer, Corporal Ahuriri didn’t really give a shit. Regulations were loose now there were so few marines left on board, which meant practice at the range was perhaps a little more fun than it should have been. DeJohn even had a plastic drink bottle filled with something that smelled far stronger than their standard electrolyte solution sitting on the shelf in his firing point. Serra wondered if she cared enough to report it, and wondered if sucking on engine juice while holding a live weapon made DeJohn more dangerous or less.
The light on the barrel of Sen’s rifle flicked to blue as she raised it, smoking, to the ceiling, balancing the stock on her hip and glancing sideways at DeJohn’s grinning face. Serra couldn’t resist grinning herself as Sen turned and, weapon safe, gave her a nod. DeJohn, meanwhile, started getting his own weapon ready on the shelf in front of him. He whooped as he checked his magazines.
“Some things a man never gets sick of,” he said. “Am I right or am I right?”
Serra took her position at Sen’s vacated station. The range of weaponry available to her as a psi-marine wasn’t as wide or as heavy as the gunner’s, just the standard light rifle and pistol. It was the latter that she was working on today; it had been a while since she’d used it. She positioned her feet carefully and then looked up, but DeJohn hadn’t been talking to her. On the other side of him, Carter stood at his own firing point, pistol in hand but barrel end resting on his shelf. He was staring at his target. He didn’t seem to be listening.
Serra frowned. Carter was acting like nothing had happened during the night, but he seemed distracted. She knew not to bother him, not after she’d seen the Fleet Medal in his hands. She wondered again about what had happened in his Black Ops tour. Being out on this derelict station probably wasn’t helping either, not with DeJohn hanging around, not with Cleveland aboard.
DeJohn didn’t seem to notice his friend’s snub. He whistled to himself and returned his attention to his weapon. He’d chosen the light rifle. When it was ready, he flicked the safety off and the barrel light went from blue to red. He glanced over his shoulder at Sen, who leaned back against the wall and did nothing except look him up and down with a smirk on her face before pointedly slipping her ear protectors on. DeJohn grinned.
“They say it’s not what you’ve got, it’s what you do with it, am I right?”
Serra rolled her eyes. “Oh please,” she said, and readjusted her footing before punching the button on her left. A new target slid into her lan
e fifty meters ahead.
The buzzer buzzed. The indicator lights turned red.
She fired six shots. Then DeJohn opened up with his rifle in the neighboring lane. Further down, a handful of other marines began firing as well, the combined sound of exploding ceramic ammunition pressing on Serra’s eardrums despite the protectors. She lowered her weapon, regarded her shots with some disdain, and stepped back.
Carter hadn’t moved. He was breathing quietly, his chest rising and falling beneath the tight olive T-shirt. Serra removed the clip from her pistol and walked over to him. She waited for the buzzer to sound again before speaking.
“You okay?”
Carter jumped at her voice, then closed his eyes and sighed. But when he opened them again they came with a grin. She smiled in return, and she felt a little better.
“Yeah, no problem,” he said. “Didn’t get enough sleep last night.”
Serra laughed. “No kidding.”
From behind her came a low chuckle from DeJohn. Serra turned and lifted an eyebrow. “You have a one-track mind, marine.”
“You’d better believe it,” he said, slamming another magazine into his rifle. He winked at Sen, who just shook her head. She was smiling too.
“Never see Captain Asswipe down here,” said DeJohn, punching his target button and raising his rifle sight to his eye. “Girl has probably never handled a gun in his life.”
Sen smirked and pushed herself off the wall. “Girl, huh?”
DeJohn snickered. Sen trailed a fingertip over his back. “And you’d show him a thing or two, wouldn’t you?”
DeJohn lowered his gun. “That I would, marine. That I would.”
Sen placed the back of one hand on her forehead and buckled at the knees. “Oh, Captain! My Captain!”
Then she burst out laughing, DeJohn and Serra too.
“Marines, ten-hut!”
There was a clatter of weaponry as the range came to attention, Serra, Carter, and Sen all standing tall. DeJohn stood relaxed, rifle hanging loosely by his side. With his other hand he grabbed his drink bottle and sucked noisily on the straw.
The Burning Dark Page 9