The Burning Dark

by Adam Christopher

  Carter walked toward the light, the decision already made.

  * * *

  “You and your wife are laboratory technicians.”

  “Please, we only grow animal protein for trade. Nothing more. Resources are scarce here. The Omoto need protein, and we need the supplements.”

  “Are you saying the Fleet does not provide for the colony?”

  “No, of course not, but—”

  “Because that is a lie. The Fleet provides for all its colonies. You make other things in your laboratory, don’t you?”

  “Please, no, we—”

  “Don’t you?”

  The man begged, the Angel of Death smiled as she gestured to her assistant in the white mask beside her, and Carter closed his eyes and felt the sweat pour from his brow in the dark underground heat of Warworld 16.

  * * *

  The Omoto called it Tangakia. The first human explorers, Nova Australis. When the war came and the Fleet arrived, it was entered into the catalog of combat theaters as Warworld 16.

  There were no Spiders on Warworld 16. There was just a handful of Omoto tribes doing fuck all in the endless savannahs. The Omoto were nomadic, with enough tech to leapfrog from planet to planet but without much ambition to do anything else.

  Carter hated the Omoto. All the marines did. The Omoto jumped to a new planet and then built temporary tent cities and sat around smoking the foul-smelling weed that was all they seemed to grow. It was pathetic. The Omoto were nomadic, but when the humans arrived, they stopped moving. Soon enough they were wearing logo-emblazoned T-shirts and hats traded from the colonists.

  Pathetic.

  As a human colony, Nova Australis wasn’t much better. Carter knew that, but while the others on the base regarded the colonists with the same distaste as the Omoto, Carter kept his thoughts to himself. Nova Australis was okay. As far as Carter could tell, it was all farmers and traders and the kind of people who liked to sit around and smoke as much as their Omoto neighbors did. There were worse places to relocate to. Nova Australis was out of the way. If you wanted to start over, here was as good a place as any. His parents had chosen a good spot. That their son was here now was coincidence, pure and simple.

  Then the Fleet arrived. Because the Omoto weren’t just growing plants and trading them for lab-grown animal protein from the colonists. The Fleet was on Warworld 16 because of the Omoto, but Carter knew that aside from the combat theater designation there would be no official record. The base on Warworld 16 was secret. The Omoto had no part in the Spider conflict, not officially.

  Carter liked being part of a Black Ops. You got more money and the rules of engagement were looser. Carter thought it would give him a chance to stretch, to show the Fleet just what he was made of. After six months he became the youngest marine to receive the Fleet Medal, and now he was being recommended for promotion by the Angel of Death herself. He’d done good work on Warworld 16. He’d confirmed what the Fleet spies already suspected.

  The Omoto were helping the Spiders, and the colonists were helping the Omoto.

  But … not Carter’s parents. The intel was off; it had to be. They’d come to Nova Australis because they wanted a chance to make their own way, to show the Fleet what people could do when left to their own devices. Nova Australis was nice. The Omoto had gotten there first, but they liked the colonists and the colonists liked them.

  Carter spit into the dust and turned back to the dark tunnel entrance.

  It was now or never.

  * * *

  Carter stood to attention in the operations room as the colonel outlined the endgame for Warworld 16. It was simple enough. They’d found the supply route between the colonists and the Omoto insurgents. The removal of the new targets would be surgical. When the mission was over, life would go on as normal for the colonists of Nova Australis. For the Omoto, things would be different. After 0000 hours CUT, Tangakia would no longer exist.

  * * *

  Carter found that the Fleet Medal meant he could do a lot of things and go a lot of places without anyone paying him much attention, other than snapping a salute to the silver bar on his chest.

  The Angel of Death had only just started on his father. For the moment he could still see and he could still walk, just. They’d left his mother alone. She could help her husband.

  Carter relieved the marines on duty outside the cage holding the prisoners; then he opened it without signing the manifest authorization. The manifest would simply flag the action and await someone’s okay at a later date. Carter just had to log in from the command deck later and punch the acceptance himself.

  He led his parents through the service levels of the base and out onto the surface. He gave them a GPS. He pointed them in the right direction. The Omoto would be wiped out in four hours. There was enough time to get away, to get off the planet. When their escape was discovered, Carter would be the one to track them back to the Omoto town. With the town excised from the planet, it would be assumed the two traitors had been disintegrated alongside their Omoto collaborators.

  Problem solved, for everyone.

  * * *

  “Very good work, Corporal.”

  Carter saluted. The colonel nodded appreciatively and glanced sideways at his adjunct.

  “I’ve received a recommendation I intend to honor. A fitting way to commemorate our departure.”

  Carter dropped his hand. It was 2340 hours. In ten minutes he was due to lead one of the raiding parties to burn the Omoto town.

  “Sir?”

  The colonel smiled. “At ease, marine. Start prepping. We evac in four hours.”

  “Sir. The … sortie?”

  The colonel patted Carter on the shoulder. Carter flinched, just a little. The colonel noticed, and he smiled. “Change of plan, marine.”

  They knew.

  * * *

  Carter watched the change of plan from orbit, with everyone else. The featureless black orb of Tangakia/Nova Australis/Warworld 16 filled the screen. Then the black turned to red as an entire hemisphere melted. No more insurgents, no more collaborators. No more Omoto and no more colonists.

  Black Ops were black for a reason. The Spiders would be blamed for the loss of Warworld 16—nothing unusual there, the Fleet on the back foot as it was, as it always had been. It would be marked as a setback and used as a rationale to push the conflict to a new level. Statistically, the loss of the colony was insignificant. Strategically, the benefit gained would be great.

  The situation on Warworld 16 had been resolved. The Fleet Admiral would make a speech, and there would be a memorial.

  Carter left the command deck without permission, but when you had the Fleet Medal on your chest you could do a lot of things without permission.

  * * *

  The engine juice on the U-Star Bloodflowers was stronger than Carter liked, but he was developing a taste for it. He took another sip and glanced at the monitor and the surveillance video playing.

  There it was. The crappy cart pushed by his father. The Omoto tribesman taking protein packs from it. And something else. They were trying to hide it but they were amateurs and the surveillance from the drone was clear. They were in on it.

  They were guilty.

  The U-Star Bloodflowers had evacuated everyone from the base on Warworld 16. Eight hundred marines and ninety prisoners. At least that’s what the manifest said. Carter had logged in and accepted the release query before anyone else had seen it. Angel Jones had already left in her own ship, and nobody else would care even if the discrepancy was noticed. Warworld 16 was now incapable of supporting life, and the U-Star had two less mouths to feed.

  Carter flicked the Fleet Medal strip from his breast pocket and tossed it into the trash next to the desk. The Fleet Medal earned with the blood of the innocent and the guilty alike. FOR SERVICES RENDERED. No record of what the services were. No mention of his good works on Warworld 16. The Fleet was never there.

  Sergeant Charlie Carter fell back into his bunk. He to
ok another swig of engine juice, looped the surveillance video back to the beginning, and stared into the screen.

  DREAMS AND NIGHTMARES

  She opened her eyes and realized she’d been dreaming, but it was hot, and she couldn’t breathe, so she closed her eyes again and returned to the dream.

  Once upon a time there was a girl who lived on a farm. Her parents were very proud and gave her life to the State so she could bring fame and honor. Honor was important. Honor was what kept the subsidies rolling in, was what kept you from being visited in the night and taken away to somewhere very dark and very cold. The girl’s father had connections that the State did not approve of, but honor made the people who mattered turn a blind eye. Honor kept them safe.

  Because they were proud and because they had decided to give her to the State almost from the beginning, they gave her a beautiful name, a name that sounded like the half-remembered dream of a fairy princess in her tall tower. Her name meant “dear people.” Even from the beginning, her destiny was written. She was a tool to be used.

  She didn’t mind. She embraced the life carved for her by her father (with his connections) and her mother (with a cold fear in her heart). They pushed her and she excelled, but she excelled because she wanted to. She was smart—that was a big help, a blessing from above—and she worked hard, and she did well because it made her parents proud, and it made her village proud, and it made the men in uniforms and hats smile at her when they visited. Once there was a man in a big blue greatcoat, bigger and heavier than anybody else’s. He had a kind face, lined and marked with pox scars, and a big gray mustache. Her mother was nervous that day. When she served tea her hand shook and the cup rattled in the saucer. But the man with the mustache thanked her and said what a wonderful home she kept and how well Father was doing on the farm. Everyone smiled.

  When she turned seventeen, she was sad to leave the farm but excited to join her new friends at the city. She’d never been to the city before. She remembered her mother and father waving from the road, remembered the soldiers hanging around and waving as well, one hand in the air, the other on their rifles. She stood on the back of the truck’s bed as it drove away, fairly bursting with pride, waving so hard, her arm ached for a day afterwards.

  The city was a strange place, full of more soldiers and empty streets. Everyone was pleased to meet her, everyone had heard so much about her, and she was introduced at a big meeting in a cold hall, not by the man with the mustache but by a new leader, a fat man who wore a silly white hat. She knew who he was now—who they all were—of course, and as she stood to attention by his side, her back was so rigid and tall that she felt like she could take off through the roof and wouldn’t even need the rocket and capsule. Her face hurt from smiling, and when the man had finished speaking everyone in the hall lined up to walk past and shake her hand and salute the fat man. She wished her mother and father could have been there, but they were busy on the farm and now had one hand less to help with all the work.

  Mornings were spent on mathematics, physics, and engineering. Afternoons were spent on physical and combat training. She met some people who smiled when they looked at her but frowned when they looked away. She could see them, and sometimes they didn’t even try to hide it. She never asked, but somebody said that she was supposed to have come from the military and that there were others more worthy of the honor. But she told them about how well she was doing and how hard she was working. At night it worried her, that there were some people who pretended to like her but really didn’t, and she didn’t know why. But hours of being strapped to gyroscopes and centrifuges left her sick and tired every night, and she never worried for very long before falling into a deep sleep.

  Sometimes in the morning she awoke and was worried again, although not about the people who didn’t smile. Sometimes she had dreams, and sometimes they were about her mother and father on the farm. Sometimes her dreams were filled with dark shadows and cold mist and a sun that burned with a purple light she could almost taste. In her dreams there were people calling her name and people reaching out to her. When she had those dreams, she woke with a cry and her bedsheets were wet with a cold, cold sweat. Nobody else in the dormitory noticed; they were all busy trying to get their last ten minutes of sleep before being woken by the siren at four o’clock.

  The months passed and she got used to the people who talked behind her back and who were rude to her face. She didn’t know why some of them treated her like that, because she was doing her military training at the same time as her flight training (and surely doing it at the same time was harder), and when the fat man came to visit the city he always had a private audience with her first, before the others. Surely that meant she was doing well?

  But it was her friend—the only true friend she thought she really had, the Japanese medic who was working with her on her training program—who made her understand. She asked her finally, and the medic laughed. She said she was pretty, and being pretty made men angry and women jealous. But the Japanese girl was pretty as well and she’d never seen any of them look at her, but her friend laughed again and smiled and told her she would find out why one day.

  She was also smart, gifted even, and this also made men angry and women jealous. But she couldn’t understand that either—it was all being done for the State, not for herself. Her friend laughed and said that she was a true hero and would get a medal after her flight, and this would make people even angrier. There were some, she was told, who had worked for years or even decades on the program, only to be leapfrogged by the newcomer, the simple girl from the country. Did she know that there had been a pilot chosen before she arrived? No? And that before she arrived, the first pilot had been welcomed by the fat man and had been visited by him just as much as her? No?

  She watched her friend laugh, late at night, and when she laughed her eyes flashed blue and were filled with stars and suddenly the girl was afraid and she remembered the cold mist and dark shadows of her dreams, before her friend smiled and asked if she wanted another drink.

  On the morning of the launch, she awoke refreshed from a deep sleep, but as she ate her special meal in a laboratory while scientists watched scrolling reels of paper and whispered to one another, she remembered a dream she’d had, one with her mother and her father and her friend in it. She ate her protein and carbohydrates and fats and tried to remember more, but she was cold and her eyes were playing tricks on her because everywhere she looked, black shadow-shapes jumped out of corners and streaked away in every direction. The men watching the paper didn’t say anything, so she knew it was just the stress and excitement of the launch.

  Some of the men who hated her—she understood that now, having thought long and hard about what her Japanese friend had told her—were the first to wish her good luck, the first to smile and shake her hand. As they walked away she saw them smile to one another as well, and she thought that perhaps they really were happy for her now. But there was no time to think about it because the fat man was due to arrive for a final meeting. She was in her suit now and stood proudly with the round helmet under one arm and the insignia of the State in bold red across her chest. There were photos, and the man gave a speech, and everyone smiled and clapped.

  She opened her eyes. She’d been cold, so very cold, and every time she looked out the window of the capsule she saw the dark shadows again. They’d been following her, a freak atmospheric effect as the capsule pulled around the Earth for yet another orbit. She realized she’d blacked out again, but the controls made no sense. Seventeen orbits? The plan had been for three. And when the controls stopped responding, the radio went dead. Another fault, perhaps, but it had gone off with a sharp click and now when she turned it on all she got was a pulse, a heartbeat of static. It was dead, like the rest of the capsule. She was alone in the sky, encased in two tons of metal that were melting from the outside in. She could feel the warmth on the panel beside her, heating one side of her body while on the other side the panels cracked
with a dense frost. Around her the black shadows swarmed, and if she turned her head, she could swear the shapes were in the capsule with her, sometimes blotting the view of the small square window from the inside.

  She opened her eyes. Now it was hot, too hot, and she realized she’d blacked out again. The radio popped and cracked and she reached for the controls, her silver hand cast in orange and yellow by the flames from the window. Someone was calling on the radio, someone from very, very far away. The words were distorted and buried under a roaring she soon realized was the capsule on fire.

  She remembered her mother, and she remembered her father, and she remembered standing proudly with the First Secretary in the warm sunshine as the photographer lined the pair of them up against the rocket sitting on the launchpad half a mile behind them.

  She remembered her duty and she remembered her country and the sacrifices that must be made. She flicked the radio and made her report. She wasn’t sure if she could be heard, but she trusted the Soviet technology that surrounded her, even as it burned, even as the capsule hurtled toward oblivion as it skipped the atmosphere of the Earth too fast, too low.

  “Five, four, three, two, one…”

  Nothing.

  “One, two, three, four, five…”

  A pop, a voice, far away. They were listening. Someone was listening.

  “Come in, come in, come in. Listen! Come in! Talk to me. I am hot! I am hot. Come in. Please.

  “I am hot.”

  PART TWO

  DARK SHADOWS

  15

  Ida spent the next cycle looking for Izanami, but he couldn’t find her anywhere. He couldn’t even find any signs she was on board at all—the desk in the medical unit looked like it had been packed up, ready for the trip home. After stalking the hub for what felt like hours, Ida was about to give in and get the bridge to put in a station-wide call for her, when there she was, waiting in the corridor by his cabin. As soon as he saw her, he called out. She recoiled from his door in surprise; then her face broke into a broad smile.