The Burning Dark

by Adam Christopher

  “Where have you been?” They both said the words at the same time, and then laughed.

  Izanami moved out of Ida’s way so he could operate the door panel.

  “I’ve been looking for you.” Ida tapped the lock code. The red LED winked to green, but Ida stopped before pressing the open button. “I can’t get the damn recording out of my head.”

  Izanami nodded. “It is unique. You have captured a freak event.”

  Ida rolled his shoulders. “Well—”

  He stopped short just inside the door. Izanami ducked around him to see into the cabin.

  “Oh my God!”

  Ida strode inside, picking up a handful of clothes as he did so. He tossed them onto the bed, where the blankets and covers were bunched in the middle of the mattress.

  Every inch of the cabin was covered with papers, clothes, bits of equipment, and broken items—a smashed ceramic mug here, Ida’s deodorant there with its screw-cap a few feet away. The chair was overturned and the main desk had been moved and stuck out of the wall at an angle. Ignoring the rest of the room, Ida headed straight for it.

  The computer terminal had been moved and the screens were pushed back on their sprung arms against the wall, but both were undamaged. The space radio hadn’t been touched, but the blue LED was on.

  “I am seriously losing patience with this place.” Ida pushed the computer screens out of the way and shoved at the edge of the desk. It was a heavy table, and it took some considerable effort for him to move it back just an inch before he had to stop to catch his breath. The table was still angled nearly a foot off the wall. Ida blinked and regarded the gap between the table and the wall. Whoever had turned his cabin over had been strong.

  “What happened?” Izanami tiptoed through the debris.

  Ida swore and the table thudded against the wall as he gave it one almighty shove. “The space apes happened.” Ida turned and scooped another armful of clothes from the floor to the bed. “DeJohn, Carter, whoever, I don’t care. I came down to this end of the station to keep out of their way. Assholes.”

  “But what did they want?”

  “Damned if I know.” Ida sighed. He turned back to the desk and waved a hand over the top of the radio set. The blue LED went dark and a very quiet background rushing sound Ida hadn’t noticed suddenly stopped.

  “Huh.”

  Izanami joined him at the desk. “What?”

  “Well,” said Ida, “they didn’t come here to smash the radio. But I didn’t turn it on.”

  “Maybe they didn’t know how to work it?”

  “If they wanted to use it…” Ida shook his head, took one more look around the cabin, and then headed to the door. He looked back at Izanami. “If we have a VIP on the way, then I doubt King will be able to sweep this one away. You coming?”

  Izanami shook her head. “Do you mind if I listen to the recording again?”

  Ida opened his mouth, closed it, and then opened it again. “Ah, yeah, sure. Knock yourself out.” He turned and began to walk away.

  “Wait, Ida!” She ran to the door.

  “Yeah?”

  “The cabin was locked, wasn’t it?”

  Ida stepped back toward her and looked at the door panel. The control was simple, a small qwerty keypad with a display above it about two inches square and a series of small LEDs; below that, the touch-sensitive chrome pad. Currently the screen was dark and a green LED was lit, indicating the door was open. Izanami was right—when he’d arrived the LED was red, and he had locked the cabin when he left it a while before. Only Ida knew the PIN to open it—that was something nobody could know or even look up on the station’s log. The Fleet was big on security. If anyone on the Coast City had managed to breach Ida’s privacy in such a manner, it would become a very serious matter. Court-martial and imprisonment, at least.

  “Sonovabitch,” said Ida. He turned on his heel to jog down the corridor. “King has to listen to me now.”

  * * *

  Ida disappeared around the corner. Izanami watched the empty corridor for a moment and then turned back into Ida’s cabin. The environmental lighting had dimmed automatically when Ida left, but the door remained open. In near darkness, Izanami sat at the desk and turned the radio on.

  The woman’s voice—the original recording—crackled into life, filling the cabin and echoing down the empty corridor outside it.

  At the far end of the corridor, long after Ida had passed by on his way to the elevators, something crossed the faint light cast by the dim yellow service lights. A few moments later, the shadow moved again. In Ida’s cabin, Izanami sat still and silent, listening to the recording over and over and over again.

  In the dark, she smiled.

  * * *

  “Captain Cleveland,” King said, “nobody has been near your cabin. For crying out loud, you’re at the other end of the crew berths. There’s nothing around there but demolition drones. In fact, your cabin will be spare parts in just a few weeks, so you might want to consider moving back—”

  Ida ran a hand through his hair. He’d run onto the bridge and confronted King—even the crew, so expertly practiced at ignoring distraction, had stopped what they were doing to look. King, to his credit, had simply laid his hand on Ida’s shoulder without another word and pushed him over to the security console himself.

  “You sure this captures everything?” Ida nodded at the computer display. King looked Ida up and down, his face pulled off-center by a scowl. Ida returned the look.

  “Yes, Captain,” said King. “This captures everything. All doors, locks, bulkheads, panels. Anything that needs to be turned on or off, locked or unlocked, coded or passed on board the station.” He pointed to the schematic rendered in green and amber on the large rectangular screen. “Not only do we have the record of the lock and door controls of your cabin, but we’ve got camera coverage right down the corridor. Look.”

  King’s fingers moved with speed over the touch-sensitive keypad. Ida watched the screen.

  The schematic flipped horizontally, replaced by the security camera feed for the corridor outside Ida’s cabin. The image was high definition and crystal clear but, given most of the station hub was perpetually in low-energy mode, was lit only in the warm twilight now so familiar to Ida. The corridor was still, silent, and it took Ida a moment to realize that King was fast-forwarding through the camera feed. Then something olive green flashed over the screen, and Ida reached forward to almost, but not quite, tap the screen.

  “What was that?”

  King glanced up. Then he watched the screen as he tracked back. “That was you, Captain.” A few seconds later, Ida watched himself walk backwards toward his cabin door and turn awkwardly on his heel. Ida hated seeing himself on camera, let alone video run in reverse; he was not the ruggedly handsome young man he imagined himself to be. But he recognized the scene as King scrolled backwards along the timeline—his arrival back at his cabin to find Izanami waiting, then his hasty departure to report the break-in. He frowned. Something was wrong with what he was seeing, but he couldn’t quite place what it was.

  “Nothing, then?” he asked, peering closer at the screen. King had paused the feed just as Ida was pulling a very odd face. He was pretty sure the marshal had done it deliberately.

  “Nothing.” King tracked again, going back and forth across a large chunk of the last cycle. Ida coming and going, stopping, coming and going again. Ida watched himself but he also checked the background—the camera provided a fish-eyed three-quarter’s top-down of the whole corridor, positioned as it was on the bulkhead frame at the end of the passageway. He could see the edge of his cabin door and the control panel set into the mesh wall outside it, sticking out after the standard tiling had been removed as part of the demolition of that part of the station.

  Nothing. Just him, moving around, coming and going. The odd feeling returned as he watched. His eyes roved the background, seeking out any corner or nook that the intruder could have hidden in to escape the vi
ew of the camera. But there was nothing, nobody except Ida.

  “And look,” said King, this time rapping a knuckle on a smaller display inset in the flat surface of the security console. “No life signs in that area, none except yours for nearly the last seven cycles.” He straightened up, adjusting the bottom of his tunic. The look he had in his eye as he met Ida’s gaze was a clear invitation to leave his bridge.

  Ida raised his hands in surrender. At least King had helped scan the feed with him. King’s obsessive attitude toward his own job was, this time, to Ida’s advantage.

  King made a stiff nod before turning back to the console to shut everything down.

  Ida balanced on his heel, and then turned to head back to the elevator. There was something he didn’t like, something he didn’t quite get, about the security feeds King had just shown him. Something buzzed around the back of his mind as he stepped into the waiting elevator.

  It was impossible, right? Nobody could have faked the security feed or the monitor readings. And yet someone had turned over his cabin. Even if it was possible to alter or erase data from the Coast City’s log—and Ida was pretty sure it wasn’t—the amount of time and effort required would classify the act as a conspiracy well beyond the petty bullying he’d been the subject of since arriving on the Coast City. That took Carter’s space apes out of the picture. And, besides, if they’d broken into his cabin to deliver a message, there wouldn’t have been anything left to pick up, let alone the computer terminal and the space radio set left not only perfectly intact but turned on as well.

  But no one had been near the cabin except Ida and Izanami, and none of the security systems could be overridden and none of the data could be faked. And Ida didn’t believe in ghosts, not least ghosts in space. He stood in the elevator, running scenarios backwards and forward and sideways in his head, replaying King’s video feed, still unable to put a finger on what he felt was wrong. He couldn’t place it as he left the elevator on his level; he couldn’t place it as he walked down the corridor outside his cabin and turned to look back at the security camera up on the bulkhead. He couldn’t place it as he walked into his cabin and nodded at Izanami, lying on the bed and listening to the recorded message on repeat. It didn’t occur to him as Izanami met his eye with a smile and returned his nod.

  Ida sat at the desk and massaged his temples. He had a headache coming on.

  16

  “And then what did you do?”

  Carter didn’t answer Serra’s question immediately. Instead, he stroked his chin as they walked down a corridor somewhere in the Coast City’s middle.

  “So what did I do?” he repeated, glancing at Serra and turning on a wicked grin.

  My God, that smile, thought Serra. That was the Charlie Carter she knew and loved. He seemed better now, more like his old self. And how long before they were off shift and—

  Serra stopped walking.

  Carter didn’t seem to notice, and kept strolling slowly forward. “I said, ‘Yes, sir. Right away, sir. Three bags full, sir.’” He stopped and turned around. “What did you think I said?”

  He paused. His eyes played over Serra. “What is it?”

  Serra stood motionless, eyes wide, looking to the floor. She held both arms straight down, fingers splayed out like she was preparing to walk a tightrope. She felt alert, suddenly energized, the corridor she and Carter were in and the conversation they were having now a million light-years away.

  They were not alone.

  Carter pulled in close. She could feel him tense up, could almost see a ripple of gooseflesh crawl up his bare arms.

  She knew the feeling. It was the same sensation you felt, out in the field, when a patrol was going too well, the second before the ambush struck or the bomb went off. Serra could almost taste it. She had no doubt Carter could feel it too—all marines had it, the good ones, the ones who came back alive. But for her, it was like being thrown into an ice bath.

  Carter’s muscles moved under his regulation T-shirt. He was preparing himself, Serra knew, to take on whatever was coming. Serra kept very still; it felt like she couldn’t move even if she’d wanted to. She knew she had the best goddamned battle sense in the Fleet, and when it was sharp like this, trouble was coming, thick and fast.

  Carter looked to Serra, his brow furrowed. She knew that he was a pro, that he wouldn’t do a thing until she gave the word. She flicked her eyes to his and he nodded, almost imperceptibly. She slowed her breathing and listened, reaching out to the world, feeling it.

  But feeling what? There was nothing on the station but a ragtag crew, some drone robots, and one washed-up ex-captain on board for some reason nobody really knew.

  Serra’s mouth was dry. Maybe she wasn’t sensing anything but the fatigue of the machine around them. The station was being pulled into little bits. Every day tons of metal and ceramic and plastic were sliced up and boxed up, leaving the humans to walk around a cat’s cradle framework. What if something had gone wrong? What if a drone had malfunctioned, or crashed? Or worse, got stuck in some error loop and kept on slicing and dicing the station until it hit the habitable spaces. One stray demolition laser, and the Coast City’s atmos would be voided into space, the crew killed instantly by the peculiar light from Shadow.

  No … there was something. The dreams and the voices and the odd feeling she’d had for weeks, and now … this. A presence, nearby. Someone watching them. Something watching them.

  Then it was over. The corridor was suddenly warmer, and the unpleasant weight in the center of her chest evaporated. Serra relaxed and allowed herself the luxury of oxygen.

  Carter sank a little as he lowered himself from his toes. His chest heaved, and he looked sideways at her. “For crying out loud,” he whispered. “I hate it when you do that.”

  Serra walked forward, comfortable enough now. She stopped, then walked back toward Carter and looked into the marine’s tight eyes.

  “What?”

  “Didn’t you hear it?” she asked.

  Carter glanced up and down the corridor, then back at Serra. “Nope. What’s up?”

  His words were light, but that was something else you learned from battle. There was enough death and despair around you without going all down and serious. There was a time and a place for that. Standing in a corridor in a far-distant, decommissioned space station was not one of them.

  Serra shrugged, and they resumed their walk. But it was different now. Serra was tense, her eyes flicking around. She was waiting for her grandmother to call her name again. But after a while no voice came, and she tuned back in to Carter’s diatribe.

  “I mean, what are we here for?” he was saying. “Security and engineering, right? Making sure this hunk of junk is sent back to the Fleet with all the right parts back in the box, right? So why the goddamn hell is a celebrity starminer coming here? Like anybody has time for that.”

  Serra snickered. “She’s hot, you know.”

  “Oh,” said Carter. His surprised expression might or might not have been faked, and she slapped him on the back anyway, not without a smile on her own face. He yelped playfully.

  “What—?”

  Carter came to a halt, Serra’s hand pulling at the back of his shirt. This time Carter pulled himself in close to her side instantly, fists clenched, and glanced up and down the corridor. He opened his mouth to say something, but Serra pushed her hand into his chest and his jaw snapped shut. The sensation of a presence was as thick as a blanket.

  As they stood in silence, Serra heard it again. It was another voice, distant but at the same time right over their shoulders. Then the voice stopped, leaving an unsettling, hollow echo. The passage they were in was lined with standard rubberized floor tiles and interlocking plastic panels on the walls, slotted into the underlying metal skeleton of the station. This section was a main thoroughfare and wouldn’t be marked for demolition for weeks yet. There was no good surface for that kind of reverberation.

  But as the seconds elongated, the
bad feeling only increased. When Serra blinked, her vision flashed purple and she couldn’t help but flinch back, the weird sensation that there was someone standing right in front of her impossible to dismiss.

  This was different, a creeping dread that wasn’t battle sense, not this time. This was something older, simpler, something that didn’t require Fleet training and pharmaceutical enhancement, something that pulled on the primal, lizard part of Serra’s brain. She pressed her hand hard into Carter’s chest and focused on the real, physical connection. His chest shook with short, shallow breaths, and she could hear the saliva moving in his mouth as he wet his lips.

  He felt it too; she could tell. It wasn’t fear they shared, not really. There was no room for that kind of reaction in the Fleet Marine Corps. They faced injury or death constantly, not just from the enemy but also from the million things that could go wrong in space that would end them in a millisecond. That was life in the Fleet. And Serra and Carter were marines, the best of the best.

  This … this was something else, something worse.

  They were not alone. Now she was sure of it.

  “Now what?” Carter’s whisper was surprisingly loud.

  Serra shushed him, but a second later she gasped herself.

  There was someone at the end of the passageway. The light ahead of them was at minimum, part of standard energy conservation. The passage was dark behind them too, the lights of each section dimming after they passed. A few hundred meters farther back was a main intersection, well lit, spilling a pool of light into each of the four corridors that branched from it. Alone in their passage, Carter and Serra were standing in a glowing bubble that stretched just two meters ahead and behind. Standard procedure on any U-Star during the night-cycle, or when a section of a station had a minimal number of crew in it.