The Burning Dark

by Adam Christopher

  “Bloom County confirmed. See you on the other side.”

  25

  The ready room felt huge without the desk.

  They—whoever “they” were—had attacked the beating heart of the station, somehow making it to the ready room and turning it over, turning Commandant Elbridge’s expensive desk into so much expensive matchwood, at the same time as Ida’s and Serra’s squads had been confronted. “They” had got past guards, crew, Flyeyes at their posts, the works. The first anyone knew something was wrong was when the comms were filled with the roar of the ocean and the sound of destruction came from behind the ready room’s closed door. When that door was opened, the room was a mess, the desk shattered, the provost marshal insensible in a corner.

  Ida knew something had happened, even before he stepped inside and saw the wreckage. The commandant himself had tried to warn him that something was happening, something to do with the ready room. Ida didn’t mention that to anyone. Not yet.

  Whatever force, whoever the enemy was, they’d escaped, vanishing from the station with the eight marines led by Serra and Ida—they were the only two who were left behind. Worse than that, the station’s manifest now reported less than half the crew there had been before. Those left aboard the Coast City were in a state of shock, impotent, with nothing to do but put armed guards everywhere and pretend to their VIPs that nothing was wrong. Pretend that the security was normal and that shadows and the cold were just an artifact of the station’s half-demolished condition and that everyone was just tense because the end of the road was in sight, is all. And Ida pretended that the voice of the commandant hadn’t come through his comm, that the absent commander hadn’t tried to contact him, give a warning, as all hell broke loose.

  Ida wasn’t even sure that had happened, not anymore. Just a cycle later and he and Serra were standing in the ready room, he with his arms folded and she staring at the picture on the wall, which had survived intact. Ida glanced at her: she looked empty, burnt out. He knew she was a psi-marine, the last left on board, and he wondered what she was feeling and seeing and hearing that nobody else was. Like him, perhaps. He thought about the commandant’s voice and about Astrid and paint flakes on the floor. Neither of which made him happy, not at all.

  The ruins of the wooden desk had been removed. Now King had only a computer pad and a chair, and it looked as though he was making do with just that. There was hardly any point in refitting the room for the last months before the final sections of the Coast City were packed into their crates and rocketed on the long drag homeward.

  Provost Marshal King stood square in the center of the room, arms folded, chin held high. Behind him, Ida heard the armor of the guard at the door crackle as he shifted on his feet. Red alert. Battle stations.

  “So, what happens next?” asked Ida. Serra finally turned her head from the painting to look at him, but when Ida met her eye, her expression was still blank, like she was somewhere else entirely.

  King’s nostrils flared, but he remained otherwise motionless. “Next, Captain?”

  Ida tightened the loop of his folded arms. “Yes, next. We have personnel missing. We have firsthand proof of intrusion. We have to tackle this now.”

  King shook his head. Then he held up his hand as Ida made to protest.

  “Captain, I agree, but our VIPs have docked. We’ve put the station on alert and have armed guards covering as much of the hub as possible, but we’re spread thin. We need to hold out until our guests have left, and then maybe we can accelerate the demolition. We have barely enough personnel to maintain operations, let alone go chasing after ghosts.”

  Ida found King’s choice of words interesting. He raised an eyebrow. “Ghosts?”

  “Intruders, then,” said the marshal. “And with the lightspeed link down we can’t alert other stations or call for any help, either. We’re alone out here. We need to focus on internal security right now. We have a very valuable guest to look after. Her safety, and that of her crew, is paramount.”

  Ida folded his arms. “Where’s Elbridge?”

  King flinched, the corners of his mouth twitching downward. “What?”

  “The Commandant, Price Elbridge. Do you know where he is?”

  King turned away and paced back to his chair. He reached down and ran his hand along the edge of the computer pad as though he were about to pick it up. Then he seemed to change his mind, and he straightened up.

  Ida stepped forward. “I was expecting him to be here when I arrived, but apparently he left before the last transport, but somehow after the one before that.”

  King’s shoulders sagged. When the marshal turned back to Ida, his face was gray and the skin around his eyes tight.

  “The station has two shuttles,” said Ida. “One has been packed away and the other is still in use to patrol the system.”

  “I—”

  “So where is he? Where did he go?”

  Ida and King regarded each other in silence in the ready room. King knew something. He was hiding something. Ida knew it. He had to tell him about the voice on the comms, about the absent commandant getting in touch, or at least trying to. And then—

  “Marshal, our VIP has arrived.”

  The Flyeye’s appearance at Ida’s shoulder broke the spell. Ida turned, suddenly angry, forcing himself to relax and to breathe, breathe, breathe.

  Ida turned back to King. “Marshal, please.”

  But it was too late. King nodded at the Flyeye and strode from the room, leaving Ida and Serra and the marine on the door.

  Ida sighed, and tried to think of something to say to Serra when he noticed she was squinting, like she was in pain.

  “You okay?”

  Serra rubbed her temples, spat out “fine,” and turned on her heel. As she left, Izanami stepped out of the shadows on the other side of the room. Ida blinked. He’d had no idea she was there with them. In the dim light her eyes seemed to shine blue. Then she laughed.

  “Sorry!” she said. “I didn’t mean to intrude.” She looked at the marine stationed at the door.

  “I’m hungry,” she said. She walked toward the door. “Come on, let’s eat.”

  26

  The woman on the screen cast a lazy look around the bridge, eyes hidden behind large rectangular dark glasses, while her entourage laughed at something. Beside her, King smiled, but everyone else on the bridge was as stiff as a board, standing to attention during the official tour. Armed marines stood against practically every clear spot of wall, conspicuous in their green armor.

  Ida took another bite of the protein stick and peered closer at the screen hanging above the table in his cabin. The official welcome was, despite the current situation, being done by the book, broadcast on the station-wide information channel like any other important bit of Fleet business.

  “She’s pretty.”

  Ida looked over his shoulder. Izanami had crept up behind him and was peering around his folded arms.

  Zia Hollywood was not pretty. She was flat-out gorgeous. Deep auburn hair streaked with black, cut into a long, angled bob that framed a delicate face with a snub nose. She was wearing black overalls, the top half folded down at the waist and the arms tied around her middle in a big knot, revealing a black sleeveless singlet. There she was, clad in the practical work gear of a space miner and somehow she outshone the stars. Her left arm was heavily tattooed, geometric patterns and floral motifs slowly moving over her skin. Intelligent, mobile ink was expensive. Her moving tattoo had probably cost as much as the pile of antique kindling that had been the commandant’s desk.

  Ida watched her on the screen as she glanced here and there, her eyes hidden behind what he could see now were square mining goggles. At the center of her entourage, she was silent and otherwise still. Her crew consisted only of three men. They were grimier than their boss, their overalls patched and marked, the bare biceps of one of them—a tall, thin man with an alarming scarlet Mohawk—matted with scar tissue. Ida had caught him being referred
to as Dathan. He looked like he’d been handsome once, but his nose was angled strangely and the rest of his face was flat as a plate. He scowled at the camera and sniffed, the movement pulling his broken nose to one side. The other two were Ivanhoe—a very short, muscular older man, bald with a long graying beard—and an average-looking thirty-something with a huge, spherical Afro haircut who seemed to go by the name Fathead.

  Ida shivered. Pulling himself away from the screen, he walked over to the environment controls near the door and poked at them. He didn’t expect much to happen. The lights were now stuck on twilight-normal around most of the hub, and—sudden failures aside—the whole station seemed to be getting steadily colder. He thought Izanami must have been terribly cold in her thin, short-sleeved white medical tunic, but the temperature didn’t seem to bother her.

  The controls responded and warm air began to blow into the cabin. Satisfied for the moment, Ida turned back around.

  “Where were you, anyway?” he asked. “Did you see anything when it happened?” It being the security breach.

  “I locked myself in the med unit. Didn’t see anything.” She turned back to the screen and then she asked, “Why don’t you like her?”

  “Who?”

  “Zia Hollywood. You don’t like her, or her crew.”

  “Says who?”

  Izanami brushed her hair from her eyes. “You don’t like anyone, Abraham.”

  Ida worked his mouth. She … Actually, she was right, and he knew it, but her tone was surprisingly hard. And she had called him Abraham.

  Ida turned back to watch the Hollywood gang fidget as King lectured them on the wheres and why-fors of station procedure before they were taken on a tour of the facilities. They were too far away to be heard over King’s monotone on the feed, but Ida saw the Mohawked man glance at the Fleet personnel around him and then rock on his heels in a suppressed laugh, although what he could possibly find funny about being surrounded by a squad of marines in full field battle kit was beyond Ida. Behind Dathan, Ivanhoe and Fathead had lost interest in the briefing and were playing some kind of hand-slapping game while their boss stood, arms folded, mouth set, and expression unreadable behind the protective eyewear. Fathead gave his bald companion’s hand one last sharp slap and then, laughing, sidled over to Ms. Hollywood. He trailed his hand over her arm as he swung around behind her. Then with one fingernail he traced the moving tattoo on her arm, the ink swirling like liquid under his touch. Hollywood remained still, but Ida thought she turned her head a little to look into the security camera.

  “Admit it, you don’t like her.”

  He found himself rubbing his chest through his shirt, trying to ease the tight feeling he now felt around his heart. “I don’t even know her.”

  “Exactly,” said Izanami, and she walked toward the door, and then out of it.

  Ida bit his thumbnail and watched the empty space where she had stood, then sighed.

  “What’s wrong?” said the voice, thin and edged with static like the rolling waves of the sea. The space radio popped and crackled and Ida felt his heart kick.

  Ludmila. She was real, apparently—an electromagnetic ghost bouncing around subspace, her voice echoing out of nothing but only when the recording was on playback. She was impossible. She was real. When she spoke, Ida felt afraid, knowing that he couldn’t, shouldn’t be talking to her. But then the fear faded, melting away, leaving Ida dizzy. They’d been in contact for little more than a cycle, but already he felt that he’d known her for years, that they had some weird connection, two spacefarers trapped in situations they had no control over.

  Ida closed his eyes. If he thought about it too hard, none of it made sense, but there at the back of his mind he recalled a story he’d read years and years ago, a tall tale if ever there was one, but one that now made him take pause for thought. The story was that Marconi, the guy who had invented radio in the first place, hadn’t been trying to build a new form of communication; he’d been trying to find a way to talk to his dead brother. That scared Ida too, and he was perhaps a little grateful that the lightspeed link was down, as he wasn’t sure checking the veracity of an urban legend like that would do him any good.

  “Nothing,” he said, opening his eyes. “I’m glad you stuck around, though.” This much was true. She was a welcome distraction.

  Ludmila laughed. Ida liked it when she laughed; the sound was high and young, and very happy. The background static pulsed in time with it, and then she sighed, the sound cut like dry leaves in an autumn wind. Ida couldn’t remember the last autumn he’d had on Earth. He got as far as thinking it was red and orange before the memory was too fuzzy. He’d spent too long in space, too much time in Fleet service. He preferred to remember the summers on the farm, anyway. Or … he had, until recently.

  Ida moved back to the door and glanced through the semi-frosted window, but the corridor to the right was just a faint orange smudge.

  Then Ida looked to his left, and saw Izanami standing in the passage. He recoiled from the window in surprise; then he hit the control panel with his palm. The door snicked open.

  “Izanami?”

  Izanami took his arm, her fingers like ice even through Ida’s sleeve. For a moment her eyes seemed to catch the light in an odd way, like they were spun blue with stars. Then the space radio popped and went quiet and Ida blinked, and the light was gone.

  “I just walked around the deck,” she said, pursing her lips. “I’m sorry, I didn’t mean what I said before.”

  Ida smiled weakly, and gestured for her to enter his cabin.

  27

  The P-Prof Bloom County crouched on the side of the U-Star Coast City like the Spiderbaby it really was, customized mining legs folded into a symmetrical array of scalene triangles. From a distance it looked like a complex communications pod, myriad antennae pointing out into the inky black. Closer, it looked like a parasitic insect, a strange locust–spider hybrid, clamped to the side of the station, sucking from the belly of its prey. They hadn’t used the station’s hangar. They didn’t need to—thanks to its unique design, the Bloom County could just sucker onto the side of the station, air lock to air lock.

  There were many theories about the origin of the Spiders, about how an organo-metallic life-form might have evolved—or been created. About why the planet-eating, intelligent but not quite self-aware machine race looked so much like spiders. About why they had any interest in human affairs anyway. But for the crew of the Bloom County, the Spiderbaby at the heart of the ship was merely a very, very effective tool that helped them do their jobs. Out on the ragged edge of space, there was no time for theories.

  * * *

  The short, bald member of the Hollywood gang, who went by the name Ivanhoe, flicked a switch, dimming the lights in the Bloom County’s control cabin, and leaned back in the navigator’s seat. He’d been born in the stars—just like the rest of the crew, each handpicked by Zia Hollywood with starbirth the most important parameter—and far preferred their light to the artificial illumination on board the ship. And while Shadow, the technetium star, was hidden on the other side of the space station, its high-energy emissions floodlit a shell of dust that enclosed the whole system nearly a tenth of a light-year out, giving the normally infinite black canvas of space an eerie—and with the cabin lights off, quite bright enough to work by—purple glow. This far out on the galactic rim, the star field beyond the glow was not as dense as Ivanhoe knew, or liked, but the scattering of distant suns that were visible were large and bright. So Ivanhoe sat for a spell, eyes flicking from one tiny solar body to the next, watching their outlines curl and flicker behind the dust cloud. He was happy to have gotten out of the VIP tour of the space station and glad to be able to look at the stars, even if he had a lot of work to do. They’d been lying about the security alert; that much was obvious from the number of marines on guard at every doorway. Unlike his crewmates, Ivanhoe didn’t like guns much. Especially guns on board a spaceship.

  Someone kno
cked a tool off the bench behind him. Dathan, probably, either finally managing to pull himself away from their boss or finally being told by said boss to go and fix the motherfucking ship. Either option was good for Ivanhoe. Tracing the fault in the navigation pod would be much easier with two people, and besides, if someone had to go out onto the hull and open up the pod itself, he’d rather it wasn’t him. It wasn’t the light of Shadow that bothered him. The pod, a box shaped like half an egg three feet in length, was within reach of the mining claws. That was what bothered him.

  One day, Ivanhoe knew, just knew, those claws would turn on them. Zia said she knew what she was doing, and Ivanhoe had no doubt about that. But nobody really understood Spider tech, not her, not her father. And, well, those claws were alive, my brother. They twitched, and sometimes they even grasped, as the Spiderbaby slept. There, they were doing it now. Ivanhoe’s eyes moved to the blinking indicator on the control desk in front of him. Two legs out of the four on the portside array were moving. Just a bit, just a flex, like someone who has sat on their hand for too long rolling their fingers to get the circulation back. Damn, it was as creepy as hell. But creepy as hell was paying the bills. Good old Spiderbaby. Sleep tight.

  “I’ll tell you now,” said Ivanhoe to the shadows behind him, “I ain’t going out there. Let’s see if we can’t get the nav pod rejacked from here, my brother.”

  Silence. Ivanhoe tore his eyes from the flickering indicator and slowly revolved the navigator’s chair around. The control cabin was empty, and the door was closed. The fallen tool—just a regular screwdriver—was on the floor in the middle of the cabin.

  Ivanhoe sighed, pushed himself to his feet, picked up the screwdriver, and dropped it back on the tray of tools on the bench, not really thinking about how far the screwdriver had fallen from one side of the room to the other, not really thinking about how hot the metal tool had felt in his hand. It didn’t matter. Space was strange. Artificial gravity wasn’t perfect. Ivanhoe didn’t trust it—he’d been born in zero-G, my brother, and like the water babies of Earth, anything else just wasn’t natural. Falling through starlight. That’s how he liked to describe it. It impressed the ladies, anyway.