“Go,” she said. “He’s on Level Twelve, Mess Deck.”
“How did you—?”
“Go!” Ludmila screamed. Her voice, meshed with the interference across the radio, was like a banshee’s cry. Ida felt the hairs on the back of his neck stand up.
Without saying a word, he sprinted out.
* * *
In the empty cabin, the static died down to a baseline level, punctuated by the occasional pop as Ludmila cried. Then it snapped again, as it had before.
“Contact has been established … contact has been established,” Ludmila whispered to the empty room.
33
Knock-knock-knock-knock-knock-knock-knock.
Hands clenched.
“It’s not working—”
“Marine, shush.”
“Sir.”
Knock-knock-knock-knock.
“You really know what you’re doing?”
“It’s fine. It always starts like this.” Serra fidgeted on her chair. Carter’s hand was like sandpaper in hers.
Knock-knock-knock-knock.
“This is fucked up.”
Someone else moved, knocking a knee against the table, rocking it.
“Carter, shut the fuck up. You were the one who asked me to do this.” And now, sitting in the dark, in the circle, she wondered why she’d agreed so easily.
Then the machine sound was there, creeping in at the edge of her mind, and she knew she’d made the right decision.
“Fine,” Carter whispered.
Knuckles white. More knocks.
“Carter,” said Sen, thrown out of bed by Carter to complete the circle, “you are so fucking full of shit.”
“That so, gunner?”
“It sure is. Just wanted you to know.”
“Duly noted.”
Someone snickered. Serra’s eyes flicked open but the canteen was lost in pitch black. It was amazing, breathtaking, how dark they had managed to get it. Not even the night-lights in the passageway outside sent a single sliver sliding under the canteen door.
She closed her eyes again and concentrated. She wasn’t that familiar with the rituals of Santeria, and she hadn’t done this for … well, forever, really. And only one time before that, when she’d been six. Her mother had been furious, but even she bit her tongue. Her mother had been scared of Grandmother, always, of the things she could do. But it was working. The white noise in her head was clearing, slowly.
“This better work.”
Serra’s eyes snapped open again. It was ridiculous. Just an hour ago Carter had been a wreck in her cabin, crying for his mother. Now he was acting like she was making him do this.
“Are we going to keep trying, or do you children want to go play somewhere else?”
Someone yawned, and someone coughed. The blackness was like a blanket, enveloping, soft.
Nobody said anything for a few seconds, but nobody let go of her hands either. Finally Carter hissed; Serra could just imagine his face, teeth clenched, lips drawn, ready for anything the enemy could throw at them.
“Do it,” he said.
Serra screwed her eyes tighter and tried to remember what her grandmother had taught her, twenty years ago. That it had been in the old house in Puerto Rico and she was now on an old station a thousand light-years away shouldn’t matter. Carter had made direct contact. That was much more than her grandmother ever had, and she’d made a living out of the “gift.”
She was old by the time Serra hit recruitment age, but cane in hand she’d stood by her beloved Carminita as she took the oath, as tall and as proud as her bones would allow. Next to her, her mother was also proud, but there were tears in her eyes and her hands shook. She was scared for her daughter. Service with the Fleet was honorable, but with Spider aggression increasing daily, the survival rate was enough to make any mother weep.
A sigh in the dark, from her left. Someone jumped in his or her seat and someone snickered again. This wasn’t going to work. They needed a focus. They needed a light. They needed gifts.
* * *
Ida’s booted feet pounded the crosshatch decking. It made a racket, which was fine by him. If the marines were in trouble, he had no problem letting them know someone was coming.
He came out of the elevator and headed left. The canteen was a quarter-way around the hub, between him and the next elevator lobby. For a change the passage lights were operational, the night glow flaring to regular operational white as Ida raced around the curved corridor. The environment control was holding as well.
Neither of these facts entered Ida’s mind until the lights failed. He careered to a halt, animal instinct stopping his run as the darkness of the next passageway section reared up at him like a physical object.
Ida swore and, arms swinging, carried on.
* * *
It was all they had, but it would do. The lighter—illegal on the U-Star, but smuggled on board by someone—provided a tiny flame but one that burned with a yellow so dazzling in the complete dark of the canteen that even with Serra’s eyes closed, the shapes moved brown and red behind their lids. Next to the lighter stood a plastic cup of canteen coffee, the steam rising in mesmerizing waves in the flickering light. The only thing missing from the offering was a cigar, but Serra was amazed enough that someone in the circle had produced the lighter. The gifts were better than she could have hoped for.
Serra exhaled, shook her sweaty hands, and then completed the circle again. All at once, everyone around the table jolted, like a circuit had been completed and an electrical charge conducted.
“What the fuck—?”
“Quiet,” whispered Serra. Behind her closed eyes she watched the flame dance.
Knock-knock-knock-knock.
“This still ain’t working. I gotta be on shift soon.”
KNOCK-KNOCK-KNOCK-KNOCK.
Everyone jumped as the rapping sounded on the table in front of them.
“What the fucking fuck?”
The knocking continued, fainter. Serra leaned down toward the table, concentrating.
“Please, we have a code. One for no, two for yes. Do you understand?”
Knock-knock-knock-knock-knock.
Serra felt Carter’s grip relax. He moved his fingers, threatening to break the perfect circle. They were so close.
KNOCK.
“What?”
“Wait.”
KNOCK-KNOCK.
“Do you understand us?”
KNOCK-KNOCK.
Someone on the opposite side of the table drew a breath in sharply. One of the marines, another woman. Serra didn’t really know her. She seemed quiet and timid, but she had more Spider kills notched on her rifle butt than the rest of the squad put together. Always the quiet ones.
“Is someone there?”
KNOCK-KNOCK.
Backs straight. Knees together. A gasp in the dark.
“You asked us to come, didn’t you?”
KNOCK-KNOCK.
Serra opened her eyes, just a crack. Lit by the steady flame of the lighter, Carter’s face was a grimace, sweat dripping down his forehead. Serra licked her teeth and watched Carter’s eyeballs moving rapidly behind his eyelids.
“Is there someone there?” she asked. “Is someone coming?”
Nothing. Serra repeated the question, and then closed her eyes. As soon as she did, the red and black shapes reappeared, dancing with the flickering flame.
She took a breath and held it; then she opened her eyes again. The flame was still, steady, strong.
Then she looked up. Standing behind the group, in the gap between Carter and the protesting Flyeye, stood DeJohn.
Except … maybe it was the light, the way he was illuminated in yellow from the front and from down low, maybe it was the way the light flickered even though the flame was steady and true. Maybe it was the way that the blackness behind him moved. Whatever it was, the figure looked less like DeJohn and more like a photograph, or some weird mannequin. She realized DeJohn had his ey
es closed.
“Hey—,” Carter whispered, eyes closed. Immediately the darkness seemed to bulge, partially obscuring DeJohn’s head. Serra pulled on Carter’s hand.
“Quiet, dammit.”
Carter did as he was told.
Serra closed her eyes. “Who is there? Do you know us?”
KNOCK.
KNOCK.
The raps came slow and deliberate. Somebody whimpered and Serra felt Sen’s grip slip in the fingers of her left hand. She turned her head instinctively toward the sound, but kept her eyes closed.
She sat and watched the shapes moving in the flame light behind closed eyes, hypnotized by their dance.
* * *
The door was open, but the canteen beyond was just an empty black void. Ida stopped again, and listened. He could hear something, a knocking sound, far away. The temperature in the passageway was approaching freezing. Standing motionless, he could feel his eyeballs drying out.
The darkness had gotten thicker somehow as he approached, filled with a substance as thin and insubstantial as gas but impenetrable to light. It had no substance, no taste, no smell, and Ida knew full well that it wasn’t gas or mist or smoke. It was shadow.
Ida was scared. Scared of what the shadows hid, of what might come out of the shadow, of going into the shadow and not returning.
“Ida … Ida…”
Her voice was caught on a nonexistence breeze, painted light and thin onto a background of static. The echo of subspace.
Ida spun around. The shadow had surrounded him, but back the way he had come the passage lights, now returned to their baseline nocturnal setting, were faintly visible. The passage looked old and granular through the fog.
She was there. Standing where he had come from. He wondered how long she’d been following him, but then he realized that she hadn’t at all. Beyond, the elevator door remained open. It was possible she’d come around from the other side of the hub, but he knew she hadn’t really.
Ludmila.
Her suit was silvered, her closed visor golden. Across her chest were four bold red letters.
CCCP.
And when she spoke, it was across the eternity of subspace. Ida wasn’t sure whether it was sound acting on his eardrums or whether she’d tuned in to his very thoughts. But she spoke, and he listened. If he was afraid, she was terrified.
“I can’t stop them, Ida, I can’t stop them. Go, please.”
And then her voice dropped to a whisper, reduced to a sibilant hissing against the interference.
“They are coming.… They are coming.…”
Ida needed no further encouragement. He spun on his heel, yelled blue murder, and dived into the black portal of the canteen.
* * *
“Carter?”
Someone sobbed. One hand, rough, grabbed Serra’s hard enough, it felt, to snap bone. Another hand, soft and wet, twisted and slipped away. The circle broke.
KNOCK.
KNOCK.
Slow and sure.
She dared not open her eyes.
Dared not.
“Who is there? Who are you?”
A sigh—long, high, not from someone who sat around the table.
She must not open her eyes.
Must not.
But …
KNOCK KNOCK.
But she must …
“I feel…,” said someone not at the table. “I feel the darkness breathe.”
The voice was female, accented. Far East. Asian. Japanese. The voice spoke the last word like it was a blessed relief.
She must not open her eyes.
KNOCK. KNOCK. KNOCK. KNOCK.
A breeze. Ice. The flame flickered.
The voice was as cold as space as it asked, “Where is he?”
She opened her eyes, and it began. One scream, then another.
The light danced and the shadows swirled and the flame on the table was still, steady, small.
Between each sitter, a face. DeJohn. An older man in round glasses. Men in Fleet marine helmets reflecting the light that guttered and flared from nowhere.
Serra tried to close her mouth, tried to stop the scream, but she could not. Wide-eyed and wide-jawed, she turned her head, left to right, left to right, like a fairground attraction from old-time Earth.
And then she turned again, to the left. The chair was empty. Sen had gone.
And to the right. Carter crying.
And to the left. The chair was no longer empty. A woman sat demurely, hands in her lap. Dressed in white, with hair long and black. Skin as white as her tunic. Her eyes, oval, Japanese, closed.
They opened, and the woman smiled. Her smile was the death of a thousand children under a hot desert sun. Her eyes were blue voids in which stars exploded.
Serra’s jaw clicked as it opened beyond normal endurance. The scream she uttered came from the ancient part of her brain. It was old and green, the sound of the Earth being split in two.
And the flame burned, white, steady. But it could not fight the darkness, the shadows. The blackness spun around the table, around the sitters, around the uninvited guests.
The Japanese woman held up her hands. One was empty, the palm facing forward. The other clutched a handle, long with a woven cover. Pointing downward, something long and silver sparked in the night.
She whispered, and the whisper became a rush of sound, a wind from nowhere, the static white noise howl of subspace. The Japanese woman stood and raised her sword.
“Where is he?”
Serra stared into the light.
“Where is he?”
Serra stared into the light and screamed.
* * *
Ida looked around, sweeping the Yuri-G in front of him. It had a white light on the front of it that projected a bright cone in front of the barrel, mixing with the red safety-off warning indicator and illuminating the table and chairs and the canteen’s serving bar at the back in a washed-out pink.
The room was empty.
Careful to keep his senses alert to anything that might be hiding in the corners, Ida played the light from the Yuri-G over the table. There was a plastic cup filled with something black that had frozen into a solid block, and something smaller, metallic, that glinted. He leaned forward and snatched it up—a cigarette lighter. He held it close and shook it. It was still nearly full of fuel, and the cap and striking wheel were hot to the touch but the metal of the body was icy. He closed the cap and squeezed the lighter in his fist. His knee banged one of the chairs; he winced at the sudden sound.
He didn’t know why he wanted to be quiet, but he did. There was something about the canteen. Not just the darkness, now that he’d passed through the strange blackness that had hung like a mausoleum curtain over the entrance, but something else. He turned to look back at the door, but the shadows seemed normal again.
Mausoleum. He turned back to the canteen and pointed the gun around slowly, rolling the word in his mouth like a glucose tablet. The canteen was the canteen, and he knew it well. But somehow, whether it was the harsh light of the Yuri-G against the soft blue of the night-lights, whether it was the odd way the shadows flitted around his peripheral vision, he couldn’t tell. But the empty tables and chairs were … spooky.
Especially the table in front of him. With the chairs arranged like a group had just been sitting there. With the frozen cup and the lighter, the closed cap still hot in his hand.
It was like walking into a tomb. He’d experienced the sensation before, on several planets. Action against the Spiders meant infiltration or outright conquest of people and places, on both sides. He’d walked through enough sacred places, forbidden temples or tombs of kings, where the very fabric of the place pushed at you, telling you to turn around, warning you to go no farther.
And he felt it here. The canteen had become an alien landscape, a sacred, secret place. Ida had the feeling he’d interrupted something, something important, something of which he wasn’t supposed to be a part. Something that, he knew, w
as terrible and dark and old, the result of foolish meddling by people who had no clue at all.
Had no clue, or were led into a trap.
Ida kicked a chair and shouted and recoiled at the sound, so loud and sharp in the cathedral silence of the canteen.
It was empty. He’d been too late.
“You couldn’t stop it.”
Ida turned. When he saw Ludmila in the doorway, he lowered the gun. Its flashlight spotlighted his feet absurdly.
She was getting stronger. As he stood there, watching the slim figure in her silver spacesuit, Ida felt the hairs on his arms and neck prickle. Fear, yes, but cold as well. It seemed that to manifest like this, Ludmila was sucking the energy from the very air. Any kind, whatever was available. Light and heat. His robot knee ached like someone had hit it with a hammer.
“Where are they?” was all Ida could manage. His face was stiff with the cold, his words sending clouds of steam billowing into the air between him and her.
She moved a gloved hand by her side so that the palm faced him. Maybe moving was difficult. The room reverberated with the faint sound of the ocean.
“They’ve been taken.”
“Taken where?”
“I thought they were coming,” said Ludmila, “that this would hasten their arrival. But someone stopped them. Not you, someone else.”
“I’m afraid.”
“So am I.”
Ida’s throat was dry. “I’m afraid of you,” he said.
The gloved hand dropped.
“So you should be,” Ludmila said.
Ida stared at the apparition. She was real, solid, three-dimensional. And then he saw that her golden visor was not reflecting the room or him, standing right in front of her. It showed a starscape and the edge of a blue-green orb. The Earth.
Ida jumped as the scream punched through the fog in his mind. His intake of breath was sharp and the cold air stung. He knew that voice.
Zia.
He turned back to the woman in the spacesuit, but she was gone. The canteen was empty once more.
When Zia screamed a second time, Ida flicked the safety off the Yuri-G and left the room at a run.
The Burning Dark Page 23