The Burning Dark

by Adam Christopher

  “Here he is,” said Zia. A moment later Carter was striding briskly toward them. He kept his eyes ahead and didn’t slow as he approached, only turning and dropping into a crouch to scoot down the side passage when he had passed the group. They gathered around him.

  “Everyone is being assembled for evacuation. They think the Carcosa is the last transport.”

  “But who are all these crew?” asked Zia. “There weren’t this many when I arrived.”

  “They’re from the Carcosa,” said Ida. “I recognize them.”

  “Well, that means you’re a liability,” said Carter. “They’ll recognize you too.”

  Serra shook her head. “They’re not really people anymore.”

  “The Funayurei,” said Ida, and Serra nodded.

  Zia frowned. “But what are they doing? There’s hundreds of them.”

  “Remember what Ludmila said.” Ida rested his artificial knee on the floor and leaned around the curve of the passage; the knee now ached constantly, a low, dull pain. In the main corridor there was no letup in the foot traffic. Fleet personnel passed by in a near-continuous stream.

  “The harvest,” said Zia. “They’re swarming.”

  Serra shuddered. “Like locusts, coming in to eat.”

  “Something tells me the Fleet’s plan isn’t going so well,” said Carter.

  “We have to make sure ours does, then,” said Zia. She turned to Serra. “You can talk to my ship?”

  Serra nodded; Carter’s eyebrow went up.

  “I really wish you’d tell us what was going on,” he said.

  “Can’t risk it,” she said. “I’m talking to the ship, but others may be listening.”

  “Well, that’s just dandy. So what do you want us to do?”

  Serra scanned the corridor ahead of them. “Nothing at all,” she said. “Just follow my lead. Help is nearby.”

  “Help?” Carter asked. Serra met his eye and nodded.

  “You were wrong, before,” she said.

  Ida pursed his lips. “Wrong?”

  “There are two members of the Psi-Marine Corps left aboard.”

  “Two?”

  Serra nodded. “Two: me and the commandant, Elbridge. And this is our battle now.”

  44

  They resumed their journey down the corridors of the Coast City. They made good progress at first, the standard Fleet garb of the group blending in easily with the multitude of personnel rushing here and there. Together, the four of them looked like any other crew.

  But as they got closer to their destination, it got more difficult. They started getting looks, a group of four not moving with the rest of the crew. They kept quiet, kept walking, trying to ignore the crew around them; the crew that stopped and stared, their faces hard, their outlines flaring with black light.

  No, not crew. Not anymore. The Funayurei. The U-Star Carcosa had been plucked out of quickspace by Izanami-no-Mikoto, the crew within consumed, their souls absorbed to rebuild their demon queen, the remnants regurgitated to add to the ranks of her army of ghosts in hellspace. The things that watched them now were projections, incomplete, but growing in power along with their queen. None spoke or moved to stop Ida’s group, but he couldn’t help but wonder. Was Izanami watching them, through the eyes of her legion? Did she know what Serra’s plan was? Could she hear what the psi-marine was saying to the Bloom County?

  Ida scratched his cheek and noticed his hand was shaking. He risked a glance sideways at Serra, and although she kept up the pace, she was squinting again, like she was in pain. Ida imagined she was. She was a psi-marine on a ship full of the dead, talking to an alien machine intelligence while one of the devils from subspace was getting closer and closer to corporeal existence in their universe. Ida didn’t want to dwell on what Serra might be hearing in her head.

  They approached the service doors leading to the back of the hangar, which, they hoped, would let them slip in unobserved. Ida motioned for the others to wait around the corner of the passage as he jogged forward and reached for the control. He paused, his hand an inch away from the panel.

  Carter hissed from the shadows opposite. “Problem?”

  Ida’s breath came out in spurts. Carter had broken his concentration. He sighed, and exhaled again, and noticed the breath gathering in front of his face in a great white cloud.

  The temperature was dropping. Fast. Ida’s knee protested, and he gasped in pain, then pressed his palm against the bulkhead control.

  The door opened. The hangar beyond was dark, and a cold breeze came from within. It ruffled Ida’s hair as he looked down. Something as light as anything tapped at his boots.

  “Please tell me you can see this,” he said, his eyes fixed on the floor. The breeze from the hangar carried with it big leaflike flakes of red paint, shiny white on one side, desiccated, like they’d peeled off an old barn in a hot summer long ago.

  Ida closed his eyes, and Astrid’s image loomed behind his closed lids, so he opened them again.

  “See what?” asked Carter. He joined Ida and looked at the floor, but it was clear he could see nothing.

  Ida closed his eyes and felt a hand on his.

  “She’s pulling images from your mind,” said Serra. “She sees the dead in all of us. They’re just more lost souls for her to use against us. Whatever you see, it comes from within.”

  Ida opened his eyes and looked at the floor. There was no paint from the barn. He looked up and Serra nodded. Behind her, Zia had her arms wrapped tightly across her front, shaking her head slowly. If he had seen a reflection of a lost summer, Ida wondered what it was that Zia had been shown just now.

  Ida kicked at nothing on the floor and took a deep breath.

  “Come on,” he said, and he went through the door.

  45

  Ida stepped into the Coast City’s hangar, the others close behind. The space was lit in an eerie purple twilight, which Ida had thought was the station’s fritzed environment controls, but which he now knew was the same color as the light of Shadow, the light that would fuck you up, penetrating the supposedly shielded U-Star along with the interference on the comms and the roar of subspace, flooding the corners of the station like a ship taking on water. As Ida blinked, the edges of the hangar flickered with black shapes; darkness that swam, darkness that watched. The souls lost at sea. The Funayurei.

  Ahead, the two shuttle bays were occupied—the Magenta, nearest, and, beyond, the Bloom County, crouched on the cradle of Spider legs. And in the cavernous space between the two craft was her.

  Izanami sat on a great pyramid of red, brown, and olive green. At first it was just a tangled collection of shapes and colors, but as he got closer in the dim light Ida could make out an arm, a leg, a head, all clad in the scraps of Fleet uniform and soaked in blood. It was a pile of corpses, Ida realized, torn apart. The empty, discarded husks of those taken by the demon queen.

  Izanami was still clad in white, but the medic’s tunic was now a long flowing robe. Her hair was tied back, and across her chest was the black strap of a sword, the long red handle visible over her right shoulder. She sat at the apex of the corpse pile, ten meters from the hangar floor. Her robe was immaculate, and her eyes were burning blue coals, energy coursing out of them like smoke in the cold, still air.

  “Welcome, my captain,” she said, smiling.

  Ida tore his eyes from her and glanced around the hangar. “There’s no one else here,” he said to Serra. “If you were expecting help—”

  Izanami’s laugh interrupted him. At the edge of the hangar, the dancing shadows parted and DeJohn stepped forward, his hands resting on the shoulders of two men shuffling along beside him. The pair stared straight ahead, their arms by their sides, their faces slack, though their eyes were moving. They were caught, trapped by Izanami’s will.

  It was Provost Marshal King, and another man: older, his hair gray but full, small circular glasses still clinging to his face. The commandant of the Coast City, Price Elbridge.

&
nbsp; DeJohn directed them to the front of the stack of bodies, then pushed them to their knees. He stood, swaying, his bulging bloodshot eyes staring somewhere into the space between him and his queen, a thick tentacle of drool escaping his slack jaw to pool on the floor.

  King looked up at Ida and then at Serra, who stepped toward him. DeJohn jerked around, lurching toward her like a zombie. Serra stopped where she was, her eyes locked with the provost marshal’s.

  “No farther, psi-marine,” said Izanami from her corpse throne.

  Serra tilted her head at DeJohn. The marine rocked on his heels, seemingly unaware of his surroundings.

  “What happened to him?”

  “I was promised the best,” said Izanami, “but this man was weak. He broke easily.” She looked down at the humans below her. “But he still has limited use.”

  “Promised the best?” asked Ida. In the gloom on the other side of the hangar, he could see small yellow lights flickering inside the Bloom County’s flight deck. Serra was quiet and so was the ship, but he knew they were talking. He knew he had to play for time. “I can’t speak for the others, but I think you got the bad end of the deal. I’m a washed-up captain with a robot knee. I should be a damn colonel, at my age.”

  Izanami laughed. “Oh, Ida, my dear, handsome Ida, war hero and space captain. My poor, poor, Ida.”

  The demon’s smile vanished, and this time the flamelike radiance from her eyes seemed to spread out around her, enveloping her in a glowing, curling halo of blue fire, her hair and the trailing ends of her white robes billowing out around her.

  “But you are the best. Your Fleet Admiral has done well.” She pointed to the group one by one. “The best marine in the Fleet—Charlie Carter, who won the Fleet Medal for services rendered, who obeyed his orders and betrayed those he loved. Carmina Serra, the best psi-marine in the corps, her battle sense beyond the knowledge of even the Fleet Admiral himself, though her own power scares her, stunts her potential.

  “The Fleet’s best officer, Abraham Idaho Cleveland, and his ship, the Carcosa. A man who saved a planet even when it meant the death of those he loved, an officer never promoted, because the Fleet were desperate to keep him on the front lines, where the war was being fought and lost.”

  Izanami’s smile returned. “And the final prize, Zia Hollywood, lost in space, running from her past in her remarkable craft. The Spider I shall study and study until I have found its secret.” She laughed again. “Oh, such prizes as these. Nothing will stop us.”

  Carter found his voice. “What for? Why are you here?” He glanced at Ida out of the corner of his eye. Carter was in on the game, stalling for time.

  “The Fleet has bargained for its survival,” said Izanami. “The Spider war goes poorly and soon all of Fleetspace will be consumed by the machine gestalt. But now the Fleet has given me my freedom. You shall lead the Funayurei, and together we will all burn in the darkness.”

  Carter swore. Ida shook his head. “You really think the Fleet knew what they were dealing with? They thought they could get the genie back in the bottle.” He looked at the two prisoners on the floor in front of DeJohn. “But someone knew that was impossible. The commandant. He knew.”

  “He thought he could stop me,” said Izanami. She was amused, patient. Confident. Ida felt ill. “He was sent here to oversee the bargain—the very reason this station was built. But he realized what his Fleet Admiral had not, and he fought. I took him first, but he had anticipated this. He prepared instructions for the one he knew would replace him, one who was not a psi-marine but who could perhaps learn from the messages written in a book. The marshal learned well, learned how to resist, to fight. So I destroyed the book and then I took him.”

  “So,” said Zia, “you’re gonna eat your way through the whole universe, top to bottom. And then what?”

  “I am looking for my husband,” said Izanami. “He will suffer for his betrayal.” Izanami looked past the group, as though her husband had just walked into the hangar. “He trapped me behind the star, behind the gateway. I shall have revenge on life itself for this!”

  In the Bloom County’s cabin, yellow lights flashed again, and Serra spoke.

  “No,” she said. She stepped forward and DeJohn jerked, but he seemed unable to move. He shuddered on the spot, his eyes unfocused, a quiet moan escaping his throat.

  Izanami’s smile vanished, and she appeared on the hangar floor. In one swift movement she drew the sword from her back and swung it forward. The tip of blade spit electric blue in the dim light and stopped a hair from Serra’s throat.

  The lights inside the Bloom County flickered, brighter this time.

  “No farther!” Izanami had both hands wrapped tight around the sword’s handle. Serra didn’t move, but she smiled. The blue flame in Izanami’s eyes flared brightly.

  “You are not free yet,” said Serra. “The gateway can still be closed.”

  The commandant pulled himself awkwardly to his feet, King close behind. Izanami swept the sword in an arc toward the two men.

  Serra stepped forward. Carter went to follow, but Ida grabbed his arm and pulled him back. In the dark, the Bloom County’s windows were filled with flickering yellow light as the machine awoke.

  “You’ve miscalculated,” Serra said. “You’ve put two psi-marines and a Spider in the same room.”

  Serra turned to the commandant, then to the marshal. They all took a step forward.

  Izanami swept the sword back and forth, stepping backwards as the trio moved toward her. Her face was a twisted visage of hate, but there was something else. Hesitation.

  Fear.

  A sound filled the hangar: a roaring, mechanical and deep; pink noise and square waves and saw waves, in a pattern, repeating. The machine code of the Spiders.

  The two psi-marines and the marshal stepped forward and Izanami stepped backwards, toward the Bloom County. Her sword was still raised but she seemed reluctant, unable, to act. Around the edges of the hangar the shadows seemed to thin, the purple light growing brighter.

  Zia grabbed Ida’s arm. “What are they doing?”

  Serra answered, keeping her eyes fixed on the enemy. “She’s not here, not fully. Izanami is still in subspace. The three of us can interfere with her projection into our universe, for a short time.”

  Ida glanced at the Bloom County. The mining legs were moving now, tapping against the hangar floor like an agitated insect, making the whole ship rock gently.

  “And then what?”

  “And then—”

  Izanami screamed and lunged forward. Serra ducked to one side as the sword flashed past her, but Elbridge was not as fast. Izanami thrust her weapon through the commandant’s chest. He staggered back and looked down at her hand pressing the hilt of the sword into his chest, as if surprised that the blade was somehow real enough to be used as a weapon. Then Izanami pulled the sword free and, even as Ida, Zia, and Carter darted forward to help, spun on her heel and sliced diagonally through King from shoulder to waist. The two men toppled over; Serra cried out and dropped to her knees, her hands pressed against the side of her head as the machine roar that filled the hangar increased in volume, the mining legs of the Bloom County adding to the metallic cacophony.

  Something grabbed Ida and nearly lifted him off his feet as his forward momentum was checked. He swung around, one arm held fast by DeJohn. Carter lunged forward and grabbed Serra, the pair falling backwards as he pulled. Zia dodged DeJohn’s other roving hand and reached for Carter, helping him drag Serra away from Izanami.

  Ida dipped his head as DeJohn swung awkwardly with his other arm, like a puppet operated by a blind master. DeJohn’s haymaker sailed cleanly over Ida’s head as Ida threw a punch into the marine’s stomach. The attack did nothing, but DeJohn overbalanced, his grip on Ida’s arm loose. Ida pulled free and scrambled out of the way as the marine fell like a tree to the floor and didn’t move again.

  Ida spun around, fists clenched for a fight, and found himself face-to-fa
ce with Izanami.

  She smiled and raised the sword above her head. Ida was lit in the burning blue of her eyes as the blade came down.

  Someone screamed his name.

  46

  There was a flash of white light, and the roaring static snapped like a gunshot. Ida toppled backwards as something silver and cold appeared directly in front of him, pushing him back.

  Ludmila.

  She collapsed onto one knee, her arms raised, Izanami’s blade gripped in her gauntlets, the space radio set she had been holding skittering across the hangar floor. Izanami screamed and Ludmila pushed forward against the blade, pushing to her feet.

  “Now!” she said, her voice echoing from the space radio a dozen meters away. “It must be now!”

  Serra moaned in pain in Carter’s arms, and as Ida ran toward them, the Spider legs of the Bloom County thumped once, twice on the floor, the vibration nearly enough to send him tumbling again. Serra struggled to rise but then arched her back, her face distorted in pain.

  “It’s too much for her!” Carter yelled into Ida’s ear. “Without the other two, she’s on her own!”

  Ida looked over his shoulder. Ludmila and Izanami were locked together. Around the hangar, the shadows spun faster and faster. Time was running out.

  “Ida,” said Serra. Her hands grabbed at his legs, and he quickly dropped to one knee.

  “The … Spider,” she said, hand flailing toward Zia’s ship. “Spiders consume stellar cores. Fly it … fly it into Shadow, it’ll collapse the gateway. Trap her.”

  She pulled again at Ida, but he ignored her. Instead, he looked up at Zia. She shook her head. “You ain’t flying that thing into a star, peaches.”

  Serra jerked her head and hissed in pain. “No,” she said. “The Spider will fly it. It just … you just need to release it … release it and it can be guided in.”