The Burning Dark
Page 30
Ida and Zia looked at each other. Zia was shaking her head.
Ida frowned. “Release it?”
Zia pointed at the ship. “There’s a quantum dampener around the Spider’s CPU, to stop its psi-fi field interfering with the ship’s systems. Fleet standard unit. That must be what she means.”
Serra moaned again.
Ida turned. The space radio. It lay on the floor just a few meters away. He started toward it when Zia grabbed him. He turned and pointed at the Magenta behind them. “Warm up the shuttle,” Ida said. “Get them out of here.”
“What are you going to do?”
Ida ducked forward and grabbed the radio set. The light on the front was bright blue, like the flames that haloed Ludmila and Izanami behind them. He turned and saw Izanami’s blade inch closer to Ludmila’s golden visor.
“Take this,” he said, passing her the radio. “Serra can guide the Spider in from the shuttle.”
Zia clutched the radio to her chest and was about to speak when Ida waved her off.
“Go! I’ll release the dampener. Go!”
She nodded finally and ran back to Carter and Serra. Ida watched as Zia and Carter lifted Serra between them and carried her toward the shuttle.
Ida stood and took a breath. He was the best captain in the Fleet. He wasn’t known for taking risks, but he was known for thinking outside the box. He’d saved Tau Retore, earned the Fleet Medal. And then the Fleet had erased him from history, handing him over to an entity from another dimension in exchange for victory over the Spiders.
It was time to set the record straight.
The hangar shook. Ida ran toward the Bloom County. As he did, Izanami pushed Ludmila to her knees, but Ludmila twisted her hands sideways and the demon’s sword dropped to the floor. Ludmila fell sideways with it and Izanami turned, floating a meter from the hangar floor, her outline blazing, blue and awful.
Ida’s foot hit the edge of the Bloom County’s ramp and he tripped, his robot knee hitting the decking, jarring his whole body. Ida yelled out, seeing his own shadow cast in front of him by the blue light, fierce and terrible behind him. He turned, and Izanami floated toward him quickly.
Behind her, Ludmila was already on her feet. She picked the sword up from where it lay. Ida blinked and she was closer, then closer again—one moment far away, the next close enough to touch, close enough to see one eye, see her face, through her smashed visor.
Close enough to push the sword through Izanami. Ludmila moved forward again, walking this time, until Ida imagined the hilt of the sword was hard again the demon’s back.
Izanami reached for Ida and paused, the blade of the sword protruding cleanly through her torso, the tip stopping just short of Ida’s face. There was no blood, just a faint blue light leaking from her. Izanami smiled and looked Ida in the eye, and for a moment he saw the medic he’d met an eon ago, the only friendly face in a hostile world. Then her expression darkened, and she snarled as cracks appeared across her face, and then across her body. She began to flake away, like ash from a fire. The cracks widened, a burning blue light shining through the channels, the same as the light in her eyes, the same as the light of the space radio.
Ludmila yelled and pulled the sword out, and Izanami shattered and was gone. Ludmila fell to her knees, the sword bouncing across her legs and to the floor before it too broke into a thousand shards, the pieces salting the floor before vanishing in an instant. The roar of subspace was louder than ever, meshed with the hard staccato of the Spider code. Around the edges of the hangar, the Funayurei swarmed in anger at the defeat of their queen, and under Ida’s back, the Bloom County’s ramp bounced as the mining legs twitched and twitched again.
Ida dragged himself to where Ludmila knelt. He cradled her cracked helmet in his hands, ignoring the white pain of cold that seared his palms. He watched his reflection in the part of the golden visor that was intact, and met her eye through the part that was broken. He fumbled for the helmet’s catch, his fingers on fire. Finally, the helmet twisted and the catch came free.
“Hello, Ida,” she said.
Her helmet clattered to the floor, and Ludmila—the first woman in space, the cosmonaut lost one thousand years ago, the pioneer who had burned in the atmosphere over Siberia in her capsule, the hero erased from all history and memory—smiled at Ida.
Her smile was the most beautiful thing in the world. He wanted to touch her skin but he was afraid that she would break, that she would tear like tissue paper. Her hair was short and spiky. Her eyes were blue and her teeth were white, and Ida almost passed out.
He felt a touch on his face, slight pinpricks of contact that burned like fire. He opened his eyes and found she had managed to take her gloves off, her long, delicate fingers on his cheeks, their icy touch like a flaming brand. Her face drew close, and he could feel no breath, smell no scent. She smiled and kissed him lightly. It was like kissing the terminal of a battery, and afterwards his lips were dry and numb.
Ludmila. Dead and alive at the same time, a soul lost at sea, like the others.
“Are you really here?” he asked, and he felt foolish for doing so.
Ludmila nodded. The hangar shook as the Bloom County thumped the floor, and she stood, pulling Ida up with her, his arm aching where she held him. Over her shoulder, Ida could see the lights of the Magenta flick on, piercing the purple haze of the hangar with brilliant sharp white.
“The Spider,” he said. “We need to deactivate the dampener, then get back to the shuttle. We—”
“I cannot come with you,” Ludmila said. “I don’t belong here.”
“What? But you’re real, aren’t you?”
She shook her head. “Someone needs to direct the Spider toward the gateway while Serra blocks Izanami. Her projection may be lost, but that won’t stop her trying to pull herself across the bridge.”
“But the Spider can fly this ship, can’t it? Serra said—”
Ludmila shook her head. “The Spider is not awake, not truly,” she said. “I will try to show it the way.”
“You sure you can pilot it?”
Ludmila hesitated.
“I’ll fly it,” said Ida. Ludmila gasped in surprise, but Ida just nodded. “We can’t take the chance. Go on.” He gestured up the ramp just as the hangar shook again. “Go!”
Ludmila ran up into the Bloom County. Ida turned. On the other side of the hangar, Zia appeared on the Magenta’s ramp, waving furiously at him.
No. There was too much at stake. Izanami had to be stopped.
Ida stepped up onto the rising ramp of the Bloom County. He turned in time to see Zia yell something and move away from the shuttle before a thick hand caught her arm and pulled her back inside. She fought, but the effort was token.
Ida saluted Carter. Carter hesitated, then perhaps realizing Ida’s plan, saluted back, and then the ramp was closed.
Ida stood in the passageway inside the Bloom County, took a deep breath, and then jogged toward the flight deck.
47
The main viewscreen of the U-Star Magenta showed the aft view as the shuttle limped away from the Coast City. The disk of Shadow convulsed as a giant flare of solar material was ejected from its surface. Silhouetted against the star, the incomplete torus of the space station looked tiny.
“Come on, come on,” Carter muttered, knuckles white as he pushed the main thruster controls. Next to him Serra sat motionless, her eyes closed, her skin pale and a layer of sweat across her brow. On her lap sat the space radio, the blue light illuminating her slick skin, making her almost glow. She moaned in pain.
Zia clutched the arms of the commander’s chair as she watched Carter wrestle with the controls.
“Can’t this piece of junk go any faster?”
“Engines are still cold,” said Carter. “Shuttles aren’t known for their quick getaways.”
Zia glanced at the viewscreen. She assumed the shuttle’s computer was filtering the light from the star, making it safe to look at, but after
a moment she closed her eyes, just in case. She imagined her own ship, the famous P-Prof Bloom County, racing toward the star as they pulled away, the Spider at the heart of the craft waking, sensing the star nearby with a terrible hunger. She only hoped that it would all work. Otherwise, they weren’t making it out of the system alive and would join the others taken by Izanami to fill the ranks of the Funayurei.
Serra cried out. Her scream was primal, animal, full of pain and despair. Zia’s eyes flew open and she saw Serra jerk back in her chair, her back arched, before she slumped into it and didn’t move. Her breathing was shallow and fast.
“Hey, Serra! Hang in there!” Carter risked letting go of the uncooperative yoke with one hand as he reached over and rocked her knee.
Something flared on the viewscreen, white and red and expanding, flooding the shuttle’s control cabin with blinding light. Zia squinted into the screen, one arm raised instinctively against the light. The violet white disk of Shadow had gone, replaced by a rippling mass of colors as the star went nova.
“Bingo,” Zia whispered. The gateway was closed; it had to be. She only hoped Izanami had still been behind it.
“Shit,” said Carter. “Hold on to something.”
A few seconds later, the Magenta was pitched forward at forty-five degrees as the shock wave from the stellar explosion reached them. An alarm sounded, and the control cabin’s lights flicked to an angry emergency red.
The trio bounced in their seats as Carter pulled at the controls, helpless as the shuttle rode the leading edge of the explosion.
On the viewscreen, the Coast City and the Carcosa boiled away into nothing but hot atoms in space a hundred thousand klicks behind them. Another alarm sounded, and Carter swore as the yoke kicked in his hands. Then the Magenta righted itself and the emergency lighting switched back to white. On the viewscreen, the nova slid out of the bottom of the picture as Carter pulled the shuttle up and accelerated, just enough to escape the explosion, the still-cold engines screaming in protest.
Serra sighed and rolled her head against the back of her seat. Carter reached over to Serra and squeezed her hand.
It was over. Shadow was gone, along with the space station, along with, Zia realized, everyone still held captive aboard the Carcosa. They couldn’t have saved them, that she knew, but she also wished there had been some other way.
Zia watched the empty viewscreen for a moment. Then she stood and left the control cabin without a word. In her hand she held the space radio, which she had picked up from where it fell as the ship had bucked.
* * *
In the Bloom County, there was—had been—a window directly above her cot. It was a custom installation, but it let the starlight fall on her as she slept.
The Magenta was Fleet-standard modular design, and had no such customization in its simple, functional crew quarters.
But there were inspection windows in the cargo hold, which is where Zia had dragged her bedding and mattress, making herself a nest under the angle of the ceiling on a high shelf on one side of the hold, directly underneath the porthole. It wasn’t that comfortable, but it would do for the long haul back to the nearest way station—they had discovered the Magenta’s drive had been damaged in the shock wave from Shadow’s explosion, and Carter had estimated the crawl to port would take ten cycles or more. If they were careful with the shuttle’s standard emergency supplies, they would make it. Just.
But she had the starlight, and that made her happy. That, and something else.
Zia rolled over and reached forward to adjust the controls of the silver space radio set that sat on a shelf on the wall beside the makeshift bed. After a second or two there was a pop and a crackle and the room was filled with the rolling sound of the ocean. There was another sound too, of someone breathing, faint, thin, and far away.
Contact had been established.
“Good night, Ida.”
Hiss-pop-crackle-pop.
Zia lay back, closed her eyes, and listened to the echo of stars as the Magenta powered out of the Upsilon system, the system that had once been bathed in the strange light of Shadow, the light that would fuck you up. But now the star field was a dazzling spectrum of color as the remnants of the star glowed in space.
A voice spoke, thin and reedy and an infinite distance away, but Zia was sleeping under the stars and dreaming of her mother, of her father.
“Good night, Zia Hollywood,” said Ida.
Somewhere in the roar behind him, a woman laughed.
MAY 19, 1961
Five … four … three … two … one …
One … two … three … four … five …
Come in … come in … come in …
LISTEN … LISTEN!… COME IN!
Come in … come in … Talk to me! Talk to me!…
I am hot!… I am hot!
What?… Forty-five?… What?… Forty-five?… Fifty?…
Yes … Yes … Yes … Breathing … breathing … oxygen … oxygen …
I am hot.… This … Isn’t this dangerous?… It’s all … Isn’t this dangerous?… It’s all …
Yes … yes … yes … How is this?
What?… Talk to me!… How should I transmit? Yes … yes … yes … What? Our transmission begins now.…
Forty-one … this way … Our transmission begins now.…
Forty-one … this way … Our transmission begins now.…
Forty-one … yes … I …
I feel hot.… I feel hot.… It’s all … It’s hot.…
I feel hot.… I feel hot.… I feel hot.…
I can see a flame!… What?… I can see a flame!… I can see a flame!…
I feel hot.… I feel hot.… Thirty-two … Thirty-two … Forty-one … Forty-one …
Am I going to crash?
Yes … Yes … I feel hot!… I feel hot!…
I will reenter!… I will reenter.…
I am listening!…
I feel
By Adam Christopher
Empire State
The Age Atomic
Seven Wonders
Hang Wire
The Burning Dark
About the Author
ADAM CHRISTOPHER is the author of Empire State, Seven Wonders, and The Age Atomic. Born in Auckland, New Zealand, he grew up watching Pertwee-era Doctor Who and listening to The Beatles, which isn’t bad for a child of 80s.
In 2006, he moved to the North West of England. When not writing, he can be found drinking tea and obsessing over superhero comics and The Cure. Visit him at www.adamchristopher.co.uk.
This is a work of fiction. All of the characters, organizations, and events portrayed in this novel are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.
THE BURNING DARK
Copyright © 2014 by Seven Wonders Limited
All rights reserved.
Cover art by Will Staehle
A Tor Book
Published by Tom Doherty Associates, LLC
175 Fifth Avenue
New York, NY 10010
www.tor-forge.com
Tor® is a registered trademark of Tom Doherty Associates, LLC.
The Library of Congress has cataloged the print edition as follows:
Christopher, Adam, 1978–
The Burning Dark / Adam Christopher.—First Edition.
p. cm.
“A Tom Doherty Associates Book.”
ISBN 978-0-7653-3508-1 (hardcover)
ISBN 978-1-4668-2086-9 (e-book)
1. Science fiction. 2. Suspense fiction. I. Title.
PR6103.H76B87 2014
823'.92—dc23
2013025214
e-ISBN 9781466820869
First Edition: March 2014
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