Dark Between Oceans

by Belinda Crawford

  I blink out of the eter. Then blink again. There's a screen in front of my face, lines and diagrams... and symbols I kinda, maybe understand, like trying to read the map except this time there's that cool green sitting next to me, making sense out of the things I'm seeing, or the non-Jøran ones at least.

  Reading an ancient Terran book through wavy glass would be easier, but slowly the stuff on the screen starts to make sense.

  It feels like the awareness knows, and instead of symbols and lines, colours spread across the screen. Vibrant, eye-searing red and a calming blue, filling in the gaps between lines. Long thin rectangles and fat curves.

  I recognise a map, or the same map I was looking at on my palm unit, except this one is spread before me in some kind of heads-up display, overlaying the corridor, highlighting the edges in white, picking out the scars on the bulkheads, the fug clinging to the ceiling. Fainter white lines hug the curves of what looks like doors hidden in the bulkheads. The strange, swirling symbols pop up over each as my eyes roll over them. More information that hovers on the tip of my brain, hanging just out of reach.

  I guess it's Aeotu's language. Whatever that is.

  The meaning of the red is pretty clear though, especially when I roll over a patch of the red fug. There's no scream, but the display flashes and throbs, stabbing my eyes.

  I jerk away, eyes streaming.

  'Stop! Message received. Red is bad.'

  The cool green in my head pulses. There's no emotion attached, just a pulse, an acknowledgement.

  Dude hops onto my knee, humming away.

  The fug armour makes him look even more like a miniature rucnart, sleeking out all the fuzz, making his muzzle sharper, his legs longer. He's even got a tail now – as long as he is and tipped with a wicked barb. His ears though... His ears are huge – satellites attached to his tiny head, twitching and turning with a life of their own.

  Satisfaction rolls off of him.

  'Choose that yourself?'

  He hums. I think that's a yes.

  So, what was the red stuff and why does it feel like Grea? I remember it from before, following Core/drone through the ruined remnants of Stasis deck. The stuff had wound in with the other fug, red like blood, dripping from the holes in the stasis units, clinging to the bulkheads. It hadn't noticed me then, not like it was now, and I can't help but think Grea has something to do with it.

  The awareness is urging me to turn back, to find the safety of A/Rec. I can feel the cool green in the back of my head. I ignore it. Grea is here somewhere, in the mess of Aeotu and Citlali. I feel her like she's standing beside me, watching, waiting. Being absolutely no use at all except as a lodestone, a game of hot or cold, where my only clue to her location is the strength with which she glares at me.

  I can't go back.

  I turn to stare at the engine room hatch.

  I have to find my sister.

  CHAPTER TEN

  Trying to force my way back into the engine room is an exercise in futility. As soon as I get within three paces of the hatch, the fug jungle is on me like a bad case of stink. Wrapping around my arms and waist, holding me back while it crawls all over the Citlali's once-white bulkheads. Eventually, there's a half-metre of grey-green nano-tech between me and the engine room's hatch.

  I'd accuse it of being Grea, or Grea of being it, getting between me and where I want to go just to piss me off. Except I can feel Grea, and she's not in the grey-green.

  Instead, I go up. And up, and up, following that trail of Grea, crawling through maintenance tubes, fug-feet slipping on ladder rungs, for once more nuisance than help. I go all the way past the Ag decks, and both A/Recs, sticking close to the back of the ship and the engines, and I keep climbing until I'm back where all this started.

  Stasis.

  I shiver as I crawl out of the access hatch. Ghosts haunt the deck. I feel them on my neck, knowing without having to look that there are more bodies lying here than there are walking around. That gem comes from the awareness; an exact count hovers on the tip of my consciousness, there if I want to reach for it. I don't.

  Not all of them are dead, and not all of the bodies are here, the awareness shares that too, although I remember it on my own well enough; the minds reaching out to me in the dark place where Aeotu changed me.

  Yeah, I remember a lot of things. Like how, before I was ejected into space, the engine containment was failing, how the miniature sun that powered the faster-than-light drive was going to explode and turn us all into atoms. I remember, too, standing in the corridor on A/Rec listening to Jim Engineer say he'd fixed the shielding but didn't have the material to kickstart the fusion generator.

  So, point one: I'm clearly not dead, which means the reactor didn't blow, and point two: someone must have found some fusion material 'cause that sucker was on. And last but not least, I'm almost half-sure that Jim wasn't the one to plaster the reactor core with red fug.

  The bulkhead at the back of the little Engineering lab is gone, as are the walls of the maintenance tunnel behind it, and the freight tube beyond that, leaving a straight shot to the main engine.

  The miniature sun is no longer the dull orange of a dying star, it blazes bright enough to burn out my retinas. Only the shimmer of the containment field and the fug combine to refract the light and save my eyes. I'm not so sure about the rest of me though.

  It's bad. Really, really bad. The red fug is crawling all over the reactor, cords of energy writhing over it, curling around each individual strand as if to cage the power. Heat rises off of the core, a haze warping the air, bringing with it the scent of burnt ozone and the acrid, musty taste of ash.

  The sense of Grea is strongest here, feels like she's standing right beside me; but she's not. She's in there somewhere, behind the writhing wall of red. Behind the containment field, as impossible as that is. If Grea is behind the containment field, then she's burning alive.

  She's my twin; I'd feel that, know that. All I feel, all I know is that Grea is here but not.

  'Grea!' Grea! I yell her name with voice and mind.

  The red shivers.

  'Grea!' Grea!

  The red moves, vines separating from the wall, turning like they're looking at me, and for a moment there's a presence, an intelligence staring back at me.

  'Grea?'

  It rumbles, a deep, steady GRUUMMMM.

  I step forward. Dude huddles against my neck. 'Grea, are you there? Can you hear me?'

  GRUUMMM.

  Another step, but while my feet are moving forward, I can't help the part of me that leans back, that whispers that this isn't right. 'Just hang on, I'm going to get you out—'

  A red spear hurtles at my face.

  I throw myself aside, feeling the burn of the fug weapon on my back.

  {{ Danger. }}

  'I know! Tell me something useful!'

  There's no response, but the voice is growing stronger, rising behind the cool green of the fug. I can see it, not just on the eter, but see it, with my eyes, floating around me like fog, rising out of the deck, taking on form beside me.

  It looks like the Citlali AI, and yet… not. Different. It's faceless, with but the suggestion of features, a squished nose, the vague shape of too-big eyes. It opens a slash that might be a mouth, showing protrusions that might be canines – too long and too sharp to be human, too small to be kin. And somehow, some way, it's linked to Hunt.

  When it speaks, it uses Core's voice. {{ Run, Kuma. }}

  'Core?'

  It shakes its head. {{ No. Run. }}

  'No, I have to find Grea.'

  {{ Not here. }}

  'Then where?'

  {{ Not here. Run. }}

  No. No.

  Grea is here, I can feel her. Somewhere amongst the mess of fug and the crumbled remnants of Stasis, my sister is waiting for me, drawing me on.

  {{ Run! }}

  I run; I run straight into the fug.

  The fug armour responds. One second I'm me, all fleshy an
d pale gold, the next I'm sheathed in grey-green, plates interlocking over my arms, clicking into place over my face, the weird visor thing over my eyes. And then there are blades coming out of my arms and there's red all around me, screaming in my ears, smacking against my ribs, my back, reaching for legs and feet. Slash, slash, slash. My arms know what to do without me telling them, and tendrils of the red stuff crash to the deck, severed sections of vines wailing a new song, one of rage and pain.

  And still the red fug fights, a new vine thunking into my sides for every one I cut down. THUNK THUNK THUNK. There's no pain. No crushing, crunching snap. Just the hollow sound as they beat against my armour. The sound reverberates in my bones

  Through it all, I can feel Grea sitting on the edge of my awareness, there and yet not.

  Heat. It starts out as a small discomfort against my back, another pain amidst the dozen sneaking through the armour. It's nothing, and then it's everything, consuming my spine, racing over my scalp, clutching my cheekbones in molten talons and going for my eyes.

  An inferno ripping through my skin,

  I scream, but there's no air, no sound, nothing save the fire.

  Red is taking over my vision, flashing and wailing, and there's that voice, Core/not-Core yelling at me, her/its words a jumble of lip movements and arms. I can't hear her/it, can't hear anything but the rush of flame.

  I'm on the deck, and there's the red fug, eating through the grey-green stuff, turning it to ash, just like it's turning me to ash, eating my armour, seeking out the flesh beneath.

  No.

  No.

  I roll. Thrash. My hands are blocks of steelcrete, numb and clumsy, resisting my brain. I roll again, slapping useless limbs on the deck, against my sides, trying to reach the molten hole at the base of my spine, needing to reach it, to rip it off and—

  There's a shape above me. Huge. Dark. Blocking out the slashing tendrils of fug. And then it's gone, leaping over me into the arms of the red.

  I'm twisting, knees under me, pushing off the deck. Watching. Blades the length of my arms rip at the vines, making them screech and wail.

  Alarms blare in front of my face, screaming red, like the fug, and Core/not-Core wails in my ear. I'm spinning around, blades springing from my own arms. Hunt films my vision, makes my heart loud and sluggish, slows down time until I'm moving through seconds like they're minutes. Long, dragging strings of time in which to twist and cut. The fug's wail becomes a song of pain, tendrils hitting the deck, turning to dust. There's a warm spot in the small of my back, a sense of the other – saviour, person, helper – moving, of their presence, perceived not by my empathy, but on the tingle of the awareness. I move and he moves, each of us spinning and slashing like we're two parts of a whole. Breathing together, hearts beating in unison.

  Hunt, or something like it, is riding him too, and with the bit of my brain that is still me, the piece hidden behind Hunt, I wonder if this is how the tree-kin feel, what it's like to be part of a pack, the sense that I'm not alone.

  A brother/not-brother watching my back.

  It's not like what I have with Grea, there's none of the friction, the constant nagging, the fighting, even amongst the closeness of twins. Without thinking, he's at my side, and we're hacking and slashing in unison, Hunt silent in my head but the map over my face updating, showing us the way forward.

  Aeotu floats between Mac and I, a conduit negating the need for speech or thought.

  I lose time, lose everything but the wail of fug and the endless swing of my blades, the way they slice through tendril after tendril. It's hypnotic.

  My arms ache, and there's a pit of hunger eating through my belly when we stop.

  One moment I'm a cog in a two-part wrecking machine, and the next I'm... not. Aeotu is gone as easily as she came, the connection to my not-brother with it, and I'm alone in my brain, without even the awareness for company. I'm hot, my breath is coming hard, and the deck looks really, really good right now, comfy almost.

  A hand grips my arm before my knees melt.

  There're no words, but that connection is back, running through my armour, hitting my brain. Warm and bloodthirsty, single-minded. But behind Aeotu, I sense something else, a familiar orange, a dull throb of emotion. Calm but not.

  'Mac?'

  There's no response, just that hand on my arm, tugging me up and forward.

  I tug back, grabbing the other by the shoulders and spinning him around. He's humanoid, that much I can tell through the grey-green of his fug armour, but everything else... The Mac from the eter. His faceplate a solid shield, featureless, shiny, a little too long for a human face, a little too narrow. And his shoulders... The Mac I remember is tall and not big, not muscled up but he actually used the gym, had muscles like solid bits of rope in his arms. The Mac before me is huge, a rucnart taken to its hind legs. And maybe it is, maybe that familiar orange tickling the back of my eter is wishful thinking, a ghost of my best friend's anima somehow clinging to the thing in front of me.

  'Mac?' I say again.

  A response, so tiny, so faint it could be a trick of my imagination. A flash of something on the very edge of psionic reach.

  I dive in, leaving my body behind, trusting it to Dude and the fug armour to protect me. The last bit feels wrong, dangerous in a way that I shouldn't even contemplate, but... Is this Mac? I'm in my eter before I've even really thought it through. Mac would do the same for me if he could. I know he would, deep down in the pit of me. He's a part of me in the same way that Grea is a part of me, connected to my anima by the bonds of friendship and the start of something deeper, he just does his best to ignore it.

  Threads of the fug's grey-green still wind through the psionic plane, still creep around me, forming their mirage over my skin though my fug parts are more solid, lacing over my feet and winding up my arms, still ghostly but... I don't know. More a part of me, taking on the vibrant pink-red of my being. They feel different too, still alien, still aware but... Complex and… agreeing, or is that promising? Whatever it is, there's the sense of protection of… looking after my body, standing in the corridor.

  Okay. That's new.

  The glimmer is on the edge of the eter, and I have no time to contemplate the latest development. Pale orange, a ripple of silver within a casing of bronze.

  I reach for it, leaving the fug behind, even the fug-me. For the first time since I came out of the stasis unit, I'm just me, and it feels... lonely and free and... There's no time for this. The orange flash that's Mac, fades. Or maybe it runs, it's hard to tell. He's a mirage, eluding me even as I chase him, never getting closer, but not getting any farther away either.

  Mac. I push the thought ahead of me, encasing it in a complex wave of emotion. Patience, anticipation, happiness, welcome. The warmth of home, of old memories, of the tight knot in the pit of my anima, the bit he gave me that's more than the affection of friends. The bit he pretends he forgot. There's no colour to describe the emote, it just is. It's a Mac-seeking missile and it arrows after that glimmer faster than he can possibly escape—

  I feel it hit him, a shudder in the fabric of the eter, a tug on the knot in my chest. Feel him stop, feel...

  Feel Aeotu. Cold and sharp, the kaleidoscope of her being no longer a conduit between us but a web under his skin.

  I stop.

  Aeotu/Mac stops.

  Turns.

  I'm in front them/him. Staring up at that face, the dark brows, the square chin, seeing through it like his flesh is crystal and underneath...

  A flat nose and liquid eyes every colour of the rainbow stare back at me. Double arms squished under Mac's skin, wrapped around his torso, whorls and lines carved into stone-like skin, twisting and turning, capturing my gaze, drawing me in.

  'Aeotu.'

  Sister.

  'Get out of him.'

  Refusal, it shines violet from under Mac's skin.

  I feel the flesh peel back from my teeth, feel the prick as they sharpen, feel my ankles bend and my
fingers ache and lengthen. Feel the vines of fug-me, crawling up my legs, wrapping solid, grey-pink tendrils around my calves.

  Aeotu/Mac shrinks.

  A growl rumbles through the eter, shaking the endless white, even as rage gleams red at my feet.

  I lunge. Arms wrap around Aeotu/Mac, grey-pink encasing them/him in vines and dive into their being, trying to peel back the layers of Aeotu and—

  Aeotu is gone, vanished without a fight, leaving just me and Mac in the eter.

  'Kuma?'

  'Mac.' I step back, feel the smile break my face even as relief saturates the air. 'Hey.'

  Confusion rides the space between his eyes, knotting the skin together and rising around him in a muddy grey fog. He looks down, at the Mac-fug gathered around his feet and hands. The first spark of alarm turns the confusion green.

  'It's just fug.' I step forward, dipping down a little to catch his eyes. 'It's okay, I've got it too. See?' I lift my hands, twisting and turning them to show off the ghost of claws hovering around my fingers. A little concentration and a twitch of my forearm and the blades spring out too. 'Just fug,' I say again, keeping the smile on my face. Or trying to.

  It's kinda hard when Mac's just looking at me, brows still crunched together and those bright sparks of alarm running through his emotions.

  I'm waiting for him to say something. Anything. My name was a good start. But he just continues to stare.

  'Mac?'

  Nothing. Well, almost nothing. His eyes are moving, drifting over my face, finally looking at my hands. He reaches out, traces a finger over the fug-me, starting in the palm of my hand and then up, over my wrist, the inside of my arm, leaving a tingle in his wake, a fine, heady fuzz that spreads through my skin and makes my toes want to curl. He keeps tracing, over my shoulder, across my collarbone. It takes me longer than it should, a second that feels like a minute...

  I'm blaming it on the tingle, on half-filled wishes and dreams I haven't told anyone about. It's not until Mac's finger finishes tracing across my chest and over my opposite shoulder that I realise, he's not touching me. I mean, he kind of is, because you know... Whatever. The thing that has Mac's attention isn't me, it's just on me, or in me or... you know what, I'll sort it out later. Right now, the important thing is that my best friend is concentrating on the air next to my left ear. Concentrating really, really hard, and that knot of confusion between his brow... it's changing, the lines deepening, the bewildered, slightly blank expression turning hot and angry, the air around him boiling.