Crescent

by Phil Rossi

  “Go.” He gave Gerald a hard push.

  (•••)

  “They’ve taken Gerald.” Marisa spoke into Gerald’s apartment comm terminal. She hadn’t bothered dressing; the bedsheet was still wrapped around her naked form as it had been when they hauled him away.

  Her stomach churned.

  “Marisa, that’s the third time you’ve said that. You need to relax,” Nigel said. His image frowned on the screen. He looked weary. Marisa recognized the look. Crescent was finally getting to him.

  “Nigel, we have to go get him. They’re gonna hurt him,” she said. They were probably already hurting him. If they hurried, they could save Gerald from any permanent damage.

  “No,” Nigel said. “Not yet.”

  “What do you mean, not yet? They’re probably beating Gerald to a bloody pulp as we speak.” Stupid horny assholes, Marisa thought, so stupid. She wanted to puke.

  “I agree we have to do something, but we’re not prepared to go in there and grab him. Think about it for a second. We don’t have any backup whatsoever.”

  She felt her cheeks flush.

  “Waiting isn’t going to change that. We’ll be as outnumbered today as we’ll be tomorrow. They’re going… ” A ball of hot grief choked her. Tears began to well up in her eyes.

  “They’re not going to kill him. Not while I’m around. In less than two days there will be a ship arriving. A colony ship. There are going to be undercover agents on that ship. That’s when we’ll make our move.”

  “Two days?” Marisa said couldn’t believe what she was hearing. “In two fucking days do you think it’s going to matter?” The thought made the nausea double.

  “Don’t do anything stupid, Marisa. You’re no use to Gerald dead and he’s going to need both of us to get him out of this mess. They are not going to kill him. Not yet. So don’t be a bloody fool. Am I clear?”

  “Yes. Infuriatingly fucking clear. Goddamn it, Nigel.”

  “I’m sorry, Marisa. I thought that Gerald would have gotten into hiding sooner.”

  “Yeah, we made a mistake. And now he’s paying for it.” And so was she. She clicked off the terminal and threw up.

  (•••)

  Gerald slept, and Gerald dreamed. He dreamed he was back on Anrar III. Above him the sky was striped with gray clouds and deep blue. A cold and familiar wind bit at his cheeks. He was barefoot and the ground was like ice beneath his bare feet; his calves clenched painfully with each step he took. I know damn well this is a dream, he thought, but still I think I might freeze my balls off. The wind howled as he walked through the grove of obsidian spires. And still, the rocky columns radiated a cold of their very own, so strong that their chill rivaled the wind.

  Gerald came out on the other side of the grove. The gaping hole in the planet’s surface was as dark and menacing as he remembered it.

  Gerald felt something shift, all around him.

  He couldn’t quite define the sensation—it felt like something big, heavy, and alive was rolling over. Gerald then experienced a gripping instant of déjà vu. The air shimmered before his eyes; it looked like the very atmosphere had been turned to ice. Tiny particles captured the light for a glittering heartbeat and then the air cleared.

  A spaceport and a mine/refinery stood where the hole had just been. A rover with a spherical, translucent glass cockpit left the structure on large, rubbery wheels, and another rover approached. Atop the spaceport was a squat, bulbous shuttle with Murhaté 01 emblazoned in yellow across its starboard side. A lifeboat hovered above the shuttle. Steaming exhaust drifted upward from glowing vents at the ship’s aft. The wind caught the wisps of white vapor, twisting them viciously before dissipating the tendrils.

  Gerald approached a large window on the spaceport’s face. Fresh grit and dust from one of the planet’s frequent rain and wind storms covered the main viewport. Gerald was able to make out moving shapes through the grime. He considered entering the building, but knew his destination lay at the top of the slope—the geological outpost.

  Gerald left the spaceport. He walked into the wind; every step was a little more painful than the last. Gravity licked at his knee and hip joints with invisible flames—unseen, but definitely felt. When he finally reached the top of the hill, he was breathless and on the verge of passing out. His clothes were drenched through with sweat.

  Gerald stood outside Geological Outpost Murhaté and listened. There were muffled voices on the other side of the metal door; the sounds of their conversation were indiscernible. Apart from the voices and the wind, there were also whispers circled his head like flies; the disembodied voices zoomed in close and pulled away. It made Gerald feel dizzy. If he didn’t get away from the disorienting whispers, he could envision himself losing his balance, falling over, and tumbling down the hill. The door opened and he tottered over the threshold.

  It was dark inside the outpost. Gerald took several steps forward. A meager light leaked out from underneath the shelves with a yellowish glow that stretched and spread like sinews joining each dark, blotchy shadow. He walked into the clearing where the all shelves had been pushed back. The circle of stones he had witnessed on his visit to the outpost with Ina was illuminated by a concentric ring of candles. The flames shifted in the drafts that floated through the large, open space. Shadow moved across the walls and the ceiling like an undulating curtain of tar.

  The metal ring was suspended in the center of the circle just as it had been on Gerald’s previous visit to the surface. Instead of a barely identifiable corpse hanging at the heart of the ring, there was a woman hanging there. She was naked save for black cables that bound her to the metal piping. Her stomach was swollen with child. At least fifty people, all wearing dirty mining coveralls, stood around the circle. Some were chanting, some were whispering. All looked up at the woman. She was motionless save for the occasional lolling of her head to the left and right. She appeared to be drugged.

  A female shouted from outside, accompanied by pounding on the entrance door. Although the voice was muffled, Gerald heard the word “stop” very clearly. But each time the woman yelled, the whispers that buzzed around his head increased in frequency and volume. Soon, Gerald could hear nothing else. Guttural, unintelligible sounds mingled with the whispers. Inhuman and terrifying, the sounds made him want to scream. The pregnant woman’s head rose. She opened her eyes and began to cry out. A man walked through the circle. Dressed in black mining coveralls, he was surrounded by a dim corona of violet light. The gravity did not appear to bother the man.

  And why would it? If he was a miner, he would’ve been acclimated to the higher gravity prior to assignment on the planet.

  There was an A-frame ladder erected beneath the pregnant woman. She now struggled against the cords that bound her arms and wrists. The dark man climbed up the ladder and stopped when he was at the same level as her belly, raising an object above his head. The object was hard to identify from Gerald’s vantage point, but it looked like to be some sort of crude tool, similar to a scraper used by humankind’s prehistoric ancestors. The dark man dragged the tool across the woman’s round stomach. The wound left in the object’s wake was ragged and bloody. Gerald averted his gaze.

  There was a woosh—like all the air had just been sucked out of the vast room. Everything went dead still. Then there was a flash red light. For an instant, crimson was all Gerald could see. When his vision returned, all that remained of the pregnant woman was a torso hanging from the metal ring. Her entire midsection was gone. Her innards hung out as glistening tatters. The fifty people that had been gathered around the base of the scaffolding were now laying one atop the other, completely motionless. Gerald turned and ran back the way he had come.

  Something blasted by him—red, violet, and black—and the exit door flew open ahead of him. There was a cry on the outside. Gerald stumbled on the door’s raised threshold and broke free of the outpost’s shadows with a tumbling fall. He rolled onto his back and saw the shuttle, Murhaté
01, rising from the small spaceport. Three amorphous blobs of color—red, violet, and black—raced toward it. The colors, trying to get off the planet, Gerald thought. He could feel it now—a lifeforce’s blind desire to be free of Anrar III. It’s too worked up, Gerald thought, it can’t do it.

  Gerald clambered to his feet.

  The red orb of light slammed into the shuttle. It exploded instantaneously; the resulting fireball crashed down into the spaceport. The structure buckled, collapsed, and then exploded itself. Gerald felt the anguish from the crimson thing. Glimmering, red blots of light like fireflies rained down around him. The light pooled around his feet and flowed like run-off back into the geological station. Another lifeboat screamed across the sky. The Violet and Black raced past in pursuit. He saw the Violet seep into the lifeboat. The Black continued to race toward the sky, closing in on the shuttle before both disappeared.

  Reality trembled.

  The air filled with glittering.

  And then he was awake.

  Slowly, he sat up on the metal cot. The strange dream seeped back into the darker reaches of his consciousness. His limbs were stiff and his lower back ached. Gerald looked to the confining bars of the cell. Bars. Simple and ridiculously effective. They were still firmly in place. He rubbed his forehead where Albin had clubbed him and then he hopped off the cot. Security had taken his boots when they booked him and the floor was cold.

  And his feet were dirty.

  He shook his head at the sight and took a deep, cleansing breath.

  Gerald went to the bars and gave them a tug—because that’s what you do when you’re in jail: you tug at the bars and shout something like “Hey! Lemme outta here!” But Gerald didn’t really feel like shouting, so he sat back down on the cot and placed his head in his hands. He was as good as dead now. Marisa, don’t you try and break me out of jail, Gerald thought, and couldn’t help but laugh. The situation defied logic.

  “Gerald.”

  He lifted his eyes. Ina stood outside the cell. Her pretty fingers were wrapped around the bars.

  “Are you okay?” she asked.

  Gerald shrugged and stood back up. Damn cold floor, he thought. He walked over to the bars, stepping with the sides of his feet as he went, trying to limit contact with the cold floor panels. He put his hands over hers—once again, this seemed like the prison thing to do.

  “I’m fine,” Gerald said. “I have a headache and I’m a little stiff from sleeping on that cot.” The response felt too matter-of-fact. He changed gears. “How’d you know I was here?”

  “Heathen’s… Maerl. I went looking for you. Maerl told me you were taken here. He overheard Albin Catlier talking to someone about you.”

  “Who was Albin talking to? Do you know—did Maerl say?” Gerald asked.

  “No. Maerl just said Crescent security.”

  Gerald sighed. It could have been anyone from security.

  “To be honest, Ina, you’re the last person I thought I’d see here,” Gerald admitted.

  She smiled uneasily and glanced up the dark cellblock hallway as she did so.

  “Gerald. My father is sick,” Ina said.

  “Sick? How?”

  “I don’t know. Whatever he has, he might have caught it on the lifeboat,” Ina said.

  “How do you figure?” Gerald asked.

  “I don’t know. He was fine and healthy before the lifeboat… ” Her voice faltered. “There was something on that lifeboat, Gerald—you know as much. And Dad’s body isn’t strong enough for it. Whatever it is, it’s changing him. Killing him. Eating him from the inside out. I know, it sounds crazy.”

  “I’m sorry,” Gerald said. What the fuck else am I going to say? He thought. Do I say, what’s changing you, Ina? What is changing me? Not that he felt all that different—he felt as fucked up as he did before he got involved with Ina, Donovan, or Crescent.

  “At the risk of sounding insensitive,” Gerald began, “why are you telling me this?”

  “That’s a fair question. I’m not looking for support or anything. We were all on that boat. You were on it twice, Gerald,” Ina said. Gerald winced. “We may have been exposed to whatever it is he’s got. I thought you should know.”

  “Thanks,” Gerald said. In truth, he wasn’t sure how much he appreciated the information. It was one of those things he’d really rather not have known. “It might be safest if you left now, Ina. I think I’m into some serious shit here.”

  “Did you get in trouble for helping us? For taking me down to that planet?” Her brow creased.

  “I did a lot of things that got me in trouble. Taking you on your little field trips was probably the least of them. Let’s just say, I tried to do the right thing and here I am.” He spread his arms and smiled an exaggerated grin.

  “There’s something else…Something else you should know.” she said. Gerald waited for her to go on. She inhaled sharply. “Gerald, I’m pregnant.”

  He let go of the bars and shook his head. Why not, he thought. Why the fuck not?

  He opened his mouth. Closed it, and then opened it again, and spoke.

  “Is it mine?” He tried to sound sensitive, but his tone sounded accusatory even to his own ears.

  “I don’t know. Maybe. Maybe not. I don’t know for sure. You’re…the most likely candidate…but…”

  “I’m doing well in the race. Yeah. I get it,” Even still, Gerald wondered just how many candidates there were.

  (•••)

  “I want to see him, Captain,” Marisa said. Captain Benedict sat behind his nondescript desk in his nondescript office; he clutched his black mug between both hands. Two rosy spots stood out on his cheeks.

  “That’s fine, Mari. Someone’s with him right now, actually,” his words were slightly slurred. Marisa wondered what was in the cup today. The notion that the captain was drinking on the job made her feel a deep pang of sadness. She pushed it away.

  “Who?”

  Benedict shrugged.

  “Marisa,” he began tapping on a data pad, “I’ve got some files for you to go over. The big concert is coming up,” he tapped several more times, “And as of now, you are in charge of the detail.”

  “Who, Captain? Who is in there?” Marisa didn’t care about assignments or concerts.

  “Some blonde girl.”

  All Marisa could think of was what Naheela had told her about Gerald sticking it in some other chick. She spared Benedict a fleeting glance and then left the office for the cells, intent on strangling the bitch, whoever she was.

  The holding block was a single, narrow hallway consisting of sixteen barred cells. Most of the cells were empty that night. Or was it morning now? Marisa had no idea. Toward the end of the hallway she saw a tall, thin woman with cornsilk hair that fell damp to delicate shoulders. Marisa’s gait slowed as she neared and the woman came into closer view. It was the woman she had run into outside of HQ.

  But there was more to this woman. Marisa knew it right away. Hot jealously was doused in a flood of jarring memories.

  A security alarm is going off. A trigger at Z-block. Z-block is off limits. It must be a rat? Marisa thinks. She glances around HQ; there is no one around. I better go check it out before I bother El Capitan, she thinks. This is against standard operating procedures in regard to Z-block alarms. SOP states the Captain must be informed of anything to do with Z-block. But there’s never been an alarm triggered down there.

  “You,” Marisa said. Her voice was a nearly inaudible whisper as she stepped up to the cell.

  The woman rolled her blue eyes over to Marisa and they locked stares.

  More memories gushed into her head.

  The service channel is as long as it is tight and Marisa thinks it is going to go on forever. She finally comes out the other side, but it is dark and dreary—there is little solace in the shadows. Only a few of the light panels are working. Marisa is surprised that any of them are working at all. Cobwebs drape every surface and Marisa chokes on air thick
with must and the vague sent of decay. There are footprints in the dust. What fool is down here? Marisa thinks, but suddenly questions what she is doing down there. She wants to go back into the light and forget she ever noticed the alarm going off. But she can’t do that. She’s got a job to do. She follows the footprints in the dust and they take her to a large, windowless bulkhead with an X crudely painted over its surface. The Vault.

  This can’t be, Marisa thinks. This is all wrong.

  Marisa sees her then—the woman with the waif-thin frame and the pretty hair. Her face is pressed against the bulkhead that seals the Vault and her eyes are closed. No Access. Authorized Personnel Only—the stenciled, yellow lettering seems to pulse. The woman has one hand up her shirt, rubbing her… breast? The fingers of her other hand are splayed out on the bulkhead’s dark surface, just beside her cheek.

  “Hey!” Marisa says, “You shouldn’t be down here.”

  The woman does not answer. Marisa frowns and grabs the woman by the arm. That’s when everything slows down. Black fills her field of view and she can no longer see the woman, but she feels the woman’s fingers wrap around her wrist to pull her in close—into an embrace. They are both pressed against the bulkhead now. Marisa hears voices. Singing? Something touches her deeply—in a secret place. Marisa is struck and thinks, so long as this liquid shadow has a hold on me, I will never know loneliness again. Marisa will never be alone—ever—not now that she has come to this wonderful place. I have to share this. I have to set this free. For everyone’s sake, she thinks. The other woman’s lips are on hers now and they are kissing. And why shouldn’t they be? They are liberated. They are free as many others shall soon be free. Freedom is the will of the Black.

  “It’s you,” the woman replied in a similar hush.

  “I… ” Marisa inhaled through her nose. She was speechless.

  “When I ran into you the other day I knew that I knew you from somewhere,” the woman said, more strength behind her voice. She reached out a hand and touched Marisa’s cheek. The woman’s fingertips were soft and cold.