by Phil Rossi
For the end game.
(•••)
Donovan Cortez was dying. Crescent was killing him faster with each passing day. Ina had not come home to him since the terrible riots. He was frightened for her, and even more frightened for himself. He drifted in and out of consciousness so frequently that he could no longer discern waking from sleeping. The purple glow was all he could see, living and anxious. The Violet was disappointed with Donovan Cortez. It had not anticipated the man’s frailty.
But if Donovan Cortez died, the Violet would be cast out, and there would not be enough time to find another with the right skills.
The bedroom door creaked opened. A figure stood there, backlit by the milky light of the hallway—a black shadow with features unidentifiable.
“Ina?” Donovan croaked. His throat felt like it was full of broken glass. The figure stood silently a moment longer, then moved out through the open door. Shadows pooled like water around its feet. “Wait.” Donovan whispered. He struggled out of bed, tumbling off the edge of the mattress. His wrist gave way with a dull snap when he hit the floor—he heard it, but he righted himself and crawled toward the living room, only distantly aware of the pain that radiated up his arm. The shadow stood in the apartment’s open doorway. It wanted him to follow. It had come to help him—Donovan knew it with a certainty. The walking shadow would prolong his life until he could say goodbye to his daughter. Donovan found a flashlight—he had a feeling he would be needing it—and pulled himself out of the apartment and into the corridor. It was empty, save for himself and the creature that his eyes seemed unable to focus upon.
Donovan crawled after the shadow-man for what felt like an eternity, following him through corridor after corridor until consciousness fled from him. When he came to, it was to the sensation of motion. He was lying on his back in a slowly descending service elevator. The deeper into the station the elevator traveled, the more laden with moisture the air became. When the lift door finally slid open, cold water spilled out onto the floor panels. Donovan rolled over and pulled himself out of the elevator, crawling onward through a thin layer of stinking water. L Deck, he thought—why else would the panels be covered in water?
The entire level was a ghost town. The corridors were lined with the mildew covered luggage, toys, and appliances the residents had been forced to leave behind when the residential level had flooded. Donovan crawled past abandoned apartments with doors that stood open. It seemed vulgar that the former homes were so exposed. Weak dregs of starlight bled through dirty viewports to show the insides of the vacant, water-damaged living spaces.
The corridor led to a dead end alley where a dark hole marred the otherwise featureless far wall; a metal grating lay cast aside in a pool of standing water. Donovan pressed his cheek to the damp floor panel, catching his breath. The walking shadow was nowhere in sight.
“Geez. I dunno, man. We probably shouldn’t do this. What if we get lost?” a young boy’s voice echoed from the shadows.
Donovan gathered his strength and pulled himself through opening.
It was tight in the maintenance shaft and Donovan found that he had to rely on his legs and elbows to move forward. His broken wrist was all but useless and he had cut his other hand badly at some point in the trek. Fortunately, water and grime had turned the channel’s surfaces slick, making the travel easier. Donovan crawled below L Deck and the shaft began to descend sharply. His descent continued for almost thirty minutes. The small flashlight he had clutched between his teeth was useless against the shadows.
Donovan came out into a chamber where two rusted collector robots leaned against one another in awkward pose. A sneaker—a child’s sneaker—and a couple of flashlights lay covered in mold and muck just beyond the robots. An exit stood at waist height on the other side of the chamber. A child’s face appeared in the opening. The boy’s skin was so pale, it was nearly translucent.
“What are you waiting for? Come on, scaredy cat,” the boy said, and his face disappeared back into the dark.
Donovan ducked through the opening unthinkingly. A will that was not his own moved his limbs. For that, Donovan was grateful. He was so tired now.
On the other side, Donovan found dust, spiderwebs, and dying light panels. A steady drip-drop of water could be heard not far off.
He crawled past a bulkhead that looked like it had been sealed shut with a plasma caster; the seams were bloated with brownish, oxidized chrome.
A massive, black bulkhead marked the end of the line. The door pulsed and glittered. It was quite possibly the most beautiful site Donovan had ever set his eyes upon. Between the pulses of shimmering black, Donovan could make out a crude red X. He reached out for the door. Contact was the only thing that could save him now. His fingers brushed against its ice-cold surface.
“Brian, let’s go. I don’t like it here,” a voice in the shadows said.
“Wanna run home to mommy? Go, run home, then. I’m gonna touch it,” another voice replied.
“No, Brian. Come on. This isn’t cool. Let’s go.”
Donovan’s hand fell away. Even that brief touch had started his heart pounding with a renewed surge of energy. He got up on his knees and placed both hands on the door. The cold hurt. It made the muscles in his forearms spasm and cramp. He was sure he’d lose the first few layers of skin when he took his hands away—possibly a finger or two.
But Donovan didn’t want to take his hands away. Ever.
It was the last thing in the world that he wanted to do.
(Part XXII)
The cavernous room rumbled with the sounds of the eager crowd even before Erick Haddyrein’s fans were admitted to the auditorium. Shapes could be seen moving on just the other side of the opaque flexi-glass scrim. The concert atrium and adjoining foyer were packed to capacity with Crescent residents. The corridors that fed the atrium were equally filled. Marisa watched the crowds on a security monitor. She felt measured doses of both good cheer and unease. This was a good event for the station, so long as those in attendance behaved themselves. Things had finally begun to stabilize after being out of whack for so long. Crescent’s citizens needed something good, something from the outside the station. Haddyrein was well-loved across the seventeen systems, and judging from the crowded concert area and the lines that marched to the auditorium, Crescent was no exception. Marisa herself enjoyed his music. Maybe not enough to have camped outside the box office months ago, but she was more than happy to check out the concert for free.
The free concert came at the cost of vigilance.
Marisa was on the clock, but she had a feeling that the evening would go smoothly enough that she could hazard to enjoy herself just a little bit. Security was thick. Haddyrein’s personal muscle detail supported Crescent’s staff. There was more than enough manpower to deal with anything that might happen. She rapped the faux-wooden railing with her knuckles and then looked out over the concert hall. Music thumped from massive honeycomb speakers embedded in the walls. A waving curtain of blue-green light obscured the stage from view. The shifting luminance was hypnotic. She smiled.
Marisa wouldn’t deny that she was feeling better. Her head was clear, maybe clearer than it had ever been. All the strangeness that had plagued her recently was fading fast from her memory. It all seemed like a bad acid trip. Things that had seemed so dire, almost seemed foolish now. But regardless of the attitude adjustment and the improved outlook, her plan was still to put Crescent behind her. She need a change, and would be off-station in two days. Gerald was leaving Crescent, too. They weren’t headed out together; per se. Shit had to be worked out in that department. But, there could be a future there. Core Sec had paid him a big chunk of change for his involvement in the successful coup, so Gerald was going to retire; hang up his wings. Good for him. Gerald had never liked space. With his bank account showing lots of zeros, he would never have to fly salvage again.
A security officer entered the auditorium through a red-lacquered door. Marisa remembered
having gone through that same door not so long ago. She marveled at the distance of the memory. It almost seems like it didn’t happen—at least, like it didn’t happen to me.
She activated her headset.
“Okay, Miguel, open the doors. Let’s let these people in before they flatten themselves.”
The man on the dance floor gave her an enthusiastic thumb up and ducked into a control booth. The big partition ascended with a whine of motors and disappeared into the ceiling, and the people began to file into the auditorium. Security checks and spinning turnstiles made the march an orderly one. Soon, the room echoed with thousands of voices. The space filled with an acrid haze of booze and cigarette smoke. Marisa glanced down at the bar that stood five meters below her monitoring platform. She would’ve killed for a drink in the name of good times and new beginnings. She couldn’t really recall the last time she had drank for pleasure. Perhaps at the end of the night, she and Gerald could find a place to grab a cocktail or two.
Yeah, she thought, and smirked to herself, that’d be really nice. So long as he doesn’t get too bombed beforehand.
It took more than an hour to fill the entire auditorium. So many people had showed up for the concert, some were forced to watch it on the big holo-projector out in the atrium. As far as she was concerned, Marisa had the best view in the house. The anticipation in the air was palpable—as if electricity arced from air molecule to air molecule, causing the whole room to buzz. She closed her eyes for a moment and savored every sound and smell. It was life. The crowd began to cheer and she opened her eyes just as the house lights darkened, filling the room with the stage curtain’s ever-changing light. The blue-green radiance bounced off thousands of glittering mirrors embedded at random in the floors, walls, and ceilings, and danced upon every surface. The photosensitive flooring swirled beneath the crowd’s feet.
The curtain shimmered out of existence.
A vaguely glowing fog-like haze filled the stage. The vatter’s equipment looked like dark, hulking beasts hiding in the murk. A green light grew from panels set in the platform, and as it brightened, a large, glass vat became apparent as the heart of the flaring beacon. The glittering liquid inside the crystal chamber scattered the light and shot it back in a thousand different directions. A beat began to pulse. More than pulse, it began to throb. The crowd swayed to the rhythm, wrapped in shifting shadows and bursts of colorful effulgence.
A shape plunged into the liquid with a mighty splash. Purple, red, and green light flared in a blinding explosion and the opening song roared across the room like a helium flash.
(•••)
“I hope this isn’t a bad time, Captain.” Crescent’s head of security stood in the open doorway to Nigel’s temporary apartment. Nigel folded the last of the few articles of clothing he had on the station and placed them in a suitcase. He looked up and smiled.
“Not at all, Captain Benedict,” Nigel said.
“I’m surprised you’re not at the concert.”
“I could say the same for you.”
“A security captain is never off duty, it would seem,” Benedict said. “There are still some matters. How do I put this? Delicate matters, pertaining to our Mayor Kendall… ”
“Former mayor,” Nigel interjected.
“Yes, former mayor. There are final matters that need to be dealt with. Ezra Kendall is not your typical prisoner, Swaren, and there are some things you should know. Some things you should see with your own eyes if you’re going to call your job here complete.”
“Things such as?” Nigel asked, his curiosity piqued. He stopped packing and stood, hands on his hips. Benedict shrugged and smiled.
“Not here. There is still some loyalty to Kendall in the ranks. It’s not safe to do this here.”
“Okay, Captain.” He paused. “Should we notify Belinda Michaels?”
“I’ve got someone on their way to her office,” Benedict said.
“Fair enough. Let’s go, then.”
(•••)
Belinda Michaels sat behind the former mayor’s large desk. She had disabled the desk-embedded security feeds. The crazy, ever changing cross-hatch of images and video made her head spin. She had plenty to think about for this interim rule. Crescent had a security force; let them monitor the feeds. After all, that was their job. Mayor Kendall must have been over the top with his paranoia, she thought with a smirk. She fingered a control on the arm of the chair and it rotated to face the large viewport. The curtains hummed open to reveal a dense starfield laced with glowing, orange-red nebulosity. She couldn’t argue with the view. For the time being, it was better than Galatea’s view of the hand toss of dead rocks. With the Habeos gate being closed, the sentry guns would be dismantled. The asteroid field would be harvested and cleared in due time.
The door chimed, and she rotated the chair to face it.
“Come,” she said. It then struck her as strange that her personal guard hadn’t notified her of a visitor. But at that point, it was already too late. The door was swinging open.
Belinda Michaels only had time to register two things:
The way the man’s stubble looked like rust in the orange light cast by the nebula and the flare of equally orange light that sprayed from the barrel of the needle gun.
(•••)
The pounding bass tones were going to crush his heart at any moment, Gerald was convinced, but he didn’t care. He danced like a drunken idiot and loved every second of it. From his location in the auditorium, he could see Marisa on her balcony. He respected that she was on duty, so he wouldn’t bother her just yet. Maybe after a few more frosty ones, he thought, I won’t have so much respect for her duty. Until then, he was content to enjoy the pure sensory overload that was a vatter concert. Erick Haddyrein twisted and spun in the viscous liquid that filled the vat. Light poured through the chamber’s thick, clear walls in a dizzying spasm of color. Rainbow lances of photons, beginning as pinpricks, exploded from the sparkling trodes attached in multitude to Haddyrein’s nearly naked form. The beams cleaved the smoky darkness.
Thick fiber optic tentacles slithered and curled on the stage like great, glowing serpents. Liquid-filled orbs attached to their lengths pulsed in sequence. At times, the long structures would roar out from the stage to circle above the audience. If Gerald were on anything hallucinatory, he was sure he would have lost his mind by then.
The lights went dim and the sound died.
A muted click came from the speaker system and then the music started again. Notes screamed from the speakers, the pitches high and ugly. Gerald pressed his hands against his ears. Something had gone wrong with Haddyrein’s gear. The vatter himself looked panicked inside his glass chamber.
The trodes on his body began to pulse madly.
And then Haddyrein writhed as if he was in pain. The speakers howled. The bass notes were a low rumble that sounded like the very end of the world and the auditorium shuddered with each thunderous pulse. Gerald turned to move for the doors, but the rest of the concert goers, stricken with panic, had the same idea. The crowd ripped down the security check points as if they were made out of cardboard. As unpleasant as the sounds coming from the speakers were, Gerald figured getting trampled to death would be even worse. He jumped behind one of the sidebars for cover. A bartender crouched there, her arms over her head protectively. Black mascara streaked her powder-white cheeks. She stared at him wide-eyed. He put a hand on her leg and mouthed everything is going to be all right. If he believed that, though, he wouldn’t have been cursing himself for not having left Crescent that morning. She held out her hand to him; a set of earplugs sat on her open palm. He took them gratefully.
(•••)
“This way, Captain Swaren.” Benedict opened a narrow bulkhead that marked the end of an even narrower passage. Nigel looked at Benedict uneasily. Three officers from Captain Benedict’s own personal company had escorted them to the remote location. The officers stepped through the bulkhead first. Nigel took
that as an encouraging sign that nothing deadly lay in wait on the other side. No need to continue your paranoia, Swaren, he thought to himself.
“After you, Captain Benedict,” Nigel said, turning to face Crescent’s head of security, only to be caught square in the chest by Benedict’s outthrust hands. Nigel tripped on the door’s raised threshold and he fell through, landing on his back with a jolt, his chest still stinging from the blow. He scrambled to his feet and lunged for the door as it swung shut, but was rewarded only with cold metal on his palms. Nigel stepped away and unholstered his sidearm. Around him, the Crescent security officers had their weapons out and were speaking to one another in clipped, nervous chatter. The officers had no idea what was going on, either.
Nigel surveyed the cavernous hangar. Large, metallic cargo crates were stacked one atop the other. Benedict was watching them through the small glass porthole in the bulkhead, but he would not make eye contact.
A light came on up above and Nigel lifted his eyes to see people filing onto a glass-enclosed observation deck. The lanky shape of Crescent’s former Mayor Kendall was unmistakable. Kendall approached the glass and waved. His voice echoed from the hangar’s PA system.
“I was afraid we wouldn’t get the chance to say good bye, Mr. Swaren,” Kendall said. “After all we’ve been through during the course of your visit, that would have been a damn shame.”
Nigel said nothing.
Kendall sighed. “Swaren, I know about your little station in Tireca. It will never replace Crescent. You and I both know that asteroid field will never be safe to mine. And without precious minerals, that station will never get finished.”
“Where is Belinda Michaels? Is she safe?”