Vault of Shadows

by Jonathan Maberry

  But Evangelyne could only shake her head. Either because she was unfamiliar with such a device or—more likely, Milo realized—because there was nothing like that anywhere here on the bridge of the alien ship.

  Then Iskiel dropped unexpectedly from the air vent, scuttled over to the smoking panel, and crawled inside the housing. Shark peered in and gaped.

  “He’s . . . eating the fire . . . ,” he said in an awed whisper.

  “He does that,” said Evangelyne simply.

  The ship suddenly bucked as if it had struck something, but there was nothing on the scanner.

  “The engines are going wonky,” Milo yelled. Even with Iskiel absorbing some of the flames, the problem was getting worse. Circuits connected to the coolant system began to pop out sparks. The salamander tried to gulp them down too, but it was spreading faster than he could eat.

  “Shark . . . ,” called Milo. “I’m losing control of the drive systems.”

  “I know . . . ,” growled Shark, who was fanning away the smoke and trying to blow out the flames. That only made them flare brighter. The ship instantly bucked again. And again.

  Milo could feel the controls becoming sluggish, and the hologram flickered like a flashlight with a damaged battery. “Do something!”

  “I’m trying.”

  “Iskiel can’t control that much fire,” warned Evangelyne. It was true. The salamander was beginning to glow an angry red, as if his insides were a furnace that had been fed too much fuel. The creature squatted inside the blaze, but it continued to spread.

  “Do something,” begged Milo.

  Shark wore a canvas vest over his T-shirt. He pulled it off. Then, after a slight hesitation and a nervous glance at Evangelyne, he pulled off his shirt as well. He was very plump, and suddenly there was a lot of brown skin in view. He began vigorously swatting at the flames with the shirt to try to create a vacuum that would rob the hungry fire of the oxygen it needed.

  “It’s working!” said Evangelyne, clapping her hands together. “Shark, you’re a genius.”

  Milo cut a look at Shark and saw his friend’s brown skin turn the color of a ripe plum as he flushed with equal parts embarrassment and pride.

  But then the ship bucked again, even harder than before.

  “Is the fire out?” Milo cried.

  “Yes . . . and the cooling circuits are still intact.” Powerful vents kicked in automatically and sucked the smoke out of the bridge. “I think we’re good—”

  Another buck, this one the hardest of all. The red ship went sideways like a soccer ball that had been kicked by a giant.

  And that’s when Milo realized what was happening. He pivoted in his chair to look at the holographic screens that showed the air behind the ship. Where once there had been a single glowing red dot to indicate the ship they were on, now there were four dots. One red, and three that throbbed a bright blue. They were being hunted by three alien pursuit ships, and the Bugs were firing on them.

  “Oh no!”

  Like the red avatar, the blue ones were configured as scaled-down images of the pursuit craft, but Milo was sitting too far away to see exactly what kind of ships they were. Because of scavenging, he was mostly familiar with the drop-ships and some of the larger combat vessels. However, he’d seen photos of at least a dozen other types of ships. Everyone in his class—everyone in the EA—had to become familiar with the silhouettes of each enemy ship. He couldn’t see these ships well enough to identify them, and it made him wonder how much better Bug eyesight was. All the screens were positioned farther away than was comfortable for ordinary human eyes. The Huntsman had been given alien eyes too, and that seemed to suggest that their eyesight was sharper. It was frustrating, though, because knowing what kinds of ships were attacking them might give him some idea about what the heck he could do.

  The ships kept firing. Firing. Firing. And at that distance they could not miss.

  “Oh no,” he said, this time in a tiny voice. It felt like a huge, icy fist had closed around his heart and was squeezing.

  The blasts hammered at the red ship.

  In his mind he could almost hear the ship scream in pain.

  FROM MILO’S DREAM DIARY

  This is what was written on the first page of that book I keep dreaming about . . .

  Had there been two boys living in Gadfellyn Hall, everything would have been different.

  So different.

  With two minds churning, there would have been games and tricks and adventures. With two mouths to smile, they would have grinned back the shadows and laughed the darkness into its rightful place beneath beds and under rocks and into cellars. With two brave hearts beating, there would have been challenges met and conquered. With two sets of bright eyes, there would have always been one pair to look forward while the other watched behind. With two sets of hands, one pair could have held a candle while the other sorted out the right skeleton keys.

  But there was only one lonely boy living in Gadfellyn Hall all through that spring and summer and into that terrible winter.

  Only one living boy.

  Only one human boy.

  And so this is a different world than it might have been.

  And therefore this is an entirely different kind of story.

  . . . and I don’t know what in the world that means. Or if it’s important. But I kind of think it is.

  Chapter 19

  Another blast hit the ship, hard enough to jolt Milo’s teeth. Killer yelped and went sliding across the floor as the ship canted to one side. The little dog’s nails made a desperate skittering sound.

  Another blast. Sparks burst from the coolant panels again.

  “Get us out of here!” roared Shark as he began once more furiously swatting with his shirt.

  But Milo was already wrestling with the controls. Even though it was a hologram, it felt real around his hand and it had started to take on weight. That made no sense to him, though, and he wondered if he was imagining it.

  Another blast shook such thoughts from his mind, and from then on he focused only on trying not to kill them all.

  He spent one burning second studying the map. The red dot formed the center of a triangle, with the three pursuit ships making up the points. They had closed around the red craft and were taking turns firing. He wondered why they didn’t simply open up and vaporize it.

  His mind provided the answer, and he knew at once that it was absolutely correct.

  They can’t risk blowing up the ship, he thought. He could feel the weight and shape of the crystal egg in his left front pants pocket. If they destroy the ship, they destroy the egg.

  A moment later a pair of blasts told him for certain that the Bugs weren’t above damaging the ship pretty badly, though.

  They want to make us crash.

  It terrified Milo because if the Bugs forced them down, then any survivors would be dragged before the Huntsman. Milo and his friends had defeated and humiliated the monster. The thought of what kind of revenge the Huntsman might exact was almost too much for Milo to bear. He wanted to crawl into a closet and cry.

  Bang!

  A control panel on the other side of the bridge exploded outward in a fresh shower of smoke and flame, and suddenly the vents and air-conditioning failed.

  “We just lost life support,” bellowed Shark.

  The smoke, no longer vented by the fans, began swirling inside the cabin.

  “Do something!” yelled Evangelyne. “I don’t want to die up here.”

  “Neither do I,” growled Milo under his breath as he tried to anticipate the next blast so he could bank away from it. Then he had a dangerous little thought. “Shark, look at the scanner. See if you can figure out what model of ships they are.”

  “Why?” demanded his friend, who was still fighting a fire. “What does it matter?”

  “Just do it.”

  The floor of the bridge seemed to buck under them, forcing Shark to crawl on all fours from the burning coolant panel to a
spot close to the screen showing the other ships. He fanned smoke out of the way and peered at the blue avatars.

  “Barrel-fighters, I think.”

  “Are you sure?”

  “I—”

  “Shark, we need to be sure.”

  Shark licked his lips, coughed, then nodded. “Yeah. Barrel-fighters. I’m positive.”

  “Barrel-fighter” was the nickname the EA soldiers had given to a particular type of attack ship. Small, barrel-shaped, with stubby stabilizer wings and a crew of three. Less than half the size of a drop-ship, and built for speed and maneuverability. Milo ran through everything he’d been taught about the barrel-fighter, and everything he’d learned from the two times his pod had scavenged wreckage of this kind of ship. The armor was thinner than a drop-ship’s, because the barrel-fighter relied on speed rather than durability. Top speed of Mach 2.3. Designed for planetary combat. Not built for escape velocity, not built for outer space. A cockpit to hold a pilot and two gunners, and everything else was engine. He remembered his mom saying that it was on a par with an F-22 Raptor. He understood that. He knew the science because that was one of the survival skills he’d had drilled into him.

  Barrel-fighters, like their Earth counterparts, were in a design class called supermaneuverable aircraft. They could turn on a dime even at high speeds. Unlike the red ship, however, they were designed to fly only in air, not in the thin upper atmosphere or in airless space. These barrel-fighters were deadly in an aerial dogfight. The red ship was more sophisticated but less maneuverable. So where was the middle ground? What was the balance between trying to outrun the pursuit ships with a craft whose engine was burning itself out, and engaging in a dogfight when no one aboard knew how to fire the cannons?

  Another panel blew out, and half the lights on the bridge went dark.

  “Are you going to just sit there?” shouted Evangelyne, her voice thick with anxiety. “Or are you going to do something?”

  “Shut up,” he told her. His voice sounded very calm to his own ears, which he figured was probably not a good sign because inside he could feel panic exploding.

  “I have the Heart of Darkness,” she reminded him. “If they destroy us, then . . .”

  “Please,” he begged, “shut up.”

  She did, but he could feel the heat of her glare on him.

  “Shark,” Milo snapped, “get back and buckle up.”

  “No, I have to put the fire out and—”

  Two more blasts hit the craft, and the rest of the lights went out. Now the only light came from several small fires and the blue glow of the holograms.

  “Do it!”

  Smoke was getting so thick that it was hard to breathe. Milo saw Shark stagger across the jolting deck and crawl into his chair. Killer, barking furiously, leaped into his lap. Milo tried not to think about what was happening to the wounded in the hold. What all the jolting and jouncing was doing to the spike in Barnaby’s chest.

  If Barnaby was even still alive.

  “Hold on,” ordered Milo. “I’m going to try something.”

  “What are you going to do?” begged Shark.

  Milo closed his fist and began pushing it forward. The engine noise changed from a troubled cough to a roar and then to a scream as the red ship shot forward.

  “Milo—the engines can’t handle this,” cried Shark, but he ignored him.

  He raised his hand. Slowly, slowly bringing the ship up, aiming it away from the trees, driving it toward the sky at increasing speeds.

  On the screen the blue ships fell immediately behind, and then, one by one, they flared brighter as they kicked their own engines up to full. The red ship was probably faster when it was first built—maybe twice as fast—but in its present condition the barrel-fighters were closing the distance with terrifying rapidity.

  Smoke poured from the coolant system and Milo had to use his free hand to pull his shirt up over his nose and mouth. The smoke burned his eyes and blurred his vision. He heard Shark and Evangelyne screaming his name, begging him to stop, to slow down.

  But Milo clenched his teeth in fear and fury as the ship soared toward the edge of space.

  The blue ships shot upward, trying to catch the red ship inside the atmosphere while there was still oxygen for their engines to burn.

  And then, with a roar of rage, Milo jerked his hand backward, his fist still clenched inside the holographic drive.

  There was a scream of protesting metal as momentum and gravity tried to turn the red ship inside out. Milo prayed that the Huntsman’s ship was built to withstand those forces. It was the beast’s command ship, capable of flight in atmosphere and space. Fast, powerful.

  The barrel-ships were directly behind the red ship, all of them traveling at more than twice the speed of sound.

  There was absolutely no way for the pursuit fighters to veer away. No chance, no time.

  One by one they slammed into the Huntsman’s craft and exploded.

  And then the red ship was falling.

  Falling.

  Falling back to the hard, unforgiving surface of the planet below.

  Chapter 20

  Everybody screamed.

  The Huntsman’s red ship dropped like a rock from the sky and fell with an escort of flaming wreckage from the three barrel-fighters.

  It fell, fell, fell.

  The steering hologram winked out as circuit after circuit exploded, melted, or burned. Milo clung to the armrests of the pilot’s seat, choking on the thick, oily smoke that now filled the cabin completely. Tears streamed from his irritated eyes, and his lungs felt hot and singed.

  Most of the viewscreen holograms had also winked out. Only one was left—and it showed the waters of Lake Pontchartrain rushing up toward them.

  “Hold on!” he bellowed. “This is going to be baaaaaad!”

  The ship hit the water.

  It was bad.

  FROM MILO’S DREAM DIARY

  I remember a conversation I had with the Witch of the World. Not sure if it was in a dream or when I was awake. Maybe it doesn’t matter.

  Anyway, I said, “Everything’s getting so complicated. I can’t keep it all straight.”

  And she said, “The world has always been complicated, Milo. What’s changed is that now you’re able to notice.”

  Chapter 21

  There are worse ways to wake up than in a burning spaceship that is filling with cold, brackish water.

  However, Milo could not think of any.

  He didn’t know how long he was unconscious. Maybe an hour, maybe only a handful of seconds. His mind was numb and every single molecule of his body hurt. He was sure he was dead and that instead of going to heaven he’d been taken to a world where pain was the only experience. He was certain of it.

  He could hear terrible screams.

  Screams in voices he recognized.

  And overlaying that sound was the gurgling of water. Milo knew he should move, should get up, get out, save himself, save everyone . . . but his body would not respond. His legs felt like they were made of ice, and his hands seemed to hang limp at the ends of dead arms.

  “H-help . . .”

  He heard the voice through the gurgling. Faint, weak, fading.

  Female.

  Milo stirred in his seat and tried to make his brain function so he could attach a name to the voice. He turned with infinite slowness, aware that he was hurt, aware of wet warmth on his face. Blood or oil? He wasn’t sure. Probably both.

  “Help . . .”

  The voice seemed so far away. Not just somewhere on the other side of all that water and smoke, but in another place.

  “M-Milo . . . please . . .”

  He saw something move. No, someone.

  A pale figure with long, flowing pale hair and eyes the color of winter ice. It confused him, because those eyes and that hair belonged to the voice, and that voice was off to his right, behind the swirling smoke.

  “Milo,” said the figure, and even with that one word,
he knew it wasn’t the same voice that had cried for help. This was a younger, thinner, higher voice. Much more familiar, and yet . . . it was as strange as the sound of wind blowing through the charred rafters of a burned-out building.

  He tried to find her name. Found something, worked to fit it into his mouth.

  “L-Lizzie?”

  She came closer, emerging from the smoke. Her hair was wild and her eyes were so strange. Lizabeth’s eyes, but also not hers.

  “Milo,” she said urgently, “you need to wake up.”

  “I—I am awake,” he protested. He could see her clearly now. The same young face and huge eyes, the blouse with the flower pattern and the cut mark.

  There was something not right about it all, though, but he couldn’t think what it was.

  “Milo, you have to wake up.”

  Lizabeth took him by the shoulders and shook him. Her hands were surprisingly strong, but so cold. Ice cold.

  “Lizzie . . . stop . . . I’m awake!”

  At least that’s what he thought he said.

  To his own ears, though, it all sounded jumbled. Gurgled. Wet. As if he was . . .

  . . . speaking . . .

  . . . . . . . under . . .

  . . . . . . . . . . water. . . .

  And suddenly Milo snapped awake.

  Actually awake.

  There was no smoke.

  There was only darkness.

  Darkness and water.

  Because the entire ship had sunk to the bottom of the lake and filled with water.

  And he was drowning.

  Chapter 22

  Milo thrashed in his chair, but he was still belted in. He punched the release, kicked free of the chair, and felt himself rising through the utter blackness. From his angle, all he could tell was that the ship had landed with the bridge tilted forward and to the right. That meant he was moving up and left toward the damaged coolant panels. There was no hatch on that side of the bridge, though. The two exits were the ones that led to the hold—that is, directly behind where he’d been sitting—and the main exit, which was next to where Evangelyne and Shark were seated.