Pitch Dark

by Courtney Alameda

  A golden sarcophagus stands mag-gravved onto a pedestal to my left. The figure carved on it glares at me with slitted, golden eyes. A little farther down, the Winged Victory of Samothrace occupies a prime hollow, along with murals from Diego Rivera; a gorgeous, golden Moche idol depicting the octopus god, Ai Apaec; and a Gutenberg Bible.

  Behind us, the tunnel splits. Two large walkways spiral around Michelangelo’s David statue, which stands four and a half meters tall, even without his head. The age-old marble glows blue in the louver lights, a faint radiance tumbling off the edges of the floatglass walkways. Mami accidentally decapitated the David in a dig, when a rival shipraider group, the Cortés family, crashed our site and fought us for the haul. During a Wild West–style shootout, Mami figuratively lost her head.

  Unfortunately for David, his loss was more literal.

  One of the centerpieces of my parents’ collection, though, remains their original copy of the former United States of America’s Declaration of Independence. It sits in the middle of the hall in a freestanding, multi-layered crysteel vault, and is protected by UV radiation blockers, and interior vacu-chambers. After so many hundreds of years, the ink’s paled. My parents have restored it, but I’ve never been able to make out the ancient, spidery handwriting and strange spellings. Nobody’s written anything by hand for hundreds of years. Except locos like Dad, who enjoy making pen nubs and crushing their own ink to study the art of handwriting. Dad’s a purist.

  I press my hand to the case as we pass the Declaration, the document’s irony not lost on me. It talks about freedom and liberty as being “self-evident,” and yet this was the artifact the Smithsons subjugated me to gain. The Smithsons’ subjugator keeps me from telling my parents about the Smithsons’ plans; though now that the John Muir terrarium’s been found, no doubt they will redouble their efforts to steal my family’s legacy.

  “That jerk’s still following us,” Faye says, glancing over her shoulder at Sebastian.

  “Ignore him,” I say, loud enough for Sebastian to hear. “He won’t try anything, not if he’s smart.”

  “What’s that supposed to mean?” Faye asks.

  I don’t answer her, but shoot a look at Sebastian before pushing off the Declaration’s case and heading toward the bridge.

  The Rio Grande bulkhead arches as high as El Arco did in Labná—it’s a giant gateway made of metal and glass, one that connects or partitions two separate areas of the ship as needed. This particular bulkhead opens into the largest continuous room onboard: the lower bridge rotunda.

  I pause beneath the high point of the bulkhead’s arch. The rotunda beyond is massive, giving a 180-degree, uninterrupted view of the ship’s surroundings. Crysteel windows stretch from floor to ceiling. From here, the nebula’s colors are glorious, vast tapestries set against the unending darkness of space. As the largest room aboard the ship, the lower bridge houses much of the ship’s control tech beneath a glowing crysteel floor. If the Narrows is the Conquistador’s nervous system, the lower bridge is its brain.

  The evening’s celebrations started here, under the glow of the nebula … and my parents’ latest find, an Exodus-era spacecraft known as the USS John Muir, NPS-3500. Right now, the crysteel floor remains closed and covered in celebratory debris—trampled holo-confetti and clustered bubble balloons. The Alfa Bridge—my destination—floats over the lower bridge like a giant lily pad, the twin stalks of its antigrav elevators reaching down to the floor.

  Freedom is finally within reach. And with any luck, the Colonies’ salvation, too: the lower bridge’s large windows frame the terrarium ship perfectly. The John Muir’s almost as big as a Panamerican torus colony, and round as a soap bubble. From this distance, it looks too delicate to stand up to the dangers of deep-space travel. A large crescent-shaped ship hugs the sphere on the left side, mirroring the gravitational rings making slow rotations around the craft. The landscape inside the sphere isn’t visible against the brilliant backdrop of stars, but there’s some kind of craggy, mountainous terra firma in there. The rock stands out in stark, black profile. Clouds puff around the mountaintops.

  After being lost for almost four hundred years, the ships we find are no better than tombs. Ancient, creaking, and filled with the bones of the dead. But miraculously, the John Muir’s lights still twinkle. Clouds in the aerodome indicate the ship’s atmosphere has enough power, air, and heat to function. If there’s water and air, there’s life. And if there’s life in the soil, my family might be able to save our people, our country.

  Four hundred years ago, Pitch Dark ecoterrorists tried to end humanity by jettisoning our Exodus starcraft into the farthest reaches of space. They succeeded in divesting us of one-third of the surviving human population, our landmarks, our history. A hundred years later, the healthy bacteria in the Colonies’ soil broke down and died. The soil in the colonies of both China and the EuroUnion deteriorated, too, until it could no longer support life. Hydroponic farming became policy, but hydroponics can’t finish terraforming a planet.

  But the soil inside the John Muir might.

  On the far side of the room, members of the night crew kick back in their chairs, heels on their desks, their backs to us. The nebula’s light glows through several empty bottles of beer. The booming laughter from the crew echoes through the entire bridge. Bueno. If they’re drunk and we’re quiet, they may not notice us sneaking up to the Alfa Bridge.

  Glancing back at Faye, I point at her shoes. She gives me this look that almost screams, Really? and I nod. She slips them off. I stride onto the bridge.

  Overhead, the Panamerican flag glimmers on several screens—Earth surrounded by a laurel wreath, the tip of former South America pointing to the heavens, with North America below. Thirty-five stars—one for each of the former American countries—encircle the planet. Most of those countries are still represented by modern-day Panamerica, in some form or another.

  A small shower of sparks erupts from one of the screens, before the flag flips upside down, displaying Earth in the ancient Eurocentric style. It looks foreign to my eyes. Wrong, somehow. The light rattles, dies; and when the flag appears again, it’s normal. I make a mental note to tell Mami the radiant filaments need to be checked. No part of a starship can ever be allowed to deteriorate, not if one wants to survive in deep space.

  I approach the Alfa Bridge’s elevators. This is it, I tell myself. With a glance at the night crew—they’re still oblivious—I scan my bioware at the lift. The words Buenas noches, Capitana Cruz pulse across the transparent doors. Faye and Alex follow me into the antigrav elevator. As Sebastian moves to join us, Alex presses a hand against one of the floatglass doors, blocking him.

  “If you don’t let me on,” Sebastian whispers, glancing at the night crew, “I will bring every mercenary on this ship straight to you.”

  Alex glances back at me. I shrug a shoulder. What was that old phrase Dad used to say? Keep your enemies close, but your friends closer? Or was it the other way around?

  “Fine,” Alex says, moving his arm aside to let Sebastian onboard. The doors close behind him.

  “Since when do you have your mother’s access codes?” Faye asks softly, stopping beside me with a little whirl. Her dress hem orbits her knees like planetary rings, the edges smacking my dusty, frayed khakis.

  “Since twenty-six minutes ago,” I reply.

  Sebastian scowls, but says nothing.

  Faye tuts. “Laura, I swear, if you’ve been up to some illegal stuff again—”

  “Remember, I’m a white hat?” I say, tapping the up button, grinning internally at her use of the word again. Early on, I got caught hacking. Quite a lot, actually, but it taught me how to cover my tracks. “I’m one of the good ones, Faye. I’m not out to set the world on fire.”

  “Yeah, I’m sure that’s what all the evil geniuses say,” she replies.

  “Ay, I thought you were supposed to be my best friend,” I say.

  “I am.” She elbows me with a teasing grin. �
��Don’t be so self-conchas.”

  Alex groans. “You said you were done with the puns, flaca.”

  Faye flutters her lashes at Alex. “I know it’s cheesy—”

  “Don’t.” Alex chuckles.

  “—But I feel grate about that last one,” she says.

  “Unbelievable,” Sebastian says as the lift glides to a stop.

  Faye clucks her tongue. “I think you meant pun-believable, chico—”

  “Faye!” Alex and I chorus together, mostly laughing our protest. Faye finds loopholes in language the way I find them in code. Perhaps that’s why we’ve become so close over the years—we see the world the same way, even if we’re looking through slightly different lenses.

  Before Faye can fire another pun at us, the lift doors slide open.

  We fall silent.

  Nothing moves on the Alfa Bridge, not even the shadows. The stars glitter through a domed crysteel ceiling. The Alfa Bridge seats the ship’s twenty main officers, their workstations built into two concentric arcs facing the front of the room. Mami’s chair sits on a raised platform, giving her a bird’s-eye view of the deck. Giant floatglass screens curve around the workstations, their displays hovering several meters off the ground, humming quietly. The Conquistador’s core stats look good. My parents run a tight ship.

  “You’re sure about this, Laura?” It’s Sebastian who asks this time, a subtle warning hidden under the simplicity of his question, like a knife punched into my chest through a pillow. I pause and glance at him over my shoulder. He stands inside the lift, the light shadowing his features and casting the rest of him in two-dimensional silhouette. Alex and Faye pause, looking to me for direction.

  There’s no reason to engage him now, not when I’m so close to winning.

  Without another word, I turn on my heel. Sebastian sighs as I climb the steps to the captain’s platform. Sweat dampens my palms as I sink into Mami’s chair and hold my wrists over the armrests, letting my bioware sync with the ship’s systems. Her chair’s comfortable, made from pliable, heirloom calfskin and old-world wood.

  But I feel anything but relaxed as I engage the chair’s clear, hard-shelled screens, which envelop me in an egg-shaped space. With the hard-shells up, Sebastian won’t be able to interrupt my work. I’ve waited so long for this chance—now all I need to do is follow my plan. Fortuna y gloria.

  “Should I even ask?” Alex says, joining me on the platform. The floatscreens come online, making it difficult to see Faye and Sebastian down below, but I can definitely hear them arguing.

  “It’s important, I promise,” I say, running the silocomputers’ diagnostic to check for malware in the gravidar. “Keep Sebastian away from me, ay? I don’t want him to interfere.”

  Alex chuckles, putting his hands on his hips. “Faye’s got him contained.” He shrugs. “For now.”

  The ship’s diagnostic tool starts scanning the mission-critical tech, looking for the black-hat hacker’s intrusion. While I wait, I pull up the captain’s personnel menu and select BIOWARE. It’s not difficult to find my name—families are grouped together, and Mami’s and Dad’s names are at the top of the crew lists—Laura María Salvatierra Cruz, bioware number 1044-A-6876.

  I move to select my name. My finger freezes a millimeter from the screen.

  No.

  I try to double-tap my name once, twice, then switch to another finger. My subjugator lets me highlight my mother’s name, Elena Concepción Cruz San Roman, or my father’s name, Jaime Luis Salvatierra Fuentes. My siblings’ names—Gael Antonio Salvatierra Cruz and Sofía Librada Salvatierra Cruz—are also clickable. But my subjugator won’t let me touch my own.

  “No manches,” I whisper under my breath. Panic rising, I consider shutting down the bioware system ship-wide for several minutes. Even a few seconds would be enough to allow me to grab Alex, point to my throat, and whisper, subjugator. A few seconds shouldn’t harm anyone aboard—though turning it off too long could get someone killed. Bioware regulates our immune systems and medications, corrects hormonal imbalances, and generally tracks the crew’s overall health while in space. My cousin, for example, relies on her bioware to manage her insulin levels.

  As I scroll back to the personnel menu, a new chat client opens up beneath my fingers. Its interface blocks me from accessing the BIOWARE menu.

  Hello, Laura, the message says.

  A soulless, empty-eyed icon stares at me from beside the message, depicting a bone-white face set atop a black background. At first I think it’s a Guy Fawkes mask—perhaps in homage to early twenty-first-century hacker collectives—but no, it’s missing the signature mustache. Then my memory is triggered: it’s a Japanese Noh theater mask, one with an oval-shaped face and thick, high-set eyebrows. The mask’s thousand-yard stare seems to look everywhere and nowhere at once. Something about its aspect makes the tiny hairs on my body rise. I glance over my shoulder, forgetting for a moment that I’m in Mami’s chair with the hard-shells on. No one can touch me.

  Except, perhaps, another hacker.

  A second line of text appears: Who thought a hacker of your skill would struggle with such a simple task?

  The words irk me. I know better than to ask who they are—no hacker would reveal that sort of information. The captain’s chair isn’t accessible remotely. How are you doing this?

  Their reply? Magic.

  A chill pricks the base of my spine, not unlike the sensation of cold needles being stuck between my vertebrae. I’d said the words hacking isn’t magic, it’s logic to Sebastian not more than fifteen minutes ago. Coincidence? No, it couldn’t be. If there’s no honor among thieves, there are no coincidences among hackers.

  I’m being monitored. The question is by whom? Sebastian and his mother seem like obvious answers, but not the right ones.

  Outside the captain’s chair, Alex shouts, “Hey, vato! Don’t you touch her!” and leaps off the platform. Voices snap and snarl, but it’s difficult to focus on two crises at once.

  Let’s dispense with the pleasantries, then, pendejo, I type back. Were you the hacker in the Narrows tonight?

  They reply, There was only one hacker in the Narrows tonight.

  You know that’s not true.

  Do I? The other hacker sends me a shadowy image, one showing me hidden between the hindrance oscillators. Panic makes my skin burn too hot and my heart beat too hard.

  Someone has hard evidence that I hacked the Narrows. If they’re good enough to hack Mami’s chair remotely, it’s possible they know about my subjugator, too. The hacker can’t be Dr. Smithson—she’s currently preparing for an international press conference with Mami—which means I have an anonymous enemy onboard the Conquistador.

  A hacker who thinks they’re better and smarter than me.

  “Alex, don’t you get all machista, too!” Faye shouts. The sounds of a scuffle reach me—the resonant, meaty drum of a fist striking flesh, grunts and groans. Concerned for Alex, I hit the button to dissipate the chair’s hard-shells.

  Nothing happens. I tap the button again. The chair doesn’t respond.

  I’m trapped.

  I’m sorry, did you want to get up? the other hacker replies. I’m afraid that’s not possible. I need you to sit there and look pretty for another, oh, 36.8 seconds.

  What? I type back. Why?

  The other hacker sends a smiley face as a reply.

  Sweat beads on my brow, my head swimming as claustrophobia born of panic fills me. I jam my fingers into the hard-shell release button, hitting it so fast it chatters like teeth. Failing that, I pound on the shell with the side of my fist. “Hey!” I shout at the others. “Help me!”

  Down below, chairs screech as the boys tumble into them, barely in view. They ignore me. “Stop it!” Faye shrieks, fisting her hands as she follows them. Her bioware’s ioScreen clings to one wrist, maybe to record the fight to prove Alex’s innocence later. “The night crew will hear you!”

  Seconds later, all the Alfa Bridge’s floatscreen
s surge back online, washing everything in cool blue light. The boys pause, look at the screens, then back at me. Faye turns to me with wide-eyed confusion.

  “What did you just do, Laura?” Sebastian asks, pushing Alex away. Blood gushes from one of his nostrils, marking a bright crimson path to his chin.

  “Nothing!” I say, putting my hands in the air. “Someone is remotely hijacking Mami’s chair!”

  “Bullshit,” Sebastian replies. “What did you do?”

  Just think, the other hacker writes. Someday, some other shipraider will find your bones. And when they do, they’ll blame you for the crash.

  “Crash?” I whisper, my brows knotting together. I sink back into the chair to type, What kind of crash are you talking about? when the ship lurches. A tinny whine starts up under my feet, the faraway sound of the scramengines screaming as they start pushing the ship forward.

  “What’s happening, Laura?” Alex shouts. The ship kicks forward, racing toward the John Muir. Faye trips, spilling into Alex’s arms.

  You have 180 seconds to try and stop the crash, Laura, the other hacker writes. The John Muir swells in the windows, growing larger as we speed toward her outer rim. Crimson warnings flash over the floatscreens, casting the bridge in a hellish light.

  Not even luck can save you now.

  USS JOHN MUIR NPS-3500

  SHIP’S DEEPS, TIER TWO, SECTOR FIFTEEN

  TUCK

  Luck saves my life. I escape death by dropping between two seats, but I don’t move my hand quick enough—a bit of shriek echo skims off the tips of my fingers. They’re sore and bloody before I ease to the floor, but hell, I’m alive. “See, Dejah?” I ask the AI as I sink into a puddle of stiflecloth. “I’m not dead yet.”

  “Your tone implies you are not taking this situation seriously,” she replies.

  “’Tis but a flesh wound.”

  “Pardon?” Dejah asks.

  I roll my eyes. The bulk of the inside jokes I shared with my mother were built on Monty Pythonesque humor. Mom could recite every movie by heart. The thought makes my chest ache, as if it somehow lanced an abscess of grief in there. I shove the feeling away. Missing Mom does jack shite for me now. It won’t bring her, my old life, or our busted planet back.