Pitch Dark

by Courtney Alameda

  “We had to get creative out here.” Tuck crosses the room, helping me settle the thing over my shoulders and loop the balaclava around my neck.

  I almost pull away, but his gestures are so gentle for someone with so many scars hatched across his hands. He seems like he should be so rough, so … barbaric, almost. He’s from a time rife with overconsumption, one that burned through our planet’s resources and left humanity out in space’s cold void. After hundreds of years in deep space, who knows how much of his humanity he’s managed to retain? There’s so little light in the depths of his eyes.

  “This cloak will save your life out there,” Tuck says, tugging the fabric into place. He picks up a hank of it, running his thumb over the cloth’s nubs. “These foam studs absorb sound, making you invisible to the mourners’ echolocation. Keep quiet while wearing this, and they can’t see you. Just remember, it’s a cloak, not a shield. It won’t stop them from killing you.”

  I draw the hood over my head. It dulls some of the sound around me, as if I’ve stepped into a bubble of white noise. “Mourners,” I say, looking up at him from under my hood’s edge. “I assume you mean those nasty monsters in the halls? What are they?”

  “The part of the Muir’s crew that didn’t wake up right,” Tuck says, stepping back from me. Turning away, he loads additional supplies into his own bag. Flares. A few more of those disgusting “energy bars,” which make me miss my tías’ enchiladas so much, grief pangs through my gut almost as loud as the hunger.

  I know Mami survived the crash, but as for the rest of my family? I have no guarantees they still live, or if Faye or Alex survived. Or the Smithsons. Or anyone, really, even the black-hat Noh Mask hacker. I touch the subjugator hibernating in my throat. With the Conquistador’s silocomputers nonfunctional, my bioware’s offline, taking my subjugator down, too. It’s the first time I’ve thought about the damned thing since the crash; and it’s the only positive I’ve netted thus far. As soon as I see Mami again, I’ll be able to tell her all the secrets I know, and all the lies.

  So I will follow this strange boy into the depths of the John Muir. Outwitting my enemies and saving myself starts by salvaging this ship.

  “Laura, you listening?” Tuck asks, startling me out of my thoughts.

  “Lo siento, yes,” I say.

  “Uh-huh,” he says. “I know that look. My mom used to…” But he trails off, his words disappearing into a quick chuckle and a grin. He rubs the back of his neck with one palm, and then says, “Aw, never mind.”

  “Your mom used to what?” I ask.

  Tuck doesn’t answer straightaway. He seems to roll a few statements around in his head, debating his answer. “My mom was a thinker, like you,” Tuck finally says. “But right now, if we’re not doers, the Muir’s not going to make it.” He hoists his backpack on one shoulder. “The ship needs power. The auxiliary power hive is nearby, about three klicks up the t-Two tunnel. Since I don’t know if anyone from my crew survived, it’s us, or it’s no one.”

  Dread worms into my heart, sending its sugary poison into my veins. A shudder runs its stubby fingers over my skin. All the courage I knew before deserts me. It’s one thing to talk about saving humanity; it’s quite another to go out there and actually do the work.

  “Listen.” Tuck reaches out and places a knuckle under my chin, turning my face up. I step back, glaring at him.

  To his credit, he glares right back at me.

  Something in his gaze transports me past the splatter of old gore on his face, the bruises on his cheekbone and neck. The fear in him resonates with the fear in me. It vibrates between us on some unseen wavelength, this terror of being alone in the hostile darkness, with the vast odds ready to topple and crush us beneath their weight. It’s human. We are different, yet the same; two kids shivering in the shadows, scared of the monsters in the halls and death at the door. The vacuum of hopelessness can’t have sucked away all his humanity, because when I look at him, I see it staring me straight in the face.

  For all we know, we’re the last two people alive on this ship, the only beating hearts on the far side of the universe. We might be the last two stars standing between humanity and an endless night.

  The thought makes a sob roll up from the center of my chest, but I swallow it down. I don’t want him to think I’m upset because I’m afraid of the monsters.

  I’m upset because I’m afraid of what those monsters have done to my family.

  “If we’re going to do this, you’ve got to be all-in,” Tuck says. “Once all three auxiliary core rooms are functional, we’ll both need to turn keys at the same time to bring the ship back online. I can’t do it alone.”

  I close my eyes and take a deep, centering breath. Do this for your family, Laura, I tell myself. Do it for your future. For all humanity’s future. Fortuna, gloria, y familia.

  “How much is a klick?” I ask, surprised at how calm my voice sounds despite the frantic fluttering of my heart. I drag my fingertips across my lower eyelids, just to make sure there aren’t any tears hiding in my lashes.

  “About a kilometer,” he says. “You a good runner?”

  “Good enough to run a few kilometers.”

  “Without huffing and puffing? We run silent, or we don’t run at all.”

  I roll my eyes. “I just free-climbed a hundred-meter-tall computer a few hours ago, survived a major ship crash, and fought off a few of your mourners. I think I can handle running a few kilometers.”

  “Good. Keep it up with the piss-off attitude,” he says, shaking his head at me. “You’re going to need it out there.”

  Ancient history or no, maybe I should have shot him when I had the chance.

  USS JOHN MUIR NPS-3500

  CURATORS’ PANIC ROOM

  TUCK

  I lied. So shoot me.

  Laura will need more than attitude to survive in the deepdowns. The other curators I’ve run with? All tough, like Laura. All smart, like Laura. All quick, like Laura. But most of them wound up dead anyway. I’ve already lost Holly today. If I were to lose Laura, too, I’d be done with this.

  For her sake—and my own—I need to get her through this.

  Alive.

  So I teach her to underpronate her steps. Rather than putting the weight of a step on the bony heel, curators place the fleshy outside of the foot down first and roll toward the middle. The knees absorb most of the shock. And trust me, my busted knee feels it every night.

  Never thought about how retro this strategy must look to an outsider, though.

  I walk across the room, demonstrating the steps. “Silence is your friend in the deepdowns,” I say, pivoting to face her. “Most mourners use echolocation to track their prey. Don’t give them anything to work with, even if you’re hurt. Understand?”

  “What if there’s noise pollution in the ship?” Laura asks, falling into step beside me. She holds out her hands to keep from wobbling with each step. “Once we reestablish the ship’s power grid, won’t its systems make a lot of noise?”

  “They might. Don’t count on it, especially in the deepdown tunnels,” I reply, halting by the lockers. She looks like a duckling, waddling back and forth across the room. “Okay, good”—she’s so not good—“do that now, but faster. I’m going to watch your form.”

  Laura jogs a few steps away from me. Tripping, she catches herself on one of the foam-covered walls. The foam pyramids depress under her weight, sucking up the sound from our voices and steps.

  “Mierda, it’s going to take a miracle not to roll my ankle out there,” she says with a wince.

  “Let’s wrap your ankles for support, Stumble-lina.”

  “This isn’t a joke,” she snaps.

  “Laura, my whole life’s a bad joke.” I pull some stiff bandages from the lockers. I show her how to wrap her ankle the way we used to on the soccer field, with the bandage crisscrossing the ankle and looping under the heel.

  Should I tell her the communications arrays are busted? I wonder as s
he secures a bandage to her left ankle, then the right. That even if we manage to get the power hives online, the ship probably won’t survive?

  If I don’t tell her these things, have I lied to her?

  And why, with this girl, does it feel like being honest matters so much?

  Laura practices running with the bandages—back and forth, back and forth. After a few attempts, her footsteps whisper against the floor. She moves quicker, with more confidence, and she’s got decent form for long-distance running. And I admit, I could watch that ponytail of hers swing across her back all damn day.

  If she can hold it together in the tunnels—and that’s a big if—we might make it to the auxiliary power hives. If we get the ship’s power back on, we’ll have Dejah on our side. The AI will seal off the crash site, as well as scan the ship’s tunnels for additional survivors. Once I can talk to Aren again, he’ll put the other curators to work.

  With a little luck—God knows I’ve got that in spades—we might survive this crash.

  I’ve got to make that happen.

  For Mom, as crazy as she used to make me.

  For Laura, the girl who dreams of history.

  For me, and whatever the future brings my way.

  And I guess for humanity—despite the lot of good they’ve done, burning down our fragging planet. Mom believed in them, though. Laura does, too.

  Right now, that’s enough.

  “Good, that’s good,” I tell Laura when her footsteps grow so quiet, they almost melt into the floor. “Now try it with all your gear.” Her quiver clacks like a set of old dentures. When I reach for it, she snatches it back and clutches it against her chest, cheeks flushed.

  “O-kay,” I say, lifting a brow, looking her up and down.

  “Sorry,” she says with a small shake of her head, as if chastising herself. “It’s … well, it’s the only artifact I was able to save from my parents’ ship.”

  “An old-ass arrow bag is that important to you?”

  “It’s a quiver,” she says, and I grin because that’s exactly what I expected her to say. “It might be the only part of my parents’ collection that survived the crash.”

  “You really are a history nerd, aren’t you?”

  “Shut up. And yes.” Laura settles her bow and quiver over her stiflecloth cape, which I hope won’t be a problem.

  “Well, stuff some stiflecloth inside your quiver, Dr. Jones.” I chuckle, sliding a slimpack on. “And let’s go save this goddamned ship.”

  USS JOHN MUIR NPS-3500

  DEEPDOWN TUNNELS

  LAURA

  Who knew it could be difficult to convince someone to save their own starship?

  Tuck takes the lead, holding a flare over his head as we step into the deepdown tunnels. It’s colder than the Conquistador’s walk-in freezer here, the chill stiffening my joints. I draw the cloak around me, surprised at how well the fabric traps my body heat; and perhaps even more dumbfounded by the John Muir crew’s ingenuity for creating a garment like this, a fusion of ancient design and smart tech.

  They’re survivors in every sense of the word.

  Tuck moves like a puff of air, his footfalls deft. His exhalations look like clouds of toxic smoke, illuminated by his flare’s green light. If he’s bothered by the cold, he shows no sign. His flare highlights the tunnel’s rounded ribs, which appear every ten meters or so. The metal floors feel like ice, numbing my feet. Behind me, the darkness feels as solid as a wall. The ship lies silent, save for the occasional metallic groan rising from its depths.

  My heart thuds in my chest, dosing my system with adrenaline. The last time I walked through these tunnels, I’d been alone. Abandoned. I had no light to guide me, nor any idea of what lurked in the ship’s bowels. Now I have Tuck. Together, we have a fighting chance to save this ship. In the meantime, I can only hope Mami and the rest of my family can manage to survive on their own.

  Tuck pops me on the arm, and with a grin, takes off running. I follow him, focusing on each step till I ease into a rhythm. Every so often, I misstep onto my heel, or my cloak snaps in the wind. Tuck recoils a little each time but doesn’t stop running. Whatever you do, don’t stay in one place. Keep moving, he told me as he prepared to open the panic room door.

  In the darkness, it’s hard to tell how far we’ve run. I count the tunnel’s ribs as we pass them. Eighty-five, eighty-six … Every hundred should make a kilometer, or a klick, as Tuck says. My bowstring presses into my collarbone as I go, chafing the skin through my clothing and cloak. While it’s uncomfortable, and I have to brace the bow with one hand to keep it from sliding, I wouldn’t have left it behind for anything. Not so long as the quiver holds one of the most important artifacts of the eighteenth century.

  My body starts to feel the distance in my lungs first—they burn with each breath. I breathe in through my nose, and out through my mouth, keeping each one as quiet as I can. Up ahead, Tuck moves like a machine. He’s mastered this technique, wholly committed to the business of survival in a hostile environment.

  After almost two full kilometers, Tuck puts up one hand, warning me to slow down. I halt beside him.

  He lifts up the flare, throwing light over a meaty mass. It spreads across the floor and up the walls. Tentacles burst from vents and seethe over the ceiling. Pulsating and dripping, everything smells of bile, of feces and rotting flesh, the stench burning the back of my throat and my tear ducts. I cover my nose and mouth with the balaclava. When I point out the shelflike fungi growing up the wall, Tuck mouths something like “the fester” at me and slices a finger across his throat.

  No pasa nada, right? Just avoid the alien mold growing all over the ship and it’ll all be fine.

  What’s going on in this place? I wonder, following Tuck as he skirts the red, spongy outer rim of the stuff. I know the John Muir’s crew woke up as mourners, but this stuff looks like a biohazard. Alien, almost. Did people get infected? How did they metamorphose into monsters while in stasis, anyway?

  The fester fills the tunnels in all directions. It gurgles, pustules bursting on the surface, emitting gas from its depths. We hug the wall for several meters, moving slowly, keeping our feet out of the stuff. I walk on the balls of my feet, gritting my teeth when something spongy and wet bursts between my toes.

  Needing no directions or map, Tuck turns left. He cranks open another door, stepping past the half-opened panels before waving me through.

  I enter a room of towering, silent machines. The flare’s nauseating green light slicks tall turbines, all of which are built from a smoky metal, maybe a steel alloy. A thick layer of dust covers the floor. We’re in the ship’s mechanical sectors, most likely the support bays for the scramengines. I haven’t studied pre-Exodus ship craft like my brother Gael has, but I know I saw a huge line of engines on the deepdowns’ outermost rim. Which accounts for the cold. The heat would leach from the ship’s outermost areas first.

  Faded numbers and letters mark the walls and machinery, most of their codes now unrecognizable. I’ve never seen such a well-preserved ship from this era. I want to know how Tuck’s people managed to keep the John Muir shipshape for so long, especially while the crew was in stasis. It’s remarkable, I think, taking a moment to absorb the ship’s details.

  Tuck leads me between two towering machines. The walkway is so narrow, I feel like a cave spelunker from pre-Exodus times. The machinery’s smooth to the touch but lacks the buoyant, static-safe layer of electrons my people use to protect our tech in deep space. I’m accustomed to touching tech on the Conquistador and feeling an airy resistance, even when the machines are off.

  Tuck pauses on the other side of the silent machines, so suddenly that I almost crash into him. He holds up a hand as I glare at the back of his head.

  The clash and clang of metal echoes in the distance. I almost ask What was that? but bite my tongue. Tuck motions at me to hunch down behind a large, boxy machine. As we do, he snuffs his flare, drawing the darkness down around us. He sits close
enough to let our knees touch, keeping us connected as we hide in the shadows.

  My heart thumps. Questions itch under my skin: Why did we stop? What’s so horrible that it’s better to hide from it than run?

  Or worse, what if he doesn’t even know what’s following us?

  Tuck and I hide for a few minutes in the dark, unmoving. The silence lies thick in the room, the chill creeping into my bones. My pounding heart begins to slow its pace. Tuck shifts beside me. Our knees break apart. In a blind panic, I reach out for him, missing his knee and accidentally grabbing his thigh. He snatches my hand away, taking my palm in his rough, callused one.

  He holds on a second longer than he should.

  Cheeks burning, I pull my hand from his grasp. We sit in awkward silence—then I see a light glittering in the distance, one moving slowly between the large machines in the room.

  The light stutters. It flares again, then winks out. As the glimmer draws closer, I realize it’s a man dressed in a white EVA suit, passing behind a row of machines on the other side of the room. His lantern’s brightness slicks his rounded EVA helmet.

  Tuck draws a sharp breath. I suppose the man’s no ally of Tuck’s, or else we wouldn’t remain hidden here in the shadows. The man in the suit passes out of sight, but Tuck doesn’t release the breath he was holding until another metal clank resounds in the room.

  Who was that? I want to ask. Where were they going? And if he wasn’t one of your allies, is this entire ship just full of locos?

  Tuck strikes a new flare and stands. Inclining his head left, he scoots past a series of grates protecting huge switchboards, and down a short flight of steps sheltered by an awning. I follow him through another set of massive machines, the spaces between them so tight I have to squeeze the breath from my lungs to fit. Then it’s through another door, back into the tunnels.