Pitch Dark

by Courtney Alameda

  Now, I just want to get the hell out.

  My flashlights glide over the torn edges of a large hole in the metal floor. Detaching from my shoulders, they float a few meters forward, illuminating whatever I turn my helmet toward. The hole’s edges have snarls of metal teeth, loops of fibrous cords, and frayed bits that still spark. The ship’s fester grows down one side like a long, slick tongue. I can see the ship’s struts and bones, and the hole stretches some ten meters in diameter.

  The map on my HUD turns three-dimensional. My route?

  Down.

  Here goes nothing. I leap inside the hole, feeling the EDDA’s wings stretch out behind me.

  Letting me drop into the darkness.

  USS JOHN MUIR NPS-3500

  SHIP’S DEEPDOWNS

  TUCK

  In the deepdowns, the mourners can’t breathe.

  The air pressure hovers above the Armstrong limit, aka the point where human beings can no longer survive without life support. One pound per square inch. For scale, the air psi at the top of Mount Everest was almost five. People used to black out at the summit. If Alex and I tried to run this without EVA protection, our saliva might’ve boiled in our mouths after the lack of air punched us out.

  Not a pretty way to go.

  But look, Ma: no mourners.

  I step over a weeper as it spasms on the tram platform outside the Ingress bulkhead. Mourners—even the big ones—lie in cancerous lumps all over. They’re hyperventilating from lack of oxygen, their chests struggling to rise and fall. They’re freezing. Dying. Mourners, weepers, it doesn’t matter. Nothing’s surviving the gutting of the Muir.

  To be honest, I’m not sure we will, either.

  The armored tram still waits for us at the plat. I drop inside, scanning the space. Clear. I wave Alex down and lock the cupola hatch behind him. He frowns at the bloodstains on the corrugated metal floor. I head for the cockpit, grabbing a seat and programming the tram for Plat 10—the one closest to the offboard station’s airlock. Since we can’t follow Laura’s trail, I figure our best bet will be to meet her at the bridge.

  The only way to do that is to lift a few maintenance mecha from the offboard station and fly there.

  Alex eases into the seat next to me. “There’s a lot of blood back there.”

  “It was Laura’s,” I say, switching on the tram’s engine. It rumbles at the back of the tram, warming up. “That’s why we need to hurry—we’ve got to save her from whatever’s lurking on the bridge.”

  He snorts. “¡Qué pendejo! Laura does not need your gringo ass to ‘save’ her.”

  “What’s that supposed to mean?” I ask, turning to him. My EVA suit creaks every time I move. Good thing there’s not much air left in the deepdowns—no way would we be able to move around out there without attracting attention.

  “She doesn’t need a white knight, or a savior,” Alex says, propping one boot on the dashboard. “That flaca can take care of herself. If we go after her, it’s because we’re her friends, and because our survival’s linked up to hers. Got it?”

  I bite back a snarky reply, irritation prickling under my skin. Part of me wants to snap. Another part knows he’s got a point—Laura can take care of herself. Who did Mom send to save the ship? Laura. Who outran a griefer over a floor full of shattered glass? Laura. Who inspired me to keep fighting? Laura.

  “You’re right, bruh,” I say as the tram rumbles forward. “Laura’s got this.”

  “If anyone can save this ship, it’s her.” Alex chuckles, shifting in his seat and resting his rifle against the wall. “You sure this is the fastest way to the bridge?”

  “Unless you want to fight your way through one of the largest mourner pods on the ship?”

  “Right, then,” Alex says.

  The tram ambles down the tracks, moving at quarter power. Every klick seems to crawl past. It’s akin to torture, the waiting. The wondering. Especially when Alex says, “Damn, she’s not responding to me,” and shakes his wrist to shut down his bioware.

  I won’t deny Laura’s capable. Tough. But I can’t not worry about her, either. She’s headed into territory I’ve not touched. I don’t know what she’ll face out there, but my imagination’s happy to fill in the blanks.

  The tram’s LE-1 bulbs flicker out, plunging us into darkness. My HUD lens fritzes, then snaps off. The tram jolts, then lags, sliding to a stop in the middle of the tunnel on a screech. Outside, heavy clicks and groans resound through the ship.

  “Ah crap,” I say, getting out of my seat. Emergency lights flicker on the tracks outside.

  “What?” Alex sits up, peering into the darkness ahead. “What’s going on?”

  “The ship’s nonessential systems are shutting down,” I say, cleaning a circle in the window to check the tracks outside. Nothing moves. “She’s going into hibernation mode, either because the AI’s not around to handle certain maintenance functions, or because the power grid’s busted again. The ship will only run mission-critical functions till someone can make repairs.”

  What I don’t mention? If the Muir’s plunging into hibernation mode, we don’t have much time left. Unless Laura can reach the bridge—and soon—the entire ship will shut down. We might have an hour. Maybe two.

  “Tu…” Aren’s voice scratches through my head. “Can you … me?”

  “Aren? Hello?… Aren, you’re breaking up,” I reply, but if he answers me, I can’t hear him.

  “We’ll have to go the rest of the way on foot,” I say aloud to Alex, making my way toward the back. Tossing my rifle’s strap over one shoulder, I pop the cupola and climb out of the tram.

  It’s strange to not worry about my footsteps, or the sounds I make. To leap off the edge of the tram and land on the ground, near soundlessly. Alex follows me down.

  My EVA suit’s helmet switches over to night vision mode. It illuminates the space around me in a strange, grayish light. In one corner, the helmet’s HUD shows me how much power and air the suit has stored: Two hours, twenty minutes. While it might not seem like much, it’s probably more time than the ship’s got.

  It takes us seven and a half minutes to walk from the tram to Plat 10. Once the platform appears in the distance, I pick up the pace. The signs for the platform are so corroded and old, I can’t read anything on them but:

  PLATFORM 10

  MECHABAY WAREHOUSES

  OUTBOARD AIR LOCKS A AND B

  The rest of the words are scratched or faded out.

  Nobody’s used Plat 10 in ages. Without EVA suits, we’ve had no use for the tunnels leading to the offboard station air locks.

  I climb up the steps to the platform. The dust lies so thick, it pillows my steps. In low air pressure and normal gravity, the dust keeps perfect prints of my boots. It’s quiet—too quiet, as that dead-horse trope goes. The ship’s systems don’t hum. No mourners howl in the tunnels. Only the hiss of air moving in and out of my helmet breaks the silence.

  What freaks me out, though, are the hundreds of EVA boot prints stamped into the platform’s dust. Someone’s been using this place, and they sure as hell weren’t curators from my crew.

  “Did you hear that?” Alex asks quietly, looking around as we move into one of the tunnels.

  My stomach bucks, sweat breaking out in my pits. I stop in my tracks, almost turning to look back at him, ready to slice a finger across my throat. Logic stops me. I know talking through the EVAs’ comms isn’t dangerous. Fears aren’t logical, though. They live in your gut, not your head, just like the months and months and months of training and conditioning I’ve had out here.

  “What?” I ask, once I’ve managed to get a grip.

  “It sounded like an engine.”

  “How’s that possible? The ship’s dying, and there’s barely any air in this tunnel.”

  “You tell me,” Alex says emphatically. “You’re supposed to be the professional here.”

  “Never thought I’d hear that word applied to me.”

  Alex snort
s.

  We stand on the edge of the platform. Watching the tracks. Straining to hear anything through our EVA suits.

  “We should keep moving,” I tell Alex, motioning for him to follow me away from the platform and into the tunnel. “But stay alert—my crew hasn’t had functional EVAs in years, so we’ve had no use for the outboard mecha. I don’t know what we’re going to find out there.”

  “Someone’s been here,” Alex says, looking at the footprints in the dust on the floor.

  “A lot of someones, probably.”

  “Not your crew?”

  I shake my head. He swears under his breath.

  My thoughts exactly.

  It’s a five-minute walk from the platform to the air locks, the ones that will lead to the outboard stations … and hopefully, to Laura. Here, everything’s rusted all to hell. A few time-eaten EVA suits line the walls. Most of their parts lie rotting on the floor. Helmets hang on hooks, their skulls cracked, crushed, and covered in dust. Several rest on the ground. Round windows look out into space. The outboard stations aren’t visible from here—I’ll have to open the Air Lock B to see them.

  “The place is a mess,” Alex says, kicking a helmet with one foot. It bounces off a wall. I cringe, even when it doesn’t gong quite as loud as it might have before. You know what they say about old habits.

  “Sorry, I didn’t exactly have the time to clean the place up for you,” I say, checking for a viable hydrapack or two. Most of the packs look pretty busted, their telescoping arms broken off, parts lying in piles. C’mon, I think. I just need one—

  “What are you two doing?” someone asks through the comms.

  That wasn’t Alex’s voice.

  A man in a dark EVA suit steps into the air lock, rifle pointed at my chest. His suit’s design, though similar to the one I’m wearing, has a yellow sun burning over the left breast and shoulder.

  That symbol itches at my memory. I’ve seen it before. A museum.

  With Mom. In Washington, DC.

  It was at the Air and Space Museum.

  Run by the Smithsonian Institution.

  Dammit. He must’ve followed the tram somehow—maybe he took one of the Jeeps from the park, or one of the skybikes from the rangers’ station.

  “Is this the part where you tell me to put my hands up?” I ask the suit. “While we exchange witty repartee underscored by mutual loathing?”

  “Shut up and … shit, just put your hands up,” the suit says. I’m not 100 percent sure, but it sounds like Sebastian in there.

  “Do you want me to drop my weapon first?” I ask, goading him. Alex snickers behind me.

  “Goddammit, yes.” He turns on the interior lighting inside his helmet. The white butterfly bandages bridging Sebastian’s nose glow blue-white. Beneath them, a purple bruise turns his entire face into a Rorschach test. I don’t know about you, but I see a bastard in the inkblot.

  I’d say I improved his overall look.

  “Put your guns down,” Sebastian says.

  “Or what, you’ll shoot us?” Alex scoffs. “We don’t have time for this, vato.” He taps the glass faceplate on his helmet. “Clock’s ticking, and we’ve got to find Laura before our suits burn out.”

  “You’re taking me with you,” Sebastian says.

  “You?” I laugh. “You’ll just die.”

  “I caught up to you, didn’t I?” he says. “I’ll be fine.”

  “Do I need to say it again?” I ask. “No.”

  Sebastian fires once. The bright bullet glances off a pile of broken EVA helmets, leaving a black mark on the wall. Alex’s shoulders rack up around his ears.

  Sebastian’s knuckle curls tighter around the trigger. My gaze zeros in on his micrometer movements of metal and flesh. “My mother took a group of men after Laura—”

  “Bruh, your mom didn’t even take you with her,” I say.

  “And if you think I’m letting you get within a hundred meters of Laura, you’re wrong,” Alex says, taking a step toward Sebastian.

  “Stop right there,” Sebastian growls.

  “You don’t have the cojones to shoot me,” Alex says, taking another step.

  Sebastian’s finger tightens on the trigger.

  I lunge for Alex. “Hold up—”

  Sebastian fires.

  For a full second, nobody moves.

  I don’t think anyone even breathes.

  Then Alex stumbles back a step, catching himself against the wall. I can’t see his face. He presses one hand to his side. When he pulls it away, blood slicks his gloved hand. In the shadows, it’s nothing more than an oily gleam on his glove. He shakes and shudders, the pain visible as it breaks through his initial shock. His suit hisses as air escapes. He breathes a curse, doubling over.

  I race forward, grabbing Alex under the arm and helping him ease to the ground. “Are you crazy?” I shout at Sebastian.

  “No, just serious,” Sebastian says, racking his rifle and pointing it at us.

  “Seriously an asshole!” I snap. Shock’s making Alex too shaky to provide adequate compression on the wound. I shuck my slimpack off my back. “Hey, man, just keep breathing. You’re going to be okay. You hear me?”

  “You’re going to take me to Laura,” Sebastian says. “Now.”

  I apply pressure to Alex’s wound with a gloved hand. “If he dies, you’re a murderer.”

  “That depends on who’s telling the story, doesn’t it?” Sebastian says.

  My anger rises like a welt, hot and red.

  “Like Laura said, the conquerors write the stories,” Sebastian says, “and I very much intend to be finishing hers. As far as the world will know, Alex got shot while valiantly trying to stop Laura from destroying the John Muir. Cooperate, and I’ll at least let him go down in history as a hero. Don’t, and you’ll all go down as villains.”

  I glare at him. “By the time this is all over, your nose won’t be the only part of you that’s broken.”

  “I’m trembling, truly.” He smirks. The flicker of fear doesn’t show in his eyes. It’s in the almost-imperceptible hitch in his breath, though. The flutter of his Adam’s apple. Proof he’s in over his head. He gestures to Alex’s wound. “You’d better help him, Tuck. He’s looking a little pale.”

  Alex tries to push up from the floor. I grab him by the shoulders and force him back down. He’s strong, dammit, even injured. Maybe that’ll give him a fighting chance. “Sit down, don’t talk,” I say.

  “Play dead, dog,” Sebastian says.

  “Shut up,” I spit at Sebastian. Taking a knee, I pull a compression-tourniquet pack out of my bag. The pack’s a type of bandage that, once inserted in a wound, will expand until it clogs a hole. If any of Alex’s major arteries or organs have been damaged, it will stopper the bleeding for a few hours. The pack’s rocket-shaped and chock full of medicaine. I insert it into his wound. The bandage responds to blood absorption and begins to swell.

  Alex gasps in pain. “The hell—”

  Did I mention the compression-tourniquet burns like a glitcher?

  “Don’t move. That’s going to make you feel better,” I say, clapping Alex on the shoulder as I stand. My bloody handprint gleams on his black suit. He grunts. “Give that two minutes, then we’ll tape your suit.”

  If Sebastian’s got two brain cells to rub together—two chambers of a heart, even, since he sure doesn’t have any balls—he won’t keep Alex around. “Let Alex go back to the park,” I tell Sebastian. “He’s only going to slow us down now. I’ll take you to Laura.”

  “No, no,” Sebastian says. “He’s one of Laura’s closest and dearest friends, and a bargaining chip. Laura would do anything to make sure her precious Alejandro Mello was safe.”

  Alex coughs, spattering blood on the inside of his helmet. “Screw you. Can’t wait to see … your ass in jail…”

  “That’s cute, Mello.” Sebastian laughs, full-bodied and mocking. “People like me don’t go to prison for self-defense.”

  “
No, but they sure as hell go to jail for being cowards,” I snap. Four hundred years of development and progress, and humanity’s still worshipping money, power, and fame? Good on ya, human race. Glad to see you’ve dealt with your baggage.

  “Now, give me your rifles and get him on his feet,” Sebastian says. “Or else I shoot him in the head and claim you did it later, Tuck. After all, who will the courts believe? The golden son of one of Panamerica’s foremost scientific minds, or some filthy savage we found on the far side of the universe? Rifles. I won’t ask again.”

  I disliked this guy before, but now I’m certain Sebastian’s not coming back from this run. Hope he kissed his mommy good-bye. While I might not be cold-blooded enough to shoot someone at point-blank range, I’ve seen a hundred deaths in the deepdowns.

  Time to put that knowledge to good use.

  If Sebastian thinks I’m a savage now, he hasn’t seen anything yet.

  USS JOHN MUIR NPS-3500

  MOURNER TUNNEL

  LAURA

  After a few seconds of gentle descent, some of the tension leaks from between my shoulders. Only the sludge from the biofarm crawls into the hole after me, tap-tap-tapping as it drips. As the suit’s wings carry me down, and thrusters engage under my feet. The EDDA’s lights have already automagically detached from my shoulders, sensing the nearness of the walls. One hovers over my head. The other floats below me.

  As my heart rate slows, I take a deeper breath. My throat feels bruised, and every breath burns like the inside of my windpipe’s been reshaped by a laser. I take quick stock of my suit, brushing off bits of gore and grime.

  If I plan to be at the bridge before the EDDA runs out of power, I need to move. The suit’s powerpac currently sits at 65 percent and is draining rapidly. The flight function appears to burn through the suit’s resources faster than almost anything else.

  In the darkness, the descent seems endless. Mourner corpses are wedged in the tunnel’s walls, all in various states of decay. Some hang suspended, their limbs tangled in cords or torsos speared on sharp objects, as if they’ve somehow fallen into this place. Others slump over ducts.