Pitch Dark

by Courtney Alameda

  “Maybe if someone hadn’t taken our rifles away…,” I say.

  “Shut up, Morgan,” Sebastian snaps.

  Craning my neck, I look for something, anything really, that I can use to distract the people on deck.

  On the other side of the station, a large red button calls out to me—it looks like a cabin purge button. Hitting that button would evac the station’s oxygen barrier and suck the air out into space, along with anything or anyone not tied down. Including me, if I’m not careful.

  It’s a crazy-stupid idea.

  But desperate times call for crazy-stupid measures.

  The outboard station stretches about forty meters wide. I’ll run that length in four or five seconds. Maybe less. Basically, run, I think with a grin. I’m always running. At least this time, I’m running toward someone, rather than away from them.

  “Everyone holding on to something tied down?” I ask through the comms.

  “Wait, wait, why?” Sebastian asks, suspicion creeping into his voice.

  “You’ll see.” I roll into a crouch, eyeing the station’s purge button. No more than five meters to the button’s left, there’s a rebar ladder welded to the wall. I’ll grab onto that when all hell breaks loose. “Stay where you are. Hang on, or you’ll die.”

  Every muscle in my body coils.

  “What are you going to do, vato?” Alex wheezes at me.

  “Something crazy,” I reply, easing around the deck’s bolted-down crates.

  Here goes nothing.

  I push off the wall, bursting past the crates. Breath fogging the inside of my EVA helmet. Legs pumping like pistons. Out of the corner of my eye, I spot an old Muir tech named Howell, who’s so shocked, he doesn’t even try to stop me. Like the woman on his right, he’s not wearing an EVA suit.

  Pity.

  This won’t be a pretty way for them to die.

  Two guys rush me from my left. Sebastian snipes at them before I can even hit my brakes. Men stumble and jerk as bullets slam into their torsos and helmets. I dodge past, shouts erupting behind me. Someone’s shouting at me inside my helmet, too. I can’t hear anything that’s said, not past the drumbeat of blood in my ears and the pounding of my feet in these massive boots.

  I catch myself against the opposite wall, break the glass case around the button with my fist, then punch the purge button hard. Sirens scream across the deck, citrine-yellow hazard lights blaring in my eyes. A woman’s voice comes over the station’s PA system: “Air purge initiated. Oxygen barrier will drop in five, four, three…”

  The station heaves, bucking underfoot. I stumble, almost losing my balance, and then leap forward to grab the rebar ladder on my left. I hook my arms through the rungs as the station’s air lock cracks open. Outside, stars twinkle, peaceful and yet so very malevolent.

  The air shrieks as it exits the station. Crates tumble end-over-end toward the void. Cranes swing overhead, their heads dragging across the ceiling and raining showers of sparks across the deck. They slam into the walls, breaking off entire metal panels and pylons. As the vacuum suction increases, everyone scrambles for a handhold. Some people fly loose, plunging headlong toward the void. Ten, maybe twelve bodies disappear through the ship’s maw.

  “What’d you do?” Sebastian shouts over the noise.

  “Something real stupid, so hold on!” I shout back.

  “You’re making it awfully hard, Tuck!” Sebastian snaps.

  I chuckle. “Oh my god, did you think about how that sounded before you said it?”

  “Now isn’t the time for dick jokes,” he snaps.

  “That’s not a thing, asshole!” I say.

  When the oxygen barrier snaps back into place, I sink to the ground and put my head against the wall. Too close that time, I think, wishing I could wipe the sweat off my face.

  The station’s air lock panels rumble closed. I don’t hear their vibration, but I can feel it through the floor.

  I look up when the light shifts in front of me. Alex limps over and sits down next to me. Sebastian emerges from inside one of the crane operating booths, keeping his rifle pointed at the ground.

  Ah, crap. I’d hoped Sebastian would’ve at least lost the rifle, if not his life.

  “You’re right about one thing,” Sebastian says. “That was stupid.”

  “But I made them disappear, right?” I ask, looking around the deck. I spread my hands wide. “Ta-da.”

  “Who’s the murderer now?” Sebastian says, motioning to me with his rifle.

  Touché.

  Both Alex and Sebastian follow me into the mecha docks. Splashes of green, turquoise, and purple light coat the floor and ceilings. Turning a corner, I walk onto the wide dock. On either side of me, the heads of the mecha are positioned inside airtight loading stations—we can drop down into the cockpits from there.

  I ignore the ouroboros symbols carved into the mecha’s flanks.

  Bastards.

  Built from smooth black titanium, most of the mecha look shipshape. The cockpits glow with soft, colored light. Their colors tell me what the mecha’s used for. The two purple mecha have two-meter-long ion saws built into their right forearms. They’re for demolitions, and come equipped with a range of targeted explosives. Beyond them, there are four each of the green machines, and four of the blue. If I remember right—and I probably don’t—the green mecha have welding tech, and the six-armed blue mecha are powerlifters. Several are missing from the dock, but we only need three.

  Circular, hip-high screens display the mecha’s status. Most of the circles glow in green “ready” states.

  “So, who knows how to fly a mecha?” I ask with a grin.

  USS JOHN MUIR NPS-3500

  SHIP’S BRIDGE

  LAURA

  After running another half a kilometer, I emerge from the mourner tunnel onto the John Muir’s massive bridge.

  Thin light falls through the bridge’s tall, age-clouded windows. Darkness hangs like a fog over the entire space, but the John Muir’s bridge appears to be several times larger than the Conquistador’s. At first I think the ceiling’s caved in toward the middle, but no. When I squint, the EDDA’s helmet magnifies what I’m looking at … but to be honest, I’m not sure what I’m looking at.

  From where I stand, it almost appears that the bridge suffered massive trauma. The floor and ceiling have been wrenched open and curled into strange, alien patterns. On my right, an entire section of computer terminals rises like an old-world tsunami over my head, their monitors dangling by cords from bent desks. Broken chairs and debris rest along the floor at the wave’s foot.

  Tuck told me the mourners had overrun the bridge, but nothing moves. It’s so quiet here, even my breath sounds like a scream. Old, shed skins rest in discarded piles on the floor, or hang from the equipment like gray ghosts. I flinch away as one wafts toward me, carried on a dying current of air.

  Though humans built this place, it looks like the primitive home of some ancient, eldritch horror. There’s no question the John Muir is a massive ship, but this is the first time I’ve wondered if it might swallow me alive.

  As I venture onto the bridge, the map hovering at the edge of my sight changes. It displays my route across the devastation, up one flight of stairs, down a short hallway, and through the ship’s control room to the server room. I’m close.

  I clamber over a large pile of rubble, shocked to find the floor ends abruptly underfoot. I grab a handhold to keep from sliding into a large sinkhole in the bridge. It must be forty meters in diameter, much larger than the tunnel I used to reach this place. Small, black-branched plants grow off the sides of the walls, their white fruit glowing like small stars. By their light, I see the large, moist membrane plugging the entire space. It twitches, a shiver rippling from its center to its edge, a strange belly-button-shaped opening in its middle. Something trembles inside the mass, and I draw back from the edge of the hole.

  What is that thing? I wonder. What sort of monster bores holes in starship
s?

  Whatever it is, I hope it’s not home.

  Skirting the hole’s edge, I head for the second-story bridge control room, passing beneath it as I head for the stairwell. I take the steps slowly, using the EDDA’s lights to search every nook and cranny. I need to be careful with the lights, as the suit only has a quarter of its power left. Dr. Morgan did say the suit was very much a prototype, its powerpac still insufficient for its needs.

  Just a little bit farther, I tell myself. We’re almost there.

  At the top of the stairs, I find myself in a utilitarian hallway with metal floors, rust-eaten walls, and broken lights. The fester spreads across most of the space, heat still rising from its spongy dankness. Spiny growths retract into the wall as I pass. Flat white worms wriggle through the fester, recoiling whenever my lights fall on them.

  To my right, I find a hefty, blast-proof door marked MISSION CONTROL in chipped paint. To my left, the hallway wanders off into the darkness. The fester grows thick here, bubbling out of vents. A pus-filled blister explodes on the wall to my right, weeping a steamy, yellowish liquid. A few of the worms slip out, writhing on the floor. My skin crawls beneath the EDDA’s protective layers.

  The touchlock beside the door glows green. The blast doors are vacuum-sealed, so I need to be careful. If the room beyond is pressurized, it will be dangerous to open this door. The blast of escaping air from a higher-pressure environment to a lower-pressure one may blow me back several meters into the fester. I wince at the white tapeworms sliding into the shadows behind me. Ugh.

  I search for a handhold. Something to cling to, in case of a massive pressure shift. I tug on a nearby set of spines, find them well-anchored to the wall, take a deep breath, and tap the touchlock.

  As the control room doors slide apart, escaping air hisses into the hall. I brace myself as the door panels widen and the airstream roars into gale-force winds. The air spirals past me and dissipates. As it slows, I wrench my hands off the fester’s spines and step into the control room, shucking goo off the EDDA suit.

  Once I close the door, the air pressure rises in the room, the HVAC still circulating massive amounts of air through the space.

  Bueno, I’m here.

  The control room sits a floor higher than the rest of the bridge, one architectural mainstay that persists in shipbuilding to this day. Most of the bridge is visible from these control room windows. Reaching out, I slide my hand along a computer monitor, knocking a waterfall of dust to the desk below. All the chairs and workstations in this room stand at attention, as orderly as the day the crew of the John Muir went to sleep.

  What must it have been like to tidy one’s desk before entering an indefinite stasis? To be Dr. Morgan, wandering the vast halls of the John Muir, alone and without hope of rescue? To wonder if you and your work had been forgotten by humanity as a whole? As an aspiring archeologist, I’m tasked with the mission to find those voices lost to time, to preserve them, and amplify their message. I promise myself the crew of the John Muir will not be consigned to this dark corner of the universe forever. It’s my duty to see their stories returned to the Colonies, not just as an archeologist, but also as a member of the human race.

  I weave my way through the desks, headed for the server room. I pass pictures of children, smiling families. An abandoned novel. A coffee cup stained with someone’s lipstick. I wonder how many of these people made it, and how many were turned into monsters.

  The EDDA’s nanites whirl on my palm and fingertips as I approach the server room door. I press my hand into the touchpad. The panels slide back into the wall, revealing the ship’s labyrinthine server room. Row upon row of black towers march into the darkness, their multicolored lights blinking across their surfaces like a myriad of stars. A few of the towers have collapsed, their guts made of wires and circuits spilling out onto the floor. I step inside, surprised by the room’s warmth and the quiet hum rising up from the floor and through my feet.

  This room reminds me of Lucita and Etel back on the Conquistador. The longer I’m in this nerve center of humming machines, the more my anxiety lessens.

  Then someone says, “Stop, Laura,” from behind me.

  My body halts, the subjugator locking my muscles down. The voice sounded female. Dr. Smithson? I wonder. After a few seconds pass, I turn, coming face-to-face with a woman in a Conquistador EVA. The Cruz lion rears across her left shoulder in green, white, and red. Her mirrorlike helmet obscures her face.

  She aims her plasma rifle at my chest.

  “You were never any good at escondidas, Laurita,” she says, her voice garbled by the EVA’s external speakers. “I don’t know why you’d think you could beat me now.”

  No manches. I take a step back, as if struck.

  “Faye?” I whisper.

  USS JOHN MUIR NPS-3500

  MAINTENANCE MECHA

  TUCK

  “Hey, brainiac,” Sebastian says over the comms. “What now?”

  The three of us—Alex, Sebastian, and me—float inside maintenance mecha, positioned about fifty meters outside the Muir’s bridge windows. I took a purple mecha, and then instructed Alex to take the other one. Sebastian rides in a green mecha—no way do I need him running around outer space with demolitions equipment.

  My original plan was to use the mecha to cut our way back into the ship. It relied on my HUD lens, which I thought I could use to identify a safe, non-mission-critical ingress point to bust into. You know, a place that wouldn’t completely glitch the ship.

  How was I supposed to know my HUD lens wouldn’t work outside the Muir’s walls?

  “Órale,” Alex says. “Do you guys see those lights?”

  “Where?” I ask.

  “Inside the bridge, starboard side,” Alex says. I can see him pointing from his mecha’s cockpit. He’s right. Two tiny, bright lights bob through the bridge. They wink in and out like fireflies as the user—or users—cross the area.

  “I thought you said there wasn’t an interior path to the bridge, Tuck,” Sebastian says.

  “Not any I know of,” I reply. But the Muir is massive. While I’ve explored a lot of her over the last two years, she still harbors her secrets, even from me. Dejah only had eyes in so many places. And we closed down entire sectors of the ship to protect the park’s resources and assets.

  I float closer to the bridge. Inside, Laura steps into the control room and closes the door. She scans the area. As she moves left—toward the server room—she knocks some dust off a computer monitor, letting it swirl around her fingers.

  Alex was right, I was stupid to think Laura needed me to save her. She’s brilliant. Badass. Tough as nails, as the old saying goes. When we first met, she looked me straight in the eye and insisted we fight for a cause greater than ourselves. She made me feel less alone in ways the crew of the Muir never managed. Laura made me care about this universe again, and where I might belong in it.

  When I met her, I promised myself I’d save her from this disaster.

  In the end, Laura saved me.

  “Where is she headed?” Sebastian asks as Laura examines the room. “What is she doing?”

  “It’s been about four hundred years since I’ve been on the bridge, bruh,” I say. “My memory’s not great. Can’t say I know what she’s doing there.”

  Lies. All lies.

  “Well, it can’t be anything good,” Sebastian snaps. “Find a way to access the bridge. Now.”

  I respond by making a fist with my mecha’s hand. “Oops,” I say, holding a middle finger up to him. “I think one finger got stuck. It’s an old mecha, after all.”

  Alex laughs so hard, he starts coughing. Wetly. I can hear the damage the plasma bullet did to his body through the comms.

  “Careful there, vato,” I tell him.

  He gives me a thumbs-up through his mecha’s cockpit, letting me know he’s okay.

  I spend the next few minutes putzing around. I knock on the ship’s metal flank as though “looking” for a place to cut
into her sides. I muse aloud, pretending to worry about hitting the ship’s “valence coordinators” or her “beta-blocking sensors,” or whatever other imaginary parts of a ship I can dream up. The longer I keep Sebastian away from Laura, the better.

  Using my mecha’s thrusters, I float beneath the Muir, still pretending to search for a way inside. The ship settles over me like the shadow of death. Every twenty seconds, the underlights flare, throwing the clunky machinery into sharp relief. Unlike the rotten interiors of the Muir, the hull’s metal looks fairly shipshape. With no air to degrade it, and no water to eat it away with rust, the only damage I can see is fine pitting from micrometeorites.

  I sweep my mecha’s high beams over the ship’s belly. The shadows lie so deep here, they almost seem to solidify outside the cone of the mecha’s highbeams.

  Alex asks, “Who’s that?”

  “Who’s what?” I ask, examining some strange scoring on the ship’s belly. Bright silver welts gleam in the black metal. What hit the ship? I wonder, because it looks like some sort of massive space monster raked the ship with its claws. Huh, weird. Cthulhu, eat your heart out.

  “Someone wearing a Conquistador EVA just entered the bridge,” Sebastian says. “It’s probably one of my mother’s agents.”

  “One of your mom’s agents,” Alex says, taking a shaky breath, “… would be in a Smithsonian EVA.”

  “Then who’s that?” Sebastian asks.

  “I’m more worried about why they have a gun,” Alex says.

  Sebastian scoffs. “Laura’s a dangerous criminal—”

  “Who’s the dangerous criminal?” I snap. “You shot someone!”

  Sebastian tuts. “Only in self-defense—”

  “Are you kidding me?” I laugh, derisive, angry. “You don’t get to pretend it was self-fragging-defense—”

  “Can you two vatos stop arguing and find a way into the goddamn ship?” Alex says, coughing again. “Whoever’s in that EVA has a gun pointed at Laura. If something happens to her while you two flex your e-peen, I’ll shoot both of you.”