The Dark Reaches

by Kristin Landon

  “A promise,” Linnea said. “To you and to Iain.” She leaned forward and kissed Hana’s cheek. “Good fortune.” Then she turned and climbed back through the docking tube. Tereu and Esayeh stood close together, absorbed in a conversation Linnea could not linger to hear. She only nodded as she rushed past them.

  By the time she reached the patrol sector of the port, she was running, leaning far forward to keep her traction and to keep close to the ground. No one had interfered with her progress or even questioned her—so Tereu had been able to prepare the way even here.

  Almost to the corridor leading to her ship, almost safe home. In the dimly lit corridor she did not see the man who stepped out in front of her until it was too late.

  They both went down, tumbling slowly end over end, but his hold on her did not loosen. They settled to the floor at last. “Let me go,” she hissed, twisting around to face him.

  “No,” he said, smiling down at her.

  It was Hiso.

  Linnea convulsed beneath him in raw panic. Being held down, being restrained—the shivering echo of her terror, years before in Rafael’s control, overwhelmed her.

  “Stop that,” Hiso said sharply.

  And she saw what he had in his hand: a neural fuser. She froze, breathing high and thin. Iain’s. It must be. She took a shaking breath. “If you use that on me,” she said, “you lose that ship. Iain’s d-dead—and there’s no one else to g-give it to you.”

  He snorted contemptuously, then released her and rolled to his feet, still holding the fuser at the ready.

  She stood up slowly and faced him.

  “This is an interesting weapon,” he said with a bright smile. “From what I’ve been told, I can do you a great deal of damage without killing you, if I shoot you in the foot. Or the hand.”

  She could not repress a shudder at the thought. But more persuasive still was the cold-eyed, dark-skinned man who appeared from the corridor behind Hiso, obviously as ordered, and took Linnea’s right elbow in a strong grip, one that promised pain if she struggled.

  She kept her face expressionless. It’s over anyway. Esayeh must have gotten Iain and Hana safely away by now. Nothing mattered now—nothing but watching for a chance, if there still was one, to get into her ship alone.

  And so, of course, they held her in a small room in the port security office for hours, while she thought with increasing fear of what might be happening to Iain. Without her there, how hard would they try to save him? Without her there, would Hana’s mercy move her to give him what she was sure he needed most—to give him death?

  Tired into numbness at last, she fell asleep on the cold floor for an hour or two, woke to find herself being dragged to her feet by one of the guards. “First Pilot needs you,” he said.

  And there was Hiso. “Pilot Kiaho,” he said genially. “That was expertly done, and I give you full credit for the effort. But you went to a great deal of trouble to rescue a dead man. I saw his test results.”

  “I saw them, too,” she said, shivering with cold and exhaustion and sinking fear.

  “Matters are moving very quickly,” Hiso said. “Raids and incursions everywhere. My ship is inadequate. I require yours.” He stretched out a hand in a gesture of invitation. “Shall we go and arrange it?”

  Under the guard’s persuasion, Linnea started forward, Hiso close at her right side, the fuser firmly gripped in his right hand. Out of reach.

  But still—they were moving toward her ship. Her heart raced, but it did not outrace her thoughts. “It can’t be done, you know,” she said. “You can’t have my ship. When its interface probes enter your brain, they’ll interfere with the wires you’ve got implanted there. That will damage the probes—damage my ship.” She bared her teeth. “And also your brain. Not that it concerns me.”

  “That is a risk I will have to take,” Hiso said airily. “And a small one, I feel confident. This is something I have considered and researched for days now. That ship is the final weapon I need to proceed with my plan to save my people.” He glanced over at her. “Since your departure, by the way, sen Paolo reconfigured the ship for his own use. So don’t think of escaping in it; it won’t respond to you. And in any case, it is locked down, held tight. If you tried to launch, you would tear it apart.”

  Linnea looked down in feigned despair, to hide a brightening flicker of hope. Hiso did not know, then, that once a ship had been equilibrated with a pilot, it would recognize her again on a moment’s notice, and adapt itself to her; the laborious fitting of ship to pilot, system to nerve, was necessary only at the beginning. She made herself sigh. “I thought he might do that.”

  “He was never blind to opportunity,” Hiso said. “As my wife might tell you if she ever wishes to be honest.”

  Linnea heard his words, pushed the thought away. They were passing through a long, cold passageway, gray plastic and gray metal, leading out to the satellite port where she knew her ship was docked. She was deeply conscious of the profound, killing cold just on the other side of the tunnel walls, and under the floor. Their breath made puffs of vapor. This world was no place for humans to live.

  Again grief stabbed through her at the thought of Iain. She should never have brought them here; if she had not, Iain would be safe at home on Terranova, in the warm sun of Port Marie. Maybe they would be walking down by the waterfront, looking out over the smooth blue bay. . . .

  They entered the bay where her ship was docked. With a parody of courtliness, Hiso waved her into the tube whose other end was sealed to her ship’s side. Then fell in close behind her.

  She knew the neural fuser was still in his hand—and she wished, not for the first time, that she knew how to fight by any means beyond blind instinct. When she got to the ship, within reach, she would be one step closer to escape. To the chance of it. Then she would act.

  They reached the ship, and as the lights in the little bay flicked up, she felt the fuser’s black mouth pressing against her left shoulder blade. “If you shoot me there, I’ll die,” she said coldly. “My heart will stop.”

  “I’ll risk it,” Hiso said. “Now. Admit me to my ship.” She heard the caressing note in his voice, the ugly note she still sometimes heard in nightmares of Rafael. Triumph and power, a silk wrapping over the steel of cruelty. The fuser pressed more tightly to her back, and she turned her head and looked at him. “Take it away,” she said, “or I won’t do this. I’ve got nothing left to live for anyway. Not if Iain is dead.”

  She saw the little flicker of satisfaction and amusement in his eyes, felt the weapon’s pressure lift away from her back as the pain in her heart eased, just a bit. If Iain really were dead, if they’d caught Esayeh’s ship, Hiso would have taunted me with that now.

  And at that instant the tall, dark guard behind Hiso struck him down.

  She gaped at them both, stepped back against the cold metal of her ship’s hatch, expecting the guard to attack her next. But instead he half bowed. “That was a gift from Madame Perrin Tereu,” he said. “According to orders. She said to tell you, you have a good man.” He bent and picked up Hiso.

  “Thank you,” she faltered.

  “My city’s duty is first to Madame Tereu,” the man said. “The First Pilot has been known to forget that.”

  Linnea nodded numbly and slapped her palm against the identification pad by the hatch. It dilated, and her ship welcomed her—the familiar scent of metal and plastic, the faint familiar hum of a jump engine on standby. As the hatch closed behind her she was already opening her piloting shell.

  She touched it carefully, letting the ship know that she had returned, that she would be piloting. Around her in the semidarkness, the boards woke to life. She had very little time, she knew that; that blow would certainly not have killed Hiso, and he would order her stopped as soon as he could.

  At least, on so short a jump, there was no need to bother with the elaborate life-support connections. She climbed into the shell clothed, settled back, felt the familiar sensation
of her ship shifting to accommodate her body in a comfortable acceleration couch. Then the cold tingle she knew so well, as the neural connection leads touched her temples; the faintly dizzying sensation as they made their way into her brain, to the programmed sites.

  Then the shell vanished, the ship vanished, and its eyes were hers. She made the gesture that brought the launch engine to life, checked the ship’s cradle—nothing was restraining it. One with the ship, she rose into the black sky. Iain, I’m coming.

  High overhead she saw the cold green glow of Neptune at first quarter, burning bright, sharp-edged against blackness as her ship climbed from the frigid crystalline plain. Frozen ammonia, nitrogen snow. The moon’s precise horizon receded quickly, curved; the universe beyond it was empty.

  She thought about the warmth of human places, crowded and smelly and familiar no matter where they were—bubbles of life, tiny and fragile, in cold and dark that went on without end. But it was that way everywhere, every life a bit of warmth and brightness between two darks. . . .

  She clung to stubborn hope—making herself believe that time reached on ahead to a future of free air and blue skies for all these people—a future that children alive today might see instead of being sacrificed to the Tritoners’ bitter bargain.

  Linnea guided her ship toward the dark. She feared that she was about to face the end of her hopes—the clear bitter point from which there could be no returning. When she would know the exact proportion of her happiness and Iain’s that she had wasted with her fears and her pride.

  When it was too late.

  She wondered if there was any chance, any at all, that she would sleep again in Iain’s warm arms. Anywhere this side of death.

  EIGHTEEN

  HESTIA

  Hana floated beside Iain’s cold-sleep container in near despair. Over the past hours, Linnea’s fear for him had become her own. She would, in any case, do everything she could to save a patient. But no one had ever been cured of an infestation once it had become established. Pilang was called in on those cases sometimes, on Triton—but only because everyone knew that deepsiders had the gen tlest, surest poisons.

  Hana looked again at the commscreen linked to Iain’s container, at the number burning red in one corner: the bot count in Iain’s blood. It had not changed in the last hour. But he was very sick; irreversible damage to his organ systems, to the structures of his brain, might already have begun.

  The cold sleep was helping, Hana thought, and the attending doctor at the clinic, an old man named Raymon, agreed. Cold sleep might even have stopped the invasive process entirely; it was too early for blood assays to tell them that. But Iain could not stay in stasis forever. There were troubling signs that his kidney had indeed been damaged by the stab wound. And eventually, even in cold sleep, that would have its deadly effect.

  And where was Pilang? Still she had not returned; still no message came.

  Linnea had not arrived from Triton. Not yet. She was tough and determined, Hana knew, and she would find a way if there was one. But on Triton, if Kimura Hiso wants to keep you, he keeps you. So Tereu had said. And Hana could believe it.

  And that was another problem: Tereu. The Tritoners would assume she had left against her will—they would never imagine that she had boarded willingly, willingly put herself into the hands of old mad Esayeh. Old mad Esayeh whom she, the First Citizen of Triton, evidently knew of old. . . . So strange. Hana had settled Tereu into a sleep sack in the staff room here, after giving her a drug patch to handle her adaptive nausea. Further measures would have to wait until Tereu decided what she was doing here. And until someone else had time to deal with the matter.

  Hana’s fingers clenched tight on the handhold above Iain’s cold-sleep container. Where the hell is Pilang?

  She floated out to the front office, where Pilang kept her commscreen, and looked around, again, for any sign of a message. Even on paper. Slips of paper were stuck everywhere on the walls, reminders of appointments and therapeutic levels of drugs and cryptic notes from Pilang to herself, but nothing new. At that moment the air system sighed again, drawing loose material toward the catch screen in the center of one wall.

  That slip of paper there—

  Hana dove and snatched it, then hooked on next to the grating and smoothed the paper out over her palm.

  Hana. Message from my cousin says attack due day 202 0032 UT fam vessel Soj Tr. 6 people, Mick and I off to get. Set up cold.

  Hana’s heard beat hard and slow. That date and time—she looked at the chrono again. Less than two hours from now. Pilang and Mick had left before Esayeh and Linnea and Hana had all jumped to Triton. . . .

  So they should have been back hours ago.

  Hana dove into the passage, pulled herself along to the cubby where she’d stowed Tereu. “Ey! Wake up!”

  Tereu blinked at her sleepily in the dimness.

  “Did you pass word of an attack to Cleopa? An attack now, tonight?”

  Tereu rubbed her face. “I—there hasn’t been any new alert. No news of one, I haven’t had a chance to—”

  Her voice faded as Hana dove back up the corridor, woke her commscreen with trembling hands, coded a call to Docking Control. “Is Pilang’s ship back? She was out with Drojo, I think. Emergency run.”

  The young girl at the panel shook her head, bewildered. “No word, no word yet.”

  “Any other ships?”

  The girl looked down at a commscreen Hana couldn’t see. “One just docked, no ID, but standing orders from Esayeh say let that one in whenever it comes—”

  “A new ship?” Hana said. “Put the pilot on with me.”

  “She’s gone through alread—no, she’s locking down now. A moment, Hana.”

  Hana waited, breathing hard, then shaming tears of relief flooded her eyes when Linnea appeared in the screen, tense and disheveled but alive. “Lin,” Hana said, her voice thin and strange, “Pilang’s in a trap. A Tritoner trap. She went out to pick up some cold sleepers, she thought she knew when the Cold Minds were coming, she should be back by now—”

  Hana saw Linnea’s eyes widen. “I need a jump point.”

  “Control will set you one. Control, I need you to send Lin to family vessel Sojourner Truth. Orbit should be on file.” She gripped the handholds beside the commscreen and tried to keep her voice steady. “Less than twenty-five minutes, Lin. If the attack time is right.”

  “Right. Out now.” And Linnea was gone.

  OUTER ASTEROIDS DEEPSIDER FAMILY VESSEL SOJOURNER TRUTH

  Linnea locked down her ship with trembling hands, her eyes on the orange-circled unknowns that had just appeared in the display over the board. They seemed to be hanging back. Had they seen her approach? Were they only waiting for her to leave her ship to make their move? Or were they ignoring her, waiting for some other signal?

  It didn’t matter. The jumpship Pilang had arrived on was still sealed to the lock next to Linnea’s, on the shadowy side of the bulky old ship. Someone long ago had painted a pattern of stars on the outside of the battered cylindrical vessel, a shape like a bent-handled cup.

  Now the ship was dark, silent. Fearing ambush, Linnea had not signaled—a good thing, she knew with a shudder. The Cold Minds were early.

  But no matter. Pilang was somewhere in that ship. And Mick, too.

  One thing at a time. Find them. Then worry about getting them out.

  Linnea pulled on her thermal suit and sealed the front seam, feeling the heating unit buzz to life. Pilang would surely have jogged the ship’s life support, but it would be very cold in there still. Please, both of you, be safe.

  Dark inside the way station, and so cold the air hurt her lungs. Linnea turned on her headlamp and pulled her way along the metal passageways, batting aside floating detritus, watching the shifting shadows. “Pilang!” Her voice echoed back to her. “Pilang! Are you here?”

  Then, tailing on the last of the echo—a reply? Linnea clung to the wall, called again, cocked her head and listened.


  Faint, distant. “Lin! Here!”

  That way. Linnea launched herself along the passage, still calling, following Pilang’s voice through the twists of the passage, past the black doorways of empty compartments to the center of the ship. Long before she reached it she saw the faint light from the compartment where, she guessed, Pilang was working to wake the sleepers.

  Linnea swung through the hatch, stopped herself, and looked around at the dim space. Pilang did not turn; she was bent over the stiff, dead-looking body of a toddler. “Lin,” she said in brief acknowledgment. “We had trouble finding the sleep cases, Drojo’s off warming the engines, we’ll be off in a moment—”

  They both heard the clank of docking grips letting go, felt the big ship lurch as a small one jumped away. Pilang looked grim. “Or, Drojo decided you could be the one to lift us home. . . .”

  Linnea saw Mick hanging anxiously in the dimness outside the circle of light where Pilang was working. “Pilang,” she said, “they’re here. They’re already here. It’s too late, we’ve got to go—”

  “I’m taking the children,” Pilang said. “There are only three, they’ll fit in one passenger shell. The Cold Minds won’t be interested in the adults, but we have to take the children.” Mick floated up beside her, holding a thermal blanket; she turned a pale, frightened face to Linnea.

  “No time,” Linnea said fiercely. “I said, they’re here already. Bring the children cold, or leave them. If we don’t leave now we’ll—” Her head went up sharply, and she broke off, hearing the sudden hollow roar of jets from a ship touching the Truth. “They’re docking.” We’re dead.

  But Pilang was stuffing the child back into the cold-sleep bag. “We’ll hide. Mick, take this one, I’ll get the other two. Lin, close that hatch over there, the parents are still in there, maybe they won’t find them. . . .”

  How do we hide from thermal sensors? Three of us, and three bodies? Linnea looked around, her mind racing. Cargo. Storage. Everything the family that ran the ship wanted to keep safe . . .