Speed of Darkness

by Tracy Hickman

  Ardo clawed and fought. He screamed.

  Three Hydralisks grasped Melani at once, dragging her back from the edge of the crowd.

  “Please, Ardo!” she wept. “Don’t leave me alone!”

  The mindless mob pushed him farther into the ship.

  Zerg claws suddenly rang against the sides of the Dropship. The pilot had played out all the time his luck would afford. The ship responded instantly to his command, lurching upward away from the Zerg and bearing Ardo away from his home, his life, and his love.

  “Don’t leave me alone!” Those were her last words to him, pounding through his mind and soul, louder and louder, threatening to burst his skull . . .

  Ardo’s world went black. It would stay black for a very long time.

  CHAPTER 2

  MAR SARA

  “ALL RIGHT, YOU RAW MEAT! HANG ON TO YOUR asses! We’re takin’ the long fall!” Private Ardo Melnikov did not bother to glance at the sergeant as he barked at them. The man was a tic—temporarily in command—for this drop. Odds were that Ardo would never see the man once they were down. It was best to just stay out of the man’s way until Ardo’s new platoon was sorted out for the mission. He could barely hear the tic above the screaming engines of the Dropship and the thunder of their hot descent buffeting the hull. There was just something about the sergeant that seemed to require a full voice and an angry eye. In any event, it really did not matter to Ardo—the sergeant was just baby-sitting them down to the surface. Once he got there, Ardo knew there would be someone who would make his life miserable on a more permanent basis.

  Ardo shrugged his shoulders, trying to lift his back away from the wall pad. The interior of the Dropship was normally a hot box, but most especially during the plunge down through the atmosphere. This particular Dropship was at least two cooling units shy of keeping everyone comfortable. Now a growing patch of sweat was sticking his shoulder blades to the nonporous cushion. Sweat beaded up on his face and occasionally dropped down the front of his fatigues. The restraining bar prevented him from finding any relief from the pooling discomfort gathering at various junction points of his uniform.

  Worse yet, the Dropship was fully loaded—packed shoulder to shoulder and bulkhead to bulkhead. The heat was not nearly so oppressive as the growing smell that was overwhelming the air scrubbers.

  There was nothing for him to look at except the same slack and blank faces of the other Marine recruits strapped against the bulkhead across from him. There was nothing for him to listen to except the sergeant’s occasional growl and the uniform roar of the hull behind him. There was nothing for him to do but wait it out with his own thoughts . . . and that was the last thing he wanted.

  They haunted him, those thoughts lurking at the back of his mind. It seemed to him sometimes that the ghosts pursued him from inside his own head. Closing his eyes never banished those specters. No sound could drown them out for long. Those ghosts were all painfully bright and beautiful, terrible and crushing. They would wait quietly, patiently at the edge of his conscious thought, kept at bay by his will alone. Sometimes he would be arrogant enough to think he had them mastered and banished once and for all. Then some smell of ripening grass or plowed earth would waft past him on a breeze, or a glint of the color of light honey, or a distant whispered laugh, or some indefinable quality of his surroundings, and the demons would rush back, overwhelming him.

  He would have bled tears just at the thought of them if he could.

  All he wanted was to fight. He needed to fight. It was the only thing that really kept the demons at bay. He could concentrate on the mission and its objectives . . . or at least those minor objectives that his commander deemed necessary for him to know. Grand strategy was not his purview. It was none of his business. His job was to do whatever he was told to do and with as little thought as necessary. That suited him just fine.

  The howling of the Dropship was tapering off. The vehicle had finally spent its energy against the atmosphere of whatever world they were plunging toward. The engines were doing their best now to make the ship imitate the grace of a bird in flight. Ardo chuckled to himself at the thought. The Quantradyne APOD-33 was the Confederacy’s proof to the stars that anything with a big enough engine would fly—no matter how badly. Of course, he had made many training jumps before. Each was completely unremarkable and he really did not care to recall them in any detail.

  Why reflect on something so painful as time to be still and think?

  Better to concentrate on something else . . . anything else. Ardo began scanning the faces of the Marines around him. It was an exercise in self-preservation. It was always a good idea to know the Marines around you. You never knew when your life might depend on one of them . . . or be threatened by one.

  The woman sitting across from him seemed to be a good example of one kind or the other—it was just that Ardo was not all that sure of which. She had close-cropped blond hair that stood in neat bristles from a well-shaped scalp. Her face was drawn tight, with angular cheekbones that sharply framed two shining, steel-tinged eyes. They stared unfocused at some distant point past Ardo’s shoulder, unblinking yet shuttered windows into any soul she might possess. Those eyes could freeze a river solid in midsummer, he thought. He was left to his own imagination as to what the rest of her looked like. The powered combat suit she wore effectively hid any physical distinction she might otherwise have displayed, but it did tell him one thing: her suit markings were that of an officer.

  That meant danger to a private no matter how you cut it. Avoidance of an officer is the first thing a private learns—especially in casual conversation. The last private he could remember being too familiar with his squad leader ended up with a hole where his head had been.

  The female officer had not said a word since they boarded the Dropship. She was perfectly welcome to let her silence continue as far as Ardo was concerned. Speak when spoken to, he thought. Otherwise, do not go looking for trouble.

  At least she was comfortable, Ardo thought. Her suit was self-cooling, and he could see the power umbilical plugged into the Dropship’s power bus. Ardo suspected that her chill went well beyond the physical. Someday he, too, would learn the intricate skills necessary to wear the CMC-300—maybe even the new 400 model. That day was a long way off, of course. Still, it would be a lot better to wear in combat than a few layers of ablative cloth and one’s standard-issue underwear. If he could just manage to live long enough to get a combat suit of his own, his prospects would improve considerably.

  Well, hopefully they would at least give him some training in a weapon. He had not even had the chance to do that yet.

  The rest of the compartment was filled with grunts just like himself. Each of them wore the standard-issue detached look of a Confederacy Security Marine. Each of them dripped Confederacy sweat through their Confederacy fatigues, as was their duty.

  Ardo’s eye fell for a time, however, on one particularly large private. The man was enormous—Ardo remembered the prep crew had some trouble getting his harness to lock closed—and he would not stop his incessant yammering for a moment. Ardo could not imagine where they had found a uniform that would fit him. He was dark complexioned, and Ardo vaguely recalled the ancient United Powers League back on Earth had once qualified the man as “South Seas Islander.” He had broad, angular features and full lips. His hair was a long mane that flowed back from his forehead and down his neck in natural black waves. The giant was gung-ho certifiable—one of those all-for-the-wall, eat-their-hearts-for-breakfast psychotics who was the first person you would want to come and pull you out of the fire and the last person you would want to follow into one.

  “Get this junkwad on the ground!” The giant laughed beneath his bright eyes. “I’ve got some death to deal out! Want to roast me some Zerg on a spit! Maybe eat their brains straight off!”

  The islander threw his head back and laughed too loudly once more. He slapped his massive hands down on the thighs of the two Marines sitting next
to him. They both winced so hard from the impact that tears pooled in their eyes.

  “We’ll eat them for dinner, eh? Big Zerg feast! Ha! Just put this flying trashyard on the ground before I open it myself!”

  The pilot in the sealed cockpit forward of the drop-bay could not possibly have heard the request but seemed willing just the same to accommodate it. The ship pivoted noticeably—Ardo knew this was a standard clearing maneuver just before landing—and the engines whined a little differently. A final bump, and the engines suddenly spindled down.

  The lieutenant in front of Ardo wasted no time unplugging herself from the Dropship power, managing to get herself free before the restraining bar had lifted completely out of the way. A deft move with her free hand brought her duffel bag down from the overhead racks. She was already moving toward the ramp as it began lowering at the back of the ship. She even beat the islander, who seemed to be in his own hurry to get into whatever fight he could either find or manufacture.

  Ardo took his time, tugging at his fatigues to pull them free of each of the places sweat had stuck them to his body. He could smell the change in the atmosphere already blowing in through the open ramp. An achingly dry breeze swept the musty dampness out of the compartment like a furnace. He pulled his own duffel bag from the racks and followed the others as they straggled out the back of the Dropship.

  “Get your asses out here, ladies,” the sergeant snarled. “We haven’t got all day!”

  The air was oven-hot and dry—drier than Ardo ever remembered breathing. A stiff breeze carried the furnace heat around him. His sweat evaporated almost at once as he stepped onto the tarmac of the spaceport.

  Ardo glanced grimly around.

  He had stepped into hell.

  The world was a rusting red, colored by the sand that seemed to add its own tint to every building and vehicle regardless of its original color. The effect was all the more enhanced by the flaming dawn just breaking over the starport . . .

  Or what was left of the starport. Nearly half of the seven launch control towers originally scattered around the sprawling installation were on fire. Two of them were crested only with broken rubble. Columns of smoke from various other fires could be seen rising from buildings of the starport itself. More telling, larger columns could be seen rising from the central city district of the colony several miles beyond.

  It was then that Ardo heard the sound—an all too familiar sound. Drifting toward him on the breeze, he heard the cries, the anguish, the panic.

  He turned sharply. On the opposite side of the field, just short of the embarkation pads, he could see the cordon of Marines surrounding the Confederacy section of the starport and the panicked mob beyond.

  No!

  The memories flooded over him. He stood in the colony square once more. The sounds of it filled his mind. Their cries . . . her cries . . .

  “Don’t leave me alone!” she wept.

  Someone shoved Ardo hard from behind. His training took over, and he tumbled deftly before rising quickly to his feet, his hands prepared to defend and attack.

  “Quit stalling, you maggot-wipe,” the drop sergeant snapped. “What are you waiting for—an official welcome? Get over to the barracks for training. You’re needed on the double!”

  Ardo dreaded the barracks more than any other thing in his life. There was something about them that repulsed him, that shook him to his very soul whenever he just heard the word. Ardo was slightly dazed, but he knew better even as he said, “No, Sergeant, I can’t . . .”

  The sergeant simply knocked him down again.

  “Welcome to Mar Sara, Marine! Now move!”

  He moved. Gathering up his kit, Ardo joined the rest of the group from his Dropship as they made their way toward the barracks at the edge of the tarmac. He had the distinct impression of swimming against the current: everyone else on the base was moving out toward the pads. “Looks like we’re the cleanup crew,” Ardo muttered to himself, trying not to think about the inevitability of what was coming next. He kept his eyes to the ground, refusing to look at the box-like mobile barracks unit even as he was walking up into its interior. He looked up only when he was inside, standing with the others in rough rows in the cramped deployment room at the top of the access ramp.

  The tic was still there with them, mothering them with his unique touch every step of the way. “You know the drill, boys and girls. Drop your gear and strip . . . then right back here, people!”

  Ardo felt a wave of nausea wash over him. There was nothing he hated more than the barracks and there was nothing in the barracks he hated more than what they were about to force on him. He told himself that it was all part of the job, but it did not make the fact of it any less revolting to him.

  Ardo herded into the adjoining barracks room—like cattle into a slaughter chute, he thought, shuddering—and found an empty bunk. Whoever had called this place home ahead of him had apparently left in a hurry. Odd bits of trash remained strewn about the bedding and the floor. Ardo thought that the tic outside probably would not have approved of such sloppy behavior. With a sigh, the young Marine began peeling off his sweat-stained shirt. He tried not to notice the others around him as they undressed. There were both men and women present—the Confederacy Marines were perfectly willing to allow both sexes to die for their missions—but Ardo was always deeply ashamed of being naked in front of men, let alone women. Young and inexperienced, he found it achingly upsetting every time he was so casually required to strip, and more than once he had been the source of considerable amusement to the other Marines.

  Ardo shivered as he stepped back into the deployment room. The dry heat was rapidly cooling the sweat still on his back. He felt physically sick. He knew what was coming next.

  He tried to distract himself by glancing at the others around the room. He would barely admit to himself that his motives in doing so were more than a little tainted with puerile curiosity. The majority of those present were men, he noted—in fact, an unusually high number. He had even briefly wondered what that lieutenant would look like once taken out of her battle armor. Ardo was somewhat surprised to note that she was not among them. Was she somehow exempt from this indignity?

  Two large guards with stunners were standing next to the tic. Between them, a single hatchway led into the darkened room beyond. Ardo closed his eyes, trying to calm down. The tic was reading from a hand display.

  “. . . Alley . . . Bounous . . .”

  Ardo could not think for the pounding in his head.

  “. . . Mellish . . . Melnikov . . .”

  Ardo took several steps forward at the sound of his name and then froze. His feet refused to move any closer to the terrifying, darkened doorway. His eyes locked on the passage beyond. Rows of man-size tubes, each filled with a blue-green liquid, lined each side of the passageway.

  “Melnikov, what the hell . . . ?”

  They would pack him in one of those tubes and as soon as they did the nightmare would begin.

  “Melnikov!”

  It was like a coffin . . . a nightmare in a coffin.

  He could not move. The two guards had seen it many times before. They stepped forward casually and, as roughly as possible, helped Ardo into the darkness.

  He was falling and there was no end. He did not know how he had gotten here. Was he here at all or was he somewhere else . . . someone else? He struggled to concentrate on the images and memories that were drifting past his mind, but he could not find a way to grasp them. He would reach for them, desperate to examine them, but they would fall apart like bubbles of air under water as he tried to hold them.

  Bubbles of air . . .

  He could breathe the water. The long clear tube was filled with the breathable water. He had tried to be brave, really he had, but in the end he had panicked and screamed and disgraced himself. They did not care, for they had seen it a thousand thousand times before. Their rough hands clamped the headpiece firmly on him and pushed him down into the tube and spun shut
the seals. “We’ll have to make an adjustment in this one,” he heard one of them say. He held his breath as long as he could . . .

  As long as he could . . . what?

  What was he thinking? Why was he thinking?

  Hair the color of wheat fields dancing in the summer sun. There was a golden day . . .

  His hands slammed against the sides of the clear tube as his last gasp escaped his lungs. The implants charged suddenly in the headpiece and his mind exploded into a million shards.

  Shards tumbled around him. Bubbles of shards.

  Combat suit school. How could he have forgotten? His instructor was an old Marine named Carlyle. They spent weeks there perfecting his technique—or was it months? The combat suit was like an old friend. He seemed to have lived with one all his life . . .

  The combat suit. Where was that? When was that? During the seminary class? There was Brother Gabittas teaching about the fall of the ancients and the sin of pride. Peace comes from within, a joyful knowledge of the pure voice of God speaking to each man. “Thou shalt not kill,” he says, but he raises an AGR-14 gauss rifle in the front of the class.

  “Here, Ardo,” the brother says, walking to where the boy sat near the back of the classroom. He hands the 8-millimeter automatic weapon to the young boy who has not been paying attention. “Do unto others,” he says as the boy takes the weapon.

  The boy drifts away in the bubble but the weapon remains, smooth and seductive. Magnetic acceleration of the projectile to supersonic speeds with enormous kinetic punch utilizing a variety of jacketless slugs from depleted uranium to steel-tipped infantry rounds. Another old friend from long ago, the rifle turns itself inside out, explodes, and then reassembles into the face of his father.

  “You’ll always be my son,” the old man says, with a single tear coursing down his cheek. The family agra-farm stretches beyond him in the sunset. “No matter where you go or what you do . . . you’ll always be my son.”

  Am I? Will I?