Speed of Darkness

by Tracy Hickman

  “You got that right!”

  “Just take it easy and relax your trigger a little, got that? I don’t want anybody blowing holes through our own just because we don’t know what’s going on. Littlefield and Melnikov, stay with me. Cutter, how’s that civvy doing?”

  “She’s starting to come around, Lieutenant.” Cutter held the woman cradled in both arms now. Against the massive islander, the woman looked tiny and frail, but Ardo could see she was stirring. “You want me to put her down?”

  “No, there’s an aid station in the Command Center.” Breanne was frustrated. There was not much left for her to command. “Let’s do this together. We’ll start with the north barracks and then—”

  “Lieutenant, I’ve got movement!”

  “Where, Bernelli?”

  “Looks like about fifty meters at about two-seven-eight degrees.”

  “That’s the Command Center! Track it, Bernelli. Stay sharp, people!”

  Bernelli’s voice was rising ever so slightly in pitch as he spoke. “Tracking . . . moving south.”

  “We’re in the open here, Lieutenant,” Littlefield breathed.

  Breanne understood at once. “Deploy forward! Take positions under the northern barracks. Use the landing struts for cover. Move!”

  The platoon dashed quickly across the clearing. Ardo ran awkwardly next to Littlefield, the two of them still struggling with the metal box between them. Ardo fleetingly thought about the supply huts just a few meters away from him. Within one of them would be a brand-new rifle for him and a fresh supply of ammo. Instead, here he crouched, cowering in the landing well of a mobile barracks with nothing to defend himself except harsh language, spit, and this stupid metal box which, as far as he was concerned, could have stayed in Oasis and become part of the great radiant cloud drifting off to the east.

  “Bernelli?” Breanne spoke quietly, despite the fact that the battle armor kept her words restricted to the com channel.

  “Still tracking, Lieutenant. Moving fast. Fifteen meters on the two hundred radial. Maintaining an eastern line.”

  “It’s coming down the road,” Littlefield rumbled.

  “Fifteen meters still. Should be able to see it . . .”

  Ardo crouched lower behind the strut.

  A single figure, bathed in the dying light of the day, staggered out into the clearing.

  “Oh, shit!” Breanne spat. She stood up, snapping back the faceplate of her battle armor and yelling across the clearing. “Marcus, what in the name of hell are you doing?”

  The figure turned. His fatigues were no longer crisp or clean. He had lost his snappy hat, revealing a head of straw hair that seemed to stick out in directions of its own free will. Nevertheless, Ardo recognized him as the technician who had joined them on the flight out to Scenic just yesterday.

  “Ma’am, oh!” Sergeant Marcus Jans snapped to a ridgid salute. “Welcome home, ma’am!”

  Lieutenant Breanne returned the salute casually, then asked, “Permission to enter the garrison?”

  “Uh, ma’am?”

  “I assume you are in charge of this post, Sergeant, or someone else would have greeted us by now.”

  “Oh.” Jans seemed confused. “Yes, ma’am, I guess I am . . . except for you . . . now, I mean.”

  Ardo was suddenly reminded of his cat and the mouse once more.

  “Then I’m reporting my platoon as having returned from a glorious mission on behalf of the Confederacy.” Breanne’s voice was tired and her temper was starting to give it an edge.

  Jans looked past Breanne to where Ardo and his companions had taken cover. “You mean, the Marines hiding under the barracks?”

  “So much for our glorious return,” Cutter rumbled.

  “Yes.” Breanne spoke the words through her teeth. “The Marines hiding under the barracks are asking permission to enter your garrison, Sergeant, and then I want to know where the hell the garrison has gone!”

  Jans blinked as Breanne’s final words seemed to rock him back on his heels.

  “But . . . but, Lieutenant . . . I thought you could tell me!”

  CHAPTER 12

  GHOST TOWN

  “WHAT THE HELL ARE YOU TALKING ABOUT, TINKER?” Breanne was in no mood to guess. The wrath in her voice might just melt the technical sergeant right down into his scuffed boots. “Well, ma’am, they just all pulled out,” Marcus stammered. The dirt on the sergeant’s face was marred by the streaks of sweat starting to run down from his hairline. “I thought, you being in the command loop and all, you’d know about it, that’s all.”

  Littlefield stepped toward Breanne and the tech sergeant, dragging Ardo closer by virtue of the metal box still hanging between them. He spoke in a low voice, confidentially, but Ardo was too close to avoid hearing. “Lieutenant, it’s getting dark, and we’ve got no place else to hide.”

  Breanne’s gaze had been locked with building fury on Jans but Littlefield’s words somehow penetrated her rage. Her head snapped up, and she seemed to be seeing the fading sky for the first time above the dim walls of the garrison.

  “We probably don’t have a lot of time,” Littlefield whispered toward the ground, but the words were meant for the lieutenant.

  “The post has been abandoned,” Breanne announced suddenly. “Some sort of SNAFU is my guess. I’ll get it straightened out. Meanwhile, Cutter . . .”

  “Yes, ma’am.”

  “There’s an aid station in the Command Center. Take that woman there, strap her to a bunk, and then report back to me. Littlefield, take Melnikov and go with Cutter. Have Melnikov keep an eye on that treasure chest of yours and the woman—if he can handle it.”

  “He’ll do fine, Lieutenant. I’ll see to it.”

  “Well, would you also ‘see to it’ that he gets a new rifle, and pick one up for yourself while you’re at it.” Breanne’s lips very nearly smiled. “Then get back here to me. We’ve got to set up a perimeter.”

  Cutter grunted once and shifted the position of the moaning woman still in his arms. There was disappointment in his voice as he spoke. “Not much fun tonight, Lieutenant. We just nuked the Zerg into bloody little bits. All that’s left now is to call for the bus to take us out. War’s all finished here.” The big man shook his head sadly. “No, ma’am, not much fun tonight at all.”

  Littlefield glanced at Breanne, but if he was looking for any reaction, he did not get the satisfaction.

  “You have your orders.” The lieutenant spoke with an even chill. Then she turned back to the tech sergeant. “As for you, Sergeant Jans, you stay with me. I have a lot of questions for you, and I don’t want you getting lost before I can ask them.”

  Night was falling quickly as they made their way to the infirmary. The wind had picked up considerably from the west, its sounds moaning and wailing among the buildings of the Confederacy garrison compound. Ardo shuddered at the sound. The deserted buildings seemed to stare back at him as he moved between them. The place was altogether too still for the massive amount of equipment remaining here. Everywhere he looked he was greeted by visions of things that were entirely in place and yet somehow wrong. The ground beneath his feet was packed hard under the treads and repulsors of various vehicles that had trod over it. The bright lights still burned in each of the modules as they passed. One supply depot access door was open, its interior work lights spilling into the street. An SCV loader stood within, its vaguely humanoid metal-and-plastic shape poised to pick up a shipping module. Its operator, however, was long gone, like a spirit who had abandoned its physical body in death. Everywhere he looked, there were the bootprints of Marines and technicians who should have been walking over that same ground still, but were somehow missing. Now they only existed here as ghosts. Ardo was not sure whether he would be more surprised by actually seeing someone else or by the constant strain of not seeing anyone at all.

  The main access roadway wound around the back of the southern barracks module, curving across the flattened ground toward the hulking C
ommand Center. The building was massive, as wide as it was tall, the suggestion of a flattened metallic spheroid in its general shape. It had obviously been built for function rather than aesthetics. Some Confederacy technical draftsman back at R&D Division probably had an impassioned affair with this design at one point, but he was alone in his appreciation. The Command Center was all business. Massive repulsor landing claws supported the main bulk of the structure, their thick struts disappearing into wide housing cowls. External ablative plates reinforced the armored hull. Above that, at a level three stories higher than the ground, a variety of observation towers, antennae, sensor domes and other technical gadgetry were arranged in what appeared to the casual observer to be utter chaos. Above it all sat the Operations Center, an armored block with windows on all sides that lorded over the entire complex. The lights were shining brightly from those windows, but there was no movement behind them as far as Ardo could see.

  The main access ramp to the Command Center had been lowered, the hydraulic arms fully extended to either side. The main command bay was well lit, but Ardo could not help but feel that they were all walking into the mouth of some great, dark beast.

  The brightness of the bay helped, however, once they were inside its glow. The fewer shadows the better. The main bay towered over them through two decks. To his left and right, Ardo knew that the Command Center held the mineral and gas processors, which were the heart that sustained any mobile command base. Their bulk took up most of the Command Center’s internal space.

  Overhead, squeezed into a space between the massive processors, was the SCV maintenance bay. “Maintenance” was something of a misnomer: the fabricators on that level could create an SCV from scratch just using the mineral processor output alone. Several T-280 Space Construction Vehicles hung suspended from their construction racks overhead. They swayed slightly. Ardo had to remind himself that it was probably the ventilation system moving the suits.

  He noticed his annoying headache had returned. Littlefield continued forward toward the lift at the end of the bay. Ardo kept up with him as he held the metal case. They both turned as they stepped onto the lift platform. Cutter, still cradling the woman in his arms, joined them, and then Littlefield activated the lift.

  As they rose, Ardo tried to get a better look at the woman. The massive tangle of her long, filthy hair was his first and strongest impression. Her face was turned away from him, toward Cutter’s chest. She wore the ubiquitous jumpsuit of a colonist worker, probably a worker in the engineering or waterfarm projects out in Oasis. The sole of one of her boots was partially torn away from the top leather. It struck him as an odd thing, considering everything else that must have happened to her companions down in that outpost town.

  At least, now that the town was drifting in a glowing cloud to the east, they would not need to go in and clean up the dead.

  Clean up the dead?

  The phrase caught in his mind, but he could not attach any significance to it. Besides, his head hurt too much to think about it much more. Better to just get on with the current task and forget about it.

  The lift quickly rose into the overhead shaft, then stopped at Level 3. Cutter turned with the woman and carried her down the narrow hall. It was a difficult feat, especially in the huge Firebat armor, but Cutter managed it without much trouble. He seemed to wear the armor like a second skin.

  “Let’s go,” Littlefield urged with a nudge against the box that carried into Ardo’s thigh. Ardo shook himself from his own thoughts and began moving down the corridor.

  The infirmary was well encased by the rest of the Command Center. It was situated nearly in the exact middle of the structure. There were no regen tanks here or really much of anything that citizens of the Confederacy might consider standard equipment for a medical facility. The infirmary was more of a first-aid station, a stopping place on the journey of an injured Marine to keep him just alive enough so that he could reach better care and facilities.

  There were several bunks mounted against one wall. Most of these were neatly and crisply made up in the traditional Marine style. One, however, was in disarray, its sheets dropping casually toward the floor.

  Cutter entered the room, his bulk seeming to take up most of it. He found a middle bunk that seemed to suit his requirements and lay the groaning woman down. The big man finally was able to flip open his helmet faceplate just as Ardo and Littlefield entered the room. Ardo could see the sweat streaming down the islander’s brown face.

  “That wasn’t good,” he huffed. He quickly released the locking rings on his gloves and pulled his hands free. In moments he was strapping the bed restraints around the listless woman’s hands, chest, and feet. “Need more exercise. Gotta work out more.”

  Ardo smiled and shook his head. Cutter had just run several kilometers with that woman either on his back or in his arms. Even with the help of the suit, that was a remarkable performance. Ardo smiled to think that Cutter would consider it a sign of weakness.

  Littlefield motioned Ardo over to the right. Against the opposite wall from the bunks, a desk stood away from the wall with a chair on its far side.

  Littlefield stopped. “Will you look at that!”

  Ardo and Littlefield both stopped.

  The desk was clean and uncluttered except for a partially downed cup of coffee and a half-eaten sandwich.

  Cutter gazed at it as well for a moment, then he reached forward with his massive right hand and picked up the cup.

  “Still warm,” he said, then downed the coffee in a single gulp.

  Ardo and Littlefield stared at him, amazed.

  “Needed sugar,” Cutter reflected as he gathered up the remains of the sandwich and began stuffing it into his mouth. The rest of his words were barely discernible through the bread. “I’m heading out. You two need anything, just shout. I’m sure someone will come.”

  Cutter grabbed his battle gloves and stepped out of the room, the infirmary door sliding closed behind him.

  Littlefield returned Ardo’s astonished look, then both men broke into a hearty laugh.

  “Unbelievable,” Ardo gasped between laughs.

  “No, not really,” Littlefield responded with good nature. “He’s really not that bad once you get to know him.”

  Ardo sat down in the desk chair, not an easy thing to do in his battle suit. “You know him?”

  “Sure,” Littlefield said as he sat on the edge of the desk. “He served under me for a while. Our styles didn’t mesh very well. I guess my style didn’t mesh very well with a lot of people.”

  Ardo could not think of anything to say in the silence that followed.

  “Well,” Littlefield went on, looking away, “it’s a nice infirmary but you are on duty. Guard duty now that I think of it. Here’s the box—whatever the hell it’s supposed to be—and I don’t think that woman will give you any trouble. Still, keep on the com channel, and whatever you do, stay awake! I’ll go find us a couple of nice new rifles and fresh ammo. Breanne wants to set the watches, then we’ll see about some chow. I’ll be back before you know it.”

  “Sure, Sarge,” Ardo nodded. He had not realized how tired he was until he sat down. “I hear you.”

  Littlefield smiled. “Head still bothering you?”

  Ardo nodded slightly. “A little.”

  “I guess the resoc is taking after all. And hey, you’re a veteran now! You’ve made your first kill and survived to tell about it.”

  The Zergling twitched before him. The beast’s dull, black eye stared back at him.

  “And God said, Let the waters bring forth abundantly the moving creature that hath life . . .”

  Ardo could not breathe.

  Ardo frowned suddenly and looked away. “Yes, sir.”

  Littlefield frowned slightly. “You’re going to be all right, kid. I won’t be long.”

  The sergeant stood up and walked purposefully toward the door. The door obliged him, slipping out of his way and then closing once he had passed.
>
  Ardo took a deep breath.

  There was nothing for him to do but wait. He could imagine nothing worse than to be left with his own thoughts.

  “I’ll never leave you behind,” he said to her. The wheat rustled about the blanket where they lay.

  He was falling into her luminescent blue eyes.

  Golden . . .

  Ardo stood up. There had to be something he could do. His head was throbbing once again.

  The woman on the bunk was apparently not faring much better. She was starting to struggle dazedly against the restraints, her moans increasing.

  Ardo quickly started searching through the wall cabinets of the infirmary. He wet down a towel in the wall basin and moved over toward the woman.

  “Easy, lady,” Ardo spoke in soothing tones. “Nobody is going to hurt you.”

  The woman’s head flailed from side to side beneath her nimbus of matted, tangled hair. Her struggles were getting more pronounced by the moment.

  “Hey . . . look, lady, you’ve got to relax! We’re here to help you.” It was not working. Ardo grabbed the woman by the shoulders and shook her. “Stop it! Listen to me!”

  The woman suddenly stopped struggling.

  “You’re safe now,” Ardo sighed as he released her shoulders. He took up the wetted towel again and moved to brush aside the hair covering the woman’s face. “You’re in the Confederacy Garrison at Scenic. No one is going to . . .”

  His voice trailed off.

  Golden.

  He blinked, then shook.

  The woman stared at him from the bunk.

  The nimbus of her long shining hair played softly in the warm, gentle breeze drifting over the wheat field.

  Tears welled up unbidden in Ardo’s eyes. “Melani? Melani! It’s you! My God, it’s a miracle! A miracle!”

  Overwhelmed, Ardo clasped the woman’s head lovingly in his hands.

  He drew his lips close to hers.

  The woman screamed.