Speed of Darkness

by Tracy Hickman

  Merdith sighed. “Ardo . . . You remember we were talking about Pandora’s box?”

  “What?” Was she changing the subject on him? “Yeah, we were talking about the metal case we found with you . . .”

  “Yes, that’s true, but I’m asking if you remember the story?”

  “Sure I do. What’s the point?”

  “You’ve got a Pandora’s box inside you. Do you really want me to open it? Once it’s open, you can never, ever close it up again.”

  Ardo winced. His head was beginning to pound once more. “You’re saying the answer is inside of me?”

  Merdith seemed to come to a decision. “Tell me about that last day. Tell me everything about that last day with Melani on your old home world.”

  The pounding in his skull increased. “What does that have to do with—”

  “Just tell me,” Merdith insisted. “Start at the beginning of where things went wrong—you know there was a moment when things just started to go wrong—what were you doing just before that?”

  Ardo winced against the pain. Why was she making him do this? Why was he allowing himself to do this? He didn’t know this woman. She was probably a spy or anarchist or God knew what.

  He had to know. He had to know the truth.

  “We . . . we were in a field . . .”

  Golden . . . a perfect day that comes along all too rarely . . .

  “ . . . having a picnic. It was the most beautiful day. Warm in the spring. Oh, God . . . do I have to . . .”

  “It’s all right,” Merdith assured him. “I’m here with you. We’ll walk through the day together and I’ll be there with you. What changed that perfect day?”

  “The siren in the township went off. The alarm siren. I thought it was the usual noonday test, but Melani said it wasn’t noon and then . . . they came.”

  “Who came?”

  The sun was dowsed in that instant. Enormous plumes of smoke trailed behind fireballs roaring directly toward him from the western end of the broad valley.

  “The Zerg came.”

  “Can you see them? What do they look like?”

  “I can’t see them . . . just balls of fire coming down through the atmosphere.”

  “What kind of entry would cause that, Ardo?”

  Ardo blinked. “What do you mean?”

  “What would cause the Zerg to make big fireballs and smoke contrails in the sky like that?” Merdith pressed. Her eyes were locked on his as she spoke.

  “High speed, I guess. A lot of heat builds up on atmospheric entry, I suppose,” Ardo replied.

  “But have you ever heard of the Zerg entering a planetary atmosphere that way?” Merdith asked softly. “They swarm across space. Their arrival is soft and silent.”

  Ardo closed his eyes. The light in the room seemed to be hurting them. “What . . . what are you saying?”

  “I’m not saying anything. I’m listening,” Merdith said. “Just try to relax and remember. Talk to me. Please . . . what did you and Melani do next?”

  “Well . . . we ran! We ran toward the township. The old colony had a defensive wall and we thought we might be safer inside. I don’t know how we got there, but the next thing I remember was that we were inside along with everyone else.”

  The rattle of automatic weapons clattered suddenly from the perimeter wall. Two dull explosive thuds resounded, followed by even more chattering machine guns.

  “What was it like?” Merdith urged quietly, her eyes fixed on Ardo as she sipped her coffee.

  “Well . . . chaos! The Zerg were attacking and—”

  “No, I mean, tell me what you saw. Tell me what you did.”

  Ardo closed his eyes.

  “Please, Ardo!” Melani said. “I . . . Where do we go? What do we do?”

  Ardo glanced around. He could taste the panic in the air.

  “We were in the square. It’s a large open area in the middle of the town. We used to have concerts there or plays in the summer evenings. I’d never seen it so crowded. We were shoulder to shoulder. Melani . . . I held her hand and we tried to cross the square.”

  “Yes, that’s right.” Merdith put the cup down. Her unblinking eyes remained fixed on Ardo. “What did you see next?”

  Ardo felt suddenly cold. His eyes shut against the images that came unbidden from the depths of his mind.

  A sheet of flame erupted beyond the fortress’s outer wall. Its crimson light flashed against the blanket of smoke that hung oppressively over the town. The blood-red hue fell across the panicked crowd in the square. Screams, shouts, and cries all tumbled into a cacophony of sound, but several disembodied voices penetrated Ardo’s thoughts clearly.

  “It’s the Confederacy forces! It’s the Marines!”

  “No!” Ardo reeled backward from the table, his combat suit slamming into the wall behind him. The plastic wall cracked under the sudden impact. “That’s not what he said!”

  “What did he say, Ardo?” Merdith was standing now, leaning forward, both her hands on the table. “What did you hear?”

  “He said . . . he must have said . . . ‘ Where . . . where are the Confederacy—’ ”

  “That’s a lie, Ardo!” Merdith shot back. “Remember! Think! Neural resocialization can’t replace memories; it can only cover them over with new ones! What did you hear?”

  “Ardo, I’m frightened!” Melani’s eyes were wide and liquid. “What is it? What’s going on?”

  There were so many words he wanted to say to her in that moment—so many words that he would regret never having said for uncounted years to come.

  “Tell me what you see!” Merdith demanded.

  The eastern wall had been breached. The old rampart was being pulled down from the other side, dismantled before Ardo’s eyes. It seemed as though a dark wave was breaking against the breach.

  “Stop it!” Ardo screamed. “What are you doing to me?”

  “You wanted the truth. You’ve opened the truth, in yourself,” Merdith said. “The ugly, horrible truth and it won’t go back in the box, Ardo. Not again. What did you see, Ardo? What happened next, Ardo?”

  Ardo slid along the wall toward the door of the mess room, reeling backward away from Merdith. He wanted to run, wanted to get as far from this woman as possible, but somewhere in his mind he knew that he was not trying to run from her but from the beast lurking in his own mind.

  Ardo heard Melani gasp behind him. “I can’t . . . I can’t breathe . . .”

  The mob was crushing them. Ardo looked desperately around him, trying to find a way out.

  Movement overhead caught his eye. The angular, bloated form of a Confederacy Dropship, still glowing from the fast atmospheric interface of landing, was dropping down overhead.

  Tears flooded Ardo’s eyes.

  Tears flooded Ardo’s eyes.

  The downblast from the engines created an instant hurricane in the panicked crowd. Ardo blinked through the dust as the Dropship lowered its transport ramp into the square. He could see the silhouetted figures of Confederacy Marines . . .

  They grabbed him.

  They tore him from Melani’s hand.

  “Melani!” he screamed.

  “Melani!” Ardo screamed in the mess hall.

  “Please, Ardo! Don’t leave me alone!” she cried as the Marines dragged him into their ship.

  Ardo struggled to escape them as the ramp closed. Something hit him from behind and his world went black . . .

  Slowly, the world grew brighter. Ardo was sitting on the floor. His eyes focused slowly on Merdith. She knelt beside him, her hand on his tear-streaked cheek.

  Her voice was heavy with emotion. “Poor soldier-boy. It’s been that way all over the colony worlds, from what we hear. The Confederacy needs to build an army as fast as they can. They’ve been press-ganging boys for over a year now and then using their neural resocialization to layer as many false memories on top of their existing ones as necessary—until their manufactured soldier-boys believe whatever the Confe
deracy needs them to believe. They go where they are told to go. They die when they are told to die.”

  “Then Melani . . . my folks . . .” Ardo struggled for breath.

  “I don’t know, Ardo, but they almost certainly didn’t die the way you remember it happening, and most likely didn’t die at all.”

  “Then everything I know is a lie,” Ardo said weakly.

  “Perhaps,” Merdith said. “But if you’re willing to help me, I think we both may be able to get off this cursed world. I can help you if—”

  Ardo pressed the muzzle of his rifle firmly under Merdith’s chin.

  CHAPTER 16

  BARRICADES

  “WHAT HAVE YOU DONE TO ME?” ARDO SHUDDERED, his hand quivering on the trigger of the C-14 assault rifle. Merdith held very still. Her voice was quiet and terribly deliberate as she spoke. “Not a thing, Ardo. Not one blessed thing.”

  “Get back!” Ardo could hardly see beyond the pain banging against the back of his forehead. He was having trouble focusing. “Just back off slowly.”

  “I’m so sorry, soldier-boy.”

  “Don’t touch me!” Ardo squealed, his voice shaking with terror and outrage. The gun muzzle shivered under Merdith’s chin.

  Merdith slowly raised both her hands, palms open toward the Marine. “Okay Ardo. I’m going to back away now. Just relax.”

  Merdith rose up with aching slowness, smoothly backing against the mess hall table. Her eyes were locked with Ardo’s, unblinking and holding his attention.

  Ardo steadied his rifle but found its aim wandering dangerously. He could not seem to keep it steady. He wanted to stand, to get some distance between himself and the woman sliding slowly back to sit on the table.

  She had done something to him, something to his mind. It was a trick, some sort of drug or attack that he had not seen. He tried to remember the way it had been—that perfect, golden day turning blood red. He could see the Zerg pouring through the breach in the town wall, and he could see the Confederacy Marines doing the same thing. The Zerg were tearing at Melani and the Marines were dragging her away all at the same time and in the same place. He had two truths in his head at the same time. He knew that they could not both be true, but that knowledge did not help him choose between them. He longed for sleep, some blessed place of unconsciousness where he could awake from this nightmare and his thoughts would have all been sorted out for him.

  Both memories could not be real, but inside himself he realized that somehow they both were real and that the full truth lay beyond both memories. He dreaded the answer, either way, but he also knew that he had to have it, whatever the cost. Something within him demanded the truth.

  Ardo staggered to his feet, regaining his composure as best he could. He breathed deeply to calm himself. His rifle aim steadied.

  Merdith made no move, no sound.

  “What did you do to me?” Ardo asked levelly.

  “I didn’t do anything to you,” she replied calmly. “You might ask that same question of the Confederacy—”

  “Cut the crap, lady,” Ardo snapped. “I may not be playing the same game you are, but that doesn’t mean I can’t read the score. You did something to my head”—Ardo jammed the rifle muzzle toward her head for emphasis—“so what did you do to me?”

  “I didn’t plant anything in your mind, if that’s what you mean.”

  Ardo raised the rifle to his shoulder, squaring his aim between her eyes.

  “Easy!” Merdith leaned back slightly, her arms still raised. “I swear. All I did is . . . unkink what was already there. Look, I’m a psych, okay? I’m an unregistered psych. I fell through the screening process—it happens sometimes in the outer colonies. They never suspected. I wasn’t interested in the Confederacy psych program, so I just kept quiet about it. I’m not trained or anything—I just have a gift for helping people get their minds straightened out sometimes, that’s all. I swear, that’s all.”

  Ardo lowered the weapon slightly. He considered her words for a moment before he spoke again. “Tell me: what really happened to my family? What happened to Melani?”

  “I don’t know.”

  Ardo brought the weapon up quickly again.

  “I don’t know!” Panic, anger and frustration tumbled through Merdith’s voice, her words rushing in staccato sounds as she spoke. “I don’t know! Maybe they’re alive! Maybe not! How should I know? They’re your memories, not mine!”

  “Aahh!” Ardo grunted as he lowered his weapon in disgust. “Worthless! You’re absolutely worthless!”

  “Look, soldier-boy, I didn’t do this to you,” she answered. “Neural resocialization just layers new memories on top of old ones—it doesn’t replace them. All I did was help you straighten out your head a little.”

  Ardo shook his head. “But you still can’t tell me which memory is the real one and which is the false one, can you?”

  “You were the one who wanted to know the truth,” she said sullenly.

  “Yeah? What truth?” Ardo growled. “Which truth?”

  “I don’t know which truth. But you do want to know what the truth really is, don’t you?”

  Ardo look at her and considered. She had opened his mind. There was no closing Pandora’s box now. “Yes . . . I have to know!”

  She sighed through a slight smile. “Then help me and I’ll help you find that truth. I know some people who can get us off this world. Help me get in touch with them . . . reach them . . . and they’ll help us, too. We’ll go back to your planet . . . uh . . .”

  “Bountiful,” he finished for her quietly. The word was almost too painfully beautiful to say.

  “Yes, back to Bountiful. And we’ll find the truth together.”

  Ardo was about to answer her when the com channel chimed in his ear. He responded automatically. “Melnikov here.”

  “Escort the prisoner to Operations on the double, Private.” Littlefield’s voice sounded somehow different to Ardo, but the private had enough worries of his own to think about it much.

  “By your word, sir,” Ardo responded, then turned to Merdith. “That’s enough coffee and conversation. Let’s go.”

  The lift had not even cleared the Level 3 landing before Ardo could hear the voices yelling overhead.

  “. . . supposed to do once we storm the transport? You’ve heard the tactical channel traffic. Do you have a better option?”

  “I don’t know! I don’t have all the answers! All I know is that I’m not giving up on these grunts, Breanne! They deserve better than this!”

  “Yes, they do, and that’s exactly my point. If we’d been good little soldiers we would have sat under that nuke and caught the damn thing with our teeth. That’s what they wanted, isn’t it? But we’re here and still breathing.”

  “So just what the hell are you telling me, ma’am?”

  “I’m saying I don’t like this any more than you do, Littlefield, but we are running out of options! You have a better idea, then fine! Let’s hear it right now!”

  The lift seemed agonizingly slow. Ardo glanced at Merdith. Her face was a blank, but Ardo could see that her eyes were focused and intent. She was soaking in every word drifting down from above.

  “I don’t have an answer!” Littlefield rumbled. “Someone must have screwed up! If we just get on the tactical channel, we can get this thing straightened out with CHQ!”

  The lift cleared the floor plates of the Operations Room. Breanne was standing on the island, her arms folded defiantly across her chest as she leaned back against one of the consoles, staring down at the map table. Littlefield’s face was ruddy as he faced her, his large fists gripping the edge of the map table. His knuckles were nearly white with fury. Between them stood Tinker Jans at the far side of the island. He looked to Ardo as though he were caught in a crossfire and trying to make himself as small and as still as possible.

  “Look for yourself! That’s satellite data, Sergeant. Clean band and updated in real time.” Breanne’s finger stabbed out sud
denly, indicating each location as she spoke. “Zerg infestations moving in from the northeast in a ragged line here, here, and here. Advanced recon groups will be reaching those outer settlements in the next few minutes. The rest of the northeast settlements will be hit within an hour after that. Where are our Marines on this map, Sergeant?”

  Littlefield stared at the map and said nothing.

  “They’re all at Mar Sara Starport,” Breanne answered for him. “Confederacy Dropships have been evac’ing every position for the last three hours. All of the heavy equipment is gone. There are still ground forces being brought to the central transports at Mar Sara Starport, but those will be loaded within the hour. Dropships are returning from the outposts now with the last remaining Marines. Tinker’s brother, the esteemed Tegis Marz, is returning from his last run now.”

  “The same guy that left us high and dry last time?” Littlefield was incredulous. “What makes you think that he’ll go out of his way to come back for us now?”

  “Because we aren’t the ones who are going to do the asking,” Breanne replied, her eyes flashing. “Tegis has been choking the com channels for the last half hour trying to find out who brought his brother out of our little garrison here. Apparently he doesn’t know his brother got left behind.”

  “Hey, it wasn’t my fault!” Tinker said. “I went out to repair the downlink. Who knew the SCV was balky. It quit on me out there and I had to hoof it back. I ran like hell when I saw the Dropships hovering over the base, but by the time I got back they were gone.”

  “I’m glad you did.” The lieutenant’s smile was wicked. “You’re my new best friend, Tinker. You’ll call your brother once he’s on the ground over the com channel and convince him to come and get you.” She looked up at Littlefield. “When Tegis comes to get his brother, we rush the ship and take it back to the Starport. Then we’ll straighten out this SNAFU and get the hell off this planet.”

  “You can’t do that!” Merdith interrupted.

  “Ah, Ms. Jernic.” Breanne noticed Ardo and his prisoner for the first time since they arrived. “It seems you’ll be joining us on a little trip.”