by Ginger Booth
The Checkpoint Bravo gate remained a block or so further. But here, in the middle of the street, sat a blackness. It wasn’t just the lack of nearby lights, though lights were out on all nearby buildings, plus a barracks-like section of wall, unlike the blocks they’d just traversed. The streetlights were also out, exactly what drew Sass to this block to approach the wall. Still, a dim glow penetrated here from other blocks, plus a bit of moonlight.
Sass could find no obvious shadow-caster. She could see no surfaces, only a dark void. “I’m going around it,” she murmured to her companion.
Kassidy nodded. “I could head up and look.” She pointed to the barracks wall across the way. “Meet you back at the base.” Because pedestrians seemed to shun the black thing, which keened with an edgy high pitch.
“No,” Sass decided. “Stick together.”
Diligently pushing their brooms, they stepped closer to the black void. The closer they got, the more the thing’s noise set Sass’s teeth on edge. The vibration felt like a vertical wobble in her tummy, making her nauseous.
“Too close!” Kassidy insisted, and drew them a few meters farther from the void. That did feel more comfortable.
Still Sass persisted in trying to circle the thing, until she reached a point where even at their five-meter distance, the intensity of the wrongness suddenly intensified. She hastily backed up and retched. At this point she’d been about to turn in between the dark void and the wall. Some guy yelled in German from up the street, and waved his arms. Sass decided to ignore him unless he came closer.
But in trying to spot him, she noticed that the blackness took on a different shape here, like…a funnel, she thought, like the flare of a trumpet or an ancient Victrola.
She’d been about to step in front of the funnel mouth. She glanced back at the wall. The locals didn’t light interiors brightly, but blocks to right and left of this section still wore low gleams of yellow light. But not here.
She took Kassidy by the arm and threaded the edge of the wrongness by feel, across to the wall-barracks on a diagonal. Then she stepped a few paces further left, until her stomach stopped wobbling. No one was here, and she surely didn’t blame them.
She pulled out her comm, but it was dead. Kassidy, a few steps further from the void-front, pulled out hers, and demonstrated to Sass that she had a signal. She handed it to Sass, and it went dead.
Sass stepped toward Kassidy, and both comms tabs lit up again.
She called Remi. “I think I found Prosper’s problem.”
Remi quickly patched Cope, Eli, Abel, and Clay into the conversation. Sass described what she saw, keeping her voice low. She tried sending video as well, but a deeper black void on a dark street failed to convey anything. They had her position nailed from the comms signal. “I don’t have much with me. A couple stun batons.”
Kassidy cut in. “We have one grav generator. I can climb the wall and down the other side and join you. If you have anything outside Prosper.”
“Ben’s inside Prosper now,” Clay advised. “Getting the crew out. He sent me to bring out the guests and report to Cope. I haven’t started interrogating the prisoners yet. But we can bring things out from the ship. Anything that will fit through the door airlock, anyway. Not the ship guns.”
Apparently Remi had his end on speaker, because Bloki volunteered next. “No! Do not attempt to blow up the dark matter device! We don’t know how big an explosion that could cause.”
“Dark matter device?” Sass inquired.
“One of Bloki’s guesses,” Remi clarified.
“My only remaining guess,” Bloki corrected. “Dark matter, or dark energy. Sass’s black un-thing is the source of the nullity trapping Prosper. Perhaps the green projectors defined its scope, what it would act on to cancel the electromagnetism within.”
“It disabled our electronics right here,” Sass quibbled. “We had to step outward until we couldn’t feel it any more, then a few steps farther. Then our comms worked. So Bloki, if you know what it is, do you know how to stop it?”
“No idea. Sorry.”
“Time to question Schauble and his sidekick,” Clay suggested. “Sass, stay put. Clay out.”
“Quire!” Ben called into the black hole of the engine room. The moist rich scent of their crops and trees wafted out, stronger here than the invading stench of rotten eggs. The life-giving star drive at its core was as dead as the rest of the ship, but the plants lived on. “It’s time to go.”
Everyone else had already evacuated out to the pavilion, but Ben kept track. His gardener had yet to emerge.
“Up here, Ben,” Quire replied. His voice was soft, but the powerless hull was an echoing silence. Ben carried his candle out to the hold as the Denali farmer stepped down the dogleg staircase from the catwalk. He bore one of the large plastic boxes he used over seedlings to keep them near 100% humidity, upside-down with another sheet of plastic across the top. “For you,” he said softly, as he reached the lower deck.
Tears pricked at Ben’s eyes as he saw what Quire had packed. Inside the box sat his bunnies on a bed of lettuce and radishes and other leafy greens, plus several of their singing frogs, and an interior container of the crickets, to protect them from the frogs. “Thank you, friend,” Ben mouthed, though his voice was a no-show.
He cleared his throat, and nodded. Then he got busy sealing the box inside a Saggy bubble for the trip to the pavilion. “Don’t waste time getting there. Those bunny hearts beat a mile a minute.”
“I’d rather stay,” Quire said. “I can still breathe.”
Ben nodded in understanding. “Captain is last to abandon ship, farmer. And I need to get back to comms range. Get a breathing mask on. Or a p-suit, any style you want. But do it now. I won’t leave without you. Besides, I need your help to carry out the last of the gear.”
Put that way, Quire could hardly refuse, despite his crippling agoraphobia. Ben carried the pink-wrapped bunny box and his candle to the pressure suit locker. Quire selected a Denali-style air mask from their eclectic collection, breathing accessories from five worlds. Then he stopped, irresolute.
“Your limp seems better, but it’s a ladder down to the ground.” Ben selected bungee cords. “You go down first, and I’ll lower stuff to you.” A concrete next step always helped, a small task, eminently doable.
“You have much more important things to do.” Quire’s voice cracked with shame.
“I have nothing more important to do. Here, can I drape Cope’s tool belt over your shoulder? That won’t interfere with your ladder climbing.” The rest of the final stuff he’d already transferred inside the small airlock, ready to go. “You’re helping me already, you know. If it weren’t for getting you out…”
Ben drew the other man by the arm into the lock. Then he turned back and held his candle high for a last look around his home. He didn’t know what came next here. Munitions was a distinct possibility. If he couldn’t keep Prosper and its cargo, he’d be damned if he’d let Cantons have it. Especially not the warp gateway and the databases. He who came to open a door to strangers must be willing to close it, too. No way in hell would he empower these Cantons fruitcakes to show up on Mahina, or Sanctuary.
“It’s not over,” Quire murmured softly.
“No, you’re right.” Ben lowered his candle and entered the airlock, shutting the door behind him. He handed his bunnies to Quire for safekeeping. And he bent to crank open the outer door to abandon ship.
“I told you, I do not control the orb of nullity!” Schauble denied yet again.
For his interviewing convenience, Clay added two Saggy bubble annexes off the main dining tent. The once-elegant structure now sported four of these glowing pink warts into the night. Cope started the practice. He grew tired of people getting in his way and created several tack-ons to park them in. Ben sent plenty of air canisters and CO2 scrubbers along to support the expanded volume.
But this particular bubble was blocked from the air supply. Clay and Abel wore
rebreathers. Schauble and Anders did not. They could neither hear nor see each other. Clay was a fan of the prisoner’s dilemma game.
“So who does control it?” Clay demanded. “Answer quickly. Because I imagine Anders knows everything you do. He who confesses first gets the deals. He who confesses last, dies.”
“Turn off the projectors,” Schauble said with a smirk.
“We already did that,” Clay growled, “as you know. And our ship fell and crashed. Those were gravity tractors, not the source of the orb. They would have been powerless against the ship’s engine’s without the nullity generator.”
“True.”
“Your local political structure intrigues me,” Clay mused. “When I kill you, who gains?”
Schauble shook his head in disgust. “You don’t understand. Every wizard vies for my title!”
Clay tossed his knife, inches away from the fragile pink wall. “I doubt that. It’s an awkward lifestyle, top crook. Most criminals lose their nerve lower on the pyramid.”
Schauble glared at him. “I am not a crook! I am the world’s premier wizard, a man of skill and ability, technical and political!”
Clay shrugged and poked the bubble with his hilt. “Answer the question. Who can turn off the ‘orb’ trapping our ship?”
Schauble smirked. “Why should I tell you? If you harm me, you will gain nothing you desire on this world!”
Clay sat to light a few candles, to burn the oxygen faster. Of course the grown men burned through a great deal more oxygen. But Clay considered the candle flames a helpful point of focus. “There is active murder. And regrettable accident. And a powerful man like yourself is far less popular than you think. Hm. Who would rather you were dead? Anders, in the other room?”
“Anders is my most accomplished acolyte. Loyal!”
“We’ll see.” Clay craned his neck to look around the wizard, bound so that he was unable to follow Clay’s gaze. “It looks like he’s already talking.”
“I don’t believe you!”
“So how do we turn it off? The nullity generator.”
“You don’t even know where it is!”
“Yes I do.”
“I won’t tell you!”
“Well, I hope someone tells us,” Clay shared. “Because our other option is to hit it with our asteroid-busting laser. But we’re unclear on the physics. Would this blow up the generator? Or leave a crater the size of Deutschland?”
Schauble paled. “You’d kill us all! Including yourself!”
Clay narrowed his eyes and pretended to size the man up. “I think you’re lying.” He stood abruptly. “Well, that’s easy then. I’ll tell my other ship to fire at will.”
“No! You fool! If you feed that much energy into the nullity, you’ll level Deutschland! Maybe also Benelux and Scandia!”
“Then how do I turn it off?”
The wizard shook his head. “You’ll die! The cutoff requires human sacrifice. There’s a lever, on the back of the generator. A meter long. It takes three men to pull that lever down. One victim after another. Until one succeeds. He will also die.”
“I have volunteers,” Clay growled. “How do they increase their chance of success?”
50
Sass and Kassidy drew into a doorway, pressing themselves flat, on the dark street of the nullity generator. The precision clomp of marching feet in unison drew closer, then veered to give maximum radius to the scary black thing. These were Polizei in outdoor rebreathers, a blank white oval.
They clomped to a stop as their leader raised his hand. Sass could only see this because the Polizei jacket cuffs bore white reflective edging, for visibility in the murk. “Captain Sassafras Collier!” he boomed out. “We are here to assist, at the order of the Kanzler!”
Sass shifted in front of Kassidy and handed her comms back. “Could you check my messages for me?” she whispered.
“Yeah, here,” Kassidy reported. “Remi says ‘Kanzler will assist.’ No idea what that means.”
Sass sighed. “Hide. I’ll talk to them.” Kassidy hastily returned Sass’s comms to her pocket.
Then bearing her push-broom on the ground before her, the captain strode across the way to stand in front of the leader. She opted to try a salute.
The troop of a dozen Polizei clicked their heels, snapped to attention in unison, and saluted back. The angles of their reflective-marked elbows matched. Sass’s long-ago drill instructor would have been thrilled. Her long-ago cop instructor would have waxed sarcastic. Sass almost regretted her goofy cartoon-character rebreather.
“I am Captain Sass Collier. Did you say assist?”
Their leader gave her a sharp jerk of a nod. “I am Sergeant Ritter. We are to secure this area against wizards.”
“Thank you.” Indeed, Sass had quite enough of the fookin suffrus wizards by now. Granted, her experience with enchanters and Polizei wasn’t much better. Nor anyone else on this benighted planet.
“We are also to provide volunteers to disable the infernal device.” The troop sergeant belted this out loud and clear, so that all his men might hear and trembling obey, if they could follow the peculiar English.
“Really ought to keep up with my text messages,” Sass muttered, drawing out her comms. “Excuse me a moment.” Clay. “I have a buffer squad sent by the Kanzler. What do I do to disable the device?”
“You wait for me,” Clay responded. “If they’ve arrived, I should be able to stroll through the gate. I’m setting off now.”
“Humor me,” Sass encouraged. “How do I turn this thing off?”
“It’ll kill you.”
“What else is new?” She nodded respect to the sergeant and waved a hand to indicate they could spread out and secure the approaches. “Hang on.” The sergeant hadn’t budged, and held up a finger for her attention. “What do you need?”
“I ask you to choose. Which of us to die. We are volunteers. We need three.”
She held up a wait finger. “Clay? How exactly do we die here? I mean, what are we trying to accomplish?”
“On the back of the machine,” Sass set off strolling thataway while she listened, “there’s a lever about a meter long. To make it easy to find in pitch black. Apparently you go in and feel all kinds of dreadful.”
“I can confirm,” Sass agreed grimly.
“If you can, you want an insulator. And you pull down the lever until it shuts off. But Schauble says they use three dead volunteers to do it.”
“He’s a rego wizard! Why not a remote control?”
“I didn’t ask. Sass, wait for me.”
“Any particular kind of insulator?” She contemplated her push broom. She judged the handle as another of the Cantons lightweight, high-strength ceramics they used where Mahina would opt for spruce wood.
“Rubber is ideal, and I’m carrying it with me.” Clay’s breath suggested he was running now. “Sass, wait for me!”
“You can die next,” she promised, and disconnected. “Sergeant Ritter? Did you bring rubber insulators?”
Ritter pointed to one of his troop, who came running. Following a brief exchange in German, the man produced hard-core rubber gloves and rubber hats, five full sets. Hats? A memory of Hugo Silva in a tinfoil hat flashed to mind. Don’t judge.
She reached for a hat and pulled it on, folding up the brim since it reached halfway down her mask, blinding her. Then she selected a pair of the huge gloves and pulled them on. Then she grabbed another pair. The policeman dropped the rest of his offerings to help her get a second layer of glove on both hands.
Sass considered pulling them onto her shoes as well, but abandoned the idea. Judging by the roiling vertigo and wobbly tummy at the periphery, the last thing she needed was to stumble around blind in fingered flippers.
“Sergeant, you asked me to choose. I choose no one. Do you understand? I will go in there. I may die. But another man will come. He might die too. But you and your men stay away from this device. If we fail, you must wait one hour. Then you s
peak to our people outside. She can help with that. Kassidy, show yourself.”
She looked toward where she left Kassidy and saw no one. Then she heard a soft double footfall across the street and a building over from the original. The acrobat had been busy. “Coming!”
“Do you have a rope?” Sass asked the original man.
Ritter put up a hand. “We are not to pull out the victims, captain. The evil travels along a rope.”
“Right.” Sass radically adjusted her expectations downward for how much good insulated gloves were going to do her. She saluted with her broomstick. “Wish me luck.”
“Captain, our instructions –!”
She waved him down. She squared herself with the middle of the rear of the tank-shaped black void. She strode forward briskly. When the queasiness began, she yanked down her rubber hood and started to jog, push-broom bristles forward like the business end of a jousting lance.
And she entered absolute blackness. Her breath died, and her heart seemed to stop beating. Her stomach flapped like someone beating sand out of a rug. Her legs felt like lead. Her thoughts moved slow as axle grease on a dark Mahina Monday. She felt shocking cold, but knew that wasn’t right, merely as close as her senses could come to interpreting the sensation. The void reeked of welding arcs and burned broccoli, and the edgy keening rose to jaw-rattling volume.
She firmly told her terror to take a hike. I’m busy.
From the onset of blackness to her target could scarcely be more than six feet. The American units of her youth reasserted under stress. She resolutely took two more steps inward and cast around with her broom, which felt like it suddenly weighed a hundred pounds. There! She stepped closer and hooked the broom over the lever. Then she pulled downward with all her weight and rapidly flagging strength.