by K. Gorman
For a second, everything was still. With the light delay on the door, it was impossible to see into the darkness of the next hallway. They held their breath, waiting.
A second later, two Shadows, tall and thin, impossible to look at, stepped through the frame and walked into the room.
Karin stopped dead, heart hammering in her chest.
Then, the door behind them, the one they had just locked, hissed.
“Oh, fuck me.” Soo-jin danced around, medical pack swinging from her shoulder. She wrenched it off and let it fall, then dove to search through its contents for the second blaster.
Eyes wide, Karin stared up as another two Shadows came in. Nick yelled behind her. The crack of his blaster snapped through her like a bolt of lightning. On the floor, Soo-jin swore, still looking for the blaster.
Light burst from Karin’s hands. She started forward, ready to help—but a small gasp stopped her in her tracks.
Ethan.
She swung around. The Shadow moved, silent and fast. It had crossed half the distance before she realized it, its shape distorting, falling out of proportion. It billowed like a sail on one step, then went tall and thin on the next.
With a thought, she gathered her light. It flared, burning without sound or heat, glaring out of her vision like magnesium. She slashed her arms forward, yelling at the pain.
The light shot ahead like a bomb.
The Shadow tried to dodge. It jumped up and clung to the ceiling far longer than it should have. A part of it spread like smoke, and its own shadow, made stark by the glare of her light, stretched on the metal behind it.
For a second, it looked like it would miss completely.
But her light was not a bomb. She pulled it in her mind, directing it with an upswing of her hand. It burst apart, fragments of it shooting upward and smashing into the Shadow’s body like missiles.
The snarl that screamed across her mind was not something she heard with her ears. Angry, full of rage and pain, it definitely came from the Shadow. She yelled, ducking her head as it tore across her frontal lobe.
In her peripheral vision, the Shadow dropped to the floor and started toward her, silent and lethal.
She slammed it with wave of light. Black-and-white crashed together, snapping, crackling, hissing when they touched each other. Her light washed over it like a storm surge on a beach.
Then, it was gone.
Her light faded from the air. As she caught her breath, other sounds came back to her. Soo-jin and Nick fighting, Ethan screaming. Cracks of blasters, swearing. Pain drove through her shoulder. She clutched it with a hiss.
A shout sounded behind her. "Karin. Watch out!"
She whirled too late. Ethan screamed as the second Shadow hurtled into her. Ghost fingers pulled at her shoulder, her head, but an instinctive wave of light shot them off. The whole corridor started to tip, but she caught herself, staggering to the floor as she spun away from her attacker. As she completed the turn, she gritted her teeth and raised her hand, yelling at the pain.
Her light made a clean slice in the air as she completed the chop her sister had taught her.
She nearly fell afterward, stumbling into the wall and pushing against it to catch herself, but the Shadow also staggered for it. Her eyes widened as it mirrored her, one hand bracing itself. Its head, bulbous, depthless, matte black with not even a barest hint of reflection, turned toward her.
She didn't give it a second chance. Light crashed into it before it recovered, slamming it further against the wall. It pinned into the Shadow like a hundred tiny bullets, marking it like drops of milk, sparkling, shimmering, making the air hum with energy.
When it receded, fading back into the air, the Shadow was gone.
The hallway grew silent. Everyone froze, wide-eyed, searching for the next danger.
After a few seconds, Soo-jin blew out a noisy breath.
“Fuck me.” She straightened, then gave Ethan a quick glance. “Sorry.”
“I think, in this case, Christops might forgive you.”
“Yeah, maybe.” She blew out another breath and threw her head back, closing her eyes. “So, they can open locked doors.”
“We knew that already,” Karin said. "That one on the last trip got me in a locked room, remember?”
“Yeah, but from what you told me, it didn't actually open the door, so I thought maybe it had come through some air vent or something.” Soo-jin glanced back the way they had come. The door at the beginning of the hall stood open. Beyond, the hallway was black. “We better do a head count. Check on the others.”
“Ronnie’s the last one. We can just wait for her and head to Mess after.” Karin nodded up the hall, catching Nick’s glance. "You want a breather, or shall we do this?"
He shook his head and made to step toward Ronnie, who'd stayed close to where he'd shoved her to the wall at the beginning of the fight.
“No,” he said. “Let's finish this.”
Chapter 14
“You’re getting better at it,” Soo-jin said. “The light, I mean.”
Karin glanced over. They’d picked up the other three former Lost in the hallway where they had still waited, and Nick had led them through some of the ship’s internal structures to cut back close to the Mess.
Apart from him walking ahead of them in near silence, keeping a close proximity to Karin and Soo-jin, the others hung back. Low murmurs of conversation rose from behind them every minute or so, whispers that would have set her teeth on edge back on Belenus, but she shrugged them off now.
People talked. It wasn’t a bad thing.
“I used to be better,” she said. “I’m out of practice.”
Soo-jin snorted. “I can’t imagine why. It’s not like they have gravball courts dedicated to throwing light around. You were on the run, right?”
I still am. That hasn’t changed. Even if she had friends now, and more resources, she’d find it a lot harder to lose herself in the system traffic with her poster broadcasting on every Alliance channel.
And finding places to practice hadn’t been the problem. The security had been. Every place, no matter how abandoned, seemed to have a camera. In the few times she’d slipped up in school, she’d lived in rigid fear, sure that, at any moment, footage would get back to the company. That they would come for her, guns blazing, and she wouldn’t be able to fight them off. They would continue their quest.
Whatever that quest was.
In the cool air of the corridor, she shivered, remembering Nomiki the day she’d found her waiting in their room, face all business, and had laid it out for her.
They’re taking our memories, Rin.
“You came from Belenus, right?” Soo-jin continued. “I think I remember creeping that on your CV.” She backtracked. “I mean, obviously, you came from Earth, but on this side—”
“No, you’re right. That’s what it says on the CV. Nomiki and I lived on Belenus for the first part. Good schools, chilled environment.”
Belenus orbited well out from the ERL gate, on the other side of Fallon’s two planets, and the distance between it and them had never stopped being a priority for them. Even now, after everything had settled, they stuck to the outer planets. Enlil had an even wider orbit than Belenus. And Karin had taken it a step further, signing up for outer-settlement scrounges.
“I transferred from Bella U to Arnell flight school. Was doing undergraduate History and Cultural Studies before I decided piloting was more fun and profitable.”
Soo-jin grunted. “Glad you decided to switch. We would have been fucked, otherwise.” Belatedly, she glanced back, where Ethan trailed a few steps behind them. “Sorry, Ethan. I—”
“I know, I know.” He rolled his eyes. “I won’t say anything to my dad.”
Karin closed her eyes and stifled a yawn. Like most of the ship, metal siding reflected the overhead lights in a brushed, yellow-tinged blur. The recycled air pricked at her dry eyes, carrying a tinge of stale must that made her wonder when th
e filters had last been changed out. An older, caged light jutted out over the door at the end, the dust coating its top and sides, along with the red casing beneath, suggesting it was long dead.
She paused at the threshold, letting Soo-jin pass first.
The woman caught her eye as she went. “So, quick break at the Mess, then we gather our forces and head to the bridge?”
“Yep. And I expect we’ll have some explaining to do.”
Conversation drifted down the hall as they left the last stairwell, much livelier and more bustling than when they’d left. Ahead, a couple of faces poked out of the Mess doors as the panel hissed behind them, then widened as they caught sight of them. They vanished back inside, and a hush soon dropped.
Fifteen people watched her as she stepped through the door, clustered in a loose group than ran adjacent to the food prep bar that led into the kitchen.
The tables and chairs were permanent fixtures, welded to the floor in case of zero grav, but several people swiveled around to face them. Other things around the room also hinted at zero grav preparation—two emergency suits folded in a closed shelf under a first aid box on the wall, tethers attached to some of the looser tables, clips on the garbage disposal that fixed it to the corner. Several paintings lined the walls, and their mass-produced, bucolic scenes gave the room an edge that stepped away from quaintness and into exhaustion.
Although most people still wore what she’d healed them in, it looked like a few had risked the trip to quarters to change. She saw a few fresh faces in the crowd. Charise, the first she’d healed, sat at a central table. Soo-jin’s med-bag had been relegated to the chair beside her, replaced by two older medkits whose contents spilled over the table. She barely glanced up as they entered, busy tending a wound on a young girl’s arm.
Aware of the attention on her, Karin shrugged off the pack she carried and loaded it onto the nearest table. Soo-jin followed suit, dropping her bed bag next to Karin’s, but Nick kept his blaster, standing off to the side with a grim look on his face. As they straightened, Ronnie, Marsa, Kirna, and Hebe slipped by, working their way along the wall before filtering toward the rest of the group through the tables. One of them made a gesture for Ethan to join them, but he ignored it, stepping closer to Soo-jin and Karin.
Everyone stared at them.
Actually, they mostly stared at her.
She had a feeling she was going to have to get used to that.
Well, this is awkward.
“So,” she said. “Where shall we start?”
“Names are always a good place.” Arren, standing to the back of the group, raised his hand. He looked better than he had before. Stronger, with less of a waver to his movement. Karin spotted a half-empty plate on the table near him. “Arren Cliessen, though I think you already knew that. I’m afraid we’re all pretty lost and confused about all this. Who are you?”
Lost. That was one way to put it.
She cleared her throat, quickly gesturing to herself and Soo-jin. “I’m Karin, and this is Soo-jin. We were on a ship coming back from Amosi when we hit your beacon. That was three days after the attack—a little over two weeks ago now.”
A murmur rose in the Mess, but not as loud as she’d expected it to be. No one seemed surprised at the missing time. A few netlink screens glowed among the crowd, which probably explained the lack of surprise.
It also meant that they’d probably noticed her and Soo-jin’s wanted posters on the relay.
“And what was this attack? We saw some of the videos—” He gestured to the closest netlink, propped up on the table. “What are those things? Do I need to get my grandmother’s book of fables out, or is there more information on the feeds once we get further in?”
Karin held back a snort. A book of fables might be appropriate in this situation, but she doubted it would help. She’d practically done an entire undergrad in myths, and the Shadows didn’t match up with anything she’d seen. Nothing beyond urban legends and hearsay, anyway. Internet rumors, not actual mythologies listed in the library codex.
The relay also wouldn’t help them. Unless specifically requested, it only updated the basics. And, unfortunately, their wanted posters seemed to have taken greater priority over the varying Shadow theories on the web. Caishen would have the most up-to-date info outside of the exo-planets, but even then…
Nobody knew what the Shadows were. The Alliance, with all its power, was kicking one-legged against the tide.
And they were losing.
That was a guilt that weighed on her, but only briefly. She would go to the Alliance. Once she found Nomiki and got to the bottom of things, she would leap at the chance to help.
If nothing else, it guaranteed her a safe place against the people who had raised her.
Unbidden, Nomiki’s words returned to her mind.
They’re taking our memories, Rin.
“Feeds don’t have much,” Soo-jin answered. “No one really knows what they are, even us. They fall to normal guns and knives, which is good. We can give you keywords to pull data and, when the Nemina comes back, we can transfer what we have in our drives.”
She made a dismissive gesture, giving her head a small shake and meeting the gazes of those around the room. Her expression remained stony. “But we have almost a week before that happens, and there’s still one person we need to clear. We believe he set the emergency broadcast that called us in.”
Another low murmur rose around the room. People looked to each other, scanning the crowd.
Arren gave a resigned nod, one hand going up to scratch at the top of his forehead.
“That’d be Christops, then. Wondered where he’d gotten to.” He lifted his gaze, bushy eyebrows rising into his forehead. “You doing all right, Ethan?”
Beside her, Ethan nodded.
“He’s on the bridge,” Soo-jin continued. “But, last we saw, there were at least five Shadows in there with him. We can’t take that many alone.”
“Of course, of course—and we wouldn’t expect you to, either. He’s one of ours. We ought to be leading the charge.” He lifted his head with a gesture toward one of the men at the side of the room. “Bill, you—”
“Why didn’t we answer the Alliance?” Charise, finished with her medical duties, flashed a hard look toward Karin and Soo-jin. “We saw your alerts. You make trouble?”
Sol. Karin shifted, aware of the room’s stares. “No, we just—”
“Alliance wants you pretty bad.” A girl to her right with the same thick hair and rounded expression as Charise lifted a glowing netlink screen in her hand. “You were top of the latest update.”
Charise’s scowl deepened. “We don’t work with lawbreakers. We all agreed on that, right at the beginning.”
By the way she glanced around, looking at the others who had gathered in the hall, Karin thought she was referencing something beyond the conversation.
“We haven’t broken the law.” Soo-jin’s voice, calm and long-suffering, silenced the room with its usual bluntness. “They just want us because Karin’s the only one that can heal this stuff.”
“Then why is it she’s running from them?” Charise narrowed her eyes. “Sounds to me like she could do a lot of good.”
Her jaw stiffened as the crowd shifted, their gazes pinning on her again, and a low rash of anger crawled through her shoulders. The woman’s gaze was narrow, accusing, stabbing her to the spot like an entomologist’s needle through a dead insect.
She balled her hands into fists at her sides.
“You have no idea what’s happening out there. How many Lost do you think have been taken? A few hundred? Maybe a thousand? Enlil alone had 470 million.” She hissed a shallow breath through her teeth. “How many do you think I could heal? It’s taken over an hour just to clear this ship—and we’re still missing one.”
Silence met her. Her jaw tensed again, and she pulled in a shuddering breath. Something pricked at her eyes.
“Even the most conservative measure
put us at over ten billion in need of help if we factor in Fallon and the outer communities.” Soo-jin put a hand on her shoulder, her low, reasonable voice carrying over the hall. “By my estimate, that would take Karin several lifetimes—and they’re still coming.”
She narrowed her gaze, giving the crowd a slow scan. “You all had that dream, right? With the ruins? Every time you have that dream, a Shadow will come.”
She paused again, letting her statement sink in.
“Now, are you guys going to help us rescue your second officer and get the engines back online, or are we going to piss around here while you try and fuck us over some wanted posters?”
A stunned silence met her words, and Karin saw more than a few raised eyebrows in the crowd. After a few seconds, Soo-jin tilted her head and touched Ethan’s shoulder. “Sorry.”
The sigh he made had a comedic touch of overdrama. “I promise I won’t tell my dad.”
She ruffled his hair.
“Good kid.” Then, she lifted her eyebrows at the crowd, meeting their stares again. “Are we good?”
The silence that followed, and the narrow-eyed frowns that some of them exchanged with each other, didn’t seem promising. Charise’s own face tightened. By the twist to her lips, and the way her stare bore into Karin’s forehead, she had quite a lot more to say.
But Arren spoke up first. “Yeah, we’re good. Right, people? Ready to get Christops now?”
Some tones of agreement sounded promising, but they were few.
Watching Charise, Karin didn’t relax, but a part of her felt relieved.
At least we’ll get to rescue Ethan’s dad.
But, as the woman held her stare, her gaze flinty and sharp, Karin had a feeling she wasn’t done with this yet.
Maybe she could talk to her later and explain more. Smooth things over.
“All right, then,” Soo-jin said. “Let’s make a rescue plan.”
Chapter 15
‘Plan’ ended up being a bit of a misnomer. There wasn’t a whole lot of tactics involved, just a scraggle of volunteers and cobbled-together weapons. The Ozark’s people were colonizers. Settlers. People who’d wanted to get away from the violence of the inner worlds and not bring it with them.