by K. Gorman
Soo-jin folded his fingers into a fist, then shoved it all back through the door. He screamed again as it bumped over the threshold.
Then it was gone. The door hissed shut.
Karin caught the crowbar as it dropped. A second later, Soo-jin had shot the control panel.
“Fuck me,” she said. “Let's get out of here.”
They left the windows and moved back into the more familiar metal stairways and crooked plastic hallways as they worked their way through the station. A medium-sized station by system standards, Caishen had enough room for forty ships to dock and 50,000 people to live and work, with a concierge area, vast halls for independent vendors, and auto-shops that populated the lower levels like traffic cones, offering anything from fuel rods to food packets, clothes, medical, and games downloads.
It had never seen that population.
Built when conditions between Fallon and the Alliance had had more amiability, Caishen was supposed to have been installed as a waypoint between Belenus and Tala, the next planet over—but Tala was Fallon's premiere planet, and the Alliance-driven station project hadn’t sat well with the Fallon elite.
They built their own station, and Caishen moved elsewhere.
It would have been rejected anyway. Even if it weren't for the politics, Laksmi, the current station between Belenus and Tala, had well over double Caishen's capacity, and, in Karin's experience, had still seemed overrun. 50,000 capacity might be a lot for the space between Enlil and Amosi, but the only people who made the trip out were miners, scroungers, settlers, and the occasional vacation types for when their orbits matched up.
Nowhere close to Laksmi's traffic.
Hopper's crew of three thousand were more than enough to run Caishen, even if it did prove more difficult to find runaways in the station's relatively vast walls and corridors.
They kept to the back routes, and they didn't speak. Only moved. They found another small hallway, along with a panel that Soo-jin’s engineer brain recognized, and slid behind it into a narrow service corridor.
The second they moved out of the public eye, the station's age became obvious. Although the outer halls must have been remodeled in the last ten years, they had not bothered with the inside. The humidity in the air doubled, along with an increasing stale smell, and a whole new slew of odors that slipped in from all places. The coppery tint of rust rose from most of the paneling, painting the sheet metal that lined the corridors in a seemingly-harmless brown shade, like tanning under the sun, but Karin knew enough about spaceflight to tense at the sight.
Good thing Caishen didn't need to break atmo. Or fly anywhere. Or do anything more strenuous than float—but still. Terrible upkeep.
It said something about her mood that Soo-jin, the resident engineer, gave the plates nothing more than a passing glance.
Karin pushed back a sudden image of the man's arm, blackened and burned.
A few side-paths opened up, but they led to engineering panels and walkways, and neither of them had any inclination to get stuck in those. The floor changed to concrete under her feet—another sign of the station's age. As they came to a stairwell, they leaned to peer over its railing.
Finally, Soo-jin spoke. “So, what all can you do with light? Throw it in places, heal people, steal it from other sources?”
“That about sums it up. Still haven't tried that camo stuff you wanted last time.”
“We'll work on that later.”
“When I take the light from other places, it seems to replenish me.” She flexed her hand. Even though she'd reabsorbed quite a bit of light since her mass healing session, her body still felt strained and tired. Like it was on the edge of getting sick, with odd aches and pains sitting in her joints.
Of course, that could be from running around and throwing herself to the floor several times in increasing ungainly fashions. Whatever the compound labs had worked into her DNA, they must have saved all the athleticism for Nomiki.
“You do look better,” Soo-jin said. “You think you could create darkness, then?”
“Only as it pertains to an absence of light.” She glanced up, studying Soo-jin's expression. “The Shadows—that kind of darkness is something I cannot do. And, apart from our stints at Songbird and Arcin-17, I have not done any of this for years.”
“Okay, but if we run into anyone else, let's see if we can mess up their game a bit.”
“All right, but I—”
A clunk sounded through the corridor behind them, the sound instantly cutting her off. They both froze and looked back.
Nothing.
Soo-jin tapped her shoulder and pointed down. Easing herself against the railing, they then descended as silently as they could, attention upward, locked on the hall. No more sounds came from above, but all the hairs had risen on the back of her arms. Heart hammering, she forced her breath to be shallow and quiet.
They didn't speak again until they had backed out of a door three levels down and put another hallway between them and whatever had made the noise.
“Fuck me,” Soo-jin said again.
It took another ten minutes to find the docks, navigating by the netlink they'd found in the office earlier—the guard's netlink from outside their cabin had been fried.
Soo-jin led. Ducking down one of the tight, narrow access paths they'd been avoiding earlier, the fit so narrow both her shoulders could brush the sides, Karin kept a hand on the woman's shoulder as it grew dimmer. The light from her hand gleamed on the metal surfaces centimeters from her face, spots of rust speckling the view like corroded bits of shadow. The netlink cast a glow in Soo-jin's hand. It outlined her tense features and reflected in her dark eyes. Pipes and wires dropped and hung over their heads, and they had to duck to get through where one set of tethers had broken and turned the overhead into a thick, insulated net.
Soo-jin flicked the netlink off as they reached the end. Karin's light, more faded than the screen, cast a dim illumination over the hall, just enough for them to see. Two lines of light, broken by the roughness and dirt on the metal access panel, outlined their exit. As they crept closer, she dimmed the glow.
They both held their breaths, straining to listen.
Nothing. By their map, they stood perpendicular to where the Ozark had berthed. There should have been something—footsteps, conversation, the rustle of clothes, anything.
Maybe everyone's inside because of the balls.
But, even as she thought it, trepidation swirled around her gut.
As Soo-jin glanced back, Karin saw the same emotions reflected in her expression. Soo-jin tilted her head to the door and lifted her eyebrows in a silent question. Karin nodded.
The access panel creaked, the thin metal catching on the top of the frame as it opened, but Soo-jin gave it a shove.
Blinking at the sudden brightness in the hall, they both took a step out, ready to dart back in and run.
Instead, they stopped dead.
Soo-jin sucked in a breath. “Saints.”
More than twenty people lay all across the wide berthing corridor. None of them were moving.
Chapter 24
“Sol and Clio.” Soo-jin blew out a sharp, shallow breath. It sounded like a breathless laugh, but without the humor. By the way her mouth moved, and the expression in her eyes, she looked like she wanted to say more, but the sight must have stopped her.
Jaws tense, Karin could only agree.
She recognized some of them, both from Caishen and the Ozark, picking out faces where she could. Blood smeared the closest one, but she suspected the oozing cut on his temple had little to do with his current state. A burned smell rose in the air, some of it reminiscent of the hot-metal burns of blaster bolts which matched the smattering of scorch marks on the walls, but the underlying tone of microwaved plastic told her all she needed to know.
“The balls were here,” she said. “I think they're following me. Not just random.”
That's how it looked, anyway—she'd walked through the b
erthing corridor and up into the station, and the balls had found both the cabin and the place she'd been healing Lost—but Soo-jin was shaking her head.
“Not necessarily. You weren't here for that long. Our shuttle used the dock up there.” Soo-jin pointed up the hall. “We have no idea how many there are.”
“They're distractable, though. They could be tracking me.”
“They could be,” Soo-jin agreed. “But don't rule out multiple attacks. If they weren't on station before, they probably came on through this deck. Lots of ships docked now. Could have been any one of them.”
Up ahead, the berthing corridor curved around, hugging the space station. To the left was only solid wall, with several more access panels cut into it at the bottom, but the right was all berths.
She'd seen the list before. More than eleven ships currently docked at Caishen.
If she got to another terminal, she'd look up who, exactly, they were dealing with.
As Soo-jin knelt next to the closest person and put two fingers against the side of his throat, her expression stern, Karin felt a rumble of her earlier iciness flow through her. Images surfaced to her mind. She felt the memory of the guard's clammy skin from earlier, the erratic pulse of his heart. She watched Soo-jin, waiting.
“Alive, but not in great health.” Soo-jin straightened, glancing over the rest. “I assume they're all the same.”
“Hopefully.” Karin frowned, re-assessing the positions of the fallen people. “Hey—does it look like they were running to you?”
Soo-jin's eyes narrowed once again. The people had fallen largely in on direction, and Karin didn't try to think too hard about the body language of their fall—clearly, they'd been in pain.
But most of the group were on this side of the corridor. Toward the other side, where the path curved away toward the other docks, only a few people had fallen.
It looked darker down there, too. As if someone had turned off the lights.
Karin swallowed hard.
“Where's the Ozark?” Soo-jin asked in a low voice, not taking her gaze off the end of the hall. “Close?”
“Right next to us,” she said.
“Good. Let's find it quickly. And hope someone is friendly to us.”
“Even though they were responsible for our betrayal?”
“We're kind of running out of options here. And I don't have anyone's comms codes on this.” Soo-jin held up the purloined netlink in her hand. “Besides, Charise is right here, along with the rest of her cronies.”
Karin followed the direction of Soo-jin's nod. A low, heavy sensation dragged at her chest as she found Charise slumped on the floor by the opposite wall, her face half-turned down into the floor.
She swallowed again. She didn't hate the woman for what she'd done, and she never would have wished this on her.
On some silent cue, she and Soo-jin exchanged a look. Then they made for the closest berthing hall. A look through the narrow window on its side gave her a view of the Ozark's vast, familiar side, the angles and planes of its construction visible in the station's outboard security lights.
As they entered the hallway, a faint hiss came from somewhere behind them.
They froze.
A door.
A second hiss sounded a few seconds later as it closed again, the sound distant and small.
“Shit.” Soo-jin pulled her back.
They didn't hear footsteps, but all the hairs on Karin's arm had lifted. Creeping toward the Ozark's hatch, they'd almost reached the comms terminal when someone screamed.
“No! No, please, not again! I—”
The words turned into a strangled yell. Light flashed across the hallway, skittering electric blue, and the scream cut off.
And after, silence.
Soo-jin activated the comms panel without a word, planting her face right in front of the camera, and Karin turned her attention back toward the main hallway. She slid the crowbar out from the crook of Soo-jin's elbow and gripped its end tight like a gravball bat. The comms tone droned behind her, making her muscle tense as it continued on and on, the seconds ticking by. All her focus lay on the end of the hall. She crept toward the corner, hoping to hear something.
A metal ball floated into sight, less than three meters away.
She snatched herself back into cover.
Fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck.
With a deep pull that gnawed at the bottom of her stomach, she wrested her light back into the air. Shrinking back from the corner, she threw it down the hall, using the metal on the opposite wall to help guide her. It rushed against it, bright white, moving under her command without a whisper of sound. She formed it into a quick human shape and crept back, clutching a shard of white in her hand to help establish the link.
The ball paused as it came back into view. Several blast strikes blackened its surface, turning its metal into a splash of soot. Two shots had even dented it, and a patch of white discoloration marked where someone had hit it dead on.
It pivoted away from her. With its back turned at an angle to her, she caught sight of the light in its back pulsing.
She let out a breath as it moved again—toward the end of the hall. Electricity crackled on its front, but it wasn't meant for her.
She darted back down the hall just as Soo-jin's call connected. Nick's face appeared on the screen.
They didn't even have to say anything. The door panel flashed green next to the hatch. They piled inside, hurrying to close it behind them.
Nick greeted them on the other side, then engaged the lock.
The Ozark had several places it could have attached to Caishen with, and this was the least welcoming. A cramped, narrow corridor with even less cause for aesthetics than the rest of the ship, Karin recognized it as one of the vessel's emergency exits.
“Thank fucking Sol,” Soo-jin started. “What the hells is—”
“Shh.” Nick cut her off with a quick gesture. “Catch up later. We have to hide. People are looking for you.”
“And you're on our side?”
“Yes. So's Christops, but Hopper's on his ass.” He led them down the hall, paused at the end to look around the corner, then gestured for them to follow. “Come on. We have to be quick.”
A sound at the hatch behind her made her pause. The ball. Hand shaking, she released her light puppet. Emptiness scraped at her insides when the light didn't return, but she swallowed it back and followed the other two.
After living aboard for almost a week, the Ozark's long, metal halls felt familiar. With only twenty-one crew, at least half of which were lying in the berthing corridor on Caishen, they walked through empty hall after empty hall. It didn't feel like the ghost ship it had been when she had first walked through it, back when they’d just been finding out about the Lost, but the silence bred a steadily growing panic that rose through her bones and stiffened her neck.
And that last puppet had taken her strength. As they climbed the stairs into the Ozark's lesser-used sections, her earlier nausea returned. A weak, fluttering sensation pulled at her muscles. She had to fight against a lightness that moved back into her brain.
After one particular staircase, a rush of dizziness threw her off. She sucked in a ragged breath and sagged against the railing, flattening her palm against the wall.
“Karin?” Soo-jin glanced back. “Are you okay?”
She tried to form an answer, but the nausea rolled through her guts instead. She swallowed it back, tasting the burn of acid at the back of her throat. She dragged another breath through her nose and held it, tensing her fingers against the wall as she fought with her stomach.
But the second wave was too much.
She heaved, doubling over. Hands caught her as she stumbled dangerously close to the stairs, and Soo-jin pulled her hair back.
Her nose burned. She coughed and tried to swallow, but her throat closed up.
In the end, she spat out more onto the floor.
In for a penny, in for a pound. Once one
had thrown up in front of strangers, there wasn't a whole lot more disgusting things you could do.
“Well, the good news is, there's no blood,” Soo-jin commented. “Just peanuts.”
Great. She was looking at her vomit. Karin coughed again, and Soo-jin patted her shoulder.
“Come on, sit over here. I'll help you.”
“I can carry her, if you like?” Nick said. “Would that help?”
“What would help is a package of water, which I have. You can help by telling us what's been happening while we've been incarcerated. Was there some sort of conspiracy to give us up?”
“Yeah. Charise and James both used to work for the government. Had a few run-ins, which is why they left, but they're Alliance loyalists.”
“And Christops is not?”
“He's with you guys, but stuck on the bridge. Keeping Hopper occupied. As for the rest...” Nick shrugged. “We don't really know what's going on, or what your plan is.”
Karin cleared her throat, but, before she could speak, Soo-jin thrust a water package into her face, straw already inserted.
“Our original plan was to have Marc pull into your aft hangar and take some fuel rods with us. That still valid?”
Nick's head tilted. “Could be. Fuel rods are already secured in there. We'd just have to open the air door.”
“Good, good,” Soo-jin said. “We can work with that. Heard anything from Marc?”
“He's about an hour out now. Already called. We told him what happened.”
“Well, get on your netlink and start updating people. Let's see if we can make this show work.”
Karin cleared her throat. “What about the Fallon ship? Any ID on them?”
“No. Came in range after we docked. It's huge, though. Some kind of warship.”
Despite herself, her jaw slackened. A warship? What the hell?
“Can the Ozark do a scan?”
“No, she's too old. Christops has the comms open, though I'm not sure they'd bother contacting us.”
She swallowed another gulp of water. “If Hopper's shunning them, we might be the only ones left.”
“Yeah, us and whoever sent those balls.” Soo-jin snorted. “I imagine its large, battle-fleet set of weaponry makes it hard to shun. How far out?”