Darkness Between the Stars

by J. Edward Neill

  “Yes.”

  “And will your count be in real-time? As in, it won’t be an aged count?”

  “My systems are programmed to be in real-time. The only lag will be due to the two-second delay incurred when the orbital stations bounce data back to me.”

  “…blah blah, two seconds,” I heard Callista mock.

  With a smirk, I aimed the skypad at the open night. Even back on our farm, the sky had never been so clear. White pinpricks burned against a backdrop of pale blues and faint yellows, a spectacular canvas of star-torn light. In my mind, I knew there were trillions of stars out there, even if the orbital scopes couldn’t see nearly that many.

  “Skypad, how many stars do you count in the sky tonight?”

  I sucked in a deep breath. I remembered the last count I’d asked for. It’d been years ago, but it felt like only last night.

  “Four-hundred million, seven-hundred thousand, thirty-two,” the skypad had told me back then.

  And tonight?

  The skypad made me wait. I hadn’t noticed, but Callista had floated over my shoulder to hear the answer. For one half a breath, I feared maybe Doctor Abid had blocked the skypad’s signal, meaning we wouldn’t get an answer.

  But then the pad answered:

  “Four-hundred million, six-hundred twelve-thousand, five-hundred forty-eight.”

  I felt a chill as I did the math in my mind. Callista noticed it. I swear her bright blue color paled when I looked at her.

  “Thirty-eight thousand, three-hundred fifty-three,” I murmured.

  “What?” Cal looked worried.

  “Thirty-eight thousand fewer.”

  “Since when?” she asked.

  “Since a year or two ago. I can’t really remember exactly how long. But I remember the numbers. It’s thirty-eight thousand.”

  “That doesn’t make sense.” She cocked her head at me. “Even if the—”

  “Forty-six thousand plus thirty-eight thousand,” I interrupted. “That’s eighty-four thousand stars since I started looking. It’s only been a few years. I thought it would’ve stopped by now.”

  Cal had learned me well enough to know when I was being serious. She must’ve seen my eyes even in the dark. She knew something was wrong.

  “You haven’t talked about this before,” she said. “If I’d have known this was what you were looking for—”

  “Then what?” I shot her a look.

  “I’d have insisted we come out here sooner.”

  My heart soared at her loyalty, but sank again into a deep, dark place. I felt colder and more alone than ever in my life. Even if Mom and Dad had been there, they wouldn’t have been able to warm me.

  “Why?” I asked.

  “Why what?” said Cal.

  “Why would the people who fled during the Exodus kill this many stars? If they just wanted revenge on Earth, why didn’t they just launch one lonely string reprogrammer our way and be done with it?”

  Callista looked over the edge of the railing into the abyss below the mountain. “Abid told me a little about them. He said they have colonies across a hundred light-year span. Maybe they’re testing the weapon. Or maybe they’re at war with each other. Does it really matter? They have to be stopped.”

  On that much, we agreed.

  I lowered the skypad.

  I wanted to ask for another count, but I couldn’t.

  “They must’ve started this hundreds of years ago,” I exhaled. “If the skypad is just now noticing the difference, it means hundreds of thousands of other stars could be dead already. We just can’t see them yet.”

  “It’s possible,” Cal floated nearer to me. “Maybe we should just go back to your room. You might feel better after some sleep.”

  “Eighty-four thousand,” I said to myself. “That many stars…it means I could probably—”

  Without the skypad, I looked out at the sky. I wasn’t sure what I expected to see. With the mountain behind me and the entire Earth beneath me, most of the stars were blocked from my view.

  But somehow, I knew.

  I knew I’d see it.

  And I did.

  There, in a patch of sky just above the next nearest mountain, I saw the patch of darkness. On a grand, cosmic scale, the little starless spot was nothing. But to me, it was everything.

  “Look.” I pointed. “See it? Right there above the mountain. Can you see?”

  “Yes,” Cal whispered.

  “All in one place. All the stars. Gone.”

  “If the missing stars are all in one part of the sky, you know what that means, right?” she asked.

  I backed away from the railing. My heart pumped ice through my veins. My head hurt. I could barely breathe.

  “It means Abid was right,” I said. “The Exodus people…they’re crazy. We have to stop them. Just you and I.”

  A Single Shot

  I couldn’t remember what day it was.

  Had it been a week since I’d spotted the dark spot in the sky?

  Or a month?

  I awoke not to the sound of Callista singing or a sprite whining in my ear, but to footsteps clapping on my bedroom’s hard, cold floor.

  I looked up, and there stood Doctor Tiana.

  It was a good thing she hadn’t walked in on me sleeping a few weeks earlier; I’d only just decided to stop sleeping naked. It wasn’t that Callista had complained, but that my insecurity had grown.

  “What is it?” I sat up with my bed sheet around my waist.

  For a change, Tiana wasn’t smiling. She looked as tired as I felt. I glanced at the window, and the black reflection told me it wasn’t yet morning.

  “I need you to get dressed and come with me,” Tiana instructed. “I’ll be outside your door. You have two minutes.”

  “Where’s Cal?” I looked all over the room.

  Tiana had already gone out the door.

  For a moment, I sat on my bed. Tiana had never been to my room before, and the more I thought about the absence of her usual smile, the more I worried.

  Is it happening? I felt my sweat start to run.

  Am I leaving today?

  I’m not ready.

  I didn’t get to say bye to Mom and Dad.

  Stomach knotted, I tore off my sheets, rushed to my drawers, and dressed in my black tunic, grey pants, and the worn slippers they’d given me so many months ago. I was sure I’d been faster than two minutes, but when I jogged to the door, Tiana was on her way back in.

  “Good.” She looked me up and down. “You’re ready.”

  “Am I?” I asked. “Ready for what?”

  Again she didn’t answer me. She adjusted her glasses and clicked down the hall in her loud black shoes. I looked for Callista again, but didn’t see her.

  I had no choice but to follow Tiana.

  The same glass and chrome corridors I’d gotten so accustomed to were stretched out before me. We walked at a brisk pace, Tiana and I, but we couldn’t seem to move fast enough. I called after her, but she wasn’t talking. With my heartbeat pounding in my ears, I probably wouldn’t have heard her even if she had shouted.

  I had the strangest thoughts:

  If I’m leaving today, am I flying out in these silly clothes?

  I’m not hungry. Does that mean it’s really early? Or really late?

  I wanted to bring Alpo.

  I lost track of time. I shivered, sweated, and felt my bones rattle inside me. I purposely walked behind Tiana so she wouldn’t see me. But it didn’t work. I was such a mess quaking in my slippers I knew she sensed what was happening.

  “It’s ok,” was all she offered. “There’s just this one thing.”

  One thing?

  What one thing?

  Did I fail?

  Are they going to kill me?

  We arrived at a door I didn’t remember. It was black like some of the others, but taller and wider. I was such a mess I couldn’t remember how we’d come to be there, whether we’d taken stairs up or down, or whet
her Tiana had been talking to me.

  Before keying in her code to open the door, Tiana faced me. I saw no light in her eyes. It was as if the Exodus traitors had snuffed the stars in her, too.

  “Joff,” she began, “I just want you to know…I just think you should understand—”

  “What is it?” I felt my body relax, though I wasn’t sure why.

  “Sometimes, these things…they’re not easy. And I know they’re hardest for you. But they’re not easy for us either. I know, Joff. I know you’d rather be back on your farm. I wish this wasn’t how things were. You and I…we almost never talk. But I wanted you to know I care about you. And if it were up to me, I’d erase all this darkness and send you back home where you belong.”

  I looked into her big, beautiful eyes. And somehow all the fear I’d had melted away. I felt like I was standing outside again, but not on the mountain platform.

  At home. Outside my barn. With my dad.

  No. That’s not right.

  Tiana’s wrong.

  This is where I belong.

  Right here.

  She keyed in her code. The door slid soundlessly open. I walked inside fully prepared to see a ship waiting in some vast hanger bay, fully steeled and ready to be shot into the great void beyond Earth.

  But that wasn’t at all what awaited me.

  The room beyond was long and narrow, and so very dim. Doctor Abid stood near the entrance. As I stood there, straining to see what awaited me at the room’s far end, Abid walked in front of me.

  “Joff, put this on,” he said.

  He handed me a part of the Vezda suit. It was the arm cannon only. I looked at it as if Abid had told me to fasten a chicken to my arm.

  “What?” I squinted at the arm cannon.

  “Take it.” He pushed it into my chest. “Put it on.”

  I couldn’t make sense of it. Maybe I was too tired, or maybe the long walk from my room had made me paranoid, but even as I took the arm cannon from Abid, I felt wrong inside.

  “Why?” I asked.

  “I’m not going to say it again.” Abid’s voice was a warning. “Put it on.”

  The Vezda suit’s cannon weighed almost nothing in my hands. That was the beauty of it. It was lightweight, molded out of some alloy whose name I couldn’t hope to pronounce. Made for me and only me, it slid over my right forearm up to my elbow. Inside it, my fingers played on the familiar switches and keys, most of which were useless without the rest of the Vezda suit.

  “Will it even work?” I looked at Abid.

  “Yes. We’ve pre-charged it. You’ve got maybe five or six shots.”

  “Shots?” I felt dizzy.

  “Don’t worry. You’ll only need one.”

  He took me by the left arm and steered me down the long, narrow room. They’d dimmed the lights on purpose, I sensed. As we walked, a shape came into focus at the room’s far end. I saw someone, a man perhaps, sitting motionless in a chair.

  “Who is that?” I asked.

  “You’ll see,” said Abid.

  As if by premonition, I looked back over my shoulder. I saw Callista floating beside Doctor Tiana. I remembered thinking how they used to look like twins, but how I’d learned to see Cal as more human than anyone I’d ever known. Even at a distance, I saw the look in Cal’s eyes.

  She was afraid for me.

  We came to the man at the room’s far end. Abid forced me to a stop ten steps away from the chair the man was sitting in. His hair was black and wild, his eyes bloodshot, and his arms and legs bound to the chair with black metal manacles.

  “Who is it?” I glanced at Abid. My blood felt cold again. My fingers were so numb I couldn’t feel the triggers inside the arm cannon.

  “Look at him.” Abid pushed my chin and forced me to face the man. “Look hard, Joff. Look and remember.”

  I did as he demanded. The man was much older than me, but perhaps not quite as old as my father. He had scars on his face, some old, some fresh. When he and I made eye contact, he cracked a hateful smile.

  He knows me.

  Wait. I know him.

  It can’t be.

  It’s Wendall Wight.

  “You told me he was dead,” I hissed at Abid. “You said they executed him.”

  “I know what I said.” Abid shrugged my anger off.

  I fumed. Wendall Wight, Wendall the Widower, stared at me. Even then, utterly unable to escape his chair, he hated me. At first, I didn’t understand it.

  “I know what you want me to do,” I said to Abid. “And I won’t do it.”

  “Oh?” said Abid. “Why not?”

  “I’m not a murderer. I don’t kill defenseless people.”

  Abid let out a snort. Any illusion I had of him being a decent, normal human being scattered like dust in the wind.

  Wendall grunted. His breaths were ragged, his face grey and sallow. I could tell he was drugged, but still had some of his wits. I peered back at Callista and Tiana, but in the darkness I couldn’t see their faces.

  “No. I won’t do it.”

  Abid was well-prepared for everything he knew I’d say. I saw it in his eyes, his stoic as stone expression. A part of me wondered just how deeply he’d rehearsed his indifference.

  “I suppose there are some things you should know,” he said.

  “Like what?” I couldn’t even look at him.

  “You were lucky that night. In a way, we were all lucky. You being out there in your farm, peeping at the stars with your little skypad. It probably saved your life.”

  “You already told me that,” I shot back.

  “Oh? But did I tell you that you saved your family’s lives, too. You see, Wendall here, he doesn’t do small. ‘Why kill one when I can kill four?’ he was thinking. He was going to slaughter you, your parents, even your sister. And he was going to enjoy it.”

  I looked at Wendall. His eyes were black in the shadows, but I saw the truth in them all the same. His stupid, salivating grin gave him away.

  Or maybe it was the drugs they’d given him.

  “Your whole farm…” Abid continued. “…turned to ashes. Do you want to know why, Joff?”

  I didn’t say anything, but Abid must’ve heard me think it.

  Yes. Tell me.

  “Wendall was ordered to do it. Not that he wouldn’t have liked to murder your family anyway, but his orders made it even easier in his sick little mind.”

  “Ordered?”

  “By the Frost family. For hundreds of years, they’ve been smuggling parts offworld for their star-killing needles. They have spies all over Earth, helping them track us, infiltrate us, and assassinate us.”

  I could feel my fingers again. My hand was sweating inside the arm cannon. I couldn’t help but touch the trigger. One pull, and a yellow sphere of death would come out. One pull, and Wendall Wight would be painted on the wall behind him.

  No, I told myself.

  “The Frost family knew about you early on,” Abid put his hand on my shoulder. “We tried to hide you just like the others. For a while, we succeeded. But they have snakes in every rabbit hole, Joff. Even on a junk-farm outside the Donva slums, we couldn’t keep you a secret forever.”

  Junk-farm? I felt the anger in my chest…and my trigger finger. Donva, a slum?

  My home had been neither of those things.

  He’s just trying to bait me, I thought.

  “So it’s like this, Joff.” Abid squeezed my left arm so hard it hurt. “You’re standing before the man who tried to incinerate your entire family. He had enough bombs in his warehouse to cook your farm ten times over. But you beat him. You, a little boy, captured one of the worst terrorists we’ve ever endured. And now you can beat him again. Just point and pull. See that black curtain behind him? It’s a rare polymer. It’ll absorb the shock from your cannon.”

  “So?” I swallowed hard.

  “It means you can get as close as you want to Wendall. The wall won’t blow up behind him. No explosion. No mess. You can lo
ok him right in the eyes when you send him to Hell.”

  I shot Abid a look that said, you seriously expect me to do this?

  He shot one back that said, what are you, a coward?

  I almost pointed the cannon at Wendall, but let my arm fall back to my side.

  “Why didn’t the government just execute him? If he killed so many people, why’s he still alive?”

  “For you, Joff.”

  “I don’t want revenge,” I argued. “I mean…I already stopped him. He didn’t kill us. Surely there’s someone else who wants to do this more than I do.”

  Abid narrowed his gaze at me. It made me feel like the smallest person on the planet. “No one else knows he’s alive.” He smirked. “Just like you did five minutes ago, everyone thinks he’s dead.”

  “You saved him for me?”

  “Yes.”

  Rivers of sweat ran down my forearm. My shirt felt sticky and hot, a furnace for me to smolder in. I’d never had the urge to hurt anything in my life, not even when I’d stopped Wendall the first time.

  I know what they’re doing.

  They want me to prove I can kill someone.

  They don’t want to send me across the galaxy just to find out I don’t have the guts to go through with it.

  Well…

  Do I?

  Do I have the guts?

  Look at him. He’s still smiling. He thinks I won’t do it.

  Same with Abid.

  I aimed the cannon at Wendall’s face.

  The trigger was slick with my sweat.

  I wondered what Dad would have thought.

  Ignition

  I read Mom’s letter over and over again.

  They’d slipped it into my room before sunrise. They must’ve known after how hard they’d worked me doing flight sims and full-gravity Vezda suit training, I’d be too exhausted to notice anyone entering my room while I slept.

  So when I woke just before dawn and searched for Callista without finding her, I saw the folded sheet of paper sitting flat on the floor beside my bed.

  It went a little something like:

  Dear Joff,

  I miss you terribly. I know what you must think. All your years on the farm, and your father and I didn’t tell you what would happen. There’s nothing I can say to lessen the sting. Even so, I want you to know I’m sorry. I’m sorry I never said anything until now. I’m sorry we haven’t been able to talk to you more often. I’m sorry for everything.