Shadow Sun Seven

by Spencer Ellsworth

  “Well, we en’t hurting for oxygen, if we can get a good sense-field going in the barge. We’ll just pop one of them cells . . .” I leave out the part where the cells have to be carefully tapped to avoid an explosion, and I en’t got the equipment. One insane disaster of a mission at a time, aiya?

  “So we can get out of here?” Kalia says.

  “Don’t you worry,” I say. I don’t want to ever hear her cry that she deserves this. “I’ll get us out.”

  “Let us follow this track, then,” Scurv says, and although I en’t know vim long, I would say, even without the holos, that’s vir “forcing cheerful” voice.

  We keep walking, following the mag-track. It gradually opens up, into a main shipping chamber where several mag-tracks meet. A huge heap of them hyperdense cells reaches up one vast, ragged pink wall to our left. Another giant heap to our right. Overhead, curtains of them cells hang.

  I en’t never seen such wealth. Three of them cells would have set me up for a year, in the time before the kids.

  There en’t no carts buzzing back and forth, though. This catch is just sitting right here, waiting for the right hands. Blue slime is everywhere too, but what blobs we see are sick, nestling into hollows to try and retain their shape.

  “Jaqi.”

  Toq is tugging my arm. “Jaqi! I know him!”

  “Know who? Someone here?”

  “Him!”

  I didn’t see them until now. The miners. Toq is pointing at one of the miners.

  They were hiding in the curtains of tissue. Ragged types, most of them looking underfed, clad in hazard suits that have seen better days. They’re all clustered around the equipment, staring at us like we’re going to kill them. Now they’ve noticed us, they’re looking ready to scatter—a good thought, given that Scurv, despite all my words, is still touching them guns.

  Wait a touch.

  They’re all human.

  All of them.

  I thought this was a prison for all the scabs and the troubled crosses of the galaxy. Why am I seeing a bunch of humans, could all be bluebloods by the look?

  And one of them staring at Toq and Kalia, and his face has the look of a fella seen the face of the devil and God both. “Kalia? Toq? My . . .”

  “Uncle Staran?” Kalia runs forward. “I thought you were dead!”

  “I knew you were dead! I saw the reports! What are you—why are you here?”

  They rush into his arms, this skinny, bald fella!

  “Uncle?” I say. I look at Scurv, as if vi will understand this any more than me. “Uncle? Here?”

  He looks up, from between the children, at me. “What are you doing here? What is this—” He seems to recognize me, and gets the look of Scurv as well, and his voice goes much darker. “Why are you with crosses?”

  For a skinny fella on the verge of death, he can definitely stare the Dark. “We en’t with the Resistance,” I say. “We’re set against them.”

  “Who are you? You are crosses—but you’re not with the Resistance?”

  “We’re the Reckoning,” Scurv says.

  Oh, see, that sounds evil exciting.

  “Who are you?” I ask.

  “This is our Uncle Staran!” Kalia says, half through tears. “My dad’s cousin! I thought you must have died on Keil!”

  “I wish I had,” Uncle Staran says. “I mean, I wished I had, until now.”

  “Excuse me.” A woman detaches herself, hobbles toward us. I notice that her right hand ends at the wrist. Hollow-cheeked, hair falling out, but her eyes are alive, fierce. “I’m Paxin sher-Kohin. I’m a journalist. Are you with the Kurguls?”

  “We were.”

  “Paxin sher-Kohin?” Scurv says. “We read your books, many years ago.”

  “Uh . . . thank you,” she says. “I didn’t think anyone read those. Did you come . . .” Her voice actually breaks. “Did you come to get us out of this place?”

  I don’t want to say I didn’t figure on it. “What’s going on here?”

  “The Resistance put us here,” Uncle Staran says, standing up and away from the kids. “The Chosen One himself, who I supported with my own money and my own vats! Who Paxin wrote about like he was some kind of hero! John Starfire corralled us, kept us penned like animals, and sent us all to die in an Imperial mine!”

  “You en’t prisoners?”

  “Prisoners get cells,” the one-handed woman, Paxin, says. “We sleep in the mines.”

  “We’re all bluebloods, as you crosses like to say,” Uncle Staran says. “The Resistance shipped us here to add to the workforce. A lot of the prisoners have been let go. We’re moving out the oxygen cells three times the speed the original prisoners did.”

  “Because,” Paxin interjects, “they were allowed to go back to their cells and sleep.”

  A woman near Uncle Staran touches Toq like he’s some kind of thing she barely remembers. Her body more bones than meat. More miners are coming near us now. Dozens of them crowding us, with them skeletal faces, looking like they been starved for years.

  “New shipments every week,” Uncle Staran says. “New people coming in. All humans.”

  That would figure right with what the Resistance thinks of humans. “How many?”

  “We’re not sure. The word is that ten thousand have come in. About a third of us have died already, from overwork, bad rations, and disease. I’m guessing that’s constant.”

  Ten thousand bluebloods, right here in this mine. Ten thousand of them getting starved and worked to death. I feel so struck I en’t able to do nothing but repeat it. “Ten thousand.”

  “More like seven thousand, with those who’ve died.”

  “Sense, it is,” Scurv says. “Resistance wants the oxygen, wants the humans dead—John Starfire is an efficient man.”

  “Jaqi,” Kalia says. “We have to rescue them! This is exactly what we’re trying to stop!”

  She’s right, of course. This is the Reckoning right here, and these are the proof of John Starfire’s own madness.

  And our caper just went from stealing one prisoner back to stealing seven thousand of them.

  * * *

  Araskar

  We drop into the maintenance tunnels, crouch, and run. Dull blue emergency lights play across Z’s and X’s tattooed skin. Z limps, running along the base of the tunnel. X clutches at the rip the Maata left across her thigh, but keeps going with me.

  “Look for a weak panel!” I shout over the roar of the oxygen works.

  “Will they send those guards after us?” X asks.

  “They’re all sick. And why send blobs after us when—”

  The Maata presses its face against the small hole, and begins to slither through, its body compacting through the hole and then expanding again.

  “Damn damn damn,” I say.

  “It still moves like a cat, save when it changes its shape,” X says. “Interesting. Should it not be sick as well?”

  “I guess the pathogen only affects certain types of fluids,” I say. “The sentient ones. Not the big ugly, hungry ones.”

  The Maata flows into the tunnel, and re-forms, sleek, red eyes glowing in the dark, and its growl mingles with the roar of the oxygen works below us.

  “We need to go below!” I yell over the sound, and I let go of Z, who slumps against the wall. I turn to confront the Maata, and realize I haven’t got any weapons, except the shock stick’s end that Z gave me. Probably burned out any residual charge.

  The Maata growls and lashes out, and I feint backward—and its right paw becomes a tentacle, slithering like a snake along the wall to me. I jam the end of the shock stick into the tentacle.

  It screams, shudders, and nearly loses shape, yanking the tentacle back.

  That’s good. A fluid sentient has a free-floating nervous system, more prone to disruptions of the electrical sort. If only I had an actual weapon.

  I back up—and stumble into Z, who is punching out one of the metal panels on the side of the tunnel.
/>   “That was brave. You might earn honor yet today,” he shouts.

  “How are you even standing?” I answer him. “That should have crippled you!”

  “Honor makes me stand!” He furiously attacks the panel, and it screeches and screams, starting to lift off the rivets. “Honor makes me strong!” Wham. More hits and the metal pops off one rivet, revealing the roar and the green haze of the oxygen works below. The stink hits like a wall. “Go!” He seizes me and I yell “No!” but he tosses me through.

  I go hurtling through the rank air, grab the first pipe I see, which breaks, shooting me with a blast of pure, heady oxygen. I go swinging out over the floor, crash into one of the big pillars, as it roars and shakes, sucking up oxygen cells.

  Z’s and X’s voices are lost in the roar of the oxygen works all around me. Through the green haze, I see a large dark shape slipping between the pillars—the Maata.

  Its sensory input will be as confused as ours, and this slick floor will do it no favors either. Of course, it’s still bigger than both of us.

  Another dark shape moves to my left, and I spin, armed with nothing but the shock stick point—

  It’s Rashiya’s ghost.

  “I’m lonely. Are you coming to me yet?”

  “Not yet.” Damn. I look back at the oxygen works, the particular centrifuge behind me. A roar and a pop echo through the works as one of the hyperdense cells is processed. I feel the suction on my legs, coming from the tiny open places at the bottom of the pillar.

  “It’s behind you,” Rashiya says.

  I ignore her and try to think back to what I learned on my oh-so-interesting tour. Hoppers of hyperdense cells under the floors. They move along at a regular click, and are sucked into the centrifuges inside the pillars, which break their integrity and then release enough oxygen to be pumped through all of Shadow Sun Seven. If only I had the shards, I could blow this whole place in two.

  “I’m just telling you what your senses already tell you,” Rashiya’s ghost says, offhandedly.

  I turn, and see two red eyes among the green haze.

  It pounces, and I just move in time to avoid being gored by its horns, but not fast enough to avoid a claw. The claw catches my leg—the good part of my leg—and tears the flesh. I scream and tumble aside. The Maata should have me for dinner, but the slick floor works against it—it slides sideways, shifting its whole mass to try and deal with the change in weight. X comes out of the green mist and stabs the Maata in its side, her knife sinking in deep—and the Maata’s side grows three sharp tentacles, lashing out at her. She tumbles away from it, lashes out with the makeshift whip of her sense-rope. Its side-tentacles grab the rope, yank it away.

  I scramble to my feet, and nearly fall over from the pain. Stupid leg. I didn’t have you reconstructed for nothing!

  I hear another burst as a nearby centrifuge sucks up a hyperdense cell. Right next to me, the suction whirring through the same small grate where I dumped the pathogen on my tour.

  Ignoring the intense pain of my leg, I kick the grate in. They’re made to be just big enough for a regular sentient, in case a blob couldn’t get in. “Hey! You!” I bellow.

  “Me?” Rashiya’s voice sounds next to my head.

  “Not you, shut up!”

  The Maata is still trying to get X, who has vanished behind another centrifuge. I jam the end of the shock stick into its rear.

  It whirls around, every inch the enormous, hungry cat as it growls at me.

  I look right into those red eyes and say, “I’m ready to die.”

  “Good boy,” Rashiya says.

  The Maata lunges, but it’s still trying to maintain its footing, and the lunge falls short of me. I back up, and slip, fall on my back, and just manage to crabwalk backward to one of the centrifuge pillars. I mutter, “Please be stupid enough for this.”

  I scuttle through the grate, scraping my sides raw, and suddenly I’m below the massive centrifuge, inside the bottom of a huge open pillar. Above me, rings of air-processing circuitry stretch to the ceiling, all of them spinning slowly, in slightly different rotations from each other. I just avoid falling into the hole where I can see sprockets turning, bringing another hopper of hyperdense cells to be processed.

  Here’s where it’ll happen.

  The Maata presses itself against the opened grate, starts to ooze through. It smells my blood, no doubt.

  From above me, Rashiya smiles down. “Is this it?”

  “Might be,” I say.

  The Maata fills the space, roars at me, its red eyes alight. Blood coats its teeth and claws. The Maata reaches for me—and the centrifuge above us whirls. Suddenly I start to lift off the ground. I hook my arm around a support strut. The Maata’s shape changes as it tries to flatten out, cling to the slick, wet ground. It lashes long, furry tentacles onto various bits of the machinery, the grates—and from the hopper in the floor, hyperdense cells go sailing up, silver globules in the darkness. The Maata whines and tries to stretch out, but the suction is tougher on a fluid body than one with a bone structure like mine. It takes mental effort for a fluid sentient to maintain that shape.

  One long tentacle loses a grip and is sucked up into the centrifuge. As one hyperdense cell explodes, the Maata screams and loses integrity to half its body; the rest starts to pull away, globs and globs of fluid-stuff spinning in the oxygen processor and being shot all over the station.

  “Come on,” Rashiya says. “Come to me.”

  My grip is slipping. The support strut is slick. And then the metal screams as someone tears it away, and the centrifuge screams louder, and all the Maata is gone and I can’t cling any longer; I’m going to be sucked up hard enough to break all my bones and—

  Two massive hands seize me under the shoulders, hold me in place as the centrifuge reaches its full status, and the Maata is completely discorporated, bits of cat and horns and claws becoming blue globules torn into pieces and spun with the exploding hyperdense cells.

  Z’s enormous tattooed arms link over my chest. My clothes tear. One of my boots flies off, up into the centrifuge.

  And then it slows down, and bits of the Maata come down onto me in a warm sticky rain.

  I don’t think I’ll ever hear again.

  My ears are screaming in pain when Z pulls me out. Even so, I can tell what he mouths. That was almost honorable.

  Thanks, asshole.

  -18-

  Jaqi

  “ANY TROUBLE WITH THE GUARDS?” I ask the writer, as she leads us through the twisting tunnels of the mines, between hanging folds of flesh and hyperdense cells, all along the mag-tracks. The other miners are following us, for all that I en’t sure that’s such an idea. But if you’re going to steal seven thousand people, might as well get them all there at once.

  Seven thousand.

  “The guards are all sick of a sudden,” she says. “Your Kurguls took them by surprise, that’s for sure. But more importantly, they can hardly hold their shape.” Her eyes take in me and Scurv. “You can handle them.”

  Small comfort, that. “En’t my Kurguls. I wouldn’t admit to owning a one of them.”

  I can remember now, from the guard’s memory, that he didn’t think much on the mines. He didn’t like it—remembered the miners as miserable, cold, skinny starved freaks. At the time, I didn’t dwell much on that, as I was busy sifting his brainpan for information about the cell blocks.

  I still feel a good bit of regret for that guard, I’m realizing a peculiar thing too—that guard, the fella didn’t ask any questions, took his check and went. Just wanted to get home, to the kid.

  Just like Swez said.

  Took his check and went home.

  It’s what I used to do before them kids.

  “If you can get us out of here—get us to a genuinely safe place—I know people who can get the word out,” the writer says. She holds out the stump of her hand. “They wanted to stop me writing, but I promise you, I will write something every single sentient in the g
alaxy reads.”

  “Yeah, that’s a fine idea,” I say, not mentioning that I would not be able to read it. I start to walk, and Kalia shouts after me, “Jaqi, they can’t walk very fast!”

  The miners are fit to fall down and die, but they’re crowding after us. Some of them are supporting others who are hurt. We pass others who have fallen, collapsed where they’re standing. We pass some that obviously have gravity sickness—them are human types who spent their life on a real planet with real gravity, and these generators make them sick once they get old enough.

  From where she’s half holding her uncle up, Kalia says, “Jaqi, what’s our plan?”

  “Our plan. Our plan.” Okay, Jaqi, you en’t no reader, but you still got the brainpan of a criminal. Use it like you en’t used it before. “I reckon we can . . . I . . .” Aw hell. “I need to talk to Araskar.” Cept he en’t been answering again. Slab, you there?

  Nothing.

  And then, Jaqi?

  Slab, you’re there! Thank all gods and Starfire. Look, where you at now?

  The oxygen works.

  I have a mighty problem, slab.

  I— He cuts off. A moment later. I do too.

  I’m distracted as I notice smaller figures come out of the side tunnels to join us. “Children?” I say. “There are children in here?”

  “Oh, yes,” Paxin, the writer, says. “They can get into difficult places we cannot.”

  Burning Dark and shit in space. There’s kids, too. “How long would it take to round up all of you?”

  “Not too long,” Paxin says. “Twelve hours?”

  Twelve hours? Why not a week?

  “What’s our plan, Jaqi?” Kalia asks.

  I look at Scurv. “Uh, slab, you got any ideas in your history?”

  “I told you those comic books lie,” Scurv says.

  “Not what I need to hear, slab!”

  “We say take the mission and leave, and return for the miners when there are greater advantages on our side.” I must be giving vim the devil-eye, because vi holds vir hands up, as if to tell me to ease off. “You think there is some better solution, we are listening.”