Void Black Shadow

by Corey J. White

  Trix keeps firing as I lash out hard at the nearest three; they tumble back and others leap at me. I throw one aside and grab hold of two more. Their limbs wheel as they struggle in mid-air, and I squeeze, yelling loud as their reinforced skeletons twist and break. The bodies hit the slick mud underfoot with a wet thud.

  The one I tossed aside moves like lightning, and the air is knocked from my lungs as he tackles me to the ground. I twist under him just in time to see Ocho attack, leaving deep scratches across the soldier’s scarred neck. She drops to the ground hissing, and before the grunt can react I lift him with one hand. With the other I tear into his stomach—the only soft spot on these cyborgs. I throw him away again, but this time his intestines trail out behind him to splat messily across the ground.

  A Legionnaire smacks Trix’s gun from her hand, and she grabs hold, lifting him high with the help of her exoskeleton. She punches him in the face with her prosthetic fist until metal skull shows through the red. He’s still struggling, while two more soldiers close in behind Trix.

  I reach back, remembering the tall, tapered heatsinks that emerge from the facility’s roof like spears. I break a dozen of these black metal barbs free, then scan my eyes over the melee, wrists flicking as I launch the spikes at each Legionnaire. The lengths of metal skewer the soldiers with two wet squicks—one as they pierce flesh, and the second as they spear into the mud. The soldiers are pinned to the ground like insects on display, except these ones are still squirming against their restraints. They die slowly, limbs going slack, blood bubbling from mouths. I don’t know how their hive mind works, but I hope the whole fucking Legion feels that pain.

  While I catch my breath, Trix retrieves her lasrifle and points the scope in the direction of the Mouse—wreckage still smoldering, but now wearing a thin layer of snow.

  “The others are coming this way,” she says.

  “OK,” I say. “Einri, how far out are you?”

  “ETA one minute.”

  “Great, land at the northern side of the building and take off on my command.”

  “I only take orders from Captain Squid,” Einri says.

  “I don’t have time to argue. Just do it,” I say as I stalk back toward the facility.

  “What are you planning, Mars?” Trix asks.

  I step through the opening in the glass, and over my shoulder I say, “You need to take Pale to the shuttle, Trix; I’ll hold them off.”

  She follows me inside, and I break a panel on the opposite side of the corridor as Einri lands the shuttle. It sits just beyond the ring of dark mud, door open and ramp extended.

  Squid joins us in the corridor. “I found everything I could in MEPHISTO’s systems,” they say.

  “Could you just burst the text to me? I don’t know if my membank could take the full digital records.”

  “Done,” they say, and a new message icon blinks in my HUD.

  “Thank you. Now, go get in the shuttle.”

  Squid crosses one arm over the other. “What are you planning?”

  “I asked the same thing,” Trix tells Squid.

  Fuck; I’ve never had a good poker face.

  I contemplate repeating the lie that I’m just going to hold the Legion off, but they deserve better. “Where Mookie’s being held, we won’t be able to just go and break him out; it’ll be too dangerous. But if I can get inside . . .”

  “No,” Trix says. “You don’t deserve to make a heroic void-damned sacrifice.”

  I grab her by the arm of her exo and Squid follows as I walk Trix out of the hallway, toward the shuttle. A cold breeze comes from the north, and even the ambient heat from the server farm isn’t enough to stop my teeth from chattering.

  “I’m not sacrificing shit,” I say. “I’m going to get Mookie out, and I’m going to kill as many people as I have to in the process. This is my fuck-up, so now I’ll fix it.”

  As we near the shuttle’s ramp Trix pulls free. “You don’t have to do this alone,” she says over the hum of the shuttle’s engines.

  “I put him in this shit, not you; so go, Trix.”

  “She was going to leave him,” Squid blurts out. Trix shoots them a glare colder than the wind. “Mars deserves to know,” they say.

  Trix sighs. “Back on Aylett, I was going to leave, but then they caught us and beat Mookie half to death, and I stayed.” She laughs, a sad, broken sort of laugh. “I was bored before you showed up. I was gonna go back to merc-work—even had a meeting lined up.”

  “Oh, Trix,” is all I can manage to say.

  “He’s out there somewhere, and he doesn’t know I was going to leave him, he doesn’t know I don’t . . .

  “I have to be the one that saves him; I owe him that much.”

  “Listen, Trix; I still don’t know how I’m going to get Mookie out of there. I need you on the outside. I need someone hiding near the prison with a ship, ready to swoop in and rescue us when I send out a signal.”

  “Damn it,” Trix says. “Alright.”

  I scratch Ocho under the chin, then hold her out toward Squid. “Take Ocho and go,” I say. Ocho squirms and tries to scratch me with her back legs, but I hold her tight and press her to Squid’s shoulder until they get a grip on the little furball.

  “Go now; don’t make me throw you in there.” I see the look on Trix’s face, and I can guess how hard it was for her to say all that, but we’re running out of time.

  Squid starts up the ramp, and when Trix follows I steal a glance at Pale, still in his drug-induced slumber. Mookie first, then I’ll save you too; save you from whatever MEPHISTO did to you.

  I take a moment’s respite from the cold inside the corridor. “Einri, you’ve got to launch the shuttle now and leave me behind.”

  “Oh,” the AI says. “This is what you meant?”

  “Yes.”

  The noise of the shuttle’s engines climbs in pitch and volume as it lifts up off the ground. “I understand, ma’am. Good luck.” The shuttle hovers for a second, then blasts into the sky.

  I walk out the other broken window and face south. The distant Legionnaires grow slowly as they run toward the facility. I figure I’ve got a couple of minutes before they reach me, so I open the data package Squid sent me.

  Briggs’s file comes up: compared to what we found on Mookie, it’s an encyclopedia. I skip over the start of his career and stop at the point where he was given command over one half of MEPHISTO’s research and operations.

  I don’t see any reference to myself, but there’s a whole file on my father—Marius Teo, a “brilliant geneticist,” and the only researcher to successfully develop telekinetic potential as part of PROJECT SALEM. There’s another entry under his name: PROJECT DIANUS. I open that and find schematics for brain augmentations and, scrolling down further, the weapon platform I found Pale trapped inside.

  First Teo gave Briggs his brood of voidwitches, but that wasn’t enough. Briggs wanted a way to use the boys too, so my father gave him those machines.

  I focus my eyes past the text and close the file; the Legionnaires have slowed about a hundred meters away. If they felt what I did to their buddies, they’ll be cautious.

  I drop to my knees, raise my hands in the air, and form a dome of psychic will just large enough to shield me, in case they decide to kill first and get answers from my corpse.

  The soldiers approach warily, weapons trained on my center of mass. When they reach the ring of sludge, a woman steps forward and lowers her weapon. “What is the meaning of this?”

  I let out a loud sigh, hoping it sounds like one of exhaustion, rather than impatience. “Are you in charge?” I ask, though her uniform is indistinguishable from the rest.

  “No one of us is in charge here; we all report to Commander Hamid. I ask again, what is the meaning of this? I will not ask a third time.”

  “My name is Mars Xi. I’m responsible for the deaths of Commander Briggs and the people under his command. I also destroyed Miyuki’s defense fleet, wiped out the garr
ison stationed here, and killed your friends,” I say, motioning to the dead Legionnaires, arranged in macabre formation across the mud and snow. I drop my head so none of them can see me smirk behind the hair that falls over my face.

  “Now that you’ve lured us here, are you planning to kill us too?” the woman asks.

  “I’ve pushed myself too hard; I’m spent,” I lie. “I don’t want to die, so I’ll come along quietly.”

  The woman doesn’t speak, but the collective mind of the Legion must come to some decision, because one of the troopers stows his gun and unclips a pair of hefty-looking restraints from his belt. He approaches carefully and I bring my shield down before he touches it.

  “You better send me to the deepest pit in the fucking galaxy,” I say, “or you’ll learn what Briggs knew in his final moments.”

  “And what is that?” the woman who is not in charge asks.

  “I can’t be stopped.”

  She smiles, and the movement is mimicked on the faces of the other Legionnaires, then something sharp pricks the side of my neck.

  Before I can protest, my head swims and I drown in darkness.

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  I wake to a droning hum, but it takes a few seconds before I’m sure it isn’t coming from inside my head. Engine noise. A ship.

  My eyelids feel heavy as they flicker. I only get them open with effort.

  The door slides open and a young Legionnaire walks in. “Commander Hamid wishes to speak with you,” he says, voice authoritative beyond his years.

  “Huh? Send ’em in then,” I say, fighting my slack mouth to form the words.

  I wait for Hamid to walk into my cell, but instead the trooper says, “You must be Mariam.” His voice has shifted up a register and softened: a woman’s voice coming from his mouth. “Commander Briggs’s pride and joy.”

  I try to laugh, but I barely manage a hoarse bleat from the back of my throat. “Even if I hadn’t killed him, I doubt he’d agree with you.”

  “You were everything he wanted his girls to be. Though I suppose he preferred them a little more . . . malleable.” Hamid’s wry expression looks wrong on this young man’s face, muscles moving in ways they aren’t accustomed to. She continues: “That’s why I wanted to see you. You are about to be delivered to a truly awful place, but I can have the Legion divert you if you agree to work for me.”

  Even if I didn’t want to go to Homan, the thought that I might join MEPHISTO is as laughable as it is fucking disgusting.

  “No deal,” I say.

  There’s a long pause, then the guard’s face frowns. Hamid says, “Mariam, I’m trying to help you here.” She sighs. “Choose to join me now, or in time we will break you; we will force you to join the Legion.”

  “You can’t break what’s already broken,” I say.

  Apparently Hamid has already stopped listening though, and in his own voice the soldier says, “We’re nearly there.” He leans down close and there’s a sharp pain in my arm. I try to look away, but a restraint collar digs into my neck. I have to watch him pull the blood-steeped needle from my skin. I want to retch, but I swallow and force myself to breathe, and my head starts to clear.

  “A squad will be here shortly to transfer you.”

  He removes the collar from my neck. I gulp again, but there’s still a dull ache where the restraint sat snug at my throat.

  The Legionnaire holds the needle up to my face and I pull back. “Your abilities will be out of reach until these drugs make their way through your system.” He spits the word “abilities” at me. I assume the Legion is pissed that I killed some of its parts, but that’s what happens when you bring cyborgs to a space witch fight. “The prison has other ways to keep you in line.”

  “Are you done?” I say, forcing a smirk. “Let’s go already, I’m bored.” It takes a few seconds for me to focus on his face, but when I do I see a confused look spread across his features. That’s right—I’m not afraid of your guns or your prison; I chose this. You think I’m your prisoner? You’re all dead fucks walking, and I’m a monster in human skin.

  He crouches and unfastens the restraints around my ankles. I stand and feel that woozy tightness as my blood pressure spikes. The Legionnaire studies me with his hand resting on his sidearm. There’s a tight tattoo of approaching boots, and he says, “Come along, then.” He motions toward the door with a nod.

  I step out of the cell and into the hallway; my legs ache, muscles struggling after untold time spent unused. The corridors are packed tightly with MEPHISTO troops—all of them bearing scars that hint at their cyborg skeletons.

  Two guards grab me by the arm. The woman barely comes up to my shoulder, but if anything, her grip is stronger. They perp-walk me down the hall and I hear the others fall in step behind us. As we move through the ship, Legionnaires duck into doorways and alcoves to let us pass, movements all seemingly choreographed, like I’m the only one who skipped rehearsals.

  It takes us ten groggy minutes of walking before we reach an interior air lock door marked Hangar Deck. I don’t recognize the design of the vessel, but from the size of the ship’s hangar I’d say it’s a carrier.

  The hangar bustles with countless Legionnaires in MEPHISTO uniforms. To the left are the external air locks, and far to the right are a collection of shuttles and sleek fighters in their bays. The middle of the deck is taken up with row after row of ROTs. They’re suspended from the ceiling on complicated apparatus, hanging over massive doors marked with caution stripes in yellow and black; they’re bombs ready to be dropped from space, carrying a cyborg payload.

  For a second I think maybe they’ll drop me to the prison in one of those pods, but before I can decide if I like that idea the troops corral me to one of the main air lock doors. There’s a large viewport to one side, filled with deep black and smudges of color. I blink and my eyes slowly focus; the blur shifts and clears, revealing a planet drenched in sunlight. Its surface is mostly sapphire ocean, but there’s a single yellow-green continent running long and thin from one pole to the other, with a scattering of islands lost in the immensity of the sea.

  “Is that Homan?” I ask, wondering how I’m meant to find Mookie on an entire prison planet, slowly realizing how little I thought this through.

  “No,” one of the soldiers says. I wait for him to continue, but he stays silent.

  “There.” One of the others points toward a small brown moon coming into view from behind the planet. It drifts closer in its orbit; flashes of metal line the rock, but I can’t see any large structures. “That is Homan Sphere; your new home, and your hell.”

  A third celestial body comes into view—another moon, pale orange and large enough to dwarf the prison. The three objects shift and dance, overlapping each other on a background of endless void. We’re beyond the edge of the empire, civilization somewhere far behind us, and the visible constellations are entirely alien to me. These are the stars of far-off galaxies, impossibly small, infinitely distant.

  We’re carried nearer, and the rock of Homan’s surface fills the viewport; I still don’t see any buildings.

  “Where’s the prison?” I ask.

  “You’ll see.”

  We come in, but not to land. We pull up close to a metal outcropping jutting out like a thumb from a closed fist. An echoing rumble fills the hangar as we dock—an ominous sound, full of dark promise.

  For the first time since I let the Legion capture me, I start to wonder if this is a good idea. It’s a bit late for that now, isn’t it?

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  The ship’s air lock twists open, segments disappearing into the hull to reveal a long corridor. Light floods in from the end of the tunnel and refracts off curved walls of galvanized steel, and despite the glowing lines along the floor, the tunnel is dark and I’m blinded by the bright light flooding in at the far end. Turret installations line the ceiling, gun barrels poking into the tunnel like the antennae of curious insects.

  I start walking and the boot
s of the soldiers make a precise beat as they follow. There’s no second air lock door at the end of the tunnel, just a heavy barred gate—the prison relying on the air lock of any docked ship, willing to let everyone inside die to decompression rather than give prisoners any hope of escape.

  My feet stop at the edge of daylight and, with a grind of machinery, the gate rises. A weapon is jabbed into the small of my back, and one of the voices behind me barks, “Keep moving.”

  I walk forward and instinctively try to raise a hand to shield my eyes, but my arms are strapped together tight. Instead I squint until my eyes adjust to the sunlight . . . No, not sunlight, something else.

  We’re standing on a flat expanse of polycrete. Directly ahead is a large transparent tube, two meters tall and extending out of sight in both directions. Behind this tube are two watchtowers, and beyond them the inside of the moon’s shell curves up above us. A massive forest covers most of the right hemisphere, broken up by prison compounds and cut into sections by endless lengths of transit tube. The nearest tree line looks close enough to walk to, but the farthest copse is inverted, pointing “down” toward the other side of the sphere, where a rectangular stretch of water shimmers. The pond, the trees, everything, held in place by centrifugal force, artificial gravity, or some combination of the two.

  We’re inside Homan Sphere. It’s like a planet turned inside out, with land where the sky should be. The view makes my head swim, but I keep staring. I try to look near the “sun” without looking at it, and when I squint just right I see glinting lines of heavy cable suspending what must be an open plasma reactor. Behind this tiny faux star, the far side of the sphere hides in darkness.

  “Incredible,” I say under my breath. When I glance at the Legionnaires, they aren’t even bothering to look up. I don’t know if they’ve seen it too many times before, or if being part of a human hive mind ruins you for appreciating extreme feats of engineering.