Voices of the Void

by David V. Stewart

  Mariela looked at him with alarm.

  “It makes sense. They can use the digger, so of course they can use the lift.” As if sensing her next question, he said, “The wrtla wanted full control of his slaves more than anything. If he let them go back up for food, he could lose them.” He absent-mindedly touched his fist to his head. “So they ate…” Andrew shook his head, the images below returning to him briefly. “He must consider himself close to free. We’re on a timer now.”

  The car went on in darkness, passing through the third sector landing and on into another stretch of blackness.

  “We’ll have to skip the atmosphere generators,” he said. “No time, no point. Let’s just live, eh?” He forced a weak and unfamiliar smile.

  Mariela touched her chin in thought. She got out her notebook and wrote slowly decompression?

  “We’d have to decompress all seven levels of the colony.”

  Mariela held up her finger as she flipped her notebook over. She drew something Andrew didn’t recognize: a series of two-dimensional boxes lined up against each other.

  “I don’t know.”

  Mariela gritted her teeth, then wrote, Heat.

  “The heat sinks. For the power plant. They wouldn’t vent into the primitive atmosphere. Too thin. No point for that.”

  Mariela wrote Top Level. Vents at TOP LEVEL. Emergency.

  “So punch a hole in the top of the power plant?”

  Mariela nodded.

  “Would that do much? It would take weeks to vent out the mine.”

  Mariela threw her hands down in frustration.

  “Well, it’s better than nothing, I admit.”

  Mariela began working the computer panel. Andrew leaned over and saw that she was punching in sector one as a destination.

  “We don’t have time,” Andrew said. Mariela looked at him, impassively.

  She picked her notebook back up and wrote Explosives.

  They soon reached the landing for sector one, which looked out across a great underground canyon. In the distance the lights of the lower levels of the colony could just be seen, burning ever on despite the lack of anyone to see them. Mariela moved out of the lift car, limping slightly but going as close to a jog as her body and her nervous system would allow.

  The second sector had at some point been converted to additional storage. There was nothing left to conveniently mine so high up, so the empty tunnels had been sealed by steel barricades which were now caked with dust. Mariela seemed to know the main area, and she quickly found a storage room with a locked door. She pointed at the doorknob.

  Andrew sighed. He had discarded his plasma gun.

  “Step back and cover your eyes.” Mariela nodded and complied. Andrew took several steps back and shot at the lock. The bullet fractured and ricocheted, but the lock endured. He shot it three more times. The last time the mechanism within seemed to break apart, falling from the handle and clanging dully on the dusty floor.

  Andrew tried the handle and found it stuck. With a grunt, he kicked hard at the door. It gave way and swung inward to reveal a room stocked with various types of explosives. She pointed at a case. Andrew nodded and picked it up, finding the small box heavy for its size. She grabbed a few other oddities that Andrew didn’t recognize – blasting caps and ignition wires, he thought. She nodded and they quickly left the room.

  When they got back in the lift Mariela quickly entered the coordinates for the main colony, and the lift car lurched out onto the floating track.

  “We should have blown the track,” Andrew said a few seconds later.

  Mariela shook her head, as if that wouldn’t have worked.

  “Why?”

  She put down the equipment she held under her arm and wrote Only work under compression. Dad did demo.

  Andrew thought back to a rudimentary engineer’s course which dealt with demolition that he had taken when he was part of the Angl Space Force. The instructor had likened a firecracker going off in the palm of his hand – it would burn you, but you’d be fine, ultimately – with closing your hand around the same firecracker. You wouldn’t have a hand after that.

  “I should have used my grenade differently,” Andrew said aloud. “I could have at least put it in the space between the treads and the driving gears. Haste makes waste, I guess.”

  Mariela looked at him blankly. Andrew made to answer the look, but her eyes grew wider and she stepped past him before he could begin the words. She looked out the rear window, placing her hands lightly on the window. Andrew shuffled next to her and looked into the blackness.

  The other lift car was coming. It had just passed through the first sector landing. It seemed to be going slightly slower than their own car.

  “Damnit,” Andrew said. He released his magazine and checked it. He had nine rounds left. Quickly, he rummaged through his bag. He found two more stray cartridges and popped them into the top of the magazine, then put it back in the rifle. “Twelve shots, including the chamber,” he said. “Just like the old west. Is there an emergency shutoff for the lift?”

  Mariela nodded, but her face indicated a different emotion. She wrote, Need a key.

  “Makes sense,” Andrew said. “Any way to trigger an automatic shutoff?”

  Mariela shrugged unknowingly.

  “On the other hand, it would probably shut off the interior elevators as well.” He sighed. The colony loomed closer. “Let’s get there as quickly as possible. You know the way?”

  Mariela nodded.

  A minute or two passed in silence as the lift approached the final landing. At last, the lights grew close. The rock wall approached and the details of the windows looking out into the hollow mine could be discerned. The lift car slowed and finally arrived. The doors opened. Andrew and Mariela stepped out. The white light was almost nauseating after the darkness.

  Andrew took a quick look around. He saw an access panel near the double doors of the mine lift and ripped it off. Inside were a number of breakers and fuses. He dropped the explosive case, put his gloves back on, and quickly ripped out what he could. Sparks flew and the power hissed. Several of the breakers wouldn’t budge, so he stepped back and shot them a few times. The running lights on the magnetic track flickered and died.

  “Nine rounds,” he said aloud.

  He looked out the window and, after a moment, saw the other lift car in the distance, a pin of light. It was still swaying, growing closer. As he watched, the first lift car pulled away, heading back into the mine.

  “Shit,” he said.

  He glanced at the littered office around him and found a long screwdriver from a nearby workbench. He raced over to the doors and wedged it into the side of the second set near the wall. When he turned, he saw Mariela already limp-running to the main elevators. Andrew picked up the explosives and sprinted to catch up. She had already called one of the cars, and the doors were open. He followed Mariela inside and she punched in the top level.

  “We don’t have much time,” Andrew said.

  Mariela looked at him impassively. In the bright, incandescent light of the immaculately clean elevator, he could finally see clearly what they had endured. She was covered in blood, drying from crimson to brown, and her face was wet with sweat. She was trembling, too, on the edge of exhaustion. Andrew saw that his own hands were shaking and he was equally ugly with human death.

  “How long has it been?” Andrew checked his wrist computer, unsure of the passage of time in the dark below. He tapped it, unbelieving.

  Mariela was staring at him curiously.

  “Almost three days? How are we still alive?”

  Mariela pointed to her head.

  Andrew wondered: did she mean her injury, or his?

  The lift arrived at the first floor. Andrew followed Mariela away from the dormitories and schoolroom to another long, steel-lined hallway. At the end of it was a set of double doors that opened for them automatically. A reception area greeted them, empty and clean, with live computers but
nobody to man them. Mariela paused for a moment, then went through a swinging door to an area full of terminals and basic workstations. She glanced around, then limped to another door. It opened into the power plant proper, a sleek self-contained set of rooms housing the fusion chamber, which plugged away its infinite hum without a care for the humans who had not attended to it. The door, apparently, had never been locked when the workers walked down into the mine… or had been carried away.

  “There?” Andrew said, seeing the piping for the heat sinks leading from the free-standing central chamber up over a steel platform. Mariela nodded and limped on, carrying her equipment with her. They went up a narrow set of stairs to the piping, seeing the area where it divided. Half of the pipes went up, the others went another direction.

  Mariela beckoned for the case. Andrew set it down and pried it open. Inside were stacks of tubes with elongated nozzles. Mariela pointed at him, then at the far door.

  “I’ll cover you,” Andrew said. He turned and readied himself. In the bright, clean space it was hard to imagine the thrall from the mine. He could only think of human people. His past self gave him a fleeting vision of men and women at work in the room, pale translucent ghosts assembling the chamber at the center. Andrew refocused himself on the far door. He glanced back occasionally to check Mariela’s progress.

  Mariela slowly pushed the contents of the tubes into the space around the upper heat sink pipes. They vibrated slightly with the passage of coolant. As the thick, grey paste filled the area, she put in a narrow blasting cap, a simple electric-responsive explosive. She filled six of these narrow spaces, then quickly attached a wire to each blasting cap. Within a few moments, the paste had set. She ran the wires to a receiver.

  Andrew saw her shaking so badly that she couldn’t get the wire ends to fit into the terminals. He quickly kneeled down beside her and held the radio receiver. She guided each wire in carefully with her more proficient right hand. A sound from the other side of the room, distant and yet too close, made her wince.

  “Just a few more, come on,” Andrew said, not turning to look behind him. Mariela nodded and continued slowly inserting the wires, then closing the terminals.

  Andrew, while he kneeled, was having a vision of the future. He saw six figures coming through the far door, right in a line. They were horrible to look upon in the clear, bright white light. They were dark… as if made of darkness, though somehow visible. Their skin was grey where it could be seen, but they were covered in filth, human waste, and the horror of their sustenance in the deeps. Andrew could see clearly the twistedness of them as they leapt over the railing and came bounding forward. Their mouths were slobbering open, too large for people, too small to be reptiles. Their eyes were over-large and dark. Their hair hung in strands, and their hands were like claws, or like the legs of some grotesque insect.

  In the vision, he also heard. He heard their guttural cries, but he also heard the banging of the door. He knew that in the present, that sound had not happened.

  “Stay calm, we’ll be fine,” he said. He watched the damned disperse, spread out to catch them in the future.

  Mariela fidgeted, fitting the last wire into the detonation receiver.

  Andrew heard the door slam open. Mariela put the receiver down. Andrew spun around and instantly saw three targets moving at a preternatural speed. He ignored the first two, who were already spreading out, and instead focused on the door. He fired once, and one of the thrall fell away.

  “Eight.”

  The door opened again.

  Andrew fired again. The shot didn’t hit square. His vision shifted; he saw the fewer number trying to adapt, confused. The newly appeared thrall continued on, only injured. He fired again, this time hitting center mass. The figure collapsed on a ladder. In his vision, he saw a short one, what was once a woman.

  “Six.”

  Andrew fired again, this time just as the door opened. The single shot hit a squat figure in the head, knocking it back.

  “Five.”

  It stopped opening. One of the creatures that was already inside bolted for the exit; one sprinted directly at him and Mariela. Andrew focused on the bolting one, seeing a vision of him appearing from behind a steel workstation. He waited a few heartbeats, then fired as the beast revealed itself. The bullet hit, but it didn’t kill.

  The second one was on him; Andrew tore his eyes from the escaping monster and kicked out. His boot contacted the thrall, knocking it back, but it also latched onto Andrew’s leg, taking him down with it. Andrew rolled, looking for a clear shot, but Mariela had already stepped over and was stomping on the thing, screaming at it.

  It loosed its grip and Andrew rolled away. It grabbed Mariela instead, it was again as if it suddenly realized her existence; Andrew shot it once in the head. The skull came apart and the body stiffened. Mariela stepped back in disgust, then jumped over the body, beckoning Andrew onward.

  “Wait,” Andrew said. “There’s more!”

  He found it suddenly difficult to keep up with the limping, shuffling girl. He saw a phantom from the past and the future lining up over the door. As Mariela moved toward a staircase he kneeled down and fired. The door opened at the same time, and the creature was knocked back by the blast.

  “Four,” Andrew panted, getting to his feet and taking the steps two at a time behind Mariela. He grabbed her shoulder and stepped past her, kicking open the door. The hallway was empty, stained with a trail of blood. Two thrall were in their way, thrashing, fighting against death more than clinging to life.

  Andrew froze for a moment, then put a shot in each of their heads, ending their fight. They had to climb over the bodies; it was impossible to step between them, and they seemed to give underfoot like something rotten.

  “Two,” Andrew said, dismayed.

  He kicked open the door to the lobby. It was empty. He saw the trail of blood leading away, back toward the great lobby and lifts.

  “Only way is forward,” he said, stepping toward the exit. As they passed through the automatic doors, Andrew saw a flash of the future. It was confusing; he was alone in the landing zone.

  Suddenly he turned around and saw a figure behind Mariela. The thrall was reaching for her. Andrew’s finger twitched on the trigger, but he held it back with sudden realization. The creature was stepping around her, coming for him.

  Not knowing what else to do, Andrew pushed Mariela into the wrtla-thrall with force. They both toppled to the floor. Andrew jumped over her and pulled the trigger.

  The firing pin clicked, but the round didn’t go off. Lacking the time to rack the bolt, Andrew stomped down with his foot on the creatures head. He vaguely thought he recognized the face – it was a woman’s, but all his memory could tell him was that she was pretty, once. These thoughts circled hauntingly as he obliterated her twisted face, first with the heel of his boot, then with the stock of his rifle. He slammed it down over and over, until the skull split apart and the thing finally gave up its life to its master.

  He breathed hard as he looked at it. It still twitched in spite of its exposed grey matter. It was wearing the remains of a dress. He racked his bolt and popped out the offending dud round.

  “One,” he said, helping Mariela up. She touched her chest as if in pain. “Sorry.” Andrew pulled her along the blood trail toward the entrance. In the school lobby, he stopped. “We don’t have an exosuit for you.”

  Mariela looked at him, dumbfounded.

  “My ship is parked outside, not in the bay, since nobody was responding to hails. The atmosphere is too thin for you to breathe.”

  Mariela looked down at her right hand, which held the explosive remote. She put her shaky left hand on Andrew’s shoulder, as if to resign herself to a goodbye.

  “No,” Andrew said. “I’ll… Just come on.”

  She shook her head and pointed at the detonator.

  “The ship is close to the airlock,” Andrew said. “You’ll survive. I know it. I can see the future.”
/>   She didn’t give him an incredulous look so much as one that was disbelieving, but her face was also resigned, and yet somehow hopeful.

  As they walked through the halls, the blood trail led on. Andrew looked at the once vibrant hallways, full of pictures and memories. False windows showing machine-made sunlight made shadows dance on the murals. How utterly devoid of meaning they seemed now, and yet his mind took them in. He took a last look at a child’s drawing of a dragon, before focusing ahead. At last, they reached the front doors, the airlocks to the landing zone outside. The blood trail ended at the steel doors.

  Mariela pointed down at the detonator.

  “Now?”

  She pressed a few buttons. Nothing happened for a long few moments. Mariela looked at the thing in anger, then they both felt a tremendous explosion through the ground. Smoke billowed into the distant foyer, and an alarm started sounding. Overhead, sprinklers began dripping.

  Andrew linked his arm into Mariela’s and led her to the airlock. It opened for him. He pressed a button and his helmet came back up. Most of the blood had dried into a smear fractured by the seams of the helmet’s construction.

  A vision assaulted him: it was one of the thrall. It was standing outside on the hazy planet surface, pointing a rifle at Andrew, firing it into his face. Vaguely he could see, as he fell, airlock doors.

  “When it opens, run,” he said as he pressed the button to open the other door. He shouldered his rifle with his free arm. The air rushed out, meeting the thin, almost red atmosphere.

  Nothing was there. Andrew did not have time to puzzle over it. He pulled Mariela out.

  It was sunset outside, which could last for many hours on the slowly rotating planet.

  They dashed for Andrew’s ship, Mariela holding her breath and limping as fast as she could. She started gasping. Then she fell. Andrew dropped his rifle and scooped her into his arms. As he approached the ship, the airlock doors opened for him, recognizing the unique signal on his computer.

  He was struck with a future vision. He had seen it before. He was alone in the cockpit of his ship. Instinctively, he turned. He saw the bloody thrall right behind him, fazed by the thin atmosphere but far from dead. It was holding his rifle.