by K. Gorman
Weren’t they formed by water? She glanced up, searching. Maybe the settlement had used it all up? Would that affect the integrity of the ceiling?
Light flashed over metal like dulled quicksilver as Soo-jin skimmed her beam across a low archway embedded around a re-tooled hole in the cave wall. Her lip curled as the beam found a rough, metal-worked sign beside the threshold, depicting what Karin guessed to be the settlement’s coat of arms—two snakes entwined over a crossed sword and gun motif.
“Blow-torch work.” She turned her dry gaze to Marc, who stood beside her. “My pessimism rises. Can we leave yet?”
Marc squared his shoulders. “No. There’s supposed to be First-gen Earth stuff down here, maybe even a weapons’ cache. We search.”
He flicked on his light and started forward, leading the way into the rough tunnel. After a second, Soo-jin, grumbling under her breath about paranoid, inbred settlers, followed.
Darkness encroached on her back as their light moved on ahead. Karin turned the brightness up on her own light and followed. Dust rose from under her boots where the soles crunched the surface to then hang in the dead air around her. She tried to ignore her own rise of pessimism as she passed the crude sign and walked under the archway.
The path grew more and more defined as they went on. Wide enough to drive a vehicle down, it had been manually flattened and reworked. Drill holes and concrete pour lines marked the edges, and metal support struts held up the ceiling every few meters, embedded with the remnants of a lighting system whose plastic cases and mirrored backings caught the beams of their lights and threw back the occasional fractal. Other light systems appeared on both sides of the floor, their plastic cases and housings largely intact though their circuits had long corroded past the point of carrying a current. Once, in an area where the path veered to the left to avoid a patch of stalagmites growing up from what must have once been a pool, a series of metal-worked flowers glittered under their lights, their petals flashing like colored blades.
“Sure is dry down here,” Marc commented. “Cave must have shifted.”
“Maybe that’s why they left,” Soo-jin said. “No more water.”
Perhaps, but it was easy enough to make water nowadays—and the settlement didn’t look that old. Water-forms had been on the popular market for over five hundred years now.
The first pre-fab house appeared out of the gloom like a ghost. Marc’s beam snapped to its door.
“Check it.”
Soo-jin went forward without a word. The motors in her suit whirred as she leveraged the door open, prying it around its rusted hinges. She ducked inside, and her light flicked around through the dust-coated window on the building’s side. The comms line crackled with her breaths and a couple of muttered words that sounded like calculations.
She came out in a second, a small object in her metal gloves.
“Beer can,” she said, setting it down on the path outside the door. “Pre-Fallon.”
“Well, that’s a round of coffee for the three of us,” Marc said brightly. “Let’s see what else we can find.”
The rest of the settlement appeared soon enough, more pre-fab houses slipping out of the dark like pale, bulbous ticks. A pang pulled through Karin’s chest at the sight, a reminder of her time at university on Belenus, but she tamped it down with a thought. This wasn’t the first time she’d seen these kinds of structures—the original designs had been made public domain some four hundred years ago and, although the centuries had seen some changes to their interiors and commodities, they had remained a popular, modifiable set of village-style cabins and outbuildings ever since.
Even nowadays on Belenus, advertisers were cashing in on that ‘vintage’ look.
The cavern ceiling rose up into the darkness, barely visible even when they flashed their lights up, though they caught sight of the old, thick reinforcements that had been blocking the Nemina’s scans before. As they walked past the first few outbuildings, perched at complementary angles to the path and fashioned from the same, bulbous pre-fab designs as the rest, they started to get an idea of the settlement’s layout.
It had an unimaginative set-up: one main road, smoothed and reinforced like the entrance path had been, cut straight ahead in front of them with smaller lanes and low, single-level houses on either side, only curving when the cavern itself bent to the right. Farther in, an enormous pocket of space dissipated into the dusty gloom.
Clean and organized. That would make for an easy scrounge run.
Well, easy in a relative sense. They still had to do the labor.
Marc dropped his pack onto the floor and began to pull out a collapsible hoverboard. “Right. Karin, you and I are on basics. Pull out anything promising you might find, pack up anything you know is marketable, you know the drill. Soo-jin, you—”
“Sneak around and look for rare, pretty things. Yes, I know.” She was already marching away into the gloom, her light bouncing around the houses with every step.
“Meet up here when you’re through,” Marc called to her retreating back. “Three hours.”
“Yes, sir,” came the reply over the comms, sounding a little overenthusiastic on the ‘sir.’
Marc rolled his eyes. After a second, he turned to her. Static cut over his mic as he switched to a private channel.
“This is going to be a long day, isn’t it?” he asked.
“They usually are, aren’t they? When we’re actually working, and not traveling?”
He nodded, the action making his suit dip up and down slightly. “Yep.”
By the way his brows furrowed as he stared down at his pack, it looked like he wanted to say something more. She waited, but he gave his head a slight shake, pulled out the rest of the hoverboard, and then jerked his chin to the settlement.
“I take right, you take left?” he suggested.
“Sure. See you in a bit.”
And, before he could say anything else, she made her way to the nearest pre-fab cabin and started her search.
Chapter Two
Twelve hours later, the salvage had been hauled up, packed in crates, and strapped tight into the Nemina’s small-sized cargo holds. Not enough to fill them, but enough to make a maze of ceiling-high, hard-packed pathways—better than a complete fill, in a way, since they could retrieve artifacts, clean them, and have their auction listings and photographs ready by the time they hit a network.
In all, a good day. Apart from a surplus of beer cans that should, if they timed the auction market right, keep them fueled for coffee for the next three months, they’d pulled a number of standard salvage which they could scrap for a tidy sum. Soo-jin had several items socked away in the interior storage for easy access. Over the next week, she’d clean, fix, and take showcase pictures in the Mess.
Marc had also managed to find the settlement’s weapons cache, and the amount of preserved, vintage firearms had kept a quiet smile on his face all throughout the loading process.
Gun enthusiasts hadn’t died on Old Earth. They were alive and well on this side of the gate—and bidding lots of money at the Chariday auctions.
He was still smiling now. Karin could feel it as he stood behind her, watching her finalize the route calculations on the holoscreen in front of her. His stare made the space between her shoulder blades itch as she leaned forward, sitting on the edge of the pilot’s chair—having a new boss watch you work was never a relaxing venture. The bitter smell of alcohol tinted the air like cold water as he sipped on one of the specialized brews he’d saved in the weeks of transit.
She ignored him. Not the first time he’d watched her, and it wouldn’t be the last. Before she’d joined the crew, he and Soo-jin had been the ones piloting the ship. Only natural that he’d be curious about her. He’d certainly asked her enough questions about navigation over their trip. She was the one with the degree, after all—a degree that, in the very long run, would save him money. Especially if they continued to operate in Alliance-owned space.
&n
bsp; It was their steep regulations that made her a necessity. Fallon, where both Marc and the ship were from, didn’t have such restrictions.
She plugged in the last coordinate, having modified it from ones she’d plotted earlier to compensate for the extra spin and orbit of the planet, and the computer gave a small bloop as it locked in the course. Marc leaned forward as she flipped her card out of her wallet, slid it into the reader, and pressed her thumb against the screenpad for authorization.
A second bloop sounded, and they were good to go.
“Care to flip the ignition?” she asked, glancing back in his direction.
He grunted, reaching overhead to flick the switch that, for some reason—she assumed sexist ship design—lay just out of reach when she sat in the chair. A small, gurgling sound carried through the halls, then the engine began dragging through its start-up cycle with a series of rattles, hums, and the occasional clunk.
After a few seconds, it warmed up enough to catch.
The floor vibrated beneath them. Electronic whirs and whines sounded around them as the space-mode electronics activated. Buttons lit up on the manual control panel to her right, signifying its progress.
She sat back in the chair and closed her eyes, thinking of her bunk. Even with the suit, the hike up and down into the cave hadn’t been easy—and they’d done it six times. Sharp, aching stiffness pinched in her joints and made her muscles feel like lead. As soon as the ship warmed up and she steered them out of atmo, she would deal with her sore body. Maybe they had some kind of balm in Med bay, or ten of those hot-cold menthol-infused patches she’d seen advertised.
Or maybe she’d just go lie down and not move for the next few cycles.
A slosh of liquid by the door told her that Marc had taken a swig. The scent of alcohol came to her, and its undertone of wheat and berries brought a memory of the brand back to her mind. She’d tasted it in school a few times, back on the rare occasions when her sister had visited.
Liquid sloshed again. This time, though, it didn’t sound like he’d taken a drink.
“You know, I’m not actually sure why you’re with us,” he said.
She squinted her eyes open, swiveled the chair around so that he was in her view, and regarded him.
“Would you rather I were somewhere else?”
His hands came up, defensive. With some amusement, she saw that he’d crooked the bottle between his thumb and the front knuckle of his forefinger for the gesture.
“No, no—don’t get me wrong. I’m glad you’re here. I just can’t figure it.”
Ah. She settled in. They’d had different variants of this conversation over the past few weeks, and she’d deemed his curiosity benign. Her position here was a little strange, given her skill set. If she’d wanted, her degree could have gotten her a more secure, and much more high-paying, job in any of the three governments’ transit sectors—including the independents way out in the belt.
That she’d hired onto some back-alley scrounging startup?
Yeah, it was weird. Especially for a young, newer pilot.
Normally, they’d go for the inner-city cash, or the interplanetary long-haul rigs.
That’s what her peers had done.
But not her.
“I told you,” she said. “I don’t like Big Brother that much.”
She tensed at the topic, back and shoulders going rigid, but she hid it smoothly, forcing her spine to adopt a casual lean on the arm of the chair. For a second, the screen in front of her blurred, but she kept her eyes locked open, jaw clenching as she wrestled back the press of memories she’d long ago learned to suppress.
Gods, if he only knew.
“You must really not like him, coming down here with us.” His eyebrows scrunched together, and he took another swig of his beer, swirling the remaining liquid around in the bottle when he was finished with it. “How long’s it been since we hit a relay feed?”
“Five days.” Anticipating his next question, she took a quick glance at the holoscreen. “We’re due to hit the next one in three.”
“Soo-jin will be happy. I’ve never seen a girl so attached to feeds.”
“You clearly haven’t been to the inner planets, then.” Though he was born on a station close to Chamak Udyaan, which she would definitely count as an inner planet, he’d grown up on one of its moons.
She rocked her chair back a bit, checking the engine’s progression on the read-out.
“Enlil doesn’t count?” he asked.
Enlil, the closest planet to Amosi—and also the one the Nemina registered its port at.
She snorted. “Compared to the inner planets, Enlil is practically bucolic.”
“Maybe I should consider a trip, then. See the sights. You think the Alliance will let us peddle there?” He leaned forward to squint at the map, as if its projection of the closest planets, and their planned route, might provide an answer.
“I don’t see why not. Unless they take umbrage with your history.” She indicated the Fallon military tattoo on his arm. “You could always wear long-sleeves if you’re worried.”
She’d always meant to get more of its story out of him, but it always felt like a touchy subject to her, especially given her reluctance to share her past. The Fallon government had once been part of the Alliance, but had broken away. From what she’d heard, lots of bad blood existed between it and the other two, as well as plenty of border conflicts carried out on moons and asteroids and, once, famously, in a patch of empty space—but that had been years ago. Things had quieted down.
He shrugged.
“They’d see my history the second they looked at the ship’s registration.” The bottle shifted in his hand, and he glanced down at its base, checking its level. “I was stationed on Penati. Not exactly a concern for the Alliance.”
Penati. An asteroid that floated with several hundred others on the edge of Fallon and Alliance space. She’d read its name in a navigation guide once. It had a small port with a berth large enough for one of the older-model ice mining transports, and a small manufacturing bay that helped out the occasional wayward ship.
Not precisely a hotbed for system conflict. Fallon was pretty open about who it let in for water refills.
He swirled the bottle once more, then tipped it up in a salute. “I think I’d better hit the sack. Day’s catching up. You all right out here?”
“Fine,” she said with a small wave. “Have a good sleep.”
“Thanks. You’ll have to tell me about the inner worlds more, sometime.” He tipped up the bottle at her again as he turned. But, before he left completely, he paused at the door, a finger in the air as if he’d forgotten something. “Oh, one more thing. Karin?”
She swung the chair back around, catching his gaze as he half-turned back. “Yes?”
“Don’t mind Soo-jin. She mouths off sometimes, but she doesn’t mean anything by it.”
She gave him a small smile. “Don’t worry. I’m not as fragile as I look.”
He snorted. “You can say that again. Good night.”
“‘Night.”
The walkway outside groaned as he stepped out, and she heard the telltale brush of his hand as he trailed it along the corridor’s chipping paint, a habit of his she’d noticed after the first few days on board. When the door to his cabin hissed shut, she checked the engine readout on the holoscreen again, then let her head fall back onto the chair’s back cushion, rolling the toe of her shoe against the floor to make the chair rock.
Seven minutes and they could lift off. Add another eight to break atmo, then two to guide them onto their programmed track, and she could finally leave the bridge.
Her bed couldn’t come soon enough.
Chapter Three
The ruins told her it was a dream. She’d left them behind long ago, over seven years now, when they’d escaped through the gate. They were a frequent appearance when she slept—at first alarmingly so, but, as time wore down her fears, the terror their sight evoked had
ebbed.
Tonight, they seemed little more than an echo.
There were five of them, standing still under a blue, late summer sky, their weathered stone sides immune to the wind that threw the rest of the overgrown field into ripples and sways. Faint lines carved down their surfaces, making them seem like somehow more than simple hunks of old, straight-cut stone, but time had worn them down so much that their design could only be guessed at.
Karin knew. She’d spent many years trying.
She took a step and flexed her hand, the same wind that swept the field brushing over her skin in a rush, then frowned as the smell of sun-baked grass and late-season wildflowers came to her, too—and the feel of rough, hard-packed dirt beneath her feet.
A drop of fear chilled her bones.
The dreams had never been this lucid before.
“Can you feel it?” a voice asked.
She jumped. Time never moved right in dreams. In the few moments she’d been noticing her hand and the wind, the early afternoon had turned to evening. Her sister could have been there for a few hours, or only seconds.
“Miki?”
She shivered, the wind suddenly cold. Sunset bathed the stones in orange and shadow, the sky a mix of gold and purple beyond.
Nomiki stood beside her, lit by the same light, her attention on the stars now peeking through the edges of twilight.
“Something’s coming.” Nomiki took a step forward. Her dress fluttered in the wind, black trim on white. She had a strong, smooth face, tanned skin several shades darker than Karin’s. Her dark eyes flashed with the horizon’s dimming tints of orange and ocher as they narrowed. “Can’t you feel it?”
She lifted her arm. As she pointed, part of her sleeve slipped down.
A shot of adrenaline rushed through Karin as she recognized the tattoo they’d both had lasered off back on her sister’s wrist, its black ink grossly dark against the paler skin. A snake encircling an upside-down egg, biting its own tail, their project identification numbers further along.
She stumbled backwards. The dream had moved. The sun and its light had gone. Everywhere was dark now. Stars littered the sky above them, cold and distant. Dull pain smacked into her ankle. She caught a flash of hitting it against part of her bed back on the ship.