Black Hole Sun

by David Macinnis Gill

  I stand on the bridge, arms folded, acting like Janus guarding a toll bridge.

  When Eceni reaches the safety of her soldiers, she turns and shrieks, “Cowards! Fools! Know this! You have one day to surrender the treasure to the Draeu. Or we shall kill you all, starting with your anointed savior, Jacob Stringfellow.”

  Laughing, she grabs the launcher and fires a mortar into the ceiling. Behind me, the miners scurry for shelter. Rock rains down on me, bouncing off my suit. It feels like an avalanche.

  CHAPTER 31

  Hell’s Cross, Outpost Fisher Four

  ANNOS MARTIS 238. 4. 0. 00:00

  The infirmary is small, clean, and comfortable, and it stinks of alcohol and bleach.

  I knock twice and wait to enter.

  Maeve and Áine are attending to Vienne, who is lying in the bed farthest from the door.

  Maeve waves me in.

  As I pass the first bed, I see Dame Bramimonde lying there asleep, her face washed clean of the blue makeup, her cerulean dyed hair unbraided and combed out. So that’s where she spends her time. I’d assumed the Dame was holed up in quarters making the miners wait on her hand and foot. “Didn’t know she was sick,” I say in a hushed tone.

  “Lots of things you don’t know, Regulator.” Áine draws a curtain around the Dame’s bed, and I feel ashamed of myself.

  Maeve leads me to Vienne’s bed, then draws the curtain to give us privacy. My uber warrior’s face is gaunt, pale. Gray lines under her eyes. She looks frail and wan, almost weak, and I feel something inside me torque. Her hair is freshly washed and combed out, smelling of soap. The wounded heal is bandaged well and elevated. Her toes, poking out of the bandages, are swollen black and purple.

  “Nice piggies,” I say, trying to be light and perky, but I feel like the air is catching in my lungs.

  Vienne turns her face to the wall.

  “The wound,” Maeve says, clearing her voice, “was as clean as you could hope for. The shrapnel went straight through. You got her here fast, so I don’t expect much in the way of infection. If something does come up, we’ve got a good store of antibiotics and debridement larvae on hand. Yes, well, have a good visit. Call for me if you have the need.”

  Maeve draws the curtain behind her as she goes. I stand beside the bed. If I had a hat, it would be in hand, and I’d be working it between nervous fingers. When we started this mission, I told Fuse that we wouldn’t get hurt. Shows that fortune telling is not one of my talents. Maybe being a chief isn’t, either.

  “How’s the foot?” I ask quietly.

  The wall remains the only object of her interest.

  “Mimi, how is she?”

  “Vitals are normal,” she snaps. “That’s all I can tell you.”

  Her snappishness annoys me. “Can or will?”

  “Is there a difference?”

  “Feel free,” I say with a flash of anger at being treated poorly by my own AI, “to go into silent mode.”

  After another long minute, I put my fingertips on Vienne’s arm. It the first time I recall touching her bare skin, and it makes the tips of my fingers tingle. I wonder what it would feel like to touch her face, to feel the soft glow of her cheek on the back of my hand, the velvet touch of her lips on—I clear my throat to clear my head. “Vienne, how are you?”

  “I’m alive,” she says, unmoving, “thanks to you.”

  I force a fake chuckle. “You mean, no thanks to me.”

  “Twice you’ve saved me.” She pulls her arm away from my touch. Speaks in a hoarse whisper. “That means I owe you two life debts. No Regulator has two lives to give.”

  “Oh that. Then let’s say this one’s on the house.” Trying to be chipper again. It fails miserably.

  She rolls her shoulder away from me. “There is nothing you have to say that I want to hear.”

  “You’re still angry,” I say.

  Silence.

  “This is about Ockham.”

  Silence.

  “You think I ruined his beautiful death.” And because I would rather provoke a response than be ignored again, I add. “But you’re wrong.”

  “The Tenets are never wrong,” she snaps, then rolls back over.

  I sigh heavily. “The Tenets tell us that dying in the service of your comrades is a beautiful death, and Ockham would have died either way, serving all of us by allowing us to escape. The fact that I didn’t allow the Draeu to eat him alive will not keep him from reaching Valhalla in the afterlife.”

  “Your bullet ended his life, not the enemy.”

  “So?”

  “So he did not die by the enemy’s hand.”

  “You’re splitting hairs, Vienne.” My father’s voice rings in my head: It is the thinnest lines that define us. “The Tenets say nothing about whose bullet should end a life. If death can be beautiful, then his sacrifice was beautiful. I acted out of mercy. Why can’t you see that?”

  “It is not your job to show mercy,” she hisses. “It is to be chief.”

  I cross my arms. “A chief can’t show mercy?”

  “Not when it is weakness.”

  I feel myself draw back, like I’ve been slapped. “So I’m weak now?”

  She takes a few seconds to respond. Time to chew over her words first. “When it is my time, will you deny my beautiful death?”

  So that’s what’s on her mind. “If there’s one thing I know, Vienne, you will outlive me.”

  “You have saved my life twice,” she says. “Answer me, please. When it is my time, will you deny me a beautiful death?”

  “No,” I say.

  “Thank you.”

  “But I will do everything in power to keep you alive. I don’t care how many life debts you end up owing me.”

  “Why?” she says. “Why would you do that?”

  “Because I couldn’t bear it.” I lean in, touch the nape of her neck with my fingertips. “Because I—”

  “Don’t say that!” She slaps my hand away. Claps both hands over her ears. Squeezes her eyes shut. Doubles over like she’s in great pain. “The Tenets forbid it. One eye. One hand. One heart. You can’t serve the Tenets with a full heart, if…if…”

  “The deuce with the Tenets,” I whisper, “I’d rather talk about ifs.” She pretends not to hear me, curled up in her ball, trying to shut me out, her wounded foot purple and swollen in its bandages, reminding me of the pain she’s in. “Talk to me.” Silence. Taking the leg of the wheeled bed in hand, I swing it out so that she is no longer facing the wall. Now she’s facing me. “Talk to me, Vienne. We’ve fought too many battles together to let—”

  Her eyes open. They’re full of tears. She takes her hands down from her ears. Her voice is hoarse from the pain. “This is all I have to say: You are less the man I thought you were. I am less the Regulator for serving under you. I swore lifetime service, and I’ll keep my vow. But now, I’ve said all I’m willing to say and wish…” She buries her face in the pillow. “Wish you would just leave.”

  I return the bed to its proper spot. Take a deep breath. Nod. Tell Mimi to wake up, since the conversation’s over. If only I’d never come into this room. Never let those words almost slip from my lips. If I had it to do over again, I would change that. But I wouldn’t take back the shot I fired, even if it changes how Vienne sees me forever.

  I draw the curtain and walk past the Dame’s bed, breathing deep to clear the image of Vienne’s face away. Instead, I can smell the soap from her hair, hear her voice clear in my ears, as if she’s standing right next to me, whispering my name. My breath catches in my lungs so hard, it feels like I’ve swallowed something that’s stuck. It aches, and I feel myself wince, then try to breathe again. Then I tell myself to let it go, that nothing will ever happen between the two of us. Yet there’s that quiet voice, hoping, hoping, hoping.

  “Poor little brain,” Mimi says.

  “Stow it,” I tell her. “I’m not in the mood.”

  “Which mood is that?” she says, mocking me. “Be
cause my sensors say otherwise.”

  I huff. “Can’t you just leave me to wallow in my own self-pity?”

  “Sure,” she says. “Just don’t expect me to watch while you do.”

  “Okay, Miss Smarty-pants. Mark and track the biorhythms of every Regulator and miner. Let me know if anybody goes anywhere out of range.”

  “Affirmative, cowboy,” Mimi says. “Anything else?”

  “Negative,” I say. “It’s been a long day, so while you’re keeping watch, the rest of us are going to get some sleep.”

  “Including you?”

  “Including me. I just hope there’s something left to defend when I wake up.”

  But when I leave the infirmary, Maeve is waiting for me on the arcade, leaning on the rail and watching the children playing hopscotch with Jenkins.

  “Seventeen,” she says to me.

  “Seventeen what?” I can’t handle this right now.

  “That’s how many children the Draeu have stolen from us. One of them was Áine’s little sister.”

  “I’m sorry. I didn’t know it was that many.”

  “There are many things you don’t know about us, Durango.” She turns away, and her smock slides down her shoulder, pulling loose a bandage and revealing a thick, purple mass.

  “That’s a keloid,” I say. I’ve seen marks like that before. On the battlefield. On my face. On Vienne’s back. “That wound is fresh. It wasn’t there before. I was on the battlefield the day the Orthocrats turned their mining chigoes loose on us. They killed most everybody and everything in their path, and those they didn’t kill ended up with keloids that looked just like that. So I’ve got a question for you, Maeve. Where is it?”

  To her credit, she doesn’t bother to lie to me. But she doesn’t respond, either. Just chewing her chapped bottom lip. Thinking.

  “You have a chigoe,” I say. “Show it to me. We’ve got less than a day before the Draeu come back, and I need to make a measure of the situation.”

  Maeve looks into my eyes so intently, it’s like she can see Mimi. “Tell me, Regulator. How do you measure infinity?”

  Infinity, apparently, is measured by taking a secret passage from the Cross, down a flight of stairs through an old air lock, and into an ancient sewer access tunnel. I seem to be spending a lot of my time in sewers lately. Ducking low, we follow the tunnel for a few hundred meters. The path slopes sharply downward, then takes a sharp left turn, and I can see light ahead. Maeve stops at the end of the tunnel. Beyond her, I can see the sheer rock of the gorge, and above that, the bottom of the Zhao Zhou Bridge. I look down and see nothing but infinite darkness. The gorge goes on forever.

  “It’s a long way down,” I say, staying at least two meters away from the edge. My mouth goes dry. Pulse is increasing. Breath becoming more shallow.

  “Breathe!” Mimi says, and zaps my butt with a sly jolt of static.

  “Yow!” I yelp in response.

  “Quite the view,” Maeve replies, thinking I was referring to the scenery. “Ready?”

  “Ready for what?”

  “For the next tunnel. It’s about fifty meters below this one.” She lifts a climbing rope from the floor of the tunnel.

  “Know how to rappel?” she asks as she takes rappelling position on the edge, her voice sounding very far away.

  My voice squeaks, “Affirmative.” Rappelling was part of basic training in battle school. They made us slide down more ropes than I can count. “But don’t you need a harness?”

  “Harnesses are for rooters,” she calls, then drops out of view.

  “Maeve!” I drop to my knees and crawl forward. At the lip, I press flat against the ground and pull myself along. From forearm to palm, I’m doused with sweat, and the metallic stink of fear wafts from my armpits. I look down. The horizon pitches to the left. Below, the rope is empty.

  “Mimi,” I dare ask. “Did she make it?”

  “My sensors are still registering her vital signs.”

  “Seriously, does she expect me to follow her? So I’m going to have to rappel, too?”

  “The evidence would suggest it, yes.”

  “Bugger.”

  “Cowboy, may I offer a suggestion?”

  “I’m open to anything.”

  “Grow a pair.”

  “Already got ’em. You of all people should know that.”

  “Durango!” Maeve’s voice drifted up from below. “Are you coming? You’ve not turned rooter, have you?”

  “I’ve not turned rooter,” I mutter. “I’ve always been rooter.”

  “Keeping going,” Mimi says, encouraging me.

  Several deep breaths saturate my lungs—if I stop breathing halfway down, I won’t pass out. Then, grabbing the rope and wrapping my left leg around it, I back over the edge and slide into space. The first step is bad. The second is worse. By the time my body slithers into open air, my mind has gone into free fall.

  Vertigo sends wave after wave of nausea through me, and my hands start to lose the stranglehold on the rope. I am going to fall.

  “I have you,” Mimi says. “Close your eyes.”

  The symbiarmor goes rigid. She has taken control. What happens next is a mystery, because I feel nothing until she gives me another dose of static. When I open my eyes, I’m standing in the mouth of another tunnel. The rope is still grasped in my hand, and I fling it away as I take three hurried steps away from the gorge. My heart is hammering, and I see floaters drifting across my vision. But I’m on solid ground.

  “Thanks,” I tell Mimi.

  “My pleasure,” she replies. “It is my job to keep you alive, after all.”

  Maeve’s back is to me. She squatting in front of a very small, very tight tunnel, like she means to go inside it.

  “It’s a bit tight at first,” she says, and shimmies into the black emptiness.

  “You don’t say,” I grunt as I try to copy her motions. Impossible. My shoulders are too broad, and I never once in my eight and a half years even tried to shimmy.

  “Hurry,” she calls from the darkness.

  “Wait.” I climb out of the hole and shuck my symbiarmor and holster. Check to see that the armalite is on safe. Then slide into the tunnel feetfirst and pull the armor in after myself.

  The going is actually easy. After the tunnel runs straight for a few meters, it turns sharply to the right and then right again.

  “Where are you?” Maeve calls from somewhere down the tunnel.

  “Behind you!”

  “How far?”

  “Can’t tell. It’s dark.”

  “Doesn’t matter, either way. You’re almost to the end. Watch out, though, there’s a bit of a decline coming up soon.”

  I push again and then start to slide. “Mimi!”

  “Bottoms up, cowboy!”

  I try to wedge my elbows and hands against the side of the stone. But the sides are too slick. “Damn it!” I yell as I slide faster. “Whoa!”

  “Relax!” Maeve calls up the tunnel.

  I can see the dot of her head now, getting larger as I accelerate, a broad grin on her face. What’s she smiling about? I’m about to be dashed on the rock, and she’s smiling? Cruel, heartless—

  The bottom drops out. I fall almost straight down, toward a brown mass of stone. No, it isn’t stone—it’s something else. I hit the brown mass feet first, and I stick like a knife in a target.

  It’s sand. Nice, soft sand—I’m not dashed on the rocks. The armor flies out of the tunnel after me and lands with a smack at the back of my head. “Ow!”

  “Duck,” Mimi says.

  Ha-ha. “Can I get a hand?” I ask Maeve. “This stuff kind of chafes.”

  “Sorry, Durango.” She braces herself on the edge of the sand pit. Then offers a hand. “I didn’t mean for that to happen.” Then she nods at a steel door a couple of meters away. “That’s where we keep our treasure.”

  “That’s not what I call them.”

  “That’s not how we think of them, either.
But the Draeu do.”

  She rolls the door open and steps inside. Warm air meets my face, and I find the source of the fecund odor I smelled on the way down the tunnel chute. Lights flicker near the ceiling, illuminating the pathway, which is barely wide enough for me to navigate.

  She pushes a photocell, and a huge multivid lights up. “What do you think?”

  The screen shows a cloud-filled blue sky and the side of a green mountain with tall trees growing on it, rolling foothills, and a line of forest to the right. In the foreground a batch of tall grass sways in the breeze, and a crop of red flowers grows among it.

  “It’s beautiful.” I touch a palm to the screen. “Where is this? Earth?”

  “This is the Eden of Mars,” she says, sounding like a virtual reality tour guide. “Outpost Fisher Four as the founders designed it, a new world of a perfectly harmonious, balanced biosphere. In Phase Blue the permafrost will melt away and leave land ripe for forestation and settlement.”

  “What happened?”

  She switches to her normal voice. “The planet warmed up, all right, enough for the Orthocracy to close us down. The equator was livable, so they thought, why keep feeding the skies with smoke when the job was finished for them? Who cared if a few thousand indentured miners got what’d been promised to them?”

  I stare at the screen. It’s beauty that I’ve never seen on Mars. “I didn’t know.” I look from the screen to her. “It’s not the story that the Orthocracy told. There were lots of stories they told wrong.”

  Her eyes are bright, her expression a half frown. “What about the CorpComs? What stories have they told while you were off fighting wars with one another?”

  “The CorpComs are better than the Orthocracy.”

  “Maybe to you,” she says, and switches off the multivid. “But to us, there’s no difference twixt one and the other.”

  I’m sad to see the picture fade. “Why turn it off?”

  “Because they’re not fond of the light,” she says, and hands me a pair of phosogoggles.

  First I pull on my symbiarmor and buckle my holster into place. Then I put on the goggles. “They? I thought we were talking about an it.”