Shadow Run

by Michael Miller

  “Qole,” Eton said. He was in no mood.

  I was in less of a mood as I blew past him. “Captain Qole. You know, Captain Uvgamut would be even better.”

  “Qole,” he said again. “You belong on the ship.” He scowled as he slid in front of me, his long, powerful legs scissoring the distance in no time. For a second, it looked like Nev edged forward in that posturing, protective way some idiot men had…but no, he’d only shifted to lean against some lockers. “You’re the captain, as you just reminded me.”

  “You mean, I’m safer on the ship.” My scowl matched Eton’s. “I think I can handle this guy.” I gestured dismissively at Nev, and one of his eyebrows lifted.

  “And so can I! At the very least let me go with you. It’s my job to be your strong-arm. Let me do my job.” The rumble of Eton’s deep voice was louder than the scrape of his huge boots over the metal grating.

  He had a point, but this wasn’t a fresh argument he was raising. It just about stank with old familiarity, like a carcass washed up and rotting on the beach, and I was sick of it. Also, Nev was now watching me with appraisal in his oddly bright eyes, and for some reason I didn’t want him to think I couldn’t handle myself. Also, I was now blazingly furious, which had nothing really to do with either of them.

  The blackness pulsed inside me, threatening the corners of my vision. Neither Eton nor Nev stepped back. Brave, I thought, or stupid, depending on how much they could see in my eyes. Shadow poisoning wasn’t contagious, but most locals knew enough to not want to be near someone like me when they were angry. And you really didn’t want to be around when they finally snapped. Some went quietly into madness, like my parents. Others didn’t.

  Control, I’m in control, I chanted to myself. The surges were getting worse, and I didn’t seem to be getting much better at containing them. But I had to. If I didn’t, I would soon be dead. Or worse: a screaming, babbling shell of my former self, too out of my mind to know I’d be better off dead.

  I breathed deeply, trying to steady my anger. Even so, I took a sudden step toward Eton, making him do an agile dance to keep from knocking into me. In other circumstances, it would have been comical. As big as he was, he was quicker on his feet than anyone I’d ever seen.

  He also jumped out of my way, which was the effect I’d wanted.

  “Stay on the ship,” I said. He opened his mouth to protest, but I added, “That’s an order.”

  That made him clamp his mouth shut, and he turned away rather than watch Nev follow me out.

  In spite of Eton’s grudging compliance, my anger surged again like a solar flare. These offworlders. They were going to drive me crazy, if Shadow didn’t do it first.

  The wind as I leaned outside the ship was like a slap to the face, making tears spring to my eyes. It was supposed to be early summer, but this wasn’t like early summer at home. Wherever the last long rays of the sun hit, there was the vague sensation of warmth, but every shadow was a brisk reminder that if you spent the night outside without the proper gear you’d not see the morning.

  A metallic clank rang out as Qole landed on the dock beneath us. Thanks to the equipment failure I had initiated on the canisters, the cargo hold was sealed off until the decon unit from the cannery gave the all clear. So instead of using the usual ramp that dropped down from there, we were exiting the ship from a small emergency airlock situated near the crew’s quarters.

  The fall was farther than what could be prudent for day-to-day use, but Qole didn’t seem to notice. I refused to pause where she hadn’t and jumped down after her, tucking my body into a roll as I landed.

  Once I’d righted myself, I got my first good look at the Kaitan in the weak afternoon light. The ship was long and lean, in stark contrast to the bulkier freighters around it. The bridge viewport at the bow gave way to a sweeping dip on the back where the boom for the net was housed. The engine intakes on either side of the hull curved back to join in in neatly riveted plating. Like every ship I had seen here, it was an offworld design that had been customized, but the others were strewn with cabling and power couplings, and covered in poor patchwork. Despite the hull’s various dents and scrapes, everything on the Kaitan was neatly attached and accounted for.

  Qole wasn’t waiting for me. Hands in her pockets, slightly hunkered against the wind, she was resolutely striding away. She might have agreed to go get a drink, but she evidently didn’t see the need to walk there with me.

  I sighed and started after her.

  As soon as I moved, someone seized my arm with a rasping breath that sounded like air being sucked into space. A person, if he could be called that, was huddled on the icy dock in the shadow of the Kaitan. He was wasted, and thin, with eyes that were entirely black, sunken like coal pits above the protruding cheekbones—the eyes of the Shadow mad. Ragged scraps were all that stood between him and the brutal elements, and the only sound that came from the cracked lips was a hair-raising rattle.

  I jerked my arm away instinctively, then was immediately ashamed of myself. But what could I do? I had encountered too many of these Shadow-ravaged people, and I knew they were well beyond any form of care that would do them any real good. The Shadow-poisoned didn’t come back from the brink, once madness took them. They were better off dead.

  Or so I thought. Qole was suddenly there in front of me, kneeling down and pressing a heatpack into one of his hands. He turned his black eyes on her, trying to say something, but only a groan came out of his mouth.

  “He’s drawn to the Shadow on the ship,” she murmured to me, and then spoke softly to him over his rattle. “Hold this; it’ll keep you warm. I’ll comm someone to take you home. I’m sorry, Gavril. You’ll be out just a little longer.”

  I might have imagined it, but the man’s face relaxed a fraction, and he hunched over the heatpack. As promised, Qole produced a comm-unit in her hand and was spitting terse instructions to someone by the time she stood and once again set off at a brisk pace toward town.

  I hurried after her, struck by what I had witnessed. I had always been taught that one’s time was better spent on things that would have a larger impact, but Qole had bothered to do something small when she’d had no time to spare. It wasn’t exactly efficient, just…incredibly kind.

  She cared for her broader community, and that boded well for convincing her I could help. And I could. If we finally figured out how Shadow bound to organic material when it wasn’t trying to destroy it, not only could we make it available to the mass market—and have their profits skyrocket as a result—we could also make it safer for humans working in forced proximity to it.

  Maybe if she knew I cared too, she’d appreciate that. When I caught up to her on the pockmarked gravel road, I chose my words carefully. “If Shadow profits were more exceptional, do you think that would help the situation here?”

  Qole snorted derisively. “The profits are exceptional, just not for us. Those of us who risk our lives daily do okay; the rest scrape by. It’s the people who buy it from us who are making money hand over fist. Maybe on your planet, the royals let their money trickle down to you like scat in an outhouse. But out here, we don’t have any blasted royals, and so much the better.”

  I winced, glancing at the rusted-out hulk of a more ambitious building, snow still pooled in the deep shadows, where construction had obviously halted after funds had done the same. Money, royal or otherwise, was definitely not in surplus here. “Shadow is in high demand in some larger industrial applications.” And would soon be in much higher demand, if I had any say in the matter. “Couldn’t you negotiate for better prices?”

  “Sure. The same way that you could argue with me for a better cut of the run. Try and see what happens.”

  I laughed at the truth of it, impressed with how she had so neatly expressed the problem and put me in my place. “All right then, I’ll just make sure to excel at my duties and hope for the best from there.”

  “If you suck up any harder, I’ll think we’re already back ou
t in the vacuum of space.” Qole’s lips twitched, her eyes still focused on our path between the buildings. I felt a glow of pleasure at that small reaction.

  The rest of the walk was too short for much conversation, or maybe too cold. Alaxak was in the grip of an ice age, and Gamut was one of the most isolated communities on it. The village was mostly a small, featureless collection of buildings from the past century that had been kept in functioning condition with considerable patchwork, cannibalization of other structures, and pure creativity. The serrated edges of the cannery tower were the only defining part of the landscape that was man-made. What dominated the eye outside were distant mountains blanketed in snow and the ice that lay everywhere shadows lingered.

  Soon Qole veered off the main road—if the strip of frozen dirt even warranted the name—and I followed her through a battered door that she nearly let close on me. The bar was housed in an ancient pre-fab building, and it would have been as drab and boring as those types of buildings usually were if it weren’t for the interior decorating.

  Reclaimed machinery, battered bits of ships, and chunks of smooth driftwood had been used to create almost every piece of furniture. An ancient heating pillar dominated the middle of the room, glowing with a distinctive purplish cast. Lurking in the back corner was a worn leather mannequin, impaled with rusty throwing knives, a crude crown cut from a cross-section of old piping perched on its head. I didn’t know exactly which king it was supposed to be, but since we were in the Dracorte system, I could guess. At least it appeared no one had taken up the game in some time.

  The few patrons slouched at scattered tables were even more weathered and varied. Etched, beaten by the elements like everything in Gamut, they paid me absolutely no mind. Their indifference was the most disconcerting thing, as used to attention as I had been my entire life.

  The pillar glowed with purple fire, warming the entire room. The flames moved in slow motion, like oil poured into water. As soon as my eyes started to trace individual tendrils, they would snap in frenetic motion too fast to follow, then settle back into their languid dance. In their center I could spot tiny flecks of light so bright they were white, winking in and out of existence.

  Shadow.

  I couldn’t help but shake my head. “That seems…safe.”

  Qole shrugged her shoulders, hands still in her pockets as she picked her way through the tables toward the vacant bar. “Safe is relative. If you live here, you’re better off staying warm than worrying about Shadow.”

  I leaned up against the bar next to her and signaled to the man I presumed was the bartender that we wanted two drinks. He stared without registering, just long enough that I started to motion to him again, in case he hadn’t seen me. But by then he’d turned to fetch our drinks with a disgusted sigh.

  I hunkered down a bit farther, feeling no more welcome here than I had on the ship—or anywhere on Alaxak—and looked over at Qole. The corner of her lip was upturned in a marginal smile. Apparently, I was more likable when I made a fool out of myself. Being friendly, knowledgeable, assertive—all those approaches had been a lovely way to piss her off. It made almost no sense to me, but there it was.

  “Thanks, Larvut,” Qole said, as the man passed us our smudgy bottles. He grunted at her in return and shuffled off.

  So they knew each other. She’d just wanted to see how I would handle him.

  More likable or no, I wouldn’t gain Qole’s trust by playing the fool. I wondered how long the decon would give me, how long I could keep Qole listening. I resisted looking at my wrist feed, shoved down the panic that threatened to spike. I wanted to simply tell her why I was here, but the truth without trust would make her worse than pissed. I’d lose her forever.

  “So is Shadow really your best option out here?” I tried to make my voice casual, as if I were simply curious.

  Qole slid her bottle closer and looked at it for a moment before answering. “Depends on what you mean. As the best job or the best heat source?”

  “Both, I suppose.”

  “Well, people are desperate for both out here,” she said with some bite, “and it’s what’s available. But no, I wouldn’t say it’s the best anything, even though we use it for everything: cooking, heating, lighting.” She gestured vaguely in the direction of the pillar. “I know; it’s like using a nuclear reaction to boil a teapot. That’s why most people here have it in their bodies.”

  She took a deep breath, as if fortifying herself for what she was about to say. “But it’s the fishing that’s the hardest on you—it’s only fair that you know what you’re getting yourself into. You can’t take that kind of exposure without going mad and dying eventually. It’s a slow death for most of us, decades until the eyes finally go black with the poison, like Gavril outside. You can escape it if you leave. But for some of us…” She looked away, not meeting my gaze. “It’s in us already, the kids of the older Alaxan families that’ve been doing it so long. We have a tolerance or something that’s been built up and passed down. It could probably happen to anyone, but we might be some of the first. Or the worst.”

  She was right. There were others from different planets, but none with an affinity so strong, at least not that had been discovered. However, I didn’t want to let on how much I knew about her condition, in case she stopped talking.

  “I…uh…saw your eyes flash black,” I said quietly. She straightened against the counter, shooting a glance at Larvut, who’d retreated to the other end of the bar to watch a cracked news feed. I understood her reaction. Talk of Shadow poisoning made people nervous—one reason among many that it had been so hard to find someone like her. I’d pitched my voice so he wouldn’t hear, but still, to put her at ease, I added, “But they changed back. So you’re not poisoned, right?”

  “Not exactly,” she said shortly. “It affects us differently.”

  This was her Shadow affinity, her “tolerance,” as she called it, though that didn’t do justice to what I had seen. “How so?” I prodded her.

  “Sometimes”—she cleared her throat and lowered her own voice—“sometimes some of us can sense Shadow.”

  “Is that how you pilot better than anyone I’ve ever seen? It must be more than that.”

  She glanced at me sharply, and I couldn’t tell if she was surprised by the praise or by my “guess.” “It’s hard to explain, but I can feel everything…more. Faster. Not just Shadow. We can do some surprising things, but then sometimes we’re crazy and dead before we’ve barely lived, so don’t get too jealous, hey?”

  She wasn’t looking at me anymore, her eyes on the driftwood countertop, so she couldn’t know that jealousy was the last thing on my mind. For a moment, everything I was working toward was eclipsed by the sobering realization that Qole could die tomorrow, and she knew it. The immediacy of the inevitable can unravel even the strongest, my father would say, but Qole wasn’t unraveling. She was a pilot, a captain, and better at both than many I had met.

  She kept studying the bar, scratching at it with a dirty fingernail. “The children of our old fishing families die younger and younger every generation, until the family eventually sputters out. It’s a wonder any of us are still around.” She smirked. “Still happy to be on board with me? I’m a bomb ready to blow, like anyone around here was probably happy to tell you.”

  I held her eyes when she looked up at me. “Like I said, I wanted the job.”

  She looked away again. “Why? Is Shadow really your best option out here?”

  I smiled at the reversal and toyed with my bottle. It was devoid of a label, covered in dust. I’d been so engrossed in my conversation with Qole that I had consumed the entire beverage without noticing. In retrospect, it had tasted like fermented dishwater.

  Before I could answer her, the light in the room flickered, then dimmed by half. I immediately straightened, on guard, and squinted around as I waited for my eyes to adjust.

  “That’s another reason to hate Shadow: it’s unreliable as hell.” Qole soun
ded as if she wasn’t too bothered.

  Sure enough, the pillar in the middle of the room had gone dark, and all that was left was the tiny bright speck in the center of the containment unit. Weak sunlight from the dirt-streaked window backlit the bar, and I could just make out the silhouettes of the few barflies shuffling in their chairs. I heard their sighs, too. Not all that uncommon, then.

  “Great Collapse,” one of the patrons cursed. “Hey, Qole, give it a jump, will you?”

  “Why, Hudge, we hardly know each other,” she said with such a deadpan expression that it took me a second—far longer than it should have—to realize she’d made a dirty joke. Another patron hooted.

  Her apparent unconcern aside, she slid away from the bar after a sideways glance at me and slapped her hand on the cylindrical surface. Something shone under her palm, and tendrils of purple flame flared inside. A moment later, the eerie glow returned to the unit, and then the room.

  An electric current ran straight down my spine. Everyone very studiously did not look at her. Not Larvut, who offered no thanks for getting his heater working again, and not even Hudge, who’d asked her to do it.

  I almost couldn’t blame them. It wasn’t a comfortable thing to see and believe.

  She hadn’t been kidding when she’d compared Shadow to nuclear fusion. For most anyone else—poisoned or not, native or offworlder—touching the pillar would have burned their hand to a crisp. And she wasn’t just immune to the heat; she sparked the Shadow.

  Of course, there were rumors of people with the ability to manipulate Shadow. I’d followed such rumors here. Then again, there were many other far-fetched tales in the systems with no empirical evidence to support them. I had never imagined something so material was possible, not in my wildest dreams. Tolerance, yes. Some sort of impact on the chemical and nervous systems might follow. Direct interaction? I wasn’t sure I could reconcile that with anything other than a miracle.