Shattered Light

by Fredrick Niles

Up from somewhere down below them, a long cord of something had emerged to fasten itself to the back of the ship.

  “What is it?” The captain leaned in. “I can’t tell if it’s from a plant or an animal.”

  “Those distinctions don’t always hold in these environments,” said 49. “Here, let me see if I can burn it off.” The ship rocked hard as he swung it sideways, trying to blast the cord with the ship’s thrusters. The thrusters fell short and the ship bounced backward again.

  As they swung back around however, trying to build up momentum so they could pivot far enough sideways, Byzzie noticed that the cloud of purple haze the cord was coming from was growing darker. She squinted and leaned in to look at the view screen.

  “Jesus, we need to move,” she said suddenly. 49 swung the ship for a second time and once again the thrusters fell short.

  Two rows of sharp, serrated teeth had appeared above and below the area where the cord was coming from and seemed to be rushing quickly toward them.

  Byzzie punched at her counsel and brought the Leopold’s ballistic defense system online. Unlike the Javelin and Chopper systems that were hooked into 49’s Light Core, the ship’s old defense system used good-old-fashioned machine gun rounds. She turned the left toggle in front of her, trying to get a lock on what must have been the advancing creature’s tongue. She failed, trying in-turn to get a lock on the creature itself, but it was approaching almost directly from the rear, which was the ship’s blind spot in terms of defenses.

  “Forget the ballistics,” Ritz said hurriedly. “Fire up the Javelin.”

  Byzzie punched some keys and just as the Javelin came online, the ship rocked one last time as 49 swung the thrusters, this time successfully frying the creature’s tongue off.

  Suddenly, the massive shape of a predatory fish-like creature rocketed passed on the left, just barely missing them. “Hit it!” Ritz yelled as Byzzie’s targeting indicators secured a lock.

  Byzzie pulled the big red trigger on the right-hand toggle and a massive spear of light gushed out of the Javelin barrel on the upper-nose of the ship. The huge fish-like creature was just turning around when the Javelin round hit it behind the eye, blowing it into a hundred different chunks, a cloud of fluorescent orange blood blooming around it.

  And then, the Void Tunnel became a jungle of elongated tongues.

  “Go! Go! Go!” Ritz shouted as 49 slammed the throttle down. The ship blasted forward and then slammed to a halt as another tongue latched onto them. This time though, the Leopold had had enough forward momentum to keep them going, and the ship continued slowly on as if dragging a huge log behind it.

  The tongue had latched onto the side of the ship and Byzzie quickly locked onto it with the Leopold’s ballistic system and cut it in half with a stream of large-caliber rounds. The ship blasted forward once again.

  49 ducked and weaved through the maze of tongues, Byzzie blasting some of them out of the air. The machine guns aboard the Leopold consisted of seven guns along the left-hand-side and seven along the right, amounting to fourteen total. They could each independently lock onto individual targets and as the ship traversed the Void Tunnel its guns seemed to have no lack of those. The bridge purred with the sound of gunfire as countless tongues and their owners were blasted apart around it.

  A shape loomed abruptly in front of them and before anyone could react, one of the creature’s tongues smacked directly into the bridge’s viewport, obscuring their vision. Out of the corner of her eye, Byzzie saw 49 switch to instrumental navigation again and try to bank to the left and then to the right. The ship banked successfully, but was immediately brought back towards the center by the pull of the tongue. Byzzie tried targeting it but before she could the ship plunged into the thing’s mouth, all of their auxiliary viewing screens going dark around them. Wasting no time, Byzzie hastily switched the Light Core weapon system from the Javelin to the Chopper and pulled the trigger.

  Light strobed in front of them as a long burst of hard light rounds erupted from the ship’s Javelin barrel and bore a hole through the creature’s body. The giant fish shuttered around them as its long tongue was severed at the connection and it was torn apart from the inside. 49 banked to the right and back at the last second, and the end of the tongue that had affixed itself to the window was effectively wiped off of the viewport as they blasted out the back of the creature in a spray of fluorescent orange fish-guts.

  “I can’t believe you don’t have a pair of windshield wipers on this thing,” 49 said.

  “Sorry, but navigating through some space-fish’s digestive system didn’t come up on the list of possible scenarios when I was building mods for the bridge,” Byzzie replied. “You can bet your ass they’re next on the list though.”

  The Leopold wove its way through a few more of the giant fish creatures, occasionally blasting one away. The problem was that there were no clearly defined boundaries to the tunnel so it felt as if they were driving in no particular direction, but merely winding their way through a maze of giant space plants and hostile creatures.

  “Hey 49, any clue where we’re going?” asked Ritz.

  “There’s an opening to the Void ahead,” the android responded. “I’ll let you know once we get within range. From there we can jump to the Pillon System.”

  The Pillon System had been their original destination before running into 49 and the Mary. After engaging a number of PUC vessels that were hell-bent on keeping them from leaving, likely because they had stolen a Light Core and killed a number of people in the process, the crew of the Leopold had taken down a Light Shield blockade that had prevented them from jumping. The Light Shield had been quickly repaired however and when they finally got clear to hit the Void Gate, the shield had come back up at the exact moment Ritz had hit the jump-button, knocking their trajectory off-course.

  But now they were hopefully back on track, just so long as they could hit the Void and jump to the Pillon System where a number of supporters, including Byzzie’s entire extended family waited for them.

  Byzzie felt her hope dim however as a large shape loomed in front of them.

  “Oh man, I don’t like the looks of that,” she said as the massive shadow fell over them. The creature was like nothing she had ever seen before. With massive spiny legs coming from all sides- it had the body of a giant slug, the tentacled lower-half of a squid, and the three-jawed mouth of a leech.

  Byzzie watched in wonder as one of its sharp-tipped legs abruptly shot out and skewered one of the long-tongued fish. Its leg then swiveled on its body, brought the fish upwards, and finally popped the dead body into its massive mouth.

  Ritz suddenly yelled “shoot it,” at the same time 49 yelled, “wait.” Byzzie toggled back to the Javelin and pulled the trigger.

  A thick spear of light lanced out from the Javelin barrel, tore through the space in front of them, and then fizzled as it careened into the side of the new monstrosity.

  “Hit it again,” Ritz yelled frantically.

  “I can’t,” Byzzie said as she locked on with the ballistics system even though she knew it was pointless. “We’re dry.” And before she could say anymore, one of the creature’s legs was piercing the space just above them, 49 managing to put the ship into a controlled dive just in the nick of time.

  “Whoa, that was close,” Byzzie said as she frantically tried to aim at the leg. Her screen bleeped, letting her know she had secured a lock but she didn’t pull the trigger. Shooting it once had already managed to piss it off, so she opted to wait until she had no other choice.

  Over the next ten-seconds, Byzzie marveled at the android’s lightning-fast reflexes as he avoided stab-after-stab from the thing’s legs. Their old pilot Hector never would have been able to pull something like that off, Byzzie thought to herself with a pang of guilt and sadness, and she resented herself for it. After all, the whole reason they were in this mess was because of 49.

  “We’re almost there,” 49 said. “The opening to the Void is ju
st on the other side of this thing. If we can get around it then we should be close enough to jump.”

  With every strike however, the creature seemed to be getting closer and closer, as if it was beginning to anticipate their moves. And just when they had almost made their way around the hulking figure, one of the legs knocked into their tail and sent them into a wild spin.

  The viewport became a blur as the ship spiraled sideways through space and just when they began to level out they found themselves face-to-face with the monster. The giant slug-like body was bent in half as it lowered its head, its massive jaws separating to take them in. Byzzie depressed the trigger and fourteen jets of tracer-rounds lit up the sky around them as they pelted harmlessly into the creature’s side.

  Then, just as the jaws came within a stone’s throw of the nose of the ship, they began to retreat. Not knowing what had happened at first, Byzzie peered out the viewport to see if she could see anything. And what she saw made her stomach flip.

  Something—perhaps “titan” was the word for it—had a massive three-fingered hand wrapped around the monster’s midsection. Obscured by clouds and darkness, the arm rose up and out of sight to connect with a creature of which they could only discern the vague outline against the iridescent lights of the Void Tunnel.

  The next thing they knew, the big slug-like creature’s body was being lowered back down, except now it was lacking a head.

  “Get us the fuck out of here,” Ritz groaned, and as he did 49 pushed the throttle forward. The ship maneuvered down and around the gargantuan trunk of the titan’s leg and then the inky blackness of the Void came into view.

  Without needing to be told, the android pulled up the coordinates and hit the jump button. And the next thing they knew, the crew aboard the bridge of the Leopold were staring down the barrels of the Pillon System’s Orbital Defense Network.

  2

  Desia

  Ritz punched in the Leopold’s identification code as two defense frigates moved in to block them. Surrounded by a large asteroid belt, the majority of Desia’s defenses lay heavily in the stationary defense turrets that had been installed on the orbiting asteroids, but there were still a number of ships they used to observe and guide other vessels to the planet’s surface if they were cleared.

  The captain waited anxiously as the heavily armed vessels moved in but then the Leopold’s comm system blurped and Ritz flipped the switch on his command chair to accept the transmission.

  “Civilian Class Vessel designation ‘Leopold’,” came a stern woman’s voice over the comms. “State the purpose of your entry into the Pillon System.”

  “Nice to see you too, Vanessa,” Ritz said. “What’s with all of the defenses? Desia seems a little more prickly than the last time I was here.”

  “Captain Riyaad Tariq,” the voice said, addressing Ritz by his full name. “I’m going to need a straight answer from you before I even think about telling my vessels to stand down.”

  “We’re wanted by the PUC,” he said flatly. “We stole a Light Core from them and are looking for safe haven.”

  “Desia and the rest of the Pillon System offers safe haven to those ostracized and victimized by the People’s Union Coalition. Not to those who willfully antagonize, steal from, and murder PUC personnel.”

  Ritz pursed his lips. In their frantic flight from the PUC facility they had stolen the Light Core from, six security personnel had been accidentally killed not to mention the crews onboard both of the corvettes they had shot down. He had hoped they would reach Desia before the news of their crimes would but apparently their detour through uncharted space had been just long enough to keep that from happening.

  “You and I both know you have a massive number of separatist militants on each of the five planets in this system,” Ritz said, his voice low. “And I know that you know they aren’t playing with kid-gloves, so are you going to let us land or what?”

  Silence permeated the bridge. Ritz began to drum his fingers on the armrest of his chair. Then finally, Vanessa came back over the line.

  “Do you have my daughter onboard, Captain Tariq?”

  “I’m here, mom,” Byzzie said, toggling the comms. “And I didn’t shoot anyone so you can just go ahead and arrest these other criminals if you’d like.”

  Byzzie’s mother didn’t say anything, but five seconds later, the defense frigates began to back-off.

  “Maybe we should lead with that next time,” 49 suggested, but Byzzie was already shaking her head.

  “Mom doesn’t like it when we play the daughter card. Sometimes I think she’d just like to forget I’m out here. In fact, I’m pretty sure she tells my aunts and uncles that I’m still out doing PSAs for environmental organizations.”

  “Why’d you stop doing that?” 49 asked, turning to look at her.

  Ritz watched as his gunner mulled that over in her head. Finally, she responded: “Look 49, there’s a phrase that you’re going to have to get used to if you’re going to be walking around down there. So I might as well start conditioning you for it.”

  “And what’s that?”

  Byzzie turned to him and met his gaze. “None of your damn business.”

  When Raquel Fisher stepped off of the Leopold and onto solid ground, she all but dropped to the dirt and kissed it. She had been watching the ship’s progress through the solar storm on her living quarter’s view screen, and she had made it a solid two minutes before she had to vomit into the small wastebasket she kept by her bed. She had then felt her stomach lurch after catching a glimpse of the huge leviathans that seemed to inhabit the storm, but she had turned away just in time to keep from throwing up again.

  From there, she had been able to cool down as they passed from the storm into the Void Tunnel. She had even admired some of the creatures and structures until they were suddenly thrown right back into the thick of it with those huge predatory fish things. She had really lost it though when the massive titan had reached down and grabbed the other still relatively massive creature that had been blocking their way. Few times in her life had she ever felt so small and helpless and insignificant as in that moment, and she once again hurled into the sloshing bucket, this time, conjuring nothing by a long series of painful dry heaves.

  Then, almost immediately after, they had jumped to navigate the Void and Raquel blacked out, which apparently wasn’t something that happened to other people. According to Nadia, one of her crewmates, when people jumped Void Gates they typically just felt like they were in one place and then suddenly another without a hiccup. The reality was that they actually spent something like billions of years traveling incalculable miles out of their way to zig-zag around the Void until they reached the coordinates of their pre-designated gate, but because time didn’t exist in the Void, it was more like stepping out of one room and into the next. No time expended. No blacking out.

  Raquel had only Void traveled two other times in her life: once when the Leopold had illegally docked on a public transport ship to escape the system they had picked her up in, and once when they got stranded out in uncharted space with 49’s workshop of mutated horrors. She had blacked out both times. In fact, the whole routine was starting to worry her, as every time she did she had strange dreams about a life that she had never lived in a time she had never occupied.

  Or at least, one that she didn’t remember occupying. This time had been no exception.

  One day nearly five years ago, Raquel had washed up on the bank of a river on a PUC owned planet called Lithoway. Possessing no name and no memory, she was hauled to a nearby medical facility where she was used as a subject for all matter of drug testing and other forms of degradation. The personnel there was no help in terms of information about her past and, as far as she could tell, neither was anyone else she had come across since being rescued from the facility by the Leopold crew.

  With no sense of personal or familial history, Raquel often felt like she was just some drifting vessel who had accidentally slipped throu
gh the cracks of nonexistence and into the world of the living. Just an accident waiting to be thrown back into the depthless ocean of non-creation from which she had escaped.

  But if that were true—if she really was just some accident walking around as an uncounted number in the mass of the living—then what had the dreams been? The first time she had blacked out she had remembered wearing a purple dress at a family party in Todos Santos, Mexico- which, to the best of her knowledge, hadn’t existed since the Dislocation.

  It all seemed distant to her. Unreal. But if it was unreal, then how did she know the name of the city? Of the country? How did she know that those people standing, laughing, and eating around her were her family? And this time…

  This time…

  Raquel shuddered when she thought about it. The shapes of things scuttling in the dark. Beady insect eyes. Infinite black.

  They had too much to worry about at the moment to try to figure out what her obscure dreams meant. Maybe someday she would go to one of those dream-readers and see if they could puzzle it out. Unlikely, she thought—most of those people were just psychologists at best, and charlatans at worst—but maybe. Maybe they’d be able to dig something out of her psyche that she hadn’t been able to manage as-of-yet.

  But that was for later.

  Right now, Raquel simply enjoyed the feeling of reaching down and scooping up a handful of soil and letting it run through her fingers. Her hands were beginning to heal from where they had blistered a few weeks before after holding a live Light Core, and the new skin was incredibly tender. The feeling was extraordinary after being in space for so long. And the last time she had been on the ground she had been too busy routing combat synths to stop and smell the roses.

  “Is something fascinating about this planet’s topography?” Nadia asked, walking over. She had traded her sleek-fitting Marauder armor for civilian clothes but Raquel could still see something bulky jutting out of her hip, and suddenly Raquel was all too aware of her own sidearm in plain sight on her thigh-holster.