by Dan Schiro
“I’ll be right there.” He scrambled after his carelessly discarded boots. Dalaxa rose as well and fussed with her own tangled Union bodysuit. “Just ping me the location, and I’ll see if I can find a trail to follow.”
“Will do, but be cool on your way there,” she cautioned him. “Cos is already on-scene investigating, and we don’t want to alert the whole ship yet.”
“Smart,” Orion said as he stooped to pick up his cloak. “There’s a chance we could track whoever did this before they even know that we’re—”
A bleat from his floating datacube interrupted him, and a pop-up hologram showed an emergency call from Kangor Kash. Orion blinked at this for a moment, since Kangor never used the emergency band. In fact, the old-fashioned vycart never called Orion at all.
“Hang on Red, I’ll get right back to you.”
Orion commanded his datacube to switch over to the incoming call, and Kangor’s wolfish face appeared floating above his datacube. “Little friend,” he said with labored breaths. He held a hand to his neck, and crimson vycart blood bubbled slowly between his fingers.
“Kangor,” Orion spat. “What happened?”
“The Exile and I were attacked,” he grunted.
In the background, Orion could hear Aurelia yell, “Of all the insufferable nonsense, I’ve been stabbed!”
“What?” Orion threw the smartcloak over his shoulders and clipped it to the collar of his kinetic bodysuit. “By one of the Briarhearts?”
Kangor shook his head. “Definitely not. I had just entered the Exile’s quarters — we had planned to watch the datasphere feed of the Galactic Games…”
“Kangor, to the point,” Orion hissed.
“Just as I entered,” Kangor continued with a scowl, “I saw a dark… being emerge from the shadows of her quarters, and…” He glanced back over his shoulder at Aurelia.
“He gut-stabbed me,” she shouted. “The Goddess-cursed coward!”
“Yes,” said Kangor with a nod, “but he seemed surprised to see me. I leaped and caught him, but the prowler gashed me with a lucky stroke of his knife.” He took his hand off his neck to show Orion the oozing wound, his thick hide already sealing over with a thicker scar tissue generated by clusters of undifferentiated cells. “Then he seemed to… melt away.”
Orion tipped his head incredulously. “Melt away?”
“Yes.” Kangor paused for a wet cough. “He disappeared between my hands, vanished.”
“Stay with AD, okay? Keep her safe, and keep your guard up. I’ll get back to you.”
He commanded his datacube to flip back to his interface with Reddpenning. “Red, listen, there’s something on the ship, it attacked—” But he halted mid-sentence when he saw that she was running, her datacube keeping pace in front of her.
“No shit there’s something on the ship,” she said between heaving breaths. “Cos just got attacked near the first body. Some kind of… phantom!”
“Is he okay?”
“I don’t know,” she panted. “I’m on my way now with Zagzebski and Adler.”
“I’ll meet you there.” Orion snatched his datacube out of the air and whirled to face a fully dressed Dalaxa. “Stay here and keep the door locked. Don’t let anyone in, don’t even open up the door.”
“No way,” she scoffed. “I’ve seen enough bad datasphere thrillers to know that’s how you get killed. I’m coming with you.”
Orion shook his head and turned for the door. “Fine, but stay close!”
The two of them pounded down long corridors dimmed to minimal illumination for the ship’s nightshift. They navigated the echoing halls of the crew deck until they came to an intersection in front of the securely barred armory. Zagzebski and Adler stood guard over three downed Briarhearts and a spreading pool of blood. A young freyan laid dead atop an equally deceased mystskyn who Orion assumed was Biyamba. Jim Costigan’s blood mingled with theirs, but Orion’s old friend still fought for life as Reddpenning propped him up. Without a look up at Orion, Reddpenning snapped open her med kit and sprayed the long slashes across Costigan’s torso with a pressurized can of emergency consulin.
“Cos, what happened?” Orion asked as he dashed in and knelt down opposite Reddpenning. “Hey buddy, talk to me.”
“Came out of the shadows…” Costigan looked up at Orion with wide, darting eyes, his jaw flexing to restrain a scream. “Came right out of the shadows…”
Orion slid a hand in to help Reddpenning prop up her stout husband. “Someone was lying in wait, baiting you with the first murder?”
Costigan shook his head vigorously, sweat streaming down his face. “No, he came out of the shadows like… like he was coming out of water…”
Reddpenning’s mouth tightened as she sprayed on more consulin. “You’re in shock, you’re not talking sense.”
“Had one of those.” Costigan shot a glance at the silver gauntlet that, unbeknownst to Orion, had flowed forth to cover his forearm and clenched fist. “His was crawlin’ with black veins…” He coughed weakly. “Came out of the shadows…”
Costigan’s consciousness slipped away, and Reddpenning slapped him to bring him back, barking at him like a drill sergeant. Orion glanced up, meeting Dalaxa’s eyes. A vague memory of something Typhus’ robotic proxy had said seemed to tickle both of their minds at once. Death is your shadow now. Reaching out with his spellblade, Orion realized that both of the slain Briarhearts had been utterly drained of their life forces, without so much as a lingering wisp for him to feed on.
“One of the Mad Thinker’s agents is aboard the ship,” Orion said, announcing it to himself as much as the others. He leaned over Costigan to whisper to Reddpenning. “Sound the alarm, and send the whole crew to the mess hall.” He stood, tossed up his datacube and commanded it to call Kangor back on the emergency band. “Kangor,” Orion said when he saw his friend’s fierce image. “Can AD walk?”
“Of course I can walk, you twit,” she hollered in the background. “I’m not some fragile human, slain by a stubbed toe!”
“Good.” Orion ignored the Exile’s rage. “Kangor, I need you two to go to the mess hall with the Briarhearts. Turn on all the lights, and I want Aurelia to burn bright too. Can you do that?”
Kangor nodded. “Of course, little friend.”
Aurelia all but screamed in the background. “And just why in hell would I waste my time with a light show when I should be incinerating the prick who stuck a knife in my belly? Troop morale?”
“I think our enemy is using a spellblade to move through the shadows,” Orion shouted. “Using them like portals. Just do it!” He snatched the datacube down, his eyes flitting to Dalaxa, Zagzebski, Adler and finally down to Reddpenning and Costigan. “You guys go to the mess, too. And Red, I need you to shut off all of the lights in the central corridor of this floor.”
A worried look on her face, Dalaxa took a step toward him and reached out with her slender fingers. “What are you planning?”
“I’ll draw him to me. I’m the one Typhus wants anyway.” Orion took her hand. “I’ll have to find a way to turn his shadow-boxing back on him.”
Dalaxa opened her mouth to speak, but the sound of pulse bolts echoed down the hall. Almost simultaneously, alarms blared and emergency lights painted the stark steel halls of the White Heath red. A split-second later, Reddpenning’s datacube let out a digital shriek. While still supporting her husband, she pulled the slate-gray cube from the pocket of her vest and flicked it up.
“We’re under attack,” said a panicked voice over an audio-only channel. “In the barracks, there’s something in here!” Pulse bolts hissed and fizzed over the channel. “There’s something in here, appearing and disappearing, oh god—” The audio cut out with a crackle.
“Stay here,” Orion shouted at the others as he started in the direction of the pulse bolts.
“OG,
” yelled Zagzebski, his heavy footsteps right behind Orion. “We can help.”
Orion whirled on the big man and held up a hand. “No, Zag, you and Adler need to stay here. Protect Costigan, protect Dalaxa.” He turned again and dashed off down the corridor, his smartcloak streaming behind him. “I’ll handle this.”
After a short, heart-pounding run, Orion reached the barracks. The shared-living area housed the lower-rank Briarhearts Costigan and Reddpenning had brought on as their mercenary company expanded. The wide double doors stood retracted, and Orion could smell the intertwined scents of blood and burnt ozone wafting out of the dim dormitory. Yet it seemed that in the few moments it had taken him to get there, the firefight had ended. As he went to the threshold, he heard a low moan and the residual sizzle of pulse bolts on steel. Orion conjured a long silver katana from his spellblade gauntlet and stepped inside.
“Help…” said a weak voice. “Help me… I think… I think I’m bleeding out…”
Orion’s eyes acclimated slowly to the low light. Though a single dark shape stirred in a distant corner, nearly a dozen Briarhearts lay slashed to ribbons all over the barracks. Their slaughter had been surgical, severing the right artery in the right place whether the corpse was human, freyan, durok or otherwise. Through the ancient alien symbiote, Orion could taste the pure, powerful blood of the innocent, its essence colored by final moments of extreme fear. Within seconds the vivid red veins on his sword and gauntlet were glowing brightly.
“Help me…” said the man again, crawling slowly toward Orion.
Still Orion waited. A killer of such precision didn’t leave one of 12 merely wounded. “A nice attempt,” Orion said loudly, his voice booming through the semi-dark. “But you’re not going to bait me like that.”
Orion heard laughter, first from one dark recess of the dormitory, then from the other. “I knew the man who murdered my brother and sisters would be too smart for that,” said a raspy voice. “But I had to try.”
“Technically, I didn’t kill all of them,” Orion said with a smirk, his head on a swivel as he tried to pinpoint the location of the voice. “Your freak-show brother, Ruga, jumped into a pool of toxic waste rather than face my blade. I did run the hiver through, whatever her name was, that’s true. And as for Pozoia, my dog actually killed her.”
Orion heard a growl rushing at his flank and spun to see a black-clad humanoid emerge from the shadows between the rows of bunks. He slashed at Orion, the lenses of his dark mask flashing in the light spilling in from the corridor. A manacite-silver knife found the thin seam of Orion’s kinetic bodysuit and opened a long, painful nick across his belly. As Orion gritted his teeth and danced back, the humanoid vanished into the shadowy row of bunks on the other side of the room.
“I’ll spot you that one,” Orion said, his guard up. “But why all of this senseless killing? Why not just come for me?”
“Because death is not enough for the man who murdered my siblings.” He appeared again, slashing with his hooked knife, but this time Orion deflected it with the hilt of his katana. “You need to feel the loss of your people,” the man in black said as he vanished, re-materialized, struck again and vanished. “You need to die knowing you could not avenge them.”
“Why don’t you come out of the shadows and fight?” Orion grunted as another attack sliced into his thigh. “See if your blade work is a notch above your brother’s and sisters’?”
“Why would I do that?” His dark adversary whispered between ebon portals, and a flicker of the knife slashed Orion’s underarm. “The shadows belong to me, and this universe is more shadows than light.”
“Maybe so.” Orion’s blood mixed with that of the murdered in his spellblade, and the ancient weapon’s charge waxed full. “But I do know one place that’s pure light.” His enemy melted back into the shadows once more, and Orion spoke the words to cast the spell. “White Room,” he said, pale fire leaping to life around his gauntlet.
With the help of his spellblade’s blood magic, Orion’s battle trance was more than internal this time. The barracks transformed around him, the bodies and bunks disappearing as pure whiteness washed over the shadowy space. The walls dissolved along with the scents of violence, the blaring alarms and even the thrumming of the White Heath’s engines. Orion stood on a blank, featureless stage without border or horizon. The man in the black assassin’s garb and gas mask stood frozen some 10 paces from him. The equations of violence stretched out like trembling spiderwebs between the two fighters.
“A cheap trick,” sneered the man in black.
“Not so cheap.” Orion moved his sword in slow circles to loosen his wrist. “I don’t mean to blow my own horn, but I might have created a pocket universe here. You got a name? It’s my business to know who I kill, especially if they have their own spellblade.”
“I am Nixus,” he spat, morphing his knife into a katana that matched Orion’s. “Favorite son of Typhus the Mad Thinker.”
“I bet he told all his kids that,” Orion said as they circled each other. “He still sent them to their deaths.”
They rushed to attack at the same moment, but while Orion could read the silky algorithms of combat swirling around them, Nixus could not. The man in black was easily baited into a sidelong swing. Orion bent back and dropped to his knees, sliding under the humming manacite blade. Then, casting a long stroke of his sword behind him, Orion sliced through the backs of Nixus’ legs and sent him sprawling forward. Springing to his feet, Orion turned to see that the blood Nixus spouted was a familiar milky hue.
“Don’t tell me you’re s’zone under there.” Orion loomed over him, his blade dripping. “You let Typhus do that to your own homeworld?”
Nixus flipped onto his back and flailed with his sword, but a crisp stroke of Orion’s katana separated the spellblade gauntlet from the man. Nixus screamed and scrambled back as his arm thumped to the ground, and Orion followed with slow steps, his blood-drenched spellblade thirsty for more.
“You… you can’t,” Nixus spat, clawing the mask from his face to reveal wide, blue s’zone eyes and a smooth, blue-speckled scalp. He sat up, clutching the stump of his arm to his chest. “I… I am Nixus, favorite son of the Grand Warlord!”
“Sure you are.” Orion shrugged and drew back his katana. “Whatever you need to tell yourself.”
A single smooth stroke cut through Nixus’ thin neck. As the bald s’zone head rolled away, the shadowless world around Orion faded by degrees. After a few moments, he was back in the White Heath’s dim barracks, and Nixus was one of many dead bodies on the floor. Orion listened for a moment, hoping to hear cries for help from the Briarheart who had feared he’d bleed out. When he heard nothing but silence, Orion noticed the stinging pains lancing across his body and the slickness coating his arm, thigh and belly. He took a few staggering steps for the door but fell facedown atop Nixus’ headless body, exhausted and pale. He drifted toward unconsciousness with labored breaths, but a buzz from a pocket of his smartcloak roused him. With a few languid, struggling movements, Orion managed to free his datacube and flick it into the air.
“Orion,” said Zovaco Ralli, the audio-only channel scratchy and thin. “Orion, are you there? Listen to me, the Maker Rings are under attack. I repeat, we are under attack…”
Chapter 27
The world became hazy as Orion lay atop Nixus’ body, the long wounds in the seams of his kinetic bodysuit growing cold and greasy. A thin, digitized voice continued to call his name for some time, then faded away, leaving Orion’s soft breaths as the only sounds in a room full of dead bodies. Long minutes passed as Orion crawled toward the door, struggling to stay conscious. Then big hands clutched his body and Orion blinked up into the wide nostrils of a furry snout. Orion flailed weakly, fearing Typhus the Mad Thinker cradled him.
“Little friend,” grunted a familiar voice. “Be still.”
“Kangor,” Orion said w
eakly, squinting to see his friend clearly. “Took some damage here, pal…”
The next thing Orion knew, he was on a cold steel surgical table beneath bright light. Gentler hands stripped him out of his kinetic bodysuit. Consulin spray hissed over the long cuts across his belly, thigh and arm. Relief surged through his body as the miracle medicine sealed the searing wounds, and he felt as if he could drift off into a pleasantly exhausted sleep. Then the prick of a pin touched the crook of his elbow, and the real world came rushing back.
“What?!” he yelled, looking around with wide eyes at Kangor, Aurelia and Dalaxa. “Where…?”
“The White Heath’s med bay,” Dalaxa said as she laid a hand on his bare chest. “Relax. The consulin’s not nearly set, and you still need a blood transfusion.”
Orion’s breathing slowed as Dalaxa went to a cabinet for a bag of synthetic blood that would work for humans. Kangor seemed to be fine, bark-like scar tissue covering the wound on his neck, and Aurelia lay on one of the three surgical tables next to him. The Exile looked like she was merely sleeping, but Orion knew better when he saw her wooden chest of relics open on the floor beside her. A glowing emerald amulet lay on her stomach, presumably where Nixus had impaled her.
“Okay, wow,” he breathed as he flexed his left arm and felt chemical fire running through his veins. “What did you stick me with?”
Dalaxa glanced at the dripping syringe on the nearby instrument table. “A generic adrenaline. Works for more races than you’d think.” She glanced at Kangor, then went to work deftly slipping the needle of an IV into Orion’s other arm and pumping the bag to start the transfusion. “I would have preferred to give you a sedative so you could get the rest you need, but your furry friend here insisted.”
Kangor nodded. “This is no time for rest, little friend.” Opening one of his huge hands, he held out Orion’s flashing datacube. “Zovaco is in dire need of our help.”
Orion took a deep breath and gestured for Kangor to toss him the cube. A moment later, a static-marred hologram of Zovaco Ralli floated between them in the med bay.