Crescent (20 page)

“You passed out,” he said.

“I did?” She seemed entirely surprised. Her surprise grew when she saw noticed their proximity to Bean. “How far back did I pass out?”

“Just here,” Gerald said.

“I don’t remember walking this far,” Ina said. Her voice quavered. She was about to freak out. That was one thing that Gerald definitely didn’t want to happen.

“I wish I didn’t remember either,” he said and smiled beneath the tight wrap of his hood. She couldn’t see it, he knew, but he hoped that it came through in his voice. “You’re heavy as shit. Now, come on. Let’s get off this rock.”

She extended a gloved hand. Gerald took it and helped her to her feet.

(•••)

Gerald and Ina—both of them soaked to the bone—could not have stripped out of their excursion suits any faster. It was warm on Bean and the warmth felt good, but they both shivered despite the heat rising from the vents. Gerald looked to Ina. She sat on the control couch in her bra and underwear, with her thin, pale arms wrapped around herself. The clothing that she had been wearing beneath the excursion suit lay in a sopping pile at her bare feet. Gerald covered them both with a heavy wool blanket once they were harnessed in. Lightning lanced outside the front viewport in a long purple arc. Lift-off would be rough in this weather, but they couldn’t wait for it to pass.

“About those other sites,” she began.

“Entirely out of the question.
You passed out, for god’s sake.”

“I feel okay,” she persisted.

“Well, you’re not okay. I don’t think Papa Cortez would appreciate me leaving you to your death down there,” Gerald replied.

“You wouldn’t,” Ina said, incredulous.

“Ina, you have no idea how hard you were to carry. And that was for, what, one
freakin
’ meter? I’m not doing it again. So, your safest bet is to shut your mouth and let me get us out of here.”

She had no response. Gerald was satisfied with her silence.

“Bean.
Would you kindly get us out of this storm?” Gerald asked.

“And on to greener pastures,” Bean replied. “It would be my pleasure, Captain. All this flying grit is bad for my hull.”

“We wouldn’t want to ruin that fine complexion of yours,” Gerald said without humor. “Now, quit screwing around. Let’s go.”

Bean rumbled beneath them as the conventional engines fired, and then they rocketed skyward. The g-forces pressed the ship’s occupants into the soft cushions of the control couch. They approached the wall of the storm at high speed. Angry clouds swirled with grey-black vortices, like the barrier between this mortal coil and hell itself. For a single, irrational instant, Gerald feared that the ship would explode when it hit the clouds. The heart of the storm pummeled the ship savagely. Lighting burst around them in blinding violet flashes. The turbulence was so intense, Gerald’s eyes felt like they would rattle right out of his head.

They broke through the cloud deck and into sunlight. The bright orange-red orb of
Anrar
hung low, just above the fringe of the cloud line.

And then there were stars.

“Do you have any tea on this ship?” Ina said, fumbling at the buckles of the harnesses. “I feel so cold. It’s deep.
Really deep.
Please, if you have anything. I need it.” There was a queer desperation in her voice that made Gerald reach out and place a hand on shoulder. She was right. She was cold. He could feel it beneath the blanket.
Ice cold.
“Jesus, Ina. You’re freezing. Do you feel okay otherwise?”

“Yes.”

“You don’t think that you’re going hypothermic on me, do you?”

“I…
 
I’m not sure what that would feel like. But I really don’t think so. I just need some dry clothes and some tea. Please,” she said.

“Okay. Bean, crank up the heat.”

Gerald returned from the berthing quarters, dressed and feeling warmer. He carried a folded pile of clothing under one arm and a steaming cup of tea in his hand. Ina was no longer in the control couch. He heard her voice, though, thick and low. She was mumbling. He set the tea down on the deck and peered over the control couch to see Ina lying on her back. Her arms were folded across her chest; her fingers were curled into tight, white-knuckled fists. Ina’s eyes were rolled back into her head. Her lips moved, but they were out of sync with her speaking. Gerald couldn’t make any sense of what she was saying. It sounded like gibberish. But the more he listened to her, the less he believed she was speaking nonsense.

“Bean.
Are you catching this
…
 
”

Her eyes went wide and blue. They fixed on him.

“The stone will be carved,” she said before Bean had a chance to reply. “The music will play. The vessel will be filled. The door will be young enough. We will be born complete. The Three will finally be whole.
Unity.”
The voice was not Ina’s. The sound of it made Gerald’s blood run cold. Ina’s eyes rolled back into her head and she began to mutter in the strange language once more.

It was going to be a long flight.

(•••)

Donovan Cortez crawled along the maintenance shaft. It was longer and far more cramped than he would’ve imagined. According to Ina, Gerald had lost his cool in this very passage. Donovan now understood why the salvage pilot had panicked so. The walls pressed against the elder Cortez’s shoulders, and his fat belly seemed to get hung up on every junction that he crawled past. Donovan, who was not claustrophobic by nature, was finding it difficult not to panic each time he found himself momentarily stuck.

It was cold in the passage. The rest of the lifeboat had seemed to absorb the heat from Crescent’s life support system eagerly, but not this place. It was cold enough that Donovan could see his breath.

He cursed at the hardhat he wore on his head. It was too big for him. It kept falling forward over his eyes, despite his thick coif of mad curls. He stopped for what felt like the nine-hundredth time and resituated the thing. First this way and then that; finally, he tried resting it further back on his head. That seemed better, and he started forward again. But after only a few paces of progress the helmet fell, rolled off his back, and hit the tunnel floor. The lamp shattered and he was in darkness.

He waited there on his hands and knees. His breathing was slow, measured, and deliberate.
Don’t panic, Donovan,
he thought. He willed his pulse to stay even, though his cardiac muscle seemed to tremble with every beat. He would simply turn around and crawl back the way he had come.
Piece of cake.
He hadn’t been traveling down the passage for all that long. Five minutes?
Maybe less.

But he couldn’t turn around. The space was too tight. And with that realization, his heart rate threatened to shoot through the roof. He took in several gulps of air. It was musty.
Dank.
Cold.
Donovan squeezed his eyes shut against the darkness. The gulps retarded into more reasonable breaths. His pulse slowed. Donovan knew what he had to do. He had to press on until he reached the chamber where Gerald had ejected the reactor core. There would be enough room for him to turn around there.

His palms were clammy with sweat and he slipped frequently, but he crawled forward in the darkness. He wiped his hands dry on his shirt every few minutes to be sure that he didn’t end up planting his face into channel floor.

Then Donovan stopped moving.

What is that?
he
thought.
Is that light?

It was quite impossible that there was light up ahead. Yet, Donovan saw a vague, purplish glow. The violet luminance could have been his brain inventing light to cope with the complete blackness. Donovan started crawling again and as he moved forward, he knew the theory was wrong. He could see the outline of a circular junction—the hatch to the reactor chamber. But if there was light, where was it coming from?

Donovan went through the opening and the answer presented itself:

Everywhere.

The walls of the ovoid chamber were painted in a low, purplish glow. The light flowed along the curving wall panels like a viscous fluid. Donovan got to his feet, so enthralled by the living light that he didn’t even notice the pile of corpses. When he did, he took several tottering steps backwards and landed on his rump. He was no stranger to cadavers, but the sheer volume of desiccated human remains was overwhelming.
You are a scientist, Donovan Cortez,
he thought,
and a doctor.
He took a slow and deep breath and reminded himself that he had seen plenty of bizarre things on the operating table, and he’d seen more than his fair share of death. But the stark and surreal quality of the scene made his chest feel compressed. Donovan continued to practice his measured breathing until calm returned to him
. Why had Gerald not said anything about this room?
Donovan wondered. The purplish light continued to ooze over the walls and floor. Tendrils of it curled around the soles of his white sneakers like smoke.

Donovan steeled himself and approached the mummified remains of what had been likely been the lifeboat’s crew and passengers.

How did they get there? Donovan wondered. Were they already dead when they had been brought there? Some of the bodies were missing limbs. Some were even missing their heads: necks, ragged around the edges, jutted from sunken shoulders. Everything was lit in the ethereal purple light. Donovan felt like he was moving through a bad dream.

He found it hard to not stare into the lilac haze, swirling on the slanted walls. It was beautiful.
Living.
His eyes kept fixing on it. He settled onto the chamber floor and lay on his back. Now he could gaze up at the ceiling and watch the light. The old, dry corpses that surrounded him didn’t matter. Nothing mattered but the magnificent light that moved in whirls and eddies above and around him. It seemed to take on shapes when he gazed at it long enough—spheres rose and sank back into the light. And those spheres were changing, too. He could hardly comprehend the beautiful wonder of it all.
Faces.
Yes! Faces emerged from the purple light; their mouths were stretched wide open. They were singing.
Singing the glory of that wonderful light.

But they weren’t singing.

They were screaming.

White hot, the sound of a thousand agonies reverberated in his head. He pressed his hands to his ears, but it didn’t help. The faces continued to rise and wail. Their mouths were open so wide that the visages tore from ear to ear; the glowing flesh sloughed away to reveal skulls that were misshapen with bizarre protuberances. They didn’t look like human skulls at all, but like the skulls of gargoyles and monsters. Donovan tried to stand, but the weight upon his chest had multiplied ten-fold. It was crushing him. He screamed; his voice joined the chorus in his head.

The light began to coalesce at the center of the curved ceiling into a single, undulating cloud of hateful faces and slowly began to descend.
Donovan’s heart jack-hammered in a chest that felt like it was about to burst into flames.
I’m having a heart attack,
he thought.
I’m going to die in here.
These were the only coherent thoughts he could manage through all the screaming.

The angel of death wore no black robes. Instead, he was a blaze of violet and agony.

(•••)

“What’s the matter, Ezra?” the prostitute asked. Her clear eye blinked up at him. The milky eye stared off into nothing. She stroked Kendall’s penis with a determination that was commendable. But he could not seem to get hard, despite her best ministrations and the pleasing swell of her bosom. He tried to focus on her breasts, which bounced with each pull of her soft hands.
Nothing.
His inability to perform was becoming a problem more and more lately. He had too much on his mind. Between Core Sec auditors, a halt in firearms production, and the station itself going crazy, Kendall was finding himself constantly preoccupied. At present, the bitch Griffin was to blame for his flaccid member. Griffin hadn’t erased the security feed as he’d requested. She left the accursed footage on the hard drive. She left it there because she knew he would watch it again. And Kendall did watch it again. He couldn’t help himself. He had to see it again to know for sure. And now he knew. The darkness on the station was getting restless—again.

The prostitute continued to stare at him. Her dark eye swam with frustration. Kendall brushed his long finger over her shoulder and smiled.

“Angela. That is your name, yes?” he said, and she nodded. “I have a terrible headache. It has been a long week for me. Why don’t you leave and come back later tonight?”

“Are you sure?”

“Yes, dear.
I’m sure.”

Angela concealed her exposed breasts and began to cinch up her bodice. She spared him one last glance before leaving his bed chambers. Once she was gone, Kendall depressed a thumb behind his ear.

“Taylor. I would very much appreciate you arranging for
Naheela
to be at my office in thirty minutes.”