The Burning Dark (30 page)

“Hey—,” Carter whispered, eyes closed. Immediately the darkness seemed to bulge, partially obscuring DeJohn’s head. Serra pulled on Carter’s hand.

“Quiet, dammit.”

Carter did as he was told.

Serra closed her eyes. “Who is there? Do you know us?”

KNOCK.

KNOCK.

The raps came slow and deliberate. Somebody whimpered and Serra felt Sen’s grip slip in the fingers of her left hand. She turned her head instinctively toward the sound, but kept her eyes closed.

She sat and watched the shapes moving in the flame light behind closed eyes, hypnotized by their dance.

*   *   *

The door was open,
but the canteen beyond was just an empty black void. Ida stopped again, and listened. He could hear something, a knocking sound, far away. The temperature in the passageway was approaching freezing. Standing motionless, he could feel his eyeballs drying out.

The darkness had gotten thicker somehow as he approached, filled with a substance as thin and insubstantial as gas but impenetrable to light. It had no substance, no taste, no smell, and Ida knew full well that it wasn’t gas or mist or smoke. It was shadow.

Ida was scared. Scared of what the shadows hid, of what might come out of the shadow, of going into the shadow and not returning.

“Ida … Ida…”

Her voice was caught on a nonexistence breeze, painted light and thin onto a background of static. The echo of subspace.

Ida spun around. The shadow had surrounded him, but back the way he had come the passage lights, now returned to their baseline nocturnal setting, were faintly visible. The passage looked old and granular through the fog.

She was there. Standing where he had come from. He wondered how long she’d been following him, but then he realized that she hadn’t at all. Beyond, the elevator door remained open. It was possible she’d come around from the other side of the hub, but he knew she hadn’t really.

Ludmila.

Her suit was silvered, her closed visor golden. Across her chest were four bold red letters.

CCCP.

And when she spoke, it was across the eternity of subspace. Ida wasn’t sure whether it was sound acting on his eardrums or whether she’d tuned in to his very thoughts. But she spoke, and he listened. If he was afraid, she was terrified.

“I can’t stop them, Ida, I can’t stop them. Go, please.”

And then her voice dropped to a whisper, reduced to a sibilant hissing against the interference.

“They are coming.… They are coming.…”

Ida needed no further encouragement. He spun on his heel, yelled blue murder, and dived into the black portal of the canteen.

*   *   *

“Carter?”

Someone sobbed. One hand, rough, grabbed Serra’s hard enough, it felt, to snap bone. Another hand, soft and wet, twisted and slipped away. The circle broke.

KNOCK.

KNOCK.

Slow and sure.

She dared not open her eyes.

Dared
not.

“Who is there? Who are you?”

A sigh—long, high, not from someone who sat around the table.

She must not open her eyes.

Must not.

But …

KNOCK KNOCK.

But she must …

“I feel…,” said someone not at the table. “I feel the darkness
breathe
.”

The voice was female, accented. Far East. Asian. Japanese. The voice spoke the last word like it was a blessed relief.

She must not open her eyes.

KNOCK. KNOCK. KNOCK. KNOCK.

A breeze. Ice. The flame flickered.

The voice was as cold as space as it asked, “Where is he?”

She opened her eyes, and it began. One scream, then another.

The light danced and the shadows swirled and the flame on the table was still, steady, small.

Between each sitter, a face. DeJohn. An older man in round glasses. Men in Fleet marine helmets reflecting the light that guttered and flared from nowhere.

Serra tried to close her mouth, tried to stop the scream, but she could not. Wide-eyed and wide-jawed, she turned her head, left to right, left to right, like a fairground attraction from old-time Earth.

And then she turned again, to the left. The chair was empty. Sen had gone.

And to the right. Carter crying.

And to the left. The chair was no longer empty. A woman sat demurely, hands in her lap. Dressed in white, with hair long and black. Skin as white as her tunic. Her eyes, oval, Japanese, closed.

They opened, and the woman smiled. Her smile was the death of a thousand children under a hot desert sun. Her eyes were blue voids in which stars exploded.

Serra’s jaw clicked as it opened beyond normal endurance. The scream she uttered came from the ancient part of her brain. It was old and green, the sound of the Earth being split in two.

And the flame burned, white, steady. But it could not fight the darkness, the shadows. The blackness spun around the table, around the sitters, around the uninvited guests.

The Japanese woman held up her hands. One was empty, the palm facing forward. The other clutched a handle, long with a woven cover. Pointing downward, something long and silver sparked in the night.

She whispered, and the whisper became a rush of sound, a wind from nowhere, the static white noise howl of subspace. The Japanese woman stood and raised her sword.

“Where is he?”

Serra stared into the light.

“Where is he?”

Serra stared into the light and screamed.

*   *   *

Ida looked around, sweeping
the Yuri-G in front of him. It had a white light on the front of it that projected a bright cone in front of the barrel, mixing with the red safety-off warning indicator and illuminating the table and chairs and the canteen’s serving bar at the back in a washed-out pink.

The room was empty.

Careful to keep his senses alert to anything that might be hiding in the corners, Ida played the light from the Yuri-G over the table. There was a plastic cup filled with something black that had frozen into a solid block, and something smaller, metallic, that glinted. He leaned forward and snatched it up—a cigarette lighter. He held it close and shook it. It was still nearly full of fuel, and the cap and striking wheel were hot to the touch but the metal of the body was icy. He closed the cap and squeezed the lighter in his fist. His knee banged one of the chairs; he winced at the sudden sound.

He didn’t know why he wanted to be quiet, but he did. There was something about the canteen. Not just the darkness, now that he’d passed through the strange blackness that had hung like a mausoleum curtain over the entrance, but something else. He turned to look back at the door, but the shadows seemed normal again.

Mausoleum. He turned back to the canteen and pointed the gun around slowly, rolling the word in his mouth like a glucose tablet. The canteen was the canteen, and he knew it well. But somehow, whether it was the harsh light of the Yuri-G against the soft blue of the night-lights, whether it was the odd way the shadows flitted around his peripheral vision, he couldn’t tell. But the empty tables and chairs were … spooky.

Especially the table in front of him. With the chairs arranged like a group had just been sitting there. With the frozen cup and the lighter, the closed cap still hot in his hand.

It was like walking into a tomb. He’d experienced the sensation before, on several planets. Action against the Spiders meant infiltration or outright conquest of people and places, on both sides. He’d walked through enough sacred places, forbidden temples or tombs of kings, where the very fabric of the place pushed at you, telling you to turn around, warning you to go no farther.

And he felt it here. The canteen had become an alien landscape, a sacred, secret place. Ida had the feeling he’d interrupted something, something important, something of which he wasn’t supposed to be a part. Something that, he knew, was terrible and dark and old, the result of foolish meddling by people who had no clue at all.

Had no clue, or were led into a trap.

Ida kicked a chair and shouted and recoiled at the sound, so loud and sharp in the cathedral silence of the canteen.

It was empty. He’d been too late.

“You couldn’t stop it.”

Ida turned. When he saw Ludmila in the doorway, he lowered the gun. Its flashlight spotlighted his feet absurdly.

She was getting stronger. As he stood there, watching the slim figure in her silver spacesuit, Ida felt the hairs on his arms and neck prickle. Fear, yes, but cold as well. It seemed that to manifest like this, Ludmila was sucking the energy from the very air. Any kind, whatever was available. Light and heat. His robot knee ached like someone had hit it with a hammer.

“Where are they?” was all Ida could manage. His face was stiff with the cold, his words sending clouds of steam billowing into the air between him and her.

She moved a gloved hand by her side so that the palm faced him. Maybe moving was difficult. The room reverberated with the faint sound of the ocean.

“They’ve been taken.”

“Taken where?”

“I thought they were coming,” said Ludmila, “that this would hasten their arrival. But someone stopped them. Not you, someone else.”

“I’m afraid.”

“So am I.”

Ida’s throat was dry. “I’m afraid of you,” he said.

The gloved hand dropped.

“So you should be,” Ludmila said.

Ida stared at the apparition. She was real, solid, three-dimensional. And then he saw that her golden visor was not reflecting the room or him, standing right in front of her. It showed a starscape and the edge of a blue-green orb. The Earth.

Ida jumped as the scream punched through the fog in his mind. His intake of breath was sharp and the cold air stung. He knew that voice.

Zia.

He turned back to the woman in the spacesuit, but she was gone. The canteen was empty once more.

When Zia screamed a second time, Ida flicked the safety off the Yuri-G and left the room at a run.

34

He found her in
the corridor outside, halfway between the canteen and elevator lobby. She was curled into a ball and pressed into a corner, arms wrapped around her knees. One arm was bare but the sentient tattoo on the other had stretched out, enveloping the limb in a black sleeve. It made Ida feel sick to look at it.

“Zia?”

She flinched at his voice, and as he knelt down she crawled backwards even farther, trying to telescope her body into the smallest bundle possible. Small, safe, out of reach.

He caught sight of his own face looming toward the reflection in her goggles. At least that meant she was real, and she was here. Then he blinked and looked away. The reflection showed only blackness behind him. He had the irrational, childish fear that something was going to swim out of the darkness and grab him from behind; a single white hand with claws, creeping out across the floor to grasp at an ankle and pull him away.

He shuddered and then took a breath. “Zia, what happened?”

He gently took one shoulder—above the arm without the tattoo—and squeezed. Her curled form seemed to relax, and the tension in her forehead eased. Her lips parted, and she tilted her face up to his. Then her lips began to move, mouthing words that, somehow, Ida didn’t feel were hers.

“Where is he? Where … Where is he?”

Then she let out a cry and jerked forward, pushing Ida away. He rocked on his heels as she scrambled forward on her hands and knees before she seemed to relax again and sat on her haunches.

“What’s wrong?” Ida realized he had a fair idea. “What did you see?”

Zia coughed and brought her knees up to her chest. Her goggles were pointing dead ahead, but Ida had no idea where she was looking. Then she spoke in a small voice.

“Nobody. I didn’t see nobody.”

She fumbled on the floor; Ida backed off to allow her to push herself to her feet.

“You all right? Because you sure screamed like you weren’t. And where is who?”

Zia paused as though considering an answer while she brushed herself down. Her glasses were now pointed right at him.

“I don’t know what you’re talking about. I’m fine.”

Ida frowned.

“We have to leave. Now,” she said, and she headed toward the elevators.

“Wait,” said Ida, but she ignored him. He jogged to join her and touched her shoulder as he pulled level, but she jerked away. As she moved her other arm to rub the shoulder where he had touched, Ida noticed the tattoo springing to life, curling and swirling like an agitated eel in a tank.

Zia Hollywood hit the control panel and stepped though the sliding doors, Ida close on her heels. Ignoring Ida, she touched the personal comm unit on her wrist.

“Fathead, we all set?”

The comm clicked and her crewman’s voice came through, acknowledging. Zia nodded.

“I’ll be at the
County
in five. Start the engine warming.” She released the comm and dropped her arm.

“So that’s it? You’re off, just like that?”

Nothing.

“Zia—”

She tapped her foot three times and then spun on her heel. Her mouth was set.

“Yes, Cap’n, I’m leaving.” The elevator dinged. She shifted the weight on her feet, and the corners of her mouth twitched. “And if you had any sense, you would too.”

Ida took a step forward. “What does that mean?”

Zia shook her head. “I need to get the fuck off this ship. You do too. Everyone.”

The elevator doors snicked open. Zia’s level, one floor up from Ida’s hidey-hole. She made a line for the doors, forcing Ida to sidestep. By the time he turned around, she was already halfway down the corridor. And then the light panel behind her faded off as the one ahead faded on, and Ida watched as she became a series of vignettes disappearing toward the guest quarters.

*   *   *

She was waiting for
him in his cabin. She sat on the bed and was smiling, like there was nothing wrong at all aboard the U-Star
Coast City
.