The Burning Dark (35 page)

And there it was: in the middle of the sun’s disk, impossibly close, a black mark that could have been a sunspot if Shadow had had any blemishes at all on its perfect purple skin. Ida followed the copilot’s pointed finger and watched with growing dread as the black shape steadily grew in size. Like it was coming out of the star itself.

The pilot had his eyes glued to the forward sensor reading, Zia standing at his shoulder. There, at least, the object was as large as life. Dead ahead.

“Is that another ship?” asked the
Magenta
’s commander. Ida glanced at the man and scratched his own temple with the barrel of the Yuri-G, safety on, before turning back to the screen.

The safety had been on the gun for a while now. Ida was pleased that the crew had offered only a token resistance. You didn’t argue with a man holding a Yuri-G. The marines locked in their troop compartment had been somewhat more vocal, at least until Zia had told the commander in no uncertain terms to kill the comm link with them. The manifest scanner on the control desk showed the life signs of ten marines sitting in their harnesses along each wall, one standing by the door, and one pacing up and down.

“Now what?” The shuttle commander drummed his fingers on the arm of his chair behind Ida.

“We get close, we find out what that thing is,” said Zia.

The commander snorted. “That’s some plan, lady.”

Ida turned back to the screen. “The best defense is a good offense. Didn’t they teach you anything at the Fleet academy?”

The pilot slowed the
Magenta
. The black wedge ahead of them got larger, nothing but a deep silhouette against the star behind.

Then he leaned forward over the control desk and flicked a couple of switches. “Manifest failure, sir.”

The commander creaked forward in his chair, but Ida waved at him to sit back. Ida stood over the pilot’s shoulder and glanced over the screens.

“Report, pilot.”

“Sir … ah, I mean…”

The commander began drumming his fingers on his chair again. “Go ahead, pilot,” he said.

“Tracing the fault now, sir. Manifest scanner is misreporting crew complement.”

Zia stepped forward to look at the pilot’s display, upside down, from the other side of the console. She and Ida exchanged a look.

Ida looked at the small square display panel set into the desk that provided the standard shuttle system report. Energy reserve, engine throttle, and core temperature, a dozen other mysterious technical parameters that Ida once understood but had long since lost interest in. As on the
Coast City,
the ship’s crew were counted among its equipment and assets.

The troop compartment was showing as empty. Where twelve life signs had showed as bright orange dots just a few moments before, the diagrammatic representation of the harnesses showed them all to be empty. Gone also were the two others who had been moving around.

An alarm chimed, and the pilot flicked another switch. The status screen refreshed, but the manifest report stayed the same.

“Can’t trace any computer fault, sir. Trying again.”

Ida’s felt his skin grow cold. “Don’t bother,” he said. “That’s not a fault. That’s the manifest report.”

Zia swore. The commander leapt out of his chair and pulled on Ida’s shoulder, ignoring his own gun held in Zia’s rising arm.

“Do you know what’s going on, Captain Cleveland?”

Ida licked his dry lips and glanced at the viewscreen. Shadow was nearly all gone, obscured by the black nothing.

Another alarm pierced the silence, loud enough for everyone on the bridge to jump. The commander grabbed Ida’s arm instinctively, but Ida threw him off and pushed him back into his chair. The commander made to stand again, but found the hot end of the Yuri-G in his face, the red light in the barrel indicating that the safety was now off.

The high, bell-like alert sounded again. Ida looked at the ceiling.

“U-Star
Magenta,
stand down and prepare for boarding. Do not deviate from your present heading or we will open fire.”

The voice that came over the ship-to-ship was female, the accent American. Ida spun around and leaned on the control desk to stare at the viewscreen. There was nothing but an empty black void, lit violet white at the edges of the screen.

The alarm sounded a third time.

“Proximity alert, Commander,” said the pilot, and the commander, navigator, Ida, and Zia all crowded the pilot’s position. The sensory display showed the object ahead, close enough now to get a better reading: an oblong outline, with a set of three narrow trapezoids at one of the short ends. The shape was distinctive, recognizable to any Fleet personnel.

“What is it?” Zia looked at Ida.

Ida stood and pointed at the forward viewscreen. As the object blotted out the light of Shadow behind it, it came into sharp relief. It was metallic, silver, and very close, filling the entire forward view. “It’s a U-Star. A Destroyer.”

The ship-to-ship sprang into life again.

“U-Star
Magenta,
boarding in two minutes. Present yourselves at the loading bay air lock immediately, seated with hands on heads. Failure to comply will result in the use of lethal force.”

The
Magenta
’s commander swung back into his chair and snapped on the personal comm panel in the arm.

“This is Commander Van Buren of the U-Star
Magenta
. You will identify yourselves.”

There was a pause, but the comm channel stayed open. Very faintly, at the edge of hearing, there was a rustle, something like dry paper being crushed or someone walking on small pebbles. Or static, white noise, the sound of nothing. The sound of subspace.

“U-Star
Magenta,
this is Commodore Manutius of the U-Star
Carcosa
. You will stand down and prepare for boarding in one minute.”

“Jesus Christ have mercy on our souls,” Ida whispered.

Zia’s eyes were wide. “Ida, what is it?”

Ida looked at Zia, and then the others on the bridge.

“That’s not Manutius, and that’s not the
Carcosa
. It can’t be.”

The commander and navigator exchanged an uncertain look. Zia stepped up and stared into Ida’s eyes.

“How do you know?” she asked.

“Because,” Ida said, “the
Carcosa
was lost with all hands.”

“What? When?”

“At Tau Retore. The
Carcosa
was my ship.”

41

They were kept in
darkness for a long time. There was no need for hoods or blindfolds. As soon as the
Carcosa
had docked and its marines stormed the
Magenta,
the lights were killed. Standard Fleet procedure—the marines could all see in their helmets, but the prisoners were blind. In a way it was worse than being hooded, because with eyes wide in the total dark, the blackness became almost a physical object. It loomed right into your face, giving you the feeling you were about to walk into something very hard and very painful.

That was the idea. At the end of a march through darkness, prisoners would be in a state of near-panic. Considering most of the Fleet’s human prisoners were civilians, it worked too. Captured Fleet troops were unusual, and for Ida and the crew of the
Magenta,
it was unpleasant but quite bearable if you knew what to do. Except as far as Ida and Zia were concerned, the darkness itself was dangerous, and both of them kept their eyes screwed tight.

Ida had got only a glimpse of the boarding marines. They were what he expected, helmeted and armored, although he wasn’t sure if it was his imagination or whether there was something else there, something dark, misty, smokelike; shadows that moved with the men.

When the lights came on, Ida needed a few moments to adjust to the glare. Sitting cross-legged on a hard ceramic floor, Ida guessed before he opened his eyes that the flare of lights meant that they were now in the holding cages. He lowered his hands from behind his head and looked around.

Zia was sitting immediately on his left, the commander, navigator, and two pilots behind them. They were sitting in the middle of a cube made of a fine wire mesh, big enough to stand in and walk around comfortably with a dozen people in it. But if you strayed too close to the mesh, you could hear an unsettling buzzing coming from the wire. The walls of a standard Fleet holding cube were not something you would want to touch.

Their cube sat in a large, hangarlike room, and was just one of fifty identical cages set in a regular grid, filling the space. The holding cells of a large U-Star. Ida knew the design well. It looked like half the cages were occupied, a sea of blue and olive figures, some standing, most sitting, blinking as they adjusted to the lights. All Fleet personnel.

“So they got you in the end, huh?”

Ida turned at the voice. The next cube along the grid was three meters away, and was occupied by a full dozen. Hands on hips, Carter stood as close to the wire wall as he could. He shook his head, like a teacher disappointed with a problem student yet again.

Ida unfolded himself and stood quickly. “Carter, you’re alive?” He ran his eyes over the other occupants of the cage. “Serra! Your whole squad?”

Carter nodded, and behind him, Serra’s face broke into a grin. Carter looked back over his squad, and when he turned back to Ida, his smile curled up at the corners. He really seemed pleased to see Ida. Or, Ida thought, pleased to see his nemesis stuck in the same position he was.

“All but DeJohn,” said the marine. He nodded, indicating the other cages. “They’re keeping about half of us here.”

Zia paced their cage, looking out at the other cubes. Ida knew what she was looking for.

“No sign?”

Zia’s pace increased. She swore impatiently. “Nothing.”

“They were here,” said Carter.

Zia stepped up close to the wire next to Ida. “Were? You’ve seen them?”

“Your crew? You betcha. They were taken out a while ago. Look.”

He pointed.

Between the holding cubes and the far wall of the room was a gap of twenty meters, an assembly ground where prisoners were brought in and sorted—in the dark—into their cube groups. The far wall had a large double door, the very one Ida’s group had been marched through. This had now opened again, and a group of people walked in. Ida’s jaw loosened as he watched.

They didn’t really walk. They
glided,
their movements somehow in time with the blinking of Ida’s eyelids. One moment they were ten meters away, the next five, and yet they didn’t seem to be moving at all. Their edges were blurry and seemed to streak away to the left, like a faint smoke trail being pulled in a nonexistent wind, like the shadow figures he’d seen on the station—like the marines who had boarded the
Magenta
. Except these were no shadows; they were people.

In single file, ten figures—eight men and two women—traveled across the assembly space

Carter folded his arms as he watched. “Looks like they’re coming to get some more.”

As the people approached, their forms shimmered like the guttering flame of the lighter in Ida’s pocket. Ida found himself stepping back from the wall of the cage. Were they still people at all?

They were all Fleet marines. None of Zia’s missing crew were among them.

Ida looked at Carter, but the marine just shook his head. Serra caught Ida’s eye, and she nodded, just slightly before quickly looking away. Ida frowned, unsure what she was trying to tell him.

The figures separated, each heading toward a different cube, including Ida’s. As the shadow-man approached, Ida could read the name tag stitched onto the marine’s fatigues.

“Garfield? Garfield, it’s me, Cleveland? Remember?”

The marine that had been Garfield made no indication he knew Ida was there. Close up, he looked as real as anyone, except for an odd halo of darkness that seemed to outline him, a shadow clinging to his figure.

Zia joined Ida at the wire, peering closely at the marine.

“What the hell’s happened to them?”

Ida stood. “Carter?”

Carter was sitting on the floor again, next to Serra. A shadow-man had gone to their cage too, and was now standing, waiting for something.

“Every now and then they take people out,” he said. “Sometimes they come back, and when they do, they’re like this. Sometimes we don’t see them again.”

“What about the crew of this U-Star?”

“What crew? We haven’t seen nobody.”

“The commodore spoke to us, on board the shuttle.”

“You came here by shuttle?”

Behind Ida, Commander Van Buren laughed. “Not by choice.”

Ida sighed, but Van Buren told Carter about the hijacking.

Carter laughed. “The resourceful Captain Cleveland. Maybe you really are a hero.”

Ida ignored him “What did you see on the station, marine?” he asked.

Carter stopped laughing, and the smile dropped from his face. “What?”

“Back on the station,” said Ida, “I saw someone … someone I knew. Someone I know is dead. She spoke to me, even.”

Carter’s eyes widened.

Zia stepped forward. “So did I.”

Ida smiled at Carter. “So, who did you see? What sent you to the infirmary for a whole cycle?”

“I don’t think that’s your business,
sir.
”

“Come on!” Ida slapped his arms against the sides of his legs in frustration. “You may not have noticed, but we’re kinda in trouble here.”

Carter sat back down. Ida looked around and realized the shadow-men had vanished. He turned, looking around his cage. The two pilots from the
Magenta
had gone, leaving him and Zia with Van Buren and the navigator. In Carter’s cage, half of the dozen prisoners had vanished. Ida was pleased to see Serra was still there. She sat cross-legged on the floor, her eyes closed, a smile playing over her lips. She was a psi-marine. Maybe she’d gone too, inside her head.

Ida whistled. “Hey, listen to me. You know where we are? We’re on a ghost ship, marine. The U-Star
Carcosa
. That’s a ship I happen to know very well. It was my ship, the one that didn’t make it through quickspace when we hit Tau Retore.”