The Vital Abyss

by James S. A. Corey

  Less than two meters from me, the new interpretation that might have been the one, that might have cracked open the mystery, waited for my eyes, and I couldn’t get to it. In that moment, I understood fully the depth of the abyss before me. I begged to look at the results. I whined, I wept, I cursed. The Belters ignored me.

  Hours later, they hauled me to the docks and into a hastily rigged holding cell. A man with a hand terminal and an accent almost too thick to parse demanded my name and identification. When I told him I didn’t have a union representative to contact, he asked if I had family. I said no to that too. We burned at something like a third of a g, but without a hand terminal or access to a control panel, I lost track of time quickly. Twice a pair of young men came and beat me, shouting threats to do worse. They stopped only when the larger of the two started weeping and couldn’t be consoled.

  I recognized the docking maneuvers only by the shifting vectors of the ship. We had arrived at wherever we were going, for however long we were meant to stay there. Guards came, hauled me out, shoved me in a line with others from Thoth. They marched us as prisoners. Or animals. I felt the loss of the experiment like mourning a death, only worse. Because out there, like hell being the absence of God, the experiment was still going on but it had left me behind.

  They kept us in an enormous room.

  * * *

  “How could she not know?” Michio Pa asked me. “If she was dropping glasses and things, she had to notice.”

  “One of the features of the illness is that she wasn’t able to be aware of the deficits. It’s part of the diagnosis. Awareness is a function of the brain just like vision or motor control or language. It isn’t exempt from being broken.”

  The conference room had a table; soft, indirect lighting; eight chairs built for longer frames than my own; a nonluminous screen displaying Leonardo da Vinci’s sketch of a fetus in the womb; two armed guards on either side of the double doors leading to the hall; Michio Pa wearing sharply tailored clothes that mimicked a military uniform without being one; and me. A carafe of fresh water sat in the center of the table, sweating, four squat glasses beside it. Anxiety played little arpeggios on my nerves.

  “So the illness made it so she couldn’t see what the illness was doing to her?”

  “It was harder for me than her, I think,” I said. “From outside, I could see what had happened to her. What she’d lost. She caught glimpses now and then, I think, but even those didn’t seem to stay with her.”

  Pa tilted her head. I recognized that she was an attractive woman, though I felt no attraction to her and saw none in her toward me. Something focused her on me, though. If not attraction, fascination maybe. I couldn’t imagine why.

  “Do you worry about that?”

  “No,” I said. “They screened me when I was still on basic. I don’t have that allele. I won’t develop her illness.”

  “But something else, something that acts the same way…”

  “I went through something like it in college. I won’t be doing that again,” I said and laughed.

  Her eyelids fluttered, her mind—I supposed—dancing through a rapid succession of thoughts, each quickly abandoned. She chuffed out a single laugh, then shook her head. I smiled without knowing what I was smiling about. Her hand terminal chimed, and she glanced at it. Her expression cooled.

  “I have to see to this,” she said. “I’ll be right back.”

  “I’ll be right here.”

  After the guards closed the door behind her, I got up, pacing the room with my hands clasped behind my back. At the Leonardo screen, I stopped and stared. Not at the sketch, but at the reflection of the man looking at it. It had been three days since I’d left the room, and I still struggled to recognize my reflection as my own. I wondered how many people, roughly, went through years without a mirror. Very few, I thought, though I personally knew almost three dozen.

  Even with my hair barbered, my scrub-brush beard shaved away, I looked feral. Somewhere during my years in the room, I’d developed jowls. Little sacks of skin puffed under my eyes, a shade darker and bluer than the brown of my cheeks. I had gray hair now, which I’d known intellectually, but seeing it now felt shocking. Quintana’s attacks on me had left no marks. Even the knife wound, cared for by the station’s medical expert system, would leave no scar. Time had done me immeasurably more damage, as it did with everyone. If I squinted, I could still make out traces of the man I thought of when I pictured myself. But only traces. I wondered how Alberto had been able to bring himself to fuck the tired old man in my reflection. But, I supposed, beggars and choosers.

  That I would not return to the room seemed a given now. They had not sent me back there, had given me new clothes, new quarters. Even Brown, during his long interrogations, hadn’t been allowed to shave. My naked, white-stubbled chin bore witness to the fact that I’d surpassed him. For the first day, I’d proudly marched out my egg hypothesis for one person, then another, then another, then the first again. Then they gave me a read-only access file that covered the years I had been gone. Two thousand pages, and I read it with the kind of longing and jealousy I imagined of someone following the career of an estranged child. From the uncanny transit of Eros to the surface of Venus to the creation of the ring gate to the discovery and activation of more than a thousand other gates that opened to a thousand empty solar systems, it filled me with wonder and joy and the bone-deep regret that I hadn’t been there to see it happen.

  I dropped the egg theory and took up my more natural hypothesis of the gate. They thought they’d given me a cheat sheet, a way to pass myself off as better than I was for the Martian. I wasn’t concerned with what they thought. If they considered me a fool, it still wouldn’t be less than I thought of them. I could only hope that the negotiation between the Belters and Mars went well. My fate was in their hands, as it had been for years now.

  The door opened and Michio Pa returned. The Martian was at her side. The same unfortunate skin, the same nut-brown hair. My heart beat with a violence that left me short of breath, and for a long moment I feared that something dire and medical was happening.

  “Dr. Cortázar?” the Martian said.

  “Yes,” I said, rushing toward him too quickly, pushing my hand out before me like the unfounded presumption of intimacy. “Yes, I am. That’s me.”

  The Martian smiled coolly, but he shook my hand. No physical contact had ever been more electric.

  “I understand you’ve made some sense of our ring gates?”

  Michio Pa, at his side, nodded as if unconsciously prompting me.

  “Not in exhaustive depth,” I said. “But I have the broad strokes.”

  When he replied, it was like a punch in the gut. “Why did you lie to us at first?”

  “About?” I asked, trying to buy time.

  He smiled, though the expression had no humor. “You had to know that every sound in that holding cell is monitored and recorded.”

  No. I hadn’t known that. Though in hindsight it seemed obvious.

  He continued. “You deliberately fed Dr. Brown a false story about your analysis, then at the last minute gave him the correct version. I’d like to understand why.”

  “I rethought my…” I began, then trailed off when I saw the knowing look in his eye.

  “You were gaming him,” the Martian said. “Manipulating him to try to secure your position. Incorrectly believing that we would be traded the least valuable prisoner.”

  The way he said it was not a question, but I found myself nodding anyway.

  “The fact that he didn’t spot your falsified conclusions in the data,” the Martian continued, “is the reason you’re here. So, I suppose, your plan failed its way to success.”

  “Thank you,” I replied inanely.

  “Be aware that we know exactly what you are, what tactics you favor, and will not tolerate this behavior in the future. The consequences of failing to understand this fact of your future existence would be extreme.”


  “I understand,” I said, and it was the truth. Something in my expression seemed to please him, and he relaxed a little.

  “I am developing something of a private task force to examine the data that’s coming in from the initial probes that have gone through to the other side of the ring gate. Your experience with the initial discovery puts you in a rare position. I’d like you to join us. It won’t be freedom. That was never in cards. But it won’t be here, and it will be work.”

  “I don’t need freedom,” I said.

  His smile held an echo of sorrow I couldn’t parse. I wondered if Alberto would have known what it meant. The Martian clapped my shoulder and a wave of relief lifted me up.

  “Come with me, Doctor,” he said. “I have some things to show you.”

  I offered silent thanks to whatever imaginary God was listening and let the Martian lead me to this wide new universe, opening before me.

  I did let myself wonder how the room would be without me. Whether Brown would ever understand how I’d outplayed him. Whether Alberto would take another lover. How many years would stretch out before Fong and Navarro gave up hope that I would somehow come back for them all. Questions I did not expect ever to answer, because in the end I didn’t actually care.

  Meet the Author

  James S. A. Corey is the pen name of fantasy author Daniel Abraham and Ty Franck. They both live in Albuquerque, New Mexico. Find out more about this series at www.the-expanse.com.

  Also by James S. A. Corey

  THE EXPANSE

  Leviathan Wakes

  Caliban’s War

  Abaddon’s Gate

  Cibola Burn

  Nemesis Games

  Babylon’s Ashes

  THE EXPANSE SHORT FICTION

  Drive

  The Butcher of Anderson Station

  Gods of Risk

  The Churn

  The Vital Abyss

  If you enjoyed

  THE VITAL ABYSS,

  look out for

  THE LAZARUS WAR

  Book One: Artefact

  by Jamie Sawyer

  DANGER LIES IN THE DEPTHS OF SPACE

  Mankind has spread to the stars, only to become locked in warfare with an insidious alien race. All that stands against the alien menace is the soldiers of the Simulant Operation Program, an elite military team remotely operating avatars in the most dangerous theaters of war.

  Captain Conrad Harris has died hundreds of times—running suicide missions in simulant bodies. Known as Lazarus, he is a man addicted to death. So when a secret research station deep in alien territory suddenly goes dark, there is no other man who could possibly lead a rescue mission.

  But Harris hasn’t been trained for what he’s about to find. And this time he may not be coming back…

  Chapter One

  There was something so immensely wrong about the Krell. I could still remember the first time I saw one and the sensation of complete wrongness that overcame me. Over the years, the emotion had settled to a balls-deep paralysis.

  This was a primary-form, the lowest strata of the Krell Collective, but it was still bigger than any of us. Encased in the Krell equivalent of battle-armour: hardened carapace plates, fused to the xeno’s grey-green skin. It was impossible to say where technology finished and biology began. The thing’s back was awash with antennae – those could be used as both weapons and communicators with the rest of the Collective.

  The Krell turned its head to acknowledge us. It had a vaguely fish-like face, with a pair of deep bituminous eyes, barbels drooping from its mouth. Beneath the head, a pair of gills rhythmically flexed, puffing out noxious fumes. Those sharkish features had earned them the moniker “fish heads”. Two pairs of arms sprouted from the shoulders – one atrophied, with clawed hands; the other tipped with bony, serrated protrusions – raptorial forearms.

  The xeno reared up, and in a split second it was stomping down the corridor.

  I fired my plasma rifle. The first shot exploded the xeno’s chest, but it kept coming. The second shot connected with one of the bladed forearms, blowing the limb clean off. Then Blake and Kaminski were firing too – and the corridor was alight with brilliant plasma pulses. The creature collapsed into an incandescent mess.

  “You like that much, Olsen?” Kaminski asked. “They’re pretty friendly for a species that we’re supposed to be at peace with.”

  At some point during the attack, Olsen had collapsed to his knees. He sat there for a second, looking down at his gloved hands. His eyes were haunted, his jowls heavy and he was suddenly much older. He shook his head, stumbling to his feet. From the safety of a laboratory, it was easy to think of the Krell as another intelligent species, just made in the image of a different god. But seeing them up close, and witnessing their innate need to extinguish the human race, showed them for what they really were.

  “This is a live situation now, troopers. Keep together and do this by the drill. Haven is awake.”

  “Solid copy,” Kaminski muttered.

  “We move to secondary objective. Once the generator has been tagged, we retreat down the primary corridor to the APS. Now double-time it and move out.”

  There was no pause to relay our contact with Jenkins and Martinez. The Krell had a unique ability to sense radio transmissions, even encrypted communications like those we used on the suits, and now that the Collective had awoken all comms were locked down.

  As I started off, I activated the wrist-mounted computer incorporated into my suit. Ah, shit. The starship corridors brimmed with motion and bio-signs. The place became swathed in shadow and death – every pool of blackness a possible Krell nest.

  Mission timeline: twelve minutes.

  We reached the quantum-drive chamber. The huge reinforced doors were emblazoned with warning signs and a red emergency light flashed overhead.

  The floor exploded as three more Krell appeared – all chitin shells and claws. Blake went down first, the largest of the Krell dragging him into a service tunnel. He brought his rifle up to fire, but there was too little room for him to manoeuvre in a full combat-suit, and he couldn’t bring the weapon to bear.

  “Hold on, Kid!” I hollered, firing at the advancing Krell, trying to get him free.

  The other two xenos clambered over him in desperation to get to me. I kicked at several of them, reaching a hand into the mass of bodies to try to grapple Blake. He lost his rifle, and let rip an agonised shout as the creatures dragged him down. It was no good – he was either dead now, or he would be soon. Even in his reinforced ablative plate, those things would take him apart. I lost the grip on his hand, just as the other Krell broke free of the tunnel mouth.

  “Blake’s down!” I yelled. “’Ski – grenade.”

  “Solid copy – on it.”

  Kaminski armed an incendiary grenade and tossed it into the nest. The grenade skittered down the tunnel, flashing an amber warning-strobe as it went. In the split second before it went off, as I brought my M95 up to fire, I saw that the tunnel was now filled with xenos. Many, many more than we could hope to kill with just our squad.

  “Be careful – you could blow a hole in the hull with those explosives!” Olsen wailed.

  Holing the hull was the least of my worries. The grenade went off, sending Krell in every direction. I turned away from the blast at the last moment, and felt hot shrapnel penetrate my combat-armour – frag lodging itself in my lower back. The suit compensated for the wall of white noise, momentarily dampening my audio.

  The M95 auto-sighted prone Krell and I fired without even thinking. Pulse after pulse went into the tunnel, splitting armoured heads and tearing off clawed limbs. Blake was down there, somewhere among the tangle of bodies and debris; but it took a good few seconds before my suit informed me that his bio-signs had finally extinguished.

  Good journey, Blake.

  Kaminski moved behind me. His technical kit was already hooked up to the drive chamber access terminal, running code-cracking algorithms to get u
s in.

  The rest of the team jogged into view. More Krell were now clambering out of the hole in the floor. Martinez and Jenkins added their own rifles to the volley, and assembled outside the drive chamber.

  “Glad you could finally make it. Not exactly going to plan down here.”

  “Yeah, well, we met some friends on the way,” Jenkins muttered.

  “We lost the Kid. Blake’s gone.”

  “Ah, fuck it,” Jenkins said, shaking her head. She and Blake were close, but she didn’t dwell on his death. No time for grieving, the expression on her face said, because we might be next.

  The access doors creaked open. There was another set of double-doors inside; endorsed QUANTUM-DRIVE CHAMBER – AUTHORISED PERSONNEL ONLY.

  A calm electronic voice began a looped message: “Warning. Warning. Breach doors to drive chamber are now open. This presents an extreme radiation hazard. Warning. Warning.”

  A second too late, my suit bio-sensors began to trill; detecting massive radiation levels. I couldn’t let it concern me. Radiation on an op like this was always a danger, but being killed by the Krell was a more immediate risk. I rattled off a few shots into the shadows, and heard the impact against hard chitin. The things screamed, their voices creating a discordant racket with the alarm system.

  Kaminski cracked the inner door, and he and Martinez moved inside. I laid down suppressing fire with Jenkins, falling back slowly as the things tested our defences. It was difficult to make much out in the intermittent light: flashes of a claw, an alien head, then the explosion of plasma as another went down. My suit counted ten, twenty, thirty targets.