by Kathryn Hoff
“That is true,” Danto said. “Mya was upset by Lyden’s insistence, and we spoke in the salon.”
Kojo looked to Mya with sympathy. “I’m sorry, Mya. We can hold a memorial whenever you wish.”
“We should probably hold off on doing anything with the relic,” Jamila said. “Out of respect.”
“No!” Mya grasped Danto’s arm. “Sergeant Danto, Rachel.” She looked desperately from one to the other. “You agreed to allow access to the relic today. We must do it, today! Now! Suriel calls—I must go to it. I must feed it.”
Rachel paused only a moment. “Yes, I can see the urge is becoming stronger. Very well, but I will require controlled conditions.”
Mya sat in the chair next to the isolation unit. She looked thin and flushed but smiled as if she were meeting her lover. Danto paced nearby. I sat to the side by the drone control console.
My insides roiled, not from hunger, but from envy and fear. I wanted—needed—to touch the artifact, to sate the longing gnawing at my mind. My own desires disturbed and disgusted me.
Rachel used heavy gloves to open the case and place the relic within the isolation chamber. I had a brief glimpse of the tablet’s underside—channels etched into the stone in converging spirals.
“Ahh!” Immediately, Mya reached both hands toward it, but Rachel closed the chamber over the dark stone. Rachel spent a minute looking at the readouts.
I felt seething frustration from the relic, mirrored by the yearning on Mya’s face.
I wished it was me sitting in the chair. I wished it very much.
“All right,” Rachel said. “You may insert your arm.”
Mya put her arm into the port and let her hand caress the relic. Under her hand, the stone seemed to pulse in somber colors.
Blood! Blood!
To see her stroking the relic made me burn with envy. I should have turned away, but instead I stared in fascination. I ached to be there beside Mya, to touch the cool stone, to let my blood cover its surface.
Mya’s eyes were closed. She whispered, “A knife.”
“Step back, please,” Rachel said. Danto and I both had strained forward.
Rachel manipulated the instrument arm within the chamber. A mechanical appendage tipped with a scalpel appeared. “Stay still,” Rachel murmured.
The scalpel made a short cut on Mya’s forearm. Crimson drops slid to the surface of the relic.
Mya gasped. “More,” she whispered. “More.”
Blood gathered in the channels, forming thin streams that disappeared into the relic like rain flowing on sand.
A sigh of satisfaction crept into my mind. The hunger and desire began to abate.
Rachel scanned the readouts. After a few more drops, Rachel withdrew the scalpel, letting the flow of blood slow.
Mya remained seated, eyes closed, caressing the relic with her bloody hand. “Show me,” she whispered. “Show me Nakana.”
Her eyes snapped open, gazing at something far beyond the dingy walls of the cargo hold.
“Green plants,” she said. “Fields and hills covered with grass. Animals! Water and warmth.”
I saw them, too, and felt the warm humidity.
Mya breathed a long, satisfied sigh. “Thank you, Suriel. I am blessed, truly blessed.”
“Where?” Danto demanded. “Look, Mya, here are the star charts. This is our position, between the gateway and Kriti. Where is Nakana?”
“It’s beautiful,” Mya sighed. “And we are close now. I will show the way.”
Rachel glanced at me.
I shook my head. I had no clue where to go.
Home. Peace and joy.
The relic’s familiar whine was a welcome relief after a night of gnawing bloodlust. I hadn’t realized how keyed up I’d been with the relic’s demand to feed.
From the helm, I listened on the com while in the salon Hiram, Danto, and Kojo pored over the charts and their skimpy information about this area of space. Rachel was with them to keep the peace and Mya was there because she wouldn’t leave Danto’s side.
Hiram drawled, “Sergeant, we done everything you said. Patched up Sparrow, put up with your insults, come back for that bloody bit of rock. But now you’re talkin’ about going into the Gloom. There ain’t no beacons in there, lad, and no one to come rescue us if anything happens. I was counting on starting out closer to Kriti, using one of the known trails as far as we could.”
Danto’s voice was testy, “But look at the location Mya has specified—it is closer to our current position than to Kriti. If we go directly from here, we could be at the target location in only four days.”
Hiram grunted. “That Nakana planet ain’t gonna have a big welcome sign on it, lad. How are we gonna know if we’re in the right place?”
“I will know it.” Mya’s voice was high and clipped. Her desperation to feed the relic had changed to a high-strung giddiness. “Suriel has shown it to me. The system is a double star, hidden in a cloud.”
Rachel’s light voice asked, “Hiram, if we do as Danto suggests and travel into the Gloom from here, will we be able to find our way back again?”
“Huh. That Selkid scanner we scavenged is pretty damn good.” He paused. “If we stick to the quiet places and leave a trail of breadcrumbs behind, the locators can guide us back out.”
Kojo spoke up. “We wouldn’t be able to stay long—we don’t know the conditions inside the Gloom and locators can drift.”
“Agreed,” Danto said. “If we do not find a system such as Mya has described within two days of reaching the target location, we will proceed to Kriti. By then, the Patrol post on Kriti will have received my reports and be ready to escort Sparrowhawk to safety.”
Kojo said thoughtfully, “Four days in, two days to explore. Survey would take how long?”
“No more than three days,” Rachel said.
“Then twelve days to retrace our steps and move on to Kriti. That puts us in port within twenty-one days on the outside, sooner if there’s nothing there.” I could almost see Kojo rubbing his chin.
That timeline would have us in Kriti at least seven days prior to our deadline. With luck, we could deploy drones with the synthreactor before then—once the flyby was finished, both Danto and Rachel would be more relaxed and less vigilant. We could drop the synthreactor somewhere at the edge of the Gloom—before the Patrol escort could find us—and find some way to relay its location to Ordalo. It would be tight, but it could work.
“Rachel, you’ve been awful quiet,” Kojo said. “The survey will be under your supervision. What do you think?”
After a pause, Rachel said, “I’ve had a great deal to think about. If we have sufficient supplies to go to this cloud, locate Nakana, and conduct up to three days of survey before preceding to Kriti, then I agree we should go ahead. If there is a Sage planet out there, we need to place it under Settlement Authority control as soon as possible.”
“Very well,” Danto said. “We will proceed immediately.”
Rachel’s voice became brisk. “Danto, I want your word of honor as a Patrol officer that you will break off the mission and return to Kriti, if and when I tell you to do so. The Settlement Authority’s orders include getting this mission’s personnel back alive and in good health. We’ve already lost two members. I must have your assurance that you will comply if, in my judgment, the risk is too great.”
“If you insist, Dr. Fiori. You have my word of honor.”
“Thank you.”
“Sorry, Hiram,” Kojo said. “The drinks and the companionship will have to wait awhile longer.”
CHAPTER 25
The Gloom
Unrelieved, impenetrable darkness. To call the view through the canopy “black” was an understatement. Black is a pigment with a character of its own, or simply a space empty of light. The Gloom was altogether different, a vast field of energy and subatomic particles that sucked the light out of the sky, that absorbed every stray photon and reflected nothing. Simply being there mad
e me think of death—not the friendly, rousing afterlife I’d been raised to believe in, but a total obliteration of a soul.
I stationed myself at the drone console in the cargo hold with a raft of lightweight locator buoys ready for deployment. The locator was the type we used for in-transit deliveries to be picked up by our customers—just the sort of thing we’d use for the synthreactor.
“Buoy one launched,” I reported. The locator gave a single ping, then went silent—it would only activate again in response to a coded hail. We wanted no bounty hunters following us.
“Ready, then,” Kojo responded. “Archer, full engines.”
With a hiccup from the grav generator and a roar from the engines, Sparrow turned her back on the last vestiges of light and headed into the Gloom.
It was eerie, sailing through the Gloom. No visible cues, no ping of beacons, it was hard to sense whether we were progressing at all. Our scanner marked currents and grav fluctuations, but Hiram and Kojo stayed in a quiet channel and kept track of distance traveled by pinging the buoys. We dropped buoys at intervals of two hours, never more than a third of our scanner range—I wanted to be damn sure we could find our way out if one of the locators drifted away or stopped working.
After dropping the first two buoys, I took the time to deal with Lyden’s remains. Rachel had left Lyden in her nightclothes, lying peacefully on the deck. In death, her face was shrunken and bony. She looked much older than I had realized, as if she’d held onto vibrancy by force of will.
I wrapped her in a sheet and placed her next to the recycling chute and invited the subdued passengers in for a memorial. Pale and swaying, Mya rushed through the long Sage prayers. With a final May the blessings of the Sages be with you, she turned to Danto. He wrapped his long arms around her and she sobbed into his chest.
Out of a sense of delicacy, I waited until Mya and Danto left to flush Lyden’s corpse down the recycling chute. From there, I went to the engine room. I’d had very little time to visit with Archer lately, but to be honest, he’d been so testy I’d been avoiding him.
“How are the engines?” I asked.
“Fine. Much better than before the upgrades.” He squirted some Prestofreeze into the power mod coolers.
“And your arm?”
“Oh.” He flexed it. “A little twinge now and then. It’s fine, really.”
“Good.” I racked my mind for something else neutral to talk about.
He flapped his hands. “I’m sorry, Patch. About Lyden.”
“Lyden? Well, it’s too bad she passed away while on our ship, but”—I shrugged—“she wasn’t particularly dear to me. In fact, I didn’t like her much.”
“I thought, with you spending so much time with her and the other Gavs—well, I thought maybe you were starting to have second thoughts.” He carefully wiped the excess lube from the port and closed it.
“What do you mean? Second thoughts about what?”
“About being more Terran than Gav. I mean, it would be understandable, if you thought you would be more at home with them.” He shifted from foot to foot.
I looked at him with astonishment. “Archer, are you out of your mind? More at home? With them? How could you even think that?”
“Well, you hardly ever come to talk to me anymore. And what with getting to know Balan and Danto…After all, it’s not like we’re really married.”
“You’re space-happy. You didn’t know Papa long, but he was the best father I could have had. So, no, I don’t have any ‘second thoughts’ and it will be a hot day in black space before I want to live with Gavorans.” I took a breath. “And if you think I’m being too friendly with the passengers, well, that’s not any of your business, is it? Like you said, it’s not like we’re really married.”
After a day in the Gloom, dinner was quiet. The darkened viewscreens seemed to oppress the passengers’ mood—except for Mya.
“A beautiful world awaits us,” she said dreamily. “I saw it. I saw it all. An atmosphere rich in water vapor. Huge seas, extending over vast portions of the surface. Land masses covered with vegetation. Lush, grassy plains and mountains covered with green plants. And wildlife!” It was strange, hearing Mya describe the place I had seen in a dream. “Herds of herbivores, covered with fur. All imbued with a feeling of peace and satisfaction.”
Peace and joy.
Mya smiled around the room, her flushed face and twitching hands at odds with her serene expression.
“Sounds nice,” Kojo said.
Grim snorted. “Sounds unreal. Where are the Sages, then? Where’s all the technology? There must be cities, right? Transportation? Factories and farms? People?”
Mya’s smile faltered. “I saw nothing like that. Perhaps the Sages have evolved beyond the need for such things.”
“If it is a Sage planet, Mya,” Jamila said gently, “most likely the Sages left it long ago.” Mya’s face stiffened. Jamila added hurriedly, “But even if we find only a single ruined structure, the boon to our knowledge will be invaluable. It will be one of the greatest finds of our lifetime.”
I asked Rachel if she’d learned any more about the relic.
“I did,” she said. “It’s been very helpful to be able to see Mya’s interaction with the relic. Her blood not only triggered additional telepathic signals, she also received a high dose of endorphins. Essentially, the relic gave her an emotional reward for cooperating. Its effect is similar to an addictive intoxicant.”
“It makes you high?” Grim asked.
“Essentially, yes.”
“Ha! I knew Balan was strung out!”
Mya bridled. “You are belittling a profound religious experience.”
“Not at all,” Rachel said. “Your experience is real, as verified by my instruments. I am merely examining the mechanism.”
“Suriel is a person, not technology,” Mya insisted.
“If there is a life form within the relic,” Rachel said, “the relic must contain some very sophisticated technology to keep it alive. I don’t want to use a high-intensity imager to learn more—that might harm the relic. But there is one thing that would help—a control subject. In fact, you, Grim.”
Grim started. “Me? For what?”
“To donate a little blood.”
“You must be joking!”
“It’s necessary. By having a Terran interact with the relic, I’ll have a control sample and I can understand more about the relic’s process.”
“But why me?”
Rachel smiled. “Because you are the least essential Terran on the ship.”
Later that evening, after dropping another locator, I joined Kojo in the wheelhouse. We’d had little time to talk since entering the Gloom.
“What’s wrong with Tinker?” I asked. The cat was restless, meowing, twining between my ankles as if she wanted attention, but refusing to stay put when I lifted her to my lap.
“I don’t know,” Kojo said. “Hiram said she was getting spooked by the Gloom. How are we doing on breadcrumbs?” He was keeping Sparrow on a route that twisted between hazards, sticking to the calmest channels so that the locators would remain in position long enough to get us out.
“The locators? Fine, we have plenty. Why are they called breadcrumbs?”
“In the old story, two children who were taken into the woods left a trail of breadcrumbs to find their way home.”
“Did they? Find their way home?”
Kojo rubbed his chin. “Come to think of it, no. Birds ate the breadcrumbs.”
That didn’t sound encouraging.
Meow, meow. Tinker clawed at the hem of my pants.
“Maybe she’s hungry,” I said.
“She’s got food, I checked. If she keeps this up, I’m going to lock her in one of the holds.”
Looking through the canopy was like looking into a mirror in a dark room—you might imagine anything and convince yourself it was real. If a stray current pushed the locators out of place, we would spend the last days of our l
ives looking into that void.
I rubbed my arms and shivered, even though the environmental controls were working fine. “Do you think we made the right decision, coming into the Gloom like this instead of going to Kriti?”
Kojo clucked his tongue. “You can’t look back, Patch. Once you’ve dealt the cards, you’ve got to play your hand.”
Rachel entered. Tinker immediately abandoned my ankles and rubbed up against Rachel’s.
“Do you need something?” Kojo asked, frowning. We tried to keep the command deck off limits to passengers.
“Just a few words with you and Patch.” Rachel reached down to stroke Tinker. “Oh, dear. Gone into heat already, kitty?”
Meow, meow.
Kojo laughed. “Is that all it is? She’s definitely getting locked in a hold.”
Rachel smiled. “You should do something permanent or eventually you’ll be up to your ears in kittens. Patch, what are you hearing from Suriel?”
“No more hunger. Promises of peace and joy on Nakana. Constant urging for us to go there, just like when you first came aboard.”
She nodded. “Good. However, I wanted to let you know that what I see on the monitors is a slow, steady rise in telepathic activity. In your case, a small but consistent increase from when I first came aboard.”
Kojo eyed me worriedly. “What about Mya?”
“Mya’s neural activity is greatly enhanced since she connected with the relic. I’m more concerned about Danto. His neural activity has also increased in the last few days, and it continues to grow more pronounced.”
I felt cold. “Danto? I didn’t know he was hearing the relic.”
Kojo rubbed his jaw. “That’s not good. Is that why you made him promise to end the mission on your decision?” I asked.
“Yes, and I expect him to honor his word. But I wanted to make you both aware, in case action is needed.”
Kojo nodded. “Thanks, Rachel.”
Rachel paused. “This may not be significant, but he’s also moved into the stateroom with Mya.”
