Into Darkness

by Peter Fugazzotto

  “A boy in the grasses, I stared into the night sky. The stars cast across the blackness. Fragments of hope. I saw those jewels of light as we all did. A promise of the heavens where science and faith and dreams all came together.

  “The stars would liberate us. They would free us from this earth, from the incessant pull of gravity, from the fate of bones beneath the earth.

  “There could be another way and the promise was held in the stars. We only had to find a way to reach them and everything would change. Already we ventured and what wonderful things we began to find: new planets, strange gases, unimaginable rainbows, elements beyond our ken.

  “A new universe, a new way of being.

  “But what did we do?

  “We carried ourselves, the burden, the history, the curse we drag along with us. A ball and chain to the stars. Red blood to fling against an unclouded mirror.

  “Rather than let the heavens shape us, we tried to bend the heavens to us.

  “War, greed, slavery, death.

  “We don’t deserve the stars.

  “Not if we choose to remain the same.

  “The choice is ours. The choice is yours.

  “Come out of your holes. Tear yourself away from the gravity of the history of our species. Come to me and mine and evolve. Become something new. Allow the heavens to shape us so we all can be free.”

  Twenty-Five

  THE RASPY VOICE echoed in Gomez’s head long after the man had stopped talking.

  This mission had gone sideways. The crash landing, the haywire robots, the corpses in the colony, and now this voice. They were walking into something deadly. Gomez felt it deep in his bones.

  He knew what he should do: pull his team back and retreat to the loading dock. They could hole up there until Prime sent another team. With enough food and water, the area was defensible. They never should have cut through that door.

  The others seemed as disturbed by the rambling voice. They shrunk back from the door, guns clutched tight, lips pressed.

  “What the fuck was that, boss?” said Orlov. “Crazy preachers in space too?”

  “Some deep shit, man,” said Finn. He tapped the side of his headset. “Climbing down the rabbit hole.”

  Hendo’s lips fluttered open in laughter. He nodded as if the others somehow caught whatever thought ran through his head. His big gun swung carelessly up and down the hall.

  “What is this shit, Marley?” Gomez asked. “Who the hell was that?”

  Marley was the only one that had maintained her position by the door. She sneered at Gomez. “Focus on the objective. We need to get to Ragnar and get the AI back on line.”

  “What if we can’t? What if the AI is beyond repair? We’re not hearing a blip from it, just Orlov’s crazy preacher.”

  “Oh, man, oh, man,” said Finn, “what if that was Ragnar?” He backpedaled down the hall to where Adams crouched against the wall.

  “Why would he be talking about a memory as a boy?” said Orlov. She started following Finn away from the door. “An AI never lay in the grasses.”

  “Rabbits,” said Hendo trotting after Orlov. “When I was a boy, I got me rabbits. Pop their little heads out of the hole and bang.” He pointed his index finger at Orlov and triggered his thumb. “Sometimes the ears would be there standing as if they didn’t realize the head had done gone.”

  “Gomez.” Marley’s lips were drawn tight. “A word.”

  He followed her past the others and into an abandoned locker room. The room, empty of corpses and mildewed food, nonetheless reeked of rot. Half the locker doors had been torn from their hinges. Scratches had peeled back the brown paint to reveal shiny steel beneath. For some reason the marks reminded Gomez of a cat dragging its claws down the bark of a tree.

  Gomez followed Marley into the room; his gaze again drifted to the sway of the Agent’s hips beneath the tight combat suit. He felt a strange mix of lust and repulsion.

  “Get your team together,” Marley snarled. “Shut the chatter. You’re supposed to be professional. What the hell is this?”

  “What the hell are you getting us in to?”

  “Focus your team on the objective. Simple. No questions. Shut down the stories about shooting rabbits. Get control of your team.”

  “Objective? Mission? We’ve veered off mission. The objective changes every five minutes. We’re fucking screwed. Our first objective needs to be find a place to hole up. We need a secure retreat. The ship is lost. We’re stuck here.”

  “We complete the mission. Then we sit tight. Huang Di Prime will send in back up.”

  “Machines sticking together.”

  “A robot crew wouldn’t be giving me lip.”

  “He already sent in his robots. And they failed. Maybe he can’t trust his robots. Maybe he doesn’t really trust you either. And I’ve been sent along to clean up any messes you make along the way. Maybe the question you should be asking is why the hell he sent you on this mission. The fuck, you were escorting settlers to a planet at the edge of the universe. All the money he’s invested into your Augments and he sends you to baby sit sleepers. Something’s not adding up and I don’t think I’m the odd one out.”

  “Think what you want,” said Marley. “But don’t be stupid. We need to figure out what’s going on here. In case you’ve already forgotten, our ship crashed onto this rock and there is no way in hell it’s leaving the surface again. The best shot we have of getting out of here is the other ship. And we’re going to need an AI on the ship. Penelope is disintegrating. By the time we repair the ship, she’ll be dead.”

  He scoffed. “Dead, no. Machines just stop working.”

  “Think what you want. But if we lose Penelope, Ragnar will be our best hope. Otherwise, we won’t have an AI on the ship.”

  “Finn could fly us out of here.”

  “Who’s going to put us to sleep? Who’s going to wake us?”

  “I’ll stay awake.”

  “Not having this discussion. Get your team in order.”

  Marley stormed past Gomez and into the hall. The room stank of rot and death. He covered his nose and gagged. Something died in here. He kicked the wall of lockers and screamed, his boot denting the steel. This mission was fucked.

  But Marley was right: they were stranded. The ships were useless. He doubted even Finn or Adams could get them off the surface. Even if both weren’t destroyed or gutted. No atmosphere. They wouldn’t be able to breath. An AI could get the systems working again.

  He kicked the lockers again. They had nowhere to go. Someone or something had murdered everyone up and down the hall. He wondered even if they returned to the loading dock, whether they would be safe.

  Their only hope was getting to a comms station and sending a signal back towards the inner colonies and Prime. Only then would a ship come for them. If they couldn’t send a signal for help, Gomez and the others were as good as dead.

  Gomez kicked the lockers one last time.

  He jogged out of the room and back up the hall. The others crouched against the wall, rifles pointing towards the hanging door ahead. Gomez knelt next to Finn.

  Finn nodded his head without taking his gaze off what lay beyond the door. “Some movement on the other side. And worse: a trip wire set up on the other side. Can’t quite tell what it’s rigged to. Doesn’t look like an explosives set up. Not sure what they’re up to”

  “What moved?” asked Gomez.

  “Strange as it is, I’d swear it was a couple of kids.” Finn shook his head. “I heard laughter. This place is messed up.”

  “Safe to look?” asked Gomez.

  Finn shrugged. “They didn’t blow my head off. But ain’t making no guarantees.”

  Gomez crept past Orlov, Hendo, and a scowling Marley. He peered ahead. The hall continued beyond the hanging door. Finn had a good eye for things. Trip wires were set up in the first ten meters. They were positioned at odd heights, higher than Gomez would have expected and at a pacing suggesting longer than no
rmal strides.

  Then he realized why.

  “These wires are for the robots,” Gomez whispered over his shoulder. He looked forward again.

  Past the trip wires, a low barricade of heavy metal doors had been set up in the hallway. The doors were pocked with bullet holes and the paint had been seared black.

  “We should turn back,” said Orlov. “Only bad shit ahead.”

  “Cool it,” said Gomez. He could feel Marley’s gaze on him. “Finn, where are we in relation to the colony AI?”

  “A long way off.”

  “So through the wires, to the barricade, and then over,” said Gomez.

  “Over the hills and through the woods,” said Hendo. “To grandmother’s house we go.”

  “What if there’s someone on the other side?” asked Finn.

  “We should blow the doors up,” said Orlov. “I can do that. No problem.”

  Hendo snickered. “Shooting rabbits.”

  “If we blow it up, whatever heavies are on the other side will know we’re coming,” said Marley. “We need to go in quiet.” She slid past the others until she stood alongside Gomez. “I’ll do it.”

  “I’ll go with you,” said Gomez.

  He followed Marley, turning his shoulder and squeezing in the space between the door and the jam. The space was tight but rather than finding relief at getting through the passage, he felt suddenly exposed. A single shot from a marksman hidden behind the barricade would end things quickly. He glanced over his shoulder. Orlov had already set herself up with her large gun on her shoulder. She gave a curt, tight-lipped nod. Hendo’s thick-bearded face peered over her head.

  Gomez and Marley needed to position themselves behind the barricade. That would give them cover and superior position. But right now they moved through a dead man’s zone, navigating the wires.

  Thin wires stretched taut between the walls. He ducked under a wire and then high stepped over another. Their uneven spacing forced him to twist to his side so he faced one of the walls. He froze, his breath caught in his chest. The wires connected to metal pins plugged into black boxes glued to the walls.

  Finn had been wrong. The trip wires were set to explosive charges.

  One misstep would mean death.

  A sudden sweat formed in Gomez’s palms. He began panting.

  “You see that, right?” he hissed to Marley. “On the walls…”

  She continued to weave through the wires, stepping over, bending, slithering her body sideways.

  Gomez cursed. Always forward. Never retreating.

  As he bent beneath the next wire, his left knee crackled with gristle. Too many hours squatting and waiting for an enemy to pop his head out. Too many years hauling heavy weapons and explosives. Too many times he had to leap out of a carrier onto alien ground.

  The going was slow, and the popping and cracking in his knee continued with each step through the wires.

  When Marley reached the barricade, she waved him to hurry.

  Then something clattered from the other side of the barricade. Gomez froze. He stopped in the worst possible position, balanced on one foot.

  Footsteps slapped against the floor, and a child laughed.

  Orlov whispered through the comms channel. “Your gun. The wire.”

  Gomez turned his head. The buckle of the shoulder strap had hooked over one of the trip wires, the gentle pressure causing the wire to flex.

  His breath ran ragged between his lips. Slowly and carefully he reversed the direction of the gun, relieving the pressure, and when it was clear, he pulled it over the trip wire.

  But as he lowered his foot, a head popped over the barricade. A young boy with a tangle of long blonde hair stared at him and gasped.

  As quickly as the boy’s head emerged, it disappeared.

  Orlov cursed. “No clean shot.”

  “Get to the barricade!” urged Finn.

  The boy’s feet slapped against the floor.

  Marley leapt over the barricade.

  A muffled scream burst through the comms channel.

  “I’ve got him,” said Marley.

  By the time Gomez navigated the rest of the wires, Marley had pulled the boy over the barricade, her biometal hand clamped over his mouth. He struggled but her grip was too strong.

  “Cade.” Another child, a girl, hair in short pigtails, called from one of the doorways beyond the barricade. “You can’t hide over there. Uncle Vilms will get angry. Cade!”

  Marley waited until the girl came closer and then stood up with Cade in her arms. “Girl, you go get your uncle. Tell him to come here. No guns. We’ve got Cade. No guns! I want to talk to your uncle.”

  Twenty-Six

  “CADE, HOW MANY times do I have to warn you about playing around there?” Vilms backhanded the boy. Cade ducked too late but the blow was delivered softly and Cade used it as the impetus to get out from his uncle’s reach and into the flock of children who trailed behind. Marley was uncomfortable with the small entourage. If it came to weapons being drawn, the kids would be unprotected.

  “You took care of Klaas?” Vilms asked Marley. He was a straw-bearded, hollow-cheeked fellow dressed in light blue coveralls.

  “He won’t be able to control the robots anymore,” said Marley. “How many of you are left?”

  Vilms narrowed his eyes. “Enough to do what we need to. Why do you need to know how many of us there are?”

  “It’s not like that. We’ve come to help.”

  He laughed, revealing metal teeth. “The company sends another agent to clean up its mess. Is that supposed to reassure me, Marley?”

  “I’m here. And I’ve brought a team.”

  Vilms glanced at the mercenaries and the captain. “A handful of guns. Where’s the legion?”

  “The colony’s gone dark. Prime knows nothing other than that.”

  “Is that what he’s told you? He knows nothing? No idea what happened here? And you’re only here to visit?”

  “We lost communications with the advance robotic team. We’re here to assess the situation and get the colony back online. And hopefully you can help.”

  Vilms led Marley and the others down the hallway and into a large room that looked like once it had been a mess hall, but the tables had been pushed to the center and along the walls mattresses had been laid.

  Marley counted about thirty people in the room, a good number of which were children, but they were mostly women and men.

  And all of them were armed.

  Marley could suddenly see why Vilms had not been impressed with Marley and her mercenary team. The gathered people were a small army. Yet she got the sense of hopelessness from them. She wondered why they had not been able to bring the communications system back online.

  A large woman with tight black hair rose from one of the tables, a spoonful of green paste in hand. “What the hell, Vilms? You don’t walk in here with unknowns like that!”

  “They took out the robots in the loading dock, and Klaas too. The company sent this Augment here. It’s okay.”

  A thin scar ran along the woman’s cheek, raised pink against her chocolate skin. “Well, we’ll see about that.” She stared at Marley and the mercenaries. “This all you are? You didn’t bring anyone else? You came an awful long way all by yourselves. Would’ve expected an army not a handful.” She tugged at the collar of her jumpsuit with a finger. “So you got Klaas? That son of a bitch betrayed us.”

  A crowd had gathered. But Marley sensed no threat. They stood with their hands slack or crossed over their chests. Not a single one had drawn or leveled a weapon. Marley saw that these people were the miners and the support crew. Maybe the dark woman was colony security. She carried herself with an air of confidence, much more so than Vilms.

  Bowls of food, bland long-term rations, were brought to the tables and Marley and Gomez sat down to talk to the woman, Jean. At another table, Hendo and Orlov were already bubbling in laughter with a small group. Finn winked at a wall of kids. Adams, on
the other hand, sat, the box of heavy on his back, and he refused repeated offers from the miners to lift it from his shoulders.

  Marley frowned. She would need to do something with Adams soon.

  The mess hall reminded Marley of a refugee camp. Some mattresses were piled with tangled sheets while other beds had been neatly made, the corners tucked, the pillows fluffed, the sheets as tight as drums. A few people had set up makeshift screens around their mattresses, but Marley doubted anyone found much privacy in the crowded quarters. The room was thick with the press of sour human sweat and the heat of contained breath.

  She wondered how long they had been living here.

  “You come to get us out?” Jean asked. She slowly dripped water into the green paste in the bowl. “How big’s the rescue ship?”

  “What happened here?” Marley sniffed at the bowl before her. Bitter.

  “Things went sideways. Your colleague, Rom, finally decided a change was needed and being a part of the company, of the rest of humanity, was an impediment to something far greater. His evolution of consciousness or some bullshit.”

  “Rom?” asked Gomez between mouthfuls. He had already eaten half the paste in his bowl. “The crazy voice on the comms channel?”

  “Crazy doesn’t even begin to describe that monstrosity.” Jean paused, looked around the room at other miners before setting her gaze on Marley. She leaned in and lowered her voice. “Can you take all of us on your ship? The others are deep in it and I don’t think you’d want them in the tin can during a sleep. Might not wake up gently.”

  “We need to bring the colony back online.” Marley pushed the bowl of paste away from her.

  Jean laughed. “The six of you? You know what’s going on here, right?”

  “I have an idea,” said Marley.

  Gomez shot her a dirty look.

  “You have no idea then,” said Jean. She shook her head. “Everything’s gone south. Rom’s out of control and from what I’ve seen there is no turning back. Why would you want to bring the colony back online? Get us off this rock and then drop a nuke. Destroy everything. Clean all the filth off. Wipe the slate. There’s no other way of handling this. Better to lose your precious metal than to have Rom’s sickness spread.” Jean paused to catch her breath. She looked to Gomez. “Who’s in charge here? Get us out of here.”