Dark Between Oceans

by Belinda Crawford

  Onah blinks, upper lids sliding closed, the gesture the same as a human looking away.

  A cheer echoes from the back of my mind, carried on a wave of cherry. Grea.

  The warmth of it gives me the courage to turn the challenge on Mum. She's as close to a psionic null as anyone gets on Citlali, with just enough of the empath gene in her DNA to classify her as Jørgen. Challenging her to a psionic duel is about as effective as trying to light a fire in vacuum, and maybe that's what makes her so good at the stare-off.

  She meets my gaze head on, and while there's guilt in her aura – still making my insides shrivel, despite Grea – there's no apology, no shame.

  'Whatever your sister told you, Kuma, it had to be done.' Her voice is soft, but sure. It disturbs me more than the dismay that colours her aura every time she looks at me. Disturbs me because it feels so final, carries so much conviction.

  I break the stare. Clear my throat. 'She says that it was your idea to kill my friends.'

  'It was but I had a reason, a good reason.'

  'What's so good about—'

  There's a click, the awareness yelling {{ Danger! }}, Dude snarling, and a cherry-red bloom of fury so strong it knocks me off my feet. That's what saves me.

  The energy bolt slams into the bulkhead where my head used to be.

  No one moves, save Jim, re-aiming the pistol.

  Of course, kin don't have to move.

  No. Mwat has no hesitation, no finesse, she's a sledgehammer exploding through the psionic plane.

  Jim Engineer vibrates in the qwan's psionic grip, tendons standing on end, muscles bulging, his rage bursting from his veins, unable to move.

  No, Mwat says again. Kuma is kin; we do not kill our own. And now her gaze meets mine, red upper eyes unflinching and without challenge. An image of the place I woke up flashes between us. It's the first time I have actually seen it, the mounds of fug, the pale glimpse of hands and feet, the familiar faces. We had our reasons for what we did. Not all of those taken were as you, not all were whole.

  There is more behind that, a whole solar system of memories held behind Mwat's eyes. I know without asking that she won't share.

  Go, little kin. Mwat ruffles her feathers. We will take care of this.

  There's nothing more to say, not with Jim's whole body shaking with the effort to shoot me.

  I roll up off the deck and glide away.

  CHAPTER NINE

  I stole a map on my way out of the A/Rec One, a water bladder and a jacket too, but I left the ration packs. Somehow, taking food didn't seem right, not when my stomach had yet to feel hunger and the thought of eating one of the tasteless, high-calorie bars made my tastebuds curl up and die.

  The jacket was good though. It smelled of Dad, a rich warm scent that reminds me of nights on the couch, playing foot wars with Grea, Dad caught between us. It has the added benefit of making me feel less naked, not that I've been naked but there's something about the fug, about the way it covers my legs but leaves my chest bare, that inspires vulnerability.

  As weird as it sounds, I'm growing used to the fug, no longer stumbling over the new toes, coming to appreciate the ability to fall distances that would have once landed me in Med.

  It certainly made getting to Agriculture Three – three decks below A/Rec One – a lot faster.

  Grea's here somewhere, I can feel her, the dark strands of the other curling through the rich cherry red of her presence.

  Ag Three is Citlali's lowest deck, where all the produce from Ags One and Two is stored. The main sub-light engine bay is down here too, way up at the back. It's also where all the ship's freight tubes terminate, which makes avoiding the main Ag spaces easier. The whole way down, trepidation turns my spine in a mess of tight muscles and nerves.

  I'm waiting for the Ag AI to show up, remembering her special brand of crazy, the way she was able to emote. The tension makes my skin crawl, and the moment I step out of the freight tubes and into the huge freight terminal, it feels like my flesh is going to waltz off my bones.

  The terminal is a mess, stacked high with crates that never made it to storage, rich with the scent of rotting food. Mould, actual mould, spills out of the tops, oozing under lids and trailing down the plascrete sides. The one place where a hull breach might have actually done some good, flash-freezing the produce the crew needed to survive, and it looks like Ag Three has full atmosphere.

  The map I stole glows above my palm, fizzing and spitting, showing the terminal as a big open space at the centre of a jumble of corridors and storage rooms.

  Grea's somewhere in that maze. I could just wander around, but that'd mean more risk of running into the Ag AI, and I'd rather space myself than do that. The quickest way to find her is to use the map, but I'm having trouble deciphering the symbols.

  I'm not sure if it's the map itself, or the fug interfering with my biocomp, but the holo is weird, broken and fuzzing around the edges, looking like it's been drawn by two different hands. There are symbols that spark little bits of alien in my brain, that make sense to the other but have no place within me, and then there are familiar human words, like Ag Three and Freight Station A31 with symbols my human brain recognises, but the other puzzles over, stares at.

  One of the symbols looks like it might say "food storage" but… I don't know. I start down the nearest corridor anyway. It's dark, with just the occasional emergency glow to light my way, which is why I don't see the massive wall of fug blocking my path until I'm practically in it.

  Sometimes, like right now, the two sides of my brain get all mixed up and I can't quite tell what I'm staring at, except that I should know what it is.

  The knowledge is on the tip of my brain, hanging there, waiting for me to pick it up, but it's surrounded by fog and slippery as fuck. Frustration rises in my gut, coming out of my throat as a growl.

  On my shoulder, Dude hums, saturating my brain with calming gold.

  He's been doing that a lot, almost non-stop since I slid out of the bulkhead separating the crew from the rest of the ship. Guilt pools in the pit of my stomach. He's trying hard, really hard, to keep me from going all angry and I appreciate it, really I do, but right now... Right now, I just... I can't keep it in and this shit with my brain, with the words getting all jumbled up and feeling like there's this other part of me. That's shitting me off.

  Shitting.

  Me.

  Off.

  Would someone just stand up and say, 'Hey Kuma, it's all good, go back home, catch a few z's and we'll let you know when it's done'?

  Or just give me a translator. Or fix my head, or... or...

  Fug-rage surges from my gut, ripping out of my throat in a growl. I don't know if it's my new, deeper voice or if the fug wrapped around my throat is doing something to the sound, because Old Terra, it sounds like a rucnart in here. The bloodcurdling growl nothing Jørgen vocal cords should be able to produce.

  It feels good. Powerful. Feels like I don't have to give a fuck about the look in Jim Engineer's eyes or the lies clinging to Dad. Or anything. Anything at all. Not even the massive wall of fug blocking my way.

  The jumble of words is still a jumble, the meaning eluding my grasp, but that fug... It's a seething mass of grey-green sealing off the corridor, giant curling vines knotted together so tight I doubt even atmosphere can get through.

  There's ash on the deck around it, scorch marks on the bulkheads, signs of someone wielding a Franken-thrower with extreme prejudice, but the wall is intact.

  Awareness is throwing more numbers into my brain – thirteen centimetres thick, four metres wide, four tall – and for just a second, the word/symbol I was staring at gains meaning. "Danger". And for right now, I'm not sure if that's the Jørgen part of my brain or the alien one saying that.

  The growl is back in my throat, lifting out of the indecision, and Dude's hum stutters, the golden fuzz faltering just long enough for the fug-rage to push it aside. 'We're going in, Dude.'

  There might have bee
n a chitter, tiny claws digging into my shipsuit, but I'm striding toward the fug-wall, pushing the fug-anger ahead of me. Grea is behind there, and nothing's going to stop me from finding her.

  The wall shivers, grey-green vibrating. And for a second, I think I'm going to have to cut my way through, can already feel the fug-blades forming on the back of my hands with the thought. Then a section of the wall moves, vines writhing around each other, making a hole.

  I wonder if Ag AI is through there, waiting to suck me into vacuum.

  Dude chitters.

  I shake the thought off. 'Yeah. Yeah. Time to get to work.'

  Grea's trail leads to the back of Ag Three. The engines are around here somewhere, not the fusion drive that moves us faster-than-light – that's higher up, taking up space between the back quarter of Stasis and Engineering – these are the slower, sub-light-speed ones, the ones that move Citlali around solar systems not between them.

  The fug is thick, pressing on every side of me, long strands of it choking the corridors.

  It's like trying to push my way through a jungle, feet getting tangled in the roots snaking over the deck, vines forever snagging my arms and snatching at my collar. There's a sense of waiting, of tension flowing through the fug, and it's creeping down my spine, making my breath come a little shorter and my heart beat a little harder.

  I'm glad for the fug over my collarbone, because Dude's the same, tiny claws kneading my shoulder. Without the armour, I'm pretty sure he'd have shredded my skin an hour ago, maybe got all the way to bone with his new talons.

  The fug's tension isn't directed at me though. It slides apart, shifting and twisting, clearing as much of a path for me as it can. That's what really makes my spine crawl, wondering what it is that fug worries about more than the guy who made a habit of turning it into ash.

  What scares fug? As far as I know, it's an apex predator, eating steelcrete as readily as it does flesh. Personally, the only thing I'm scared of more than fug is h'Rawd, but he can't touch the fug, can't even sense Aeotu.

  I push through a final clump of fug vines, thicker than any I've encountered so far, the nanites slower to move, reluctant almost.

  I pop through the vines into a... I guess you'd call it a clearing. The space beyond is clear of fug, just the Citlali's off-white, square-edged bulkheads, a thick, corridor-wide hatch up ahead. There's not a scratch or a scorch mark in sight, like stepping back in time to before all this started. I turn, just make sure that the fug-jungle is still there, and yeah, there it is in all its grey-green glory.

  My heart picks up, dumping the first trickle of adrenalin into my system.

  Because this isn't worrisome at all. Nope, no way.

  The awareness is stirring, an uneasy churn in my gut.

  There are words on the hatch, emblazoned on the surface. Not "DANGER, VACUUM", which would be icing on the shit cake, but "CAUTION, ENGINES", which you would think is better, would slow my heart a little, maybe roll back the sick feeling, but no, that would be too easy. In fact, this is too easy. Why is Grea in the engine room? The sense of her is thick in the air and it's coming from behind the hatch.

  Sure, she likes to tinker with stuff, like the enviros in our quarters, but this... Engines are little more complicated.

  I creep forward, one step, two. I'm shaking, the trickle of adrenalin flowing faster with every millimetre toward the hatch and away from the safety of the fug.

  Huh. Safety. I stop, look back at it. 'Dude, when did I start to think of the fug as safe?'

  He doesn't answer, doesn't even fuzz. In fact— He's not there, or at least it looks like he's not there. I can still see the tiny furrows he's digging in the fug, but I can't see him.

  'Dude?'

  Invisible. He's gone invisible.

  Shit.

  I turn back to the hatch, eyes scanning every particle. It looks just like a regular hatch, rounded corners, smooth. Just those letters painted over it.

  Deep breaths, Kuma, deep breaths.

  My hands on the hatch, pushing it open. It should creak, that's what the creepy doors do in vids, screech as the idiot hero enters the realm of nightmares. Of course, I've got nightmares coming out of my wazoo, so maybe I've reached my quota of screeches, maybe silence is all I'm going to get for the rest of my life.

  I'd prefer the sound, because my imagination is creating all sorts of things worse than the ear-splitting scream of metal on metal.

  The reality is… Nothing.

  Clean lines of the engine room. I pad farther in, tension riding my bones, standing my hair on end, but some of the adrenalin is leeching from my system, and my heart isn't trying to break my ribs.

  Dude is a different story, still invisible, still silent as the grave. It's the only thing that stops me from dropping my guard, keeps my eyes sharp and my steps light.

  But still... It's nice to walk into a room and not have shit leap out at me—

  Red is one of those colours that sparks a primal reaction deep in the brain, the leftover bits of Homo sapien from the time in our evolution where everything could kill us.

  I turn a corner formed by the huge generators that make up whatever this part of the sub-light engines is, and the red is everywhere. Not a muted, muddy red either, but a bright screaming, Old-Terra-I'm-gonna-die red.

  There's a bulkhead ahead of me, a big thick one. I know it's thick because there are holes in it big enough for me to crawl through, and maybe, if the holes were neat circles bored through the steelcrete, I wouldn't worry so much, but these have been eaten and the culprit is dribbling down the sides like blood.

  Red fug.

  Red fug throwing off the same cherry trail as my sister.

  Veins of it thread through the holes, pulsing with light sharp enough to cut through my eyeballs. They pulse in a strange rhythm – BOOM BO BO BOOM BUH – over and over again. There's no sound, but the light... I'm getting a headache, and the ground doesn't feel as steady as it did a second ago, or maybe that's me, swaying.

  {{ Out. }}

  Yeah. Yeah, that seems like a good idea. Now, if only I can get my feet to cooperate, but there's interference somewhere between my brain and appendages. I'm having difficulty remembering where they are or how to make them move. The room tilts, the deck getting closer. Hands out, face kissing the deck, brain swimming in confusion. Trying to find my feet, to make my fingers move, to get up. And still that red pulse pounds in my eyes, echoes through my head.

  BOOM BO BO BO BOOM BUH.

  {{ Danger. }}

  I know.

  BOOM.

  I'm trying.

  BO.

  My brain hurts.

  BO.

  I find my fingers. My hands come next.

  BOOM.

  Push off the deck.

  BUH.

  I'm on my knees, but that light's still pulsing, and now it feels like my heart, like the blood in my veins and... and...

  There's a shadow, a dark rush of movement. Violence. I hear screaming, the high-pitched shriek of fug.

  Something's coming at my face, a roll of red flying through the air. There's gold in my brain, Dude fuzzing. And then there's Dude, leaping off my shoulder, flying through the air, encased in fug armour.

  More screaming.

  More red, more shadows.

  BOOM.

  I'm waiting.

  BO.

  Waiting for Aeotu.

  BO.

  Waiting for the word to shiver through the air.

  BOOM.

  The one I hate.

  BUH.

  Sister.

  But it doesn't come.

  Instead, there's something else. A presence carried on the red rolling toward me, fighting the shadows.

  I'm already half in the eter, already staring at the mess around me through a psionic veil, which is why I see it, the lightning rising above the red. As nebulous as Aeotu herself, as alien, but as familiar, as dear to me as Grea.

  I twist my brain, feel the stretch as I slip th
rough the fabric of the real and… For a nano-second I see it, a shadow in the darkness, thin and fragmented, writhing through the cherry that sings of Grea. And then it's gone, exploding in my brain, disintegrating with a scream to rival the fug's. Shredding my ears, melting my bones.

  I scream with it.

  I'm face down on the deck, and somehow, some way, I'm no longer in the engine room but the corridor. It's dark, but the floor has its own glow, not bright, and if my nose wasn't pressed against it, if the corridor around me wasn't so very dark, I wouldn't have noticed.

  My mouth has that old sock taste and there's a trickle of... I don't know, something, it's a trickle running from my nose, over my upper lip.

  I taste it. Coppery, maybe a little salty. Blood.

  Yay. Bloody nose.

  I push myself up, glad that my arms work. The light from the floor casts the corridor in twilight, picking out the vines of the fug jungle and the little sentinel sitting in front of me, still in his fug armour.

  Dude.

  'What was that?'

  {{ Danger. }}

  The voice jolts, an electric current running through my nerve endings, and now that the red is no longer pounding my brain, I realise that it's new and it comes from the place in my gut where the awareness resides. It brings other things with it as well, a wealth of information that floods my brain and makes up seem like down and turns yellow into the taste of engine oil as it tries to find a home in my brain.

  There is a click, a moment as the voice's information-dump overwhelms my senses, leaving me spinning in things I can't quite make out, and then calm. Awareness rises out of my gut, takes hold of the all the data and... orders it. It's a cool, green presence, creeping over my skin and sitting beside me in the eter, fading in and out of my perception, there and then not. A mirage on my skin.

  I tilt my head again, peering at it through slitted eyes, and see... fug. The cool green thing is fug, and not just any fug, but my fug, the stuff turning my hands into claws and my feet in paws. That fug.

  And now... now it's taking all that stuff from the voice and sorting it. A tingle runs through my nerves, gentle but insistent, and the mirage is staring at me or something, because I'm pretty sure it doesn't have eyes. And now the tingle is an unpleasant jolt and there's an expectation hovering between us.