Dark Between Oceans

by Belinda Crawford

  Literally. Boiling.

  I'm halfway across the eter, a good rucnart length between us. The movement isn't... mine I know that deep in the pit of myself. I'm stilling going what the fuck?, staring at Mac through the haze of superheated air, twisting my brain around the change in his emotions, in the firestorm of red and black snaking around his legs.

  Mac stalks after me. The eter shakes with every step, fissures opening up the ground, shooting toward me, seeking me out, pushing a new gravity before it, trying to suck me into the pool of rage beneath.

  And I'm away again, an ocean between me and Mac, between me and the rage surrounding him. And again, I wasn't the one who moved. Whatever it was, it came from outside, but still... but still a part of me. Mac's coming at me, the rage storm getting bigger, swallowing, stretching across the eter with those fissures of rage, but far enough away for me to breathe, to wonder, to slowly, oh so slowly, turn my head and look at the air next to my ear. There's a loadstone in my gut, a weight of dread and the first blooming of denial pulling me down.

  It's like trying to see in the dark, trying to pick out shapes your eyes aren't equipped to see. I catch a shimmer out the corner of my eye, but when I turn to face it, tucking in my chin and twisting my neck muscles until they scream, it's gone. I spin, trying to catch a glimpse of the thing. Spin, spin, spin.

  For a crazy moment, I'm an Old Terran dog chasing its tail in circles, trying to catch the impossible. Then there are hands on my shoulders, burning hands, catching me, lifting me up, caging me in molten rage. I brace for pain, for the shearing, fatty stench of burning flesh, for fire to race across my face. It doesn't come, not like I expect.

  There's pain, ripping across my chest, razor blades scoring the inside of my flesh, all the way down my arm to the palm of my hand. There's blood from my mouth, from the tips of my fingers, from my nose. I'm screaming and choking at the same time, trying to drag air into my lungs, trying to expel the fountain of pain.

  And then it's done. Gone. Not even an echo left behind. Just... me, Mac, and the bloody, wriggly golden thing in his hand.

  'Dude?'

  Mac's face is a snarl, his teeth rucnart-long, his whole face distorting, his fist growing claws, piercing Dude, crushing the critter in his fist—

  'No!' Fear bursts before me, a semi-focused wave of emotion blasting through Mac's hand, freeing Dude.

  The critter tumbles, and then he's in my hand. This time I move, blasting through Mac's cage, shredding the bars before Mac has a chance to blink.

  And now Mac is snarling at me.

  Okay. Enough of this shit.

  Pro tip, never piss off an empath.

  I slap Mac down. A wave of anger and he's immobile.

  He struggles, but slowly sanity seeps back into his eyes, enough for him to glare at me. 'Let me go, Kuma.'

  'No.'

  Fear wraps around him, chases some of the anger from his face. 'You gotta let me go. You have to.'

  'Why?'

  He doesn't say anything, but there's a look, a quick glance at the air next to his ear, and a spike of something deeper than fear. Terror.

  I follow his gaze and see... nothing. Just empty air.

  And still, dread curls around my feet.

  Against my chest, Dude fuzzes, not an ordinary fuzz, not trying to comfort or inspire. It's different, silver instead of gold, reaching up through my bones, wrapping around my eyes and twisting. The space next to Mac's ear shimmers, that mirage from before. I squint. The shimmer is stubborn, like not in the way a lock is stubborn, but in the way Grea is stubborn, an active don't bother me fathead kind of stubborn, twisting and turning, pushing at me, telling me to go away, to look elsewhere.

  I focus harder.

  The shimmer gives way with a pop, a burst of light and colour strong enough to force me back a step.

  And there it is. There. It. Is.

  The fuzzy, fuggy thing sitting on Mac's shoulder looks like a critter, like Dude, but not; grey-green where Dude is gold, a twisting, shifting rainbow at its claws and threaded through its coat. The rainbow curls through Mac's skin, sinking into his marrow, spreading through bone and muscle in a fine web. Wrapping around his brain stem, controlling him. I move to rip it out—

  Mac shoves me away. Not the rainbow stuff, not the fuggy critter-like thing on his shoulder. Mac. The bronze of his determination trails through the eter, leaves imprints on my chest.

  'No, Kuma.' His voice rumbles, deeper than before, an edge of metal underlying the natural timbre. 'I need it. It's helping me.'

  'It's controlling you.'

  'Maybe, but it’s better than the alternative.' He looks down.

  And that's when I see it, the red at Mac's feet isn't just rage. It churns with the same lightning the red fug does, crawling up his legs, trying to slip under his skin. Except the rainbow is there, a glowing shield beating it back.

  Aeotu at war with the same presence that's wound up in my sister.

  My grip on Mac loosens.

  He's gone.

  I stand there, staring at the endless white of the empty eter. Little by little, slow enough that I don't notice it at first, fug-me seeps through the white, turns the eter into a forest of pink and grey. It wraps around me, claiming my feet, my hands, crawling up my back.

  It whispers and the sound feels like home.

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  I blinked back into the real to find just me and Dude standing in that corridor. Alone. Not even a farewell or a boot print to let me know that Mac had been there.

  Nothing.

  I hot-footed it out of there, heading up another deck to Engineering, trying to find another way to Grea, wherever Aeotu had stashed her. And why? Why had Aeotu taken Grea from the family stasis unit? Hidden her?

  It didn't make sense, not a lick.

  All the usual routes to Engineering where cut off, thick with fug walls where the corridors weren't collapsed altogether, even the way I came. I didn't try cutting through, not when I saw the red stuff threaded through the grey-green. Not after the last time.

  After what felt like forever of crawling through access tubes and the spaces between decks, of cutting my way through bulkheads and dropping down decks only to go back up, I stopped following the readout on my visor – the HUD. The red fug was everywhere, igniting warnings, making the HUD scream and Dude growl when I got too close. There was no way up, not from the inside at least.

  So now I'm on Citlali's outer ring, staring at an airlock. It's not the usual kind of airlock, not the really big ones for shuttles or people. It's hidden in its own little closet, shielded by thick walls and a hatch that doesn't have a name, just a number engraved in the steelcrete. Discrete, invisible almost. It's one of those doors you're not meant to notice unless you need it, just another part of the bulkhead. The kind Jim Engineer used to grumble about, 'cause he always missed the damn thing, even with his biocomp showing him the way.

  It's the kind with a genetic lock, one of those we never even mucked around with as kids, not after the first time at least. Every intrusion was sent straight to Captain Lyn, and she would make you wish it was h'Rawd's teeth you were staring down. She wouldn't yell, just stand there, straight and proud, looking down her nose in that way that made you want to sink into the decking and never come out. Even if you didn't remember a word she said, you remembered that look, the one that said you did wrong and if you ever did it again she'd flush you out of that airlock and not feel a twinge of remorse. I used to wonder if she learnt the trick from Mwat.

  Now, I just remember the captain's hand reaching out of mouldy stasis gel, the stench of decomposition ripe in the air, and throwing up until there was nothing left in my stomach. I hold the memory, letting it play behind my eyes as I slice through the lock with my fug blades. They sink into the steelcrete without a sound. There's resistance, just a little, and I push harder, push until my knuckles kiss the hatch, before angling down. The hatch is thick, thicker than I expected, but then I guess it's a hole in the
protective shell of the Citlali. A punch in the membrane that keeps us safe from the vacuum of space. So yeah, I guess it should be thick. Slicing down is harder than slicing through, and I have to use every bit of strength and most of my weight to force the fug blades down. There's an extra bit of resistance, a moment where all movement stops just long enough for me to wonder if perhaps I've found something fug blades can't defeat, before I'm moving again. I guess those were the bolts holding the hatch in place.

  Then it's done. The lock is nothing more than shredded steelcrete, and I'm pushing it open.

  There's no light beyond, just darkness and cold. The HUD flashes and now I'm picking out the lines of another hatch and another lock in faint shades of green; so faint I'm squinting. Apparently, even the dark of the airlock is too dark for fug-vision, because light floods the area from a new glow on my shoulder.

  And crap, is it cold. Freezing. I'm shivering even through my layer of fug-armour.

  I push the inner door closed behind me and spend a few moments wondering how I'm going to get it to stay that way, now that I've shredded the bolts meant to keep it shut. The answer's in the fug, because, you know, why wouldn't it be?

  As I'm running my hands over the hatch, a finger-length of my amour detaches and slips into the gap between door and bulkhead. I don't know exactly what it's doing, but the awareness tells me it's fixing the bolts.

  Huh. Cool.

  Slicing through the outer airlock is as bad as the first, worse maybe, because the cold makes my muscles clench, shivering to keep warm. Keeping the blades steady is becoming a challenge with the way my hands shake.

  It would be really great if the fug-armour had heating. I'm thinking that, of being toasty warm and not shivering my arse off, trying to beat back the cold by imagining heat sinking into my skin, all the way through to my bones, when acknowledgement blooms from that place in the back of my head. The HUD flashes, a triangle bisected by a spiral appearing front and centre, and heat hits my skin.

  'Holy Terra.' The shock of it is enough to turn my muscles liquid and make my hands shake even more. I'm barely able to keep my knees from becoming jelly, let alone keep the blades steady.

  They wobble and, for a second, I think I'm in danger of cutting off my leg but then the fug-armour takes over. Joints harden, holding me up, keeping the blades in place, and for a moment, as all that happens, the golden veins under my skin, the ones Mac ripped out of my chest, blaze. And there, glowing in the corner of my eye, is Dude, sitting like a grey-green sentinel on my shoulder. Concentration rolls off him in waves.

  He chitters at me.

  'Fuck.' Mac was right. I don't... Something hard and sharp is digging claws into my gut. I don't want to call it fear, don't want to think that Dude is a threat because... well, because it's Dude.

  I breathe deep. Now's not the time, Kuma. I have a mission, a purpose. I gotta get to Grea. And it's Dude, the little fuzz-ball who saved my arse, who fought fug for me. Dude.

  I push the stuffing back into my knees, firm my muscles and as soon as I do, I feel the golden threads retreat, sense Dude relax on my shoulder.

  I focus on the hatch, on forcing the blades through the steelcrete. Fear still curls in my gut adding to the vomit-inducing roil of emotion already there. There's a whole freak-out going on in the depths of my being, but I'm ignoring it. Totally. Ignoring. It.

  It's going real well.

  It helps that I'm not shaking my arse off. Good to know the fug-armour has climate control, 'cause it's going to get colder once I open the hatch.

  The blades pop through the lock, and now I'm stepping back, eyeing the envirosuits, which, frankly, I should have thought of before I started cutting through the hull, but hey, better late than never right?

  I should be reaching for one of the thin, nano-fibre suits on their little nooks, shoving feet and arms into it, but... I've seen fug in space, seen it moving. The armour's keeping me warm, and I wonder...

  'Fug? We're going EVA.'

  EVA being short for "Everything Fucking Wants to Kill You in Vacuum". I feel... stupid. Even traitorous for talking to fug, for wanting it to do stuff for me when it's killed so many people I know, friends, not-so-much-friends. Critters. Even Core. And yet... I have fug-feet, and the armour's kept my safe so far. So... yeah.

  Nothing happens at first, and that stupid feeling is growing because it's fug for crap's sake, but still. Of course, it probably doesn't understand English. I imagine what it's like beyond the hatch, cold and dark, no atmosphere, no pressure. The awareness hums. The little bit of success spurs me on, and I imagine what would happen if I stepped through without protection. I've never seen it, not even in training vids, just been told. There's no pressure in the ice hull, all the liquid in my body would flash boil, molecules expanding, and then in the seconds it took my atoms to lose all their energy, I would freeze. Freeze right down through the bone. Flesh. Blood. Hair. One giant Kuma-popsicle. Dead before the last of the oxygen had a chance to leave my lungs.

  That spark of acknowledgement flares in the place beyond me, and something... shifts.

  The armour changes colour, the green leeching out of the grey until all that's left is a matt steel. The plates over my arms flatten, smooth out, while new patterns coat my chest. There's a pulling at my feet, and when I look down, the turned-back ankles and paws are melting as fug moves up my legs, trailing around the back of my knees. I try to twist, to follow the migration, and get a glimpse of the armour flowing over my back. Even my HUD changes, new readouts popping to life. New symbols.

  I lift my feet, one at a time, feeling the distinct shhunck shhunk of mag boots.

  On my shoulder, Dude's armour has changed as well, and I wonder if I look as sleek as he does, aerodynamic almost.

  I wonder what that's about, 'cause, you know, vacuum and aerodynamics being mutually exclusive and all that.

  Still, looks like my message got through.

  Meet the new Kuma, all kitted out for EVA.

  Hoo-boy.

  Another breath.

  I'm really going to do this.

  Trust fug.

  I'm pushing the hatch open before I think about it.

  Alarms should be squealing right about now, 'Danger, vacuum' blaring in my ears. Core yelling at me.

  But only vacuum and the endless darkness of the ice hull greet me.

  The plan is not going to plan.

  The plan was to find another way to Engineering through the ice hull, to use the maintenance tubes and cut my way through the bulkhead, thereby getting around all the internal damage. It never really occurred to me there'd be external damage as well.

  I'm staring at another collapsed tube, chunks of ice and splintered steelcrete blocking my way.

  The maintenance tubes aren't that big to begin with, large enough for human and a hover-sled to move through without bending in half. The tubes themselves are made of thin, transparent plasglas with just enough metal in them for my mag boots to function and ribs of thick steelcrete for support.

  So far, I've only brained myself on three ribs, just enough to rattle my mind and to recognise the HUD's proximity sensors.

  Outside the tubes is the ice hull, which is just what it sounds like. Ice. Thirty-three metres of ink-black frozen water surround the inner hull, forming a protective layer around the habitual parts of the ship. Beyond it, the outer hull is our last line of defence, the same defences Aeotu's grappling cables punched through like brittle plasform.

  The aftermath of which is what I'm looking at now.

  There's a massive cable amongst the mess of ice and plasglas, silver-grey and pulsing like a muscle, veins of grey-green curling around it. Fug is everywhere, a carpet covering floor and walls, seeping through cracks in the tube and branching out into the ice. I don't know what it's doing, other than making the place look like a jungle, waving streamers in the air. For the most part, the fug is inert, not dull, lifeless inert just not doing anything. Laying there. It doesn't even react when I step on
it. I wonder how much of that is because of the fug-armour, and how much is because I'm not toting a Franken-thrower and the extreme desire to use it. I mean, that desire is there but just not as... extreme as it was.

  A small part of me, the part that ran around Citlali trying to save it, to save us, the part that floated in a stasis unit, is freaking out about that, wants to question everything, is scared shitless that I'm losing myself to the new parts of me, that I'm accepting it so easily. I mean, this shit tried to kill me once, ate people I knew, tore them up and used their parts to repair itself. Is it still doing that? Still eating corpses and critters and crew? Still tearing my home to pieces in an effort to save itself?

  That part of me is a gibbering mess, spewing uncertainty and guilt like acid in my heart, making me doubt every step, every moment, every action. The other part of me, he's pushed all that shit aside.

  There's no time. I have to save Grea, and I'll use anything I can get my hands on to do it. Even fug

  The collapsed tube is going to be a problem. There isn't a way around it, no crawl spaces or access points, just the long, smooth line running through the ice hull. Even if I shifted the debris, I'd still have to get past the grappling cable, and that sucker is huge. Three rucnart-lengths wide and, as far as I knew, a solid ribbon of whatever the fuck it was that made up Aeotu's hull. I remembered cutting through it with the Franken-laser, remembered the scream knocking me on my arse, ringing in my ears. Remembered, too, the cable's pulse, how Aeotu seemed to peer through it and speak to me, the sibilant "sister" shivering through my comms.