Smoke and Shadow

by Kelly Gay

  Once he went through the insides, steady and careful, relief spread through him. And very soon, he found what he was after.

  “Rion’s heart, meet your liberator.”

  He retrieved the chip as though he were picking up and holding a newborn babe. Now all he had to do was break into the damn thing. Simple, right?

  A few hours later, Niko was ready to pull his hair out.

  At first, hearing the preprogrammed voice of “Serina” asking for security codes was cool. She sounded hot for an AI—all prim and proper like. He loved it.

  For all of ten minutes.

  Her repeated denials were starting to give him a complex. And a raging headache.

  Bleary-eyed, Niko stared at the dark screen and input yet another decryption code, the sixth one he’d written. After that lengthy process was complete, he rested his forehead on his desk and waited.

  He was nearly asleep when Serina’s sultry reply, “Access granted,” sent him bolt upright.

  It took a few seconds for his vision to come into focus, but when it did he realized he hadn’t been dreaming. “Access granted,” he repeated tiredly, and then a jolt of reality hit him. “Access granted?!” He sat back, ran his fingers through his hair, and then linked them behind his head as the screen began filling up with precious code. “Serina, baby, I love you.”

  His heart was pounding, adrenaline giving him a final burst of energy. Enough to finish the job and copy the intel onto his drive before realizing he needed to hit the toilet, because his bladder was about to burst.

  Rion was going to owe him big.

  FOURTEEN

  * * *

  * * *

  Captain’s quarters, Ace of Spades

  The deep pressure in Rion’s chest built as she brought up the intel Niko had patched into her quarters. Absently, she rubbed the place above her sternum, the knotting sensation spreading and pushing all the way up her throat. The crew was anxious to know what the buoy contained, but she needed to read it alone first—a good idea given the fact that her insides were already in an uproar. She had no idea what she’d find, and she’d rather have a mental breakdown in the privacy of her own quarters.

  Barely able to swallow, heart doing a wild dance, she pulled up the files, bypassing the long list of automatic systems reports and heading right for the priority alpha message.

  Professor Anders captured. Obtained lock on her signal. Covenant ship leaving Arcadia, preparing slipspace jump. Intercepted communication. . . . Hard coordinates obtained. Spinning up FTL drives. Intend to follow. Serina out.

  Rion stared at the screen in utter disbelief. Coordinates. Actual coordinates. Not certain whether she was going to cheer or vomit, she shot to her feet and went straight for the whiskey. With a shaky hand, she splashed amber liquid into a glass and tipped the entire contents back. Refilled and repeated.

  She swiped her hand across her mouth and let out a ragged breath, eyes stinging.

  Coordinates. Dear God. She’d never thought . . .

  Theories had abounded when the Spirit of Fire had been listed as MIA—and one in particular had caught her grandfather’s interest. Several years after the ship went missing, a rumor began floating around that she might have been involved in a battle at Arcadia. No real proof or intel though.

  But now, Captain Webb’s journal and the buoy confirmed that rumor as truth.

  They’d been alive when they went after Anders. And if Rion’s memory was correct, nothing ever came around the rumor mill of any sightings after that.

  Until now.

  With a shaky hand, she keyed the coordinates into the ship’s nav system to pull up a star map. Only no shipping maps or old military maps in Ace’s databanks appeared. The coordinates were outside of any mapped system they had at their disposal. “Uncharted space,” she murmured, sitting back and sighing heavily.

  The whiskey had warmed her belly and had taken off the volatile edge she’d felt earlier. Uncharted space. They’d be flying in blind. No idea what they’d find or what they might run into, though it was relatively safe to assume the Covenant ship had known where it was going. It would hardly run itself into a sun or planet.

  Though that was twenty-six years ago. . . .

  Rion stared at the coordinates for another few minutes before alerting the crew. They were about to go sailing in unknown waters.

  “Uh, Cap?”

  “Yeah, Less?”

  “We have a ship approaching Arcadia. It’s the Covenant war-freighter.”

  Looked like Gek had finally found them. The time to go where he couldn’t follow. Rion leaned forward. “Sending you coordinates. Let’s get the hell out of here.”

  PART FOUR

  * * *

  * * *

  SNAKE EYES

  FIFTEEN

  * * *

  * * *

  Ace of Spades, uncharted space, four days later

  Ace dropped out of slipspace and traveled another four and a half hours at top sub-light-speed before finally approaching the coordinates given by the Spirit of Fire’s AI, Serina.

  Visually, there seemed to be nothing out there in the way of scrap—just darkness broken up by the distant flecks of other stars and systems.

  From her chair on the bridge, Rion checked the data again. “Cade?”

  “I’m seeing what you’re seeing, but this is it.”

  Rion’s finger tapped on the armrest, quickly and tersely, a tiny reflection of the enormous tension and impatience stirring inside her. “Take a look around. You all know the drill. Let’s treat this like we usually do. Start hunting. When you find something, let me know.” She stood and headed off the bridge.

  “Cap,” Lessa called her back, “I’m picking up a small dwarf signature about three points on the starboard quarter. It’s the only thing in range. . . .”

  Rion returned to main controls. Cade and Niko were monitoring as well. “Guys?” she asked them.

  Cade shook his head. “Still nothing.”

  “Same here. Just the dwarf,” Niko added.

  “All right, take us to the star, then, and we’ll see what we can find. Less, how long?”

  Lessa input and received her calculations. “Um, an hour and thirty minutes if we do a two-G burst and coast?” Unsure, she looked to Cade.

  Amusement flickered across his face. “That’s about right, give or take.”

  “Good. Make it happen. Let me know when we get there.” Rion left the bridge.

  Without bothering to change into workout gear, she went to the small gym attached to the med bay, first stopping by to check Ram’s cryo-chamber before stepping onto the treadmill and walking—walking and thinking, the kind of vague, unfocused mind-rambling that meant nothing and led nowhere.

  An hour and change later, Cade called her back.

  When Rion arrived on deck, instead of black space greeting her, the viewscreen was filled with a field of asteroids orbiting a brown dwarf star.

  “Move us in for a closer look.” Rion stepped to her chair, standing behind it, hands gripping the backrest. All the calm she’d found on the treadmill completely evaporated, replaced with a hum of anticipation as Cade navigated Ace toward the asteroid belt.

  “Holy shit. Is that . . .” Niko popped out of his chair and leaned over his controls, peering in disbelief. “Is that . . . metal?”

  Rion approached the viewscreen with a frown on her face and butterflies in her gut. He was right. Massive chunks of alloy floated by amid smaller bits and pieces of what appeared to be wreckage and infrastructure on a massive scale. Conduits, cables, masonry . . . Part of a bridge sailed past, its great pylon still sunk into a large chunk of rock. The scale of it, the entire scene, was surreal and unexpected.

  “Uh . . .” Lessa said. “Someone tell me that’s not a mountain.”

  Except, as crazy as it seemed, there
was a mountain out there, floating past them as though a colossal hand had reached down through the clouds of some forgotten planet, sunk its enormous fingers into the ground, and ripped the jagged peak from its range and flung it into space.

  Cade shot to his feet. “Wait. That’s a ship fragment.”

  Rion saw it too: the sleek piece of metal slowly tumbling into view. “Niko, can you magnify that?” In seconds, an image of what appeared to be a wing came into focus, though unlike any that Rion had ever seen. “Grab the image and move it to the table.” She stepped to his console, leaned over it, and hit a button on the commpad. “Hey, Kip, we need you up here.”

  A beat passed. “Sure. Be right up.”

  As they waited, the mood on the bridge was one of shock, excitement, and confusion. Cade was the first to say what they all were thinking. “This is planetary debris.”

  “Could it be what’s left of the coordinates?” Lessa asked as Kip came onto the bridge. “The coordinates the Spirit of Fire was headed to? Maybe there was a battle and the whole planet was somehow destroyed, and some of it came here, getting pulled into the star’s orbit.”

  Kip joined Rion at the table as the others discussed the possibilities. “What do you think?” she asked him as he paused by her side, his attention already glued on the wing.

  “Boss, you’re not going to believe this,” Niko said.

  She was almost afraid to ask. “What is it?”

  “Getting a strange . . . hold on.” He frowned. “This keeps getting weirder and weirder. There’s some kind of energy shield out there. . . .”

  Rion hurried to Niko’s console. “Where?” she asked, peering over his shoulder.

  “There.” He pointed at the blip on his screen. “It’s in the debris field.”

  “Cade, navigate us into the field and put us within visual range of that signal,” Rion ordered.

  She straightened and watched with rapt attention as Ace eased into the field, Cade executing a series of thrusts and drifts in order to maneuver safely amid the debris and on through to the coordinates of the energy signature.

  “What is that?” Niko asked as Ace reversed thrust and then settled in orbit with a large chunk of detritus ringed by a shield of translucent blue. Beyond the shield was a ruin built on a jagged, broken bit of earth the size of a large freighter and blackened as though flash-burned.

  “I’ve never seen a wing design like this before,” Kip said under his breath, still studying the image.

  “Niko?” Rion prompted, more interested in the ruins.

  “The shield is reading similar to Covenant energy barriers. But . . . not.” He glanced up at her. “But where there’s a shield, there’s a reason. Right?”

  “There’s an atmosphere down there, and gravity,” Lessa said. “The levels are near perfect for us. You think this might be human? A colony? Or what’s left of one?”

  No one said it, but they were all thinking about the Spirit of Fire and her crew of eleven thousand souls. . . .

  Rion refused to get her hopes up, but that barrier had to be protecting something. And if there were humans down there, if that chunk was some sort of refuge, they were honor-bound to take a look. She went to her chair and sat down, thoughts churning, adrenaline pumping, and her good sense warring with the desire to throw caution to the wind and surge ahead. The crew glanced back at her, ready for orders, just as eager as she was to move forward. “We proceed with caution. Let’s test that barrier.”

  * * *

  It took some time for Niko to tinker with his beloved drone Michelle—another one of his modified toys—before they were able to launch her into space and navigate her toward the energy barrier.

  “She’s entering now.” Niko’s nose was glued to his controls as Michelle slipped through the barrier. A few seconds passed before reports began flowing in. “She looks good. . . . Ooh, this is . . . surprising. Picking up life signs. Signal is faint, though, coming from the interior, possibly several meters down from the surface.” His head lifted and he met Rion’s gaze. “Everything else looks golden. Michelle says we’re good to go in.”

  “Double-check everything.” Rion pulled up the readouts on her small screen, scanning them, looking for any sign that might indicate caution. But Michelle’s integrity remained the same—her sensors indicated green across the board. From all accounts, the energy barrier was a simple environmental field, preventing gases from entering or escaping, and allowing solid matter to pass through unharmed.

  “No, there’s nothing,” Niko said. “All reports say we’re good.”

  Cade was currently monitoring Ace’s position in the field while Lessa kept an eye on rogue debris in their vicinity. Kip was still examining the wing, turning the image this way and that and then keying in searches, trying to find a match. She hadn’t had much time to look at it, but as Kip continued his examination, something stirred in her memory and—

  “Rion.” Cade’s voice drew her attention away from the wing.

  The crew was staring at her, waiting as Ace was poised at the edge of the energy shield. “Take us in.”

  Ace slipped through the shield. The strange translucent glow rolled over the bow and continued on through the ship like a blue-tinted wave, covering everything in its path. Rion half expected it to tingle or burn—or worse—as it traveled over them, but there was nothing. She checked her sensors once they were inside the shield and all systems remained normal.

  “Niko, switch to ground view.” Rion watched the viewscreen as the surface appeared. There were signs of vegetation, long dead, and a wide flagstone road that led to the building, though it was cracked and buckled in places. Because of the deterioration and the state of the road and structure, it was difficult to match a civilization to the ruins they were seeing. They had to take a closer look.

  First, they needed to find a good spot to land Ace. Cade, however, was already one step ahead and guiding the ship toward part of a large slab of uneven rock that rose from the ground, part of a cliff face where Ace might find a measure of protection.

  SIXTEEN

  * * *

  * * *

  Unknown ruin, debris field, uncharted space

  After a quick rundown with the crew, Rion and Cade suited up and paid a visit to the weapons store. One assault rifle, three sidearms, and a sack of grenades later, they were out of the airlock and heading down the ramp. The surface wasn’t entirely dark; the energy barrier cast a soft blue haze over the ground, reminding Rion of a moonlit night back on Earth.

  “Confirming earlier readings. Pressure is right on target. Temp’s a balmy sixty-one degrees.” Cade moved slowly over the ground while scanning the readouts on his commpad. “Nitrogen, oxygen, argon, carbon dioxide . . . Gravity’s almost on target too, a little under one G.” With that, he released the locks on his helmet.

  “Cade—”

  Helmet off, he breathed in deeply and gave her a megawatt smile. “Atmosphere. Check.”

  “Smart-ass.” Rion removed her helmet, clipping it to the back of her waistband before pressing the nodule on her collar. “Switching to wrist comms and external audio.”

  “The life signs are still too faint for a clean reading. Definitely underground though. We’ll keep monitoring and let you know if anything changes,” Lessa said, her voice loud and clear through Rion’s earpiece.

  “Michelle’s at the end of that road. There’s a door into the structure,” Niko added. “Forty degrees from your position. Should be about sixty meters or so.”

  “So you mean right around the corner,” Cade replied in a flat tone, shaking his head.

  “Well, if you want to get technical.”

  Rion smiled. “Ready?”

  Cade answered by pulling his assault rifle from his back and over his shoulder. “Am now.”

  They kept to the rocks, mirroring the path of the flagstone road and keeping
their eyes peeled for any movement and checking the motion sensors in their comms, which were able to pick up movement within a ten-meter radius. Not exactly top-of-the-line sensor grade, but useful nonetheless.

  “Any luck on that wing, Kip?” Rion asked as they edged around several blocks of cut stone.

  Kip’s tone sounded a little bewildered. “Uh. Yeah. Some of the designs match up to a couple of images I found from a xenoarchaeological paper. That wing, I think, is—”

  “Forerunner,” Rion whispered as they came around the stones to find the door Niko had mentioned. Where the blackened surface of the structure gave way to smooth stone, a line of Forerunner glyphs was visible. Ancient. Precise. And utterly impressive. “This entire place is a Forerunner site,” she said with disbelief, turning in a circle and now seeing the ruins for what they were.

  “Any movement on those life signs?” Cade asked as they proceeded to the threshold of the tall entryway.

  “The building must have multiple floors underground,” Niko replied. “Whoever or whatever it is must be way down. Hard to tell how many—getting a lot of strange signal interference.”

  “If this is Forerunner,” Cade said, pausing to glance at Rion, “then who the hell is down there?”

  “Good question. Let’s find out.”

  Rion slipped inside the building. A few steps in, a blue beam swept over her and Cade. Immediately after, the floor lit up with a blue-white light filling in glyphs and patterns in the floor and forming a path that led them inside to a center console that glowed more brightly than anything in the area.