by Hugh Howey
He shoved the needle into the biggest of them.
Molly felt a burning sensation up and down her arm. She groaned as blood squirted out the back of the needle and splashed against the man’s apron.
“Damn!” He fumbled with a valve at the end of the needle and got it closed; Molly fought to not pass out. She watched him place several strips of tape across the inserted device before untangling coils of clear tubing and hanging empty bags from the side of the table.
Across the room, the other two men chuckled at something, making the scene too bizarre for Molly to comprehend. The laughter and horror didn’t mix, they just wrapped around each other, swirling like oil and water.
A distant voice called out amid the laughter: “Hey Paulie, anything you spill is coming out of your cut!”
And that really got them going.
21
Anlyn pulled out of Edison’s embrace as the hyperdrive traces flared up on the nav screen. She tapped him on the shoulder and pointed. Edison glanced at her screen and grunted at the results.
“We just missed them!” Anlyn said.
Edison brought up a different display on his own screen and typed something on the keyboard. The info showed on Anlyn’s as well, but she couldn’t read any of the numbers. Still, she didn’t have to know what they said. The intensity of the signatures was more than enough.
“This is impossible,” Anlyn said. “You don’t see traces like this except for right after someone jumps. These are too fresh to be—”
“They’re a week old,” Edison said.
“No, love, these are brand new.” She hit the zoom button, bringing the scope out. The traces were spread throughout the entire system. Hundreds of them. “This doesn’t make any sense.”
“The computer says they’re a week old, and it has a destination.”
“A destination? They all go to the same place?”
Edison grunted. “You’re right. This doesn’t make any sense.”
“What? Where do they lead?” She hated not being able to read the screen, relying on just the raw images.
Edison flipped over to the nav chart, pulling it up on both screens. He zoomed in on a single point.
“Here,” he said.
Anlyn couldn’t read the name under the object, but she recognized the symbol from Bern charts. It was a star. A class V star.
“They jumped into a star? So the traces are blowback.” Anlyn shook her head. “That explains the strength and age. Maybe they are a week old. But still, why would they… why jump into a star?”
“I’m not a big fan of the prophecy,” Edison said. “You know that. But I also don’t like coincidences. Do you think—?”
“That the Bern are gone? Mass suicide? No. Only because I’ve learned to not jump to my favorite conclusions.”
“Give me an alternative.”
“Okay…” Anlyn thought for a moment. “They scuttled their ships before moving off, keeping them out of our hands.”
Edison frowned.
“Or they… maybe it was a waste-disposal program.”
“Only if they were disposing themselves of ships. A dozen of these signatures come up as the same class and model as this one.”
“Maybe there’s a rift in the center of that star!”
Edison shook his head. “Wouldn’t work. The mass in the star would just leak out to the other side. No, I think they did it on purpose. Maybe they figured out some way to slingshot past your barrier. They could be attacking Drenard right now.”
“Don’t say that. And we were on Drenard a week ago. I—should we still go explore one of these stations, or should we jump along a few trade routes until we bump into someone? There’s a ton of settled worlds on this map.”
“What about jumping after them?” Edison asked.
“What? Jump into the center of that star? Have you melted your mind?”
“It was just a suggestion,” Edison said. “Then again, think about it, think about where we are. This is the front line of the Bern-Drenard war. We’re standing in the trenches of the most important standoff in your history. Do you really think they just left? Or that they killed themselves? I think it’s more likely they aren’t here because the front has moved elsewhere.”
“I know you hate it when I say this, but I don’t understand. Even without the English.”
Edison blew out his breath, then sucked in another deep one. “At almost the exact instant your Circle voted to change a tactic that has been in place for thousands and thousands of years, the moment they decided to move out of their arm of the Milky Way, the Bern disappear? Like I said, I loathe coincidences more than I hate prophecies.”
“More?” Anlyn asked, doubting him.
“Absolutely. A prophecy might be nothing more than a prediction, or a well-reasoned theory with flowery language. A major coincidence like this? I just don’t buy it.”
“What they did, if these scans are correct, it seems suicidal,” Anlyn said. “Desperate. Like something we should be celebrating instead of getting worried about.” Anlyn looked from the screens to the orbital base they had been approaching. “I say we go check out that station, maybe broadcast our message a few more times.”
Edison lowered his brows, peering at the distant station. Eventually, he nodded. “That seems logical. Still, something tells me we should follow them, but perhaps there is more to that than just jumping to a precise spot. A modification of some sort…”
“Exactly,” Anlyn said, not enjoying his line of reasoning. She turned to one of the stations and increased thrust. Edison adjusted the SADAR for her so she could see any major debris in the way. But no matter how much he played with the gain, the SADAR remained dominated by the hyperdrive traces: bright, big blooms of pixilated energy.
They were like the ghosts of something fierce, haunting the dark closet Anlyn had been taught to fear her entire life. But now, having stepped through that mystical and lore-filled door, she had found the closet to be perfectly empty, a prospect somehow worse.
As they approached one of the traces, she felt her cold side dominating. The absence of the bad men—not knowing where they were right then—was far more powerful than their presence. It was as if they could be around any corner, or off doing worse things than merely lurking in her imagination.
Anlyn found herself holding her breath as she flew through the hyperdrive trace, a hollow feeling in her chest matching the ghostlike apparitions hanging in the void. As she pierced the image, she thought about what would drive someone to jump into the center of a star, and the fear she had felt when Edison had hinted at doing just that.
22
At first, the attackers were nothing more than extra blurs below, mere background noise in the bizarre world in which Cole had found himself. It wasn’t until objects on the deck fell still—as dead bodies are wont to do—that Cole realized something was amiss.
Out of a blur, a body appeared on the deck, its limbs at odd angles, a large pool of blood popping into existence with incredible speed.
The fur-clad guards at the base of the platform stomped up the steps, and Cole wondered for a moment if his jailors were about to become his protectors. He looked to Byrne, expecting some words of wisdom or advice.
“Kill the One!” Byrne barked to the men.
Cole rose from his seat and backed away. “Wait!” he said.
Two of the men pulled out long wooden handles and wielded them as if they contained blades. After seeing what had happened to Riggs’s leg, Cole didn’t feel like testing the illusion.
One of the men lunged forward, raising his arms. Cold grabbed his metal chair; he spun and slung it at the man’s face.
It flew right at the man, turning once in the air—and then it split in two, falling to either side and past the guy. Cole glanced at the ten meter drop to the deck—a height like a three-story building—and took another step back. Two of the men circled toward the other side of the mast, trying to get behind him.
Cole t
urned and moved toward the rear of the pedestal, hoping to put the large, flat tower between him and his attackers. One of the fur-shrouded figures yelled for him to stop—or yelled to the others to stop him. As Cole backed away, the man’s scream plummeted through several octaves and seemed to draw out forever. He also noticed the blurs moving across the deck below had turned into statues, and the men running after him on the pedestal seemed to swim through molasses.
Still—they slowly gained, and Cole could sense they would soon pierce whatever barrier he had stepped through and be upon him with their swords. With no place to run, the decision to jump no longer seemed like a decision at all. Cole moved to the edge of the pedestal and nearly lost his balance as it twitched beneath his feet. He knelt down, grabbed the lip, and lowered himself over the edge to minimize the fall. Holding on by his fingertips, he had a brief pang of doubt before letting go.
He kept his body spread out across the smooth metal surface, hoping the friction from his flightsuit would slow the fall. It worked better than it should have, as he almost seemed to float to the ground, sliding through the air as if it were fluid. When he hit the deck, however, his knees still buckled from the height of the fall. Cole rolled with the impact, pushed up into a crouch, and looked around, wondering where to run to, which small metal building to hide inside of, when the men from above came raining down around him with uncanny slowness.
Cole dashed between two of them before they could get to their feet, and several other fighters across the deck noticed him. One of them pointed, and the rest gave chase. Cole sprinted into one of the alleys created by the squat structures, angling toward the port side of the deck. As he got away from the mast, everyone started to move at the same rate of time again—and most of them in his direction.
Fleeing through the haphazard twists and turns of the tight alleys reminded Cole of his nefarious Portuguese childhood. He felt right at home as he changed directions repeatedly, snaking his way aft.
Skirting the wide clearing from earlier, he tried to get his bearings, to locate the room they’d kept him and Riggs in. Several times, he found himself dodging hellish scenes of gore littered across the deck. Dead bodies—some clad in so much fur they looked like roadkill—lay in hacked up pieces amid large pools of blood. They weren’t the only dead; the other figures that had shown up lay here and there in white combat gear turned grisly shades of pink by the time Cole ran past.
When he came to a wider area with less cover, Cole glanced back to find several pursuers gaining on him. He looked ahead again just in time to dodge around another puddle of death; he ran past the nastiness while searching for an alley to dodge down.
Checking over his shoulder, Cole saw that two pursuers had attempted to cut him off. They slipped in the puddle of gore and fell, covered in blood. Cole darted behind one of the low buildings, then changed direction and ran directly aft, hopefully keeping the building between himself and those chasing after. Once he crossed the open area, he ran around the next shack and hugged the back, pausing to catch his breath. He knew he couldn’t keep up such a pace forever, especially not with his heart and adrenaline going full-bore.
He slowly made his way to the far side of the small shack, sucking in deep gulps of oxygen as he went. When he got to the corner, he peeked around and saw a cluster of men running toward an adjacent structure; they were following along in the last direction they’d seen him running. Cole looked forward, toward the bow of the moving village, and didn’t see any threats heading his way. He did, however, notice something familiar. The tall mast—the size of it from that distance and the buildings blocking the view of its base—it all looked identical to the first time he’d noticed it. He had to be close to the room he and Riggs had been held in.
Cole pressed his ear to the wall next to him. Nothing. But if Riggs was dead from his wounds, that’s exactly what he’d expect. And anyway, with the way people were blurred into motion while he was with Byrne—there was no telling how much time had passed during their conversation. Perhaps they’d already disposed of his body, or taken him someplace else.
He considered all these possibilities as he made his way around the side of the building. Shouts could be heard in the distance, growing closer. Cole stole around to the front of the small structure and pulled open the door he found there.
Bingo.
He immediately recognized the inclined racks with their dangling restraints, even though they seemed to have been rearranged. What’s more, he knew that tangy scent of blood, a hint of which remained in the air. He looked to the floor for signs of it, expecting to find a wide streak heading toward the drain along with dotted trails spurting off in one direction, but they had already cleaned it up. There was no sign of Riggs. Not even a part of him.
Cole turned to leave. Surely they would eventually look for him in the only room he’d been inside of. He wondered which direction he should head: aft into the unknown, or forward and toward the Firehawk. He was about to set foot outside and let fate decide for him, when loud footsteps began approaching from the side of the shack. Cole jumped back into the room and shut the door as quickly and quietly as he could.
The thunder of several running men passed, and a sense of panic crept up in Cole’s chest. What good is running? He thought. Where would I go?
The severity of his situation began to sink in: he was trapped in hyperspace with a collection of ancient Earth bandits, and the things Byrne had told him about the universe—the utter scale of time and space and destruction—it made all his petty concerns of self-preservation seem ridiculously small. Temporary, at best. The sane course of action, he began to suspect, had been to stay put. He should probably just step out with his hands up and turn himself in.
The sound of someone running up to the door ended that internal debate. The natural tendency to run—to protect himself—surged through his body, surfing a second wave of adrenaline. Cole grabbed the door handle and held it tight just as someone outside tried to operate it.
The bar twisted in his hands. He tried to grip it hard enough to make it seem locked, but it moved just enough—with the tension of tendons rather than steel—that he knew the person outside wouldn’t be fooled.
“Hey!”
The shout came through the door muffled but audible. Something thumped against the door, a hand or a lowered shoulder.
Again, with a dull thump.
Cole listened to two more before getting the timing down. He turned the handle the other direction, using the man’s pressure against him, and pulled the door open right before the next blow came.
A fur-clad man stumbled inside, waving his arms for balance. Cole kicked the side of one knee to help the figure go down faster. The man let out an agonized roar and fell, clutching his leg. Cole jumped on him immediately, the metallic taste of awful necessity rising up in his throat as he pictured himself killing this man with his bare hands.
He jumped for the guy’s back, hoping to strangle him from behind, but the man rolled out of the way and Cole ended up clutching his chest instead. He pulled himself on top of the figure; the man writhed in agony and kept trying to grab at the leg Cole had kicked.
Cole threw one of his own legs over the guy, straddling his waist. He kept his knees wide so the man on the bottom couldn’t buck him off, locked his heels under the figure’s legs to keep him from rolling over, and reached for his neck.
Ignoring the weak efforts to fend him off, Cole worked his hands past the fur, groping for raw flesh. The man’s goggles—his face swaddled and obscured—made the job easier. They allowed him to forget what he was trying to do; he could simply pretend there wasn’t a human inside.
Digging his thumbs into the soft depression below the Adam’s apple, Cole squeezed as hard as he could against the main arteries, pulling both hands toward each other with his thumbs.
He thought clinical thoughts. This was just a task. Something that needed doing.
The man grabbed Cole’s wrists, but he didn’t have the l
everage to do anything about the stranglehold. His hands just remained encircled there, gloveless and young-looking.
A weak croak, muffled by the fur, escaped the man’s mouth. Cole turned away from the sight of what he was doing. The man tried to say something; Cole dug his thumbs into the trachea, not wanting to hear. It sounded like the man was going into shock, complaining about how cold he was even with all that fur around him.
Cole concentrated on nothing but the throbbing against his palm as he waited for the life to eke out of the man’s body. He focused on the pulse, distracting himself with something mechanical. As it became difficult to distinguish the man’s raging heartbeat from his own, Cole knew the end was coming. The man’s hands loosened their grip around his wrists and fell away, his elbows striking the metal decking. Both hands remained there for a moment—empty, but still shaped as if to grasp something. Finally, they too sagged to the floor, slowly like something inside still provided resistance.
Cole maintained a tight grip, knowing that he would pretend to go out in the same circumstance, lashing out as soon as his attacker pulled away. He waited until the muscles in his arms burned and his knuckles ached—only then did he take his hands away, his stomach churning with disgust.
A few flakes of snow drifted in through the open door behind him. Cole turned and realized how brazen and exhibitionist the murder had been. Reaching out, he threw the door shut with a metallic bang, dropping the room into complete darkness. He pushed his goggles up to his brow and surveyed his victim in the light filtered through the semi-transparent ceiling. He knew what he needed to do to delay his capture.
He pulled the boots off first, and then the man’s fur jacket. He hesitated a moment before stripping the jerkins from his legs—more out of respect than embarrassment—then proceeded to loosen them up and tug them off as well.
The man’s body offered quite a bit of resistance, the heaviness of death forcing Cole to struggle with the pants. As they came free, he noticed the legs were slathered in a purple mess, like a war-paint of some sort. Setting the clothing aside, he reached for the strips of fur around the man’s face, having saved that for last. He hated to look, but he needed to see what he was doing in order to untangle the covering.
