Eaters of the Light

by J. Edward Neill

  But the time for talk was over.

  I reached over his shoulder and unsheathed his weapon. He stared, surprised to see it had survived our fall.

  “The Gamma Suit soaked up our fall.” I thrust the weapon in his hands. “Good thing, too. Otherwise your gun would’ve been dust.”

  At a meter long and only a few centimeters wide, the slender black rifle didn’t look like much. But I knew its power. The Milky Way armies had used them for centuries.

  “You see a Strigoi, you fire.” I said. “And don’t worry—it won’t run out of power. You’d have to fire it a half-million times before its accelerator died.”

  “Who made this thing?” he asked.

  “It’s based on an Earth weapon.” I thought of Joff. “It fires balls of magnetized, superheated gas.”

  “Gas?”

  “Like tiny suns.” I clarified. “The original…a friend I knew…he used a larger version. With it, he defeated dozens of Strigoi by himself.”

  “Oh.” Strope looked humbled. “What about you? How many have you defeated?”

  I looked down at him. In his slender white spacesuit, he seemed so small.

  “Billions,” I told him.

  Rifle in hand, he wandered a few steps into the dark. The walls, the floor, everything was hard, black bone, as though we’d fallen into the ribcage of a colossal, star-eating skeleton.

  Strope’s footsteps made no sound.

  Nothing did.

  “There’s one more thing.” I walked up beside him.

  He gazed into the endless dark corridor. I could see by the look in his eyes he expected legions of Strigoi to pour out of the gloom and annihilate us.

  Which they very well might.

  “I need to vaccinate you,” I said.

  “I’m already vaccinated.” He shook his head. “Standard procedure for every new child on Hermes. Well…except for Mahtim.”

  “In here, in this place…” I stared him down. “…the draining will be stronger. It’ll get into your suit, in-between your cells, and you’ll become one of them. But I can protect you. I just need to give you a few hundred of my light-nodes. They’ll free-float in your bloodstream. It was my original purpose – to protect my companion from the draining.”

  “Wait—”

  I closed my eyes and released two-hundred light nodes from my cortical plug. In less than a second, they slipped out of me and into the microscopic cracks of his suit. His eyes widened when the tiny blue lights entered his helmet and curled up into his nose.

  “God—” He shuddered. “That feels strange.”

  “Imagine how it feels for me.” I raised one eyebrow. “I can see your insides.”

  He made a face and then peered into the corridor again. We knew the Coffin Engine was massive. I did a quick calculation, and I knew the outer ring in which we stood stretched at least seven-thousand kilometers.

  “This place we’re in,” I said, “it’s not meant for walking. I see patterns in the bone-wall. There’s perforations above and below us. Whatever energy they use to break gravity and murder stars…it passes through here before exiting into space.”

  “Meaning if they fire this thing, we’re dust,” Strope quipped.

  I shrugged.

  At least it won’t hurt.

  I took the lead. Strope staggered behind me, his footing clumsy on the bone-textured floor. Walking felt foolish, but I had a plan, and to keep Strope motivated I knew we had to keep moving.

  “The body rebels against stagnation,” I said as we clambered across a bone hummock.

  “What?” He caught up to me.

  “Sitting still,” I said. “We can’t do it. The Vark know we’re here. They might wait for us to walk ourselves to death, but it’s not likely. They’ll expect us to have a purpose for injecting ourselves into this place. They’ll come for us. And not on foot.”

  He struggled with my meaning.

  And then it found him.

  “You want to steal their ship when they attack us,” he said. “But how will you—”

  “Pilot it?” I cut him off. “Don’t worry. I’ve done it before.”

  We began our march into the deep, dark cavern. The hollow void felt infinite, forever rounding the Coffin Engine. We leapt over cracks, circumvented giant pits, and climbed over massive lumps in the bone mortar. We saw no doors, no windows, no way in or out.

  For all we knew, we could’ve walked through the emptiness until the end of time.

  But it’s not empty, I knew.

  Its controls are here.

  Somewhere in the dark.

  In my mind, I calculated we’d march dozens of kilometers before the Strigoi found us.

  In reality, it took far less time.

  I clambered over another hump of bone and petrified sinew.

  I waited for Strope to catch up.

  And I glimpsed black shapes breaking the emptiness far ahead.

  With my left hand, I shoved Strope down into a crevice. He yelped in surprise, tumbling like a child in the dark.

  “Stay down,” I hissed. “Two ships. Straight ahead.”

  Dead silent in the vacuum, darker somehow than the abyss, two Strigoi scythes came for us. They fit easily into the giant hollow cavern, gliding through the shadows like knives. Through the Gamma Suit’s visor, they looked ghastly white, but I knew their true color. They were made of the same stuff atop which I stood, the same black bones stretching to endless depths beneath me.

  I crouched.

  I leveled my arm-cannon.

  And just as the first ship approached, I jumped.

  For all the things the Strigoi had learned about me, they’d yet to experience my newest weapon. The Gamma’s powerful legs sent me soaring into the darkness, and the white beam leaping from my arm-cannon’s tip cut a sharp line into the night. For a moment, it seemed the sun had arisen inside the Coffin Engine. The black walls trembled at the sight, and the darkness thereafter felt weaker.

  The beam hit the scythe ship’s nose. The black material holding the ship together melted away. As the ship flew beyond me, it split down its center into two pieces.

  I only wished I could’ve heard the sound of it crashing into the Engine’s walls, the terrible thunder of bones snapping.

  And Strigoi dying.

  The second ship came to a silent halt a few thousand meters ahead. I knew the Strigoi mind. They’d seen me destroy their first ship, and they were no longer fearful to use their death-beams.

  They know my light can do far more damage than their dark.

  I hit the ground hard. I felt the vibration in my bones, the Gamma’s boots absorbing the impact. The scythe ship angled its nose down at me, leveling its death-beam. I jumped just as it fired. The cold, swirling gas streamed beyond me and burned a gaping fissure in the floor.

  Again, I landed hard. And again, I leapt high into the darkness. Closing the distance, I advanced on the scythe ship several hundred meters per leap. I knew the death-beam’s timing—I’d learned the pattern centuries ago.

  Land.

  Wait a half-second.

  Jump.

  Repeat.

  I could’ve destroyed the Strigoi weapon. The black proboscis jutting from the scythe ship’s underbelly made an easy target.

  But I wanted it intact.

  It was Strope who altered the plan.

  I heard him scream my name, and I saw golden balls of light erupt from the crevice into which I’d pushed him. He fired his weapon again and again, and the golden spheres hit the scythe’s wings, pocking white holes in the ship’s hull.

  “Stop,” I shouted in my helmet.

  I knew he heard me.

  But he didn’t listen.

  The death-beam proboscis swiveled and aimed at him. The Strigoi knew he was an easy target. One blast would be enough to melt his bones into the floor.

  Brave. I shook my head as I soared into the darkness again.

  But foolish.

  I fired as I ascended. The blazi
ng white light hit the scythe ship’s bottom, burning away its weapon. The curling bones holding the death-beam in place melted away like paper in a roaring fire.

  Wounded, the ship accelerated into the dark.

  But I was already atop it.

  Crouched on its wing, balancing as it soared away from Strope’s endless stream of fire, I crawled toward the lump of cranial bone atop the Strigoi craft. A few thousand meters down the tunnel, the ship swiveled and spun around. The Strigoi wanted me to tumble to my death.

  I grabbed a bone protrusion.

  And I held tight.

  The scythe ship hovered in place, and I knelt atop it. Gripping a lump of bone with my left hand, I pulled with all my might. It snapped as it broke. I tore through another, clawing my way through the scythe ship’s top.

  Let me in, I kept digging.

  This is my ship now.

  I pulled the arm-cannon’s trigger ever so slightly, and a burst of light melted a cluster of rib-like spokes.

  The hull broke open.

  I let myself fall inside.

  The ship began to move. The two Strigoi pilots never saw me. They were distracted, accelerating toward whatever dark hangar from which they’d come.

  I fell upon them from above.

  A thousand years ago, no one would ever have dared fight two Strigoi hand-to-hand. They were three meters tall, and strong enough to pry a human apart with their bare, skeletal hands. Their draining power would’ve sucked the life out of any organism who dared touch them.

  But not me.

  I landed in the heart of their cockpit. The first once glanced at me with its four white eyes blazing. I smacked it so hard with the arm-cannon that its skull split and the black orb it called a brain burst out onto the floor, shattering like glass.

  The other stood to face me. Its rifle lay too far away, and so it came for me with its skeletal hands outstretched, its jaws wide-open. I caught it by the throat with my armored left hand, jerked its head up, and loosed a tiny burst of radiance from my arm-cannon straight into its black-ribbed chest.

  In the terrible light, the machines pumping beneath the Strigoi’s ribs shriveled and died. The monster fell from my grasp and shrank to the cockpit floor, its insides turning to ash.

  The ship was mine.

  I settled into one of its two chairs, a throne made of ligaments, skulls, and writhing bundles of oil-filled tubes.

  The last time I’d piloted a Strigoi craft had been more than a thousand years ago. I’d slipped into its computer in nano-form and caused it to destroy its fellow ships.

  Saved Joff’s life, I remembered.

  And started a war that’ll never end.

  I seized the control stick. It wasn’t so different from the Sabre’s. With one easy motion, I spun the scythe around and guided the ship back toward Strope.

  I’m coming, Commander.

  Try not to shoot me.

  Digging Graves

  “I was only trying to help,” Strope argued. “That’s why you brought me, right? To save you when you do something stupid?”

  I couldn’t help but feel affection for him. His too-small spacesuit seemed childlike in the scythe ship’s massive chair. He’d risked his life to save me, but what he didn’t know was that the hardest fight was yet to come.

  And I need him to survive a little while longer.

  “It’s my fault for not warning you,” I conceded. “You were just doing what felt right.”

  “Why?” he asked.

  “Why what?”

  “Why didn’t you want to destroy the death-beam?”

  I looked over the Strigoi console. Every switch, button, and control lever was made of bone. The interface was organic—no fancy floating blue lights, no vid screens.

  All of it…

  …an instrument for dealing death.

  “If they send more ships, which they will, I wanted the beam active. So we could…you know…fire back.”

  “Oh.” He sank into the chair.

  “Don’t worry,” I said. “I have another idea.”

  I flexed my fingers and considered the mess of organic machinery before me. There wasn’t enough time to learn it all. I needed absolute knowledge, and I needed it quickly.

  Closing my eyes, I released a thousand nano-light nodes from my body.

  I’d given up much of myself to invade the imprisoned Strigoi’s mind.

  I’d given more to immunize Strope against the draining.

  With another thousand floating free, I felt the loss of so many begin to take its toll.

  “You ok?” Strope asked.

  “I’m sending a part of myself into the ship’s console.” I shivered. “I’ll be able to steer the ship without using…” I gestured at the Strigoi controls. “…this mess.”

  “I’ve never felt so useless in my life.” He shook his head. “You don’t even need me, do you?”

  Your time will come, I wanted to say.

  And then you’ll wish you had more of it.

  Separated from my body, my light nodes penetrated the Strigoi console. It wasn’t well-protected. The scythe ship, just like nearly all Strigoi creations, was a mass-produced killing machine. Its purposes were simple:

  Fly

  Destroy.

  I found what I needed within seconds. I blinked my body’s dizziness away and seized control of the ship with my mind. The engines hummed to life, and we lifted off the ground. In seconds, we were soaring through the Coffin Engine’s vast outer corridor.

  As we flew, and as Strope filled the silence with chatter about the weapon I’d given him, I realized something:

  The scythe ship resembled the Sabre in too many ways to be coincidental.

  The position of the chairs, the shape of the cockpit window, and the harsh angles of its black interior felt too familiar. I remembered the early settlements of Hermes had been the first to make contact with the enemy, and had sent data back to Earth to help in the inevitable war.

  We copied Strigoi technology.

  We used it against them.

  I remembered something else, something Joff had once told me. During his battle with the Strigoi near the orbits of two massive stars, the enemy had talked to him. They’d invaded the Sabre’s audio ports and said many things.

  ‘We are you,’ they told him. ‘You are us.’

  It remained the one part of the puzzle I’d yet to wrap my mind around.

  Do they mean we’ll one day become like them?

  Do they envy us…our bodies…our ability to survive beneath the stars?

  Or is it something else?

  “What are you thinking about?” Strope broke into my daydream.

  “Where to stop,” I said. “Where to break through and enter the Coffin Engine’s inner core.”

  It wasn’t a complete lie. I’d segmented my mind to think many things at once.

  “What else?” He persisted.

  “I was just thinking…” I thought hard on my words. “Of all the body shapes, of all the lifeforms the Varkolak could’ve chosen to model themselves after.”

  “They look almost human,” he said.

  “Almost.” I nodded. “Two legs. Two arms. A skull very humanlike…save for the eyes. Five fingers. Five toes. They’ve looked this way for millions upon millions of years. The implication is—”

  “Humans didn’t originate in the Milky Way,” he said. “We were somewhere else first.”

  I admired his quickness.

  “If things were different, I’d like to know the answers,” I admitted. “Instead of destroying, I’d rather be learning. I’ve broken down my walls and allowed myself to know many things. But in doing so, I realize I know nothing.”

  “Sounds like you’re human after all.” He grinned.

  He didn’t ask anything else. In silence, we moved untouched through the Coffin Engine shadows. The Strigoi knew what we’d done—I sensed their pings within the ship’s computer. If I closed my eyes, I swore I heard their voices.
r />   “Closer…come closer,” they whispered.

  “The end is near, Lightbringer.”

  I couldn’t tell whether I’d imagined the voices or whether the dark signals flowing through the ship’s hardware carried messages they knew I’d find.

  I blinked and shut the voices out.

  For seven-hundred and seventy-seven kilometers, we flew. Nothing changed in the corridors outside. The vast empty tunnel, ribbed with billions of bones and dark, oily ligaments, stretched into forever. For all my intellect, I couldn’t conceive how they’d made such a massive machine.

  To imagine it was to imagine entire planets harvested—oceans of rock, metal, and life boiled into an oily soup and reshaped into the building blocks of Strigoi material.

  They had no practical reason to make their ships’ innards as horrific as their skeletal selves.

  But they do it anyway.

  Without warning, I slowed the ship and brought it down to the tunnel’s bottom. The scythe rattled as it scraped against the rib-like floor. And all become quiet.

  “Why here?” Strope looked at me. “Are they coming?”

  “No. We’re close to a hangar. Twenty ships, just like this one. Eight-hundred meters away.”

  He stood and looked out the cockpit window. I saw the white tint of his x-ray visor flash in the dark.

  “I don’t see anything,” he said. “The tunnel...it just keeps going.”

  I stood beside him. “That’s right. It goes all the way around. It’s just one continuous ring. But there’s other layers. Beneath us. In the floor.”

  “We’re leaving the ship?” He looked worried.

  I pushed a black panel on the cockpit wall, and the door creaked open. Strigoi ships had no airlocks, and so we emerged into the tunnel with a single step. It felt like breaking out of a coffin and into a graveyard.

  I led Strope ten steps away.

  The ship lifted off behind us. In seconds it was gone, gliding soundlessly into the endless dark.

  “Wait…that thing has autopilot?” He looked impressed.

  “No,” I said. “A part of me is still inside it.”

  He paled, but said nothing. He understood. I’d sacrificed a part of myself to send the ship away.