14
Compared to the Rio recon team, the salvage engineers on Twenty-Five had been a circus troupe.
The shuttle kissed dirt right in the center of the settlement and emptied itself of five soldiers and the research doctor in record time, with Ash playing the part of the woozy caboose. By the time Ash unclipped her safety web and her boots hit the sulfur-splashed earth, Natalie and the others had already started setting up the command post nearby. She stepped away to look around, raising her hand to her forehead to block out the golden light of the late afternoon sun.
Beyond the boxy prefab buildings, the fields that once fed the colonists—corn, wheat, amaranth—were long dead, choked by craggy bloodsap brambles and trees covered with glittering fractal moss. To the left was the dead maglev train, a series of broken cars and smashed-up engine units, and to the right was the main storage barn, its gray doors shattered and jagged where they had burned in some unknown assault. The colonists had tried to personalize the place, painting the plasteel dorm exterior a soothing green, hanging windows with curtains and ragged tinsel that flickered in the tendrils of the quiet sulfur wind.
Solano had given Natalie command of the soldiers in place of a citizen officer, and Ash watched her work with a guilty, nauseous envy. The younger woman worked with an effortless, fluid curve to her body, shouting orders to the others. She sent two of the soldiers trotting toward the barn with a nod of her chin and had the other two help her set up the local ansible a few meters away, where it had clear line of sight to the wine-bright sky. The uniform fit Natalie like she’d never left the military department, never tried to be anything but a soldier, never switched to salvage. Like she belonged.
Ash sighed, pulling on her field jacket where the too-small tailoring pinched her wrist.
“Your friend is going far, you know.”
Ash jumped. Dr. Julien stood just behind her, smiling with just the corners of his mouth; under the massive trees his carefully maintained citizen’s body looked even thinner than it had on Rio, and the golden afternoon light just highlighted the craggy, gray tones in his ship-pale face. Ash thought he might have been handsome, once. “You mean Natalie?”
Julien nodded. “That’s what I hear from above.”
“She’s…” Ash paused, and then decided on a neutral word. “Something.”
“Do you think you can…” Julien said. He trailed off and waited a moment before pursing his lips, dropping that line of inquiry and pulling out a syringe from the medical bag hanging from his shoulder. “This is trihexphenidyl,” he said. “Dr. Sharma developed it to cure Parkinson’s and treat celestium sickness, and we gave it to you on the ship when that’s what we thought you had. I’m not sure if it’ll keep working, but it’s a place to start. Your arm, please.”
Ash sighed and pushed up her sleeve. A quick pinch later, and she watched the tentacles dragging at her peripheral vision fold up and clear away with mild surprise. She blinked, expecting encroachment. Nothing. She felt clearer.
“Feels better,” she said.
He straightened. “Good. Let me know when your symptoms come back, and we’ll check your levels then.”
“What do you want me doing?”
“I want you to stand here,” he said, “and wait.”
Ash felt heat flood her cheeks, and she looked around, gesturing at the busy soldiers, the search-and-rescue map being laid out on the table under the command post tent by—that one, Marley, and the other, Laren. “That’s just silly, sir. I’m good in the field. I have overwatch experience, I can mark off quadrants for S&R, I can be useful here, and—”
Julien leaned in, his voice going dark and kind, like a particularly patient schoolteacher. “Look, indenture, between you and me, I understand how difficult a transfer to full indenture can be. So, I was instructed to remind you if you asked: You are to accept all orders without fail, without question. That’s what Mr. Solano wants.” He paused. “It’s why I didn’t ask you to introduce me to your friend back there.”
Ash swallowed the tight, screaming ball in her throat and nodded.
Julien squeezed her right shoulder and moved off toward Natalie, leaving Ash steaming. She shook out the tension in her shoulders and then shoved her balled-up hands in her pockets, trying for some control of her ragged breathing, her sudden roiling anger at Julien and the contract and her useless body. She tried to redirect, to calm herself down, to focus on the sounds around her: the rushing of the wind in the trees, the choking, soaring calls of the local birds, the quiet shuffling noises coming from the barn—
—no, that couldn’t be right.
She blinked, then stared at the dark maw of the barn, trying to concentrate. I’m not a canary, she said to herself, I’m a valuable participant in research. We’re here to find Kate.
Laughter on the wind, from a throat stripped of its kindness by the Bittersweet mines. You’re a fucking canary, love.
Christopher.
The muscles in her jaw tightened like fraying ropes. If she was still hearing voices, the drugs weren’t working, no matter if her vision was clear or not. She coughed and tried to put the hubbub of the yard behind her, focusing instead on the quiet darkness of the barn. She felt a second of doubt before she heard the shuffling noises again. She took a step forward, and then another, slowly, thinking that No, it’s just the sickness, before she saw the darkness move, fold over on itself, dart past on two legs.
Someone was inside the barn.
Ash took a step even closer, squinting, tilting her head. She saw a dark presence, black on sable, stooped and bent, pushing something heavy closer to the door, a box or a crate—or was it just her broken eyes?
“I think someone’s inside,” she called.
The noise of camp setup ceased. Natalie hopped down from the box she was standing on and unholstered her boltgun, charging it with a quick, frightening whine. She and Julien were next to her in breathless seconds, the other soldiers flanking them, and the air around them was suddenly tight and hot and serious, filled with a humming spread of boltguns ready to fire.
“Come on out,” Natalie called.
Whatever had been moving was not moving now; the figure had retreated into the dark cloak of the unlit barn, or had never been there at all, and the confidence leached out of the soldiers’ stances. Julien rocked back on his heels, the doubt radiating off his loosening shoulders. He sucked in a sibilant breath through his perfect birthright teeth. “Maybe the indenture was—”
“There,” Natalie said.
This time they all saw the shadow. The figure fluttered behind the left side of the barn door, hands and legs and a head covered in dirt and darkness. Ash heard a sob, a cry, and recognized the gravel-caught rasp of someone whose airway had been destroyed by gas, by particulates, by inhaling an atmosphere humans were never meant to breathe. She’d heard it a hundred times below the surface of Bittersweet.
The person inside was very sick.
She opened her mouth to tell the others, but Julien swung his open hand toward Ash, pressing two fingers against her lips. “Stay back,” he whispered.
“Come on out, now,” Natalie called, her body taut, her fingers white and tense near the trigger of her boltgun. “Let’s be friends, we’re—”
“You won’t take me, not again,” the voice gasped.
An abyssal second passed. The wind slipped through the trees. A bird chattered.
“We don’t want to—” said Natalie.
“This is for her, you bastards,” said the ghost.
Ash heard a muffled crash, the sound of plasteel against earth. A crate fell into the space between the broken doors, its contents spilling out onto the ground: a fist-size marble the color of the twilight sky on Earth, spilling out of white quarantine swaddling like a dragon’s egg dropped from a nest, rolling to a stop against Ash’s toe. The marble began to shake. Deep inside its razor’s-edge border, as if galaxies away, blue light kindled, grew, spun, knit together in a violent pirouette, in a whi
spering hurricane.
Without her pod between her and the Vai weapon, Ash felt rooted to the spot, paralyzed with fear, a crawling scream forming behind her teeth. The soldier nearest to her—Marley—breathed out a shit, shit, shit, and the gun began to shake in his hands—
“Kinetic! Go go go!” Natalie screamed. “Blue screamer! Dome evac, half mile! A-three, now, now, now!”
Ash knew that protocol.
The first step was Run like hell.
The blue light ached at the edges of the weapon, shivered there, and it took a millisecond, two, and a hundred years to do it—
The world spun to the side and Ash took off, hurtling past the dorms in what seemed like the easiest direction, crashing into the bloodsap brambles at the edge of the forest, feeling the alien air alight in her throat. Behind her, she heard crashing noises, haphazard and reckless, smashing sticks and leaves and hollering. A rumble crackled under her breastbone, shuddered up through her feet when they hit ground; some of the soldiers were lifting the shuttle off the ground.
Behind her, Natalie screamed. “You won’t get off the ground in time! Dome evac, you fucking—”
Ash ran as fast as she could, her breath burning. She heard Julien cursing nearby, alive and barreling into the forest with the rest of them. Natalie was telling them to go, that the weapon had a range of a half mile, and Julien was absurdly fast, nearly catching up with her, nearly passing her—
—when the shuttle fell out of the sky.
She stumbled to a halt, turning, her breath stolen by the fireball unfolding into the wine-soaked sky—
“Fucking run!” screamed Natalie, barreling out of the bushes behind her.
Ash took off again. She could see Marley behind her, a bobbing blue streak with a strained, frightened face, just within sight range. Behind him, she saw a brilliant alien light, a cloud of lights and mist. It was blue like the depths of the ocean and the bright stars of the early morning, and it slithered after Marley, around leaves and through bushes, torch-bright and violent in the gathering gloom.
Natalie stopped where she was, her face desperate. Ash ran up to her, dragging her by her shoulders back toward the slavering forest—
“We can’t leave them,” she said.
“We have to,” Ash said.
Marley threw himself forward, screaming. The blue light twisted in the air behind him, coiling its way toward his hands and head. He fired bolts haphazardly while looking back, as if he could slay the light like he could slay a body. The bullets disintegrated into puffs of silver brilliance, hanging in the air like fairy dust against the ancient alien forest. For an insane half second Ash was reminded of the fireworks she’d seen on the holiday holos, of the hundred dead ships glinting in the light of the Sebastian sun, and she knew, as much as she knew anything: he wasn’t going to make it.
They ran.
The blue lights sped up their oscillation, spinning faster, as if they were alive, as if they could smell Marley’s fear and delighted in it. Ash tripped over a fallen branch and grabbed for Natalie’s arm. The younger woman caught her, and threw her forward into the bushes, following Julien.
She looked back once. Marley wasn’t fast enough. The lights wrapped themselves around his limbs. “Go,” he gasped, and then threw himself into a last desperate sprint, his arms pinwheeling. The caterpillar beams snaked up to his mouth, leaving burning swaths of blackened skin behind. The light coalesced in his chest, pressing against his ribs and skin from inside. His eyes widened with some indescribable, terrified thought. His mouth opened, and the lights took him apart in a swift, hideous twist.
One moment, Marley was there; a bright second later, he was gone, strands of winding blue light where his bones should have been. Ash’s muscles knit back together and she ran, almost involuntarily now, shoving herself forward through the trees and brambles, the caustic breath of alien air stinging her throat and branches whipping at her arms and cheeks like the devil himself was after her.
“What’s the range on this thing?” hollered Julien.
“Half mile!” Natalie screamed.
“I can’t run that far!”
“You have to!”
Natalie picked up the pace, nearly reaching Julien. Ash pummeled herself onward into the darkening forest as the trees around them alighted with alien azure bouncing from one trunk to the next, catching up to them faster than they could run. Ash’s lungs were on fire and her muscles were cramping with the effort, but adrenaline pushed her on, and she caught up to the others.
The three of them made it some distance into the forest when their retreat came to a tumbling halt. Natalie’s foot caught underneath a fallen tree, and she came down hard, cracking her head on a nearby rock. Ash aimed for a tree and put her hands out, using it to stop her forward momentum; as the shock of it ran up her palms and wrists, she whirled, scrambling back over to Natalie, falling on her knees beside her.
“Ashlan!” screamed Julien.
“Just go!” Ash screamed back, and the young doctor turned and barreled in another direction, disappearing into the blackening evening. Natalie was awake but stunned; blood flowed down her face from her temple, and her eyes stared, dull, at Ash, and took a moment to resolve. “Ash, go—”
“Get up,” Ash yelled, moving to grab Natalie’s hand, attempting to yank her to a standing position, even as her eyes lolled back, disengaging, going blurry.
The clearing filled up with alien blue; Natalie’s chin tilted up. Reflected in her eyes was a gathering of blue threads, whirling, hovering, covering them in a blanket of quiet menace. Ash tried one more time; she dragged Natalie to her feet, and this time, the younger woman stumbled, then barreled forward again, Ash at her heels.
Ash felt the tendrils before she saw them; they were indescribably hot and viscerally beautiful, moving with a swift grace in a twisting, turning braid that never resolved and never ceased. Ash looked over at Natalie; she tried to yell something in her direction, let her know she’d been caught, but she could not. The storm had taken away her words. Finally outside of the exclusion zone, Natalie slowed, turned, stopped. Tears streamed down the young woman’s face, and she stopped just one moment to give Ash the Auroran salute.
“Run,” Ash called, the gesture opening her mouth to the crashing flame, the stunning, howling pain of the threads twining up her neck and her chin, forcing her mouth open, thrusting down her throat—
—and then nothing.
15
Twenty-Five’s environmental alarms howled keen and bright as Keller climbed down the aft maintenance duct, careening toward the pod bay as fast as the thin air and darkness could carry her. There was a skinny, hungry desperation in the familiar sound. She’d never thought for a moment she’d thrill to hear it.
The ship shuddered as if it were alive. Keller stopped dead in the pitch darkness, shoved against the side of the tunnel, feeling the guilt like a bolt to the stomach.
No. Not guilt.
Shame.
This was all her fault.
She dropped away from the heat, away from the flames, hoping that the training she’d given Ramsay and the others had paid off. She’d drilled them on fire response at an exhausting, incessant pace during the trip here, knowing that uncontrolled fire could kill ships in seconds. The protocol would have a convenient side effect: With everyone dealing with the emergency, Keller could grab a pod and go.
Go where? Ash’s voice, again.
Rio’s coming, if it isn’t already here, and Aurora needs to know—
Bang. Bang. She heard hard footsteps on the deck above her. Shouting. The clattering of feet heading for the fire. She fished the bolts out of her pocket and hurled them away toward the habitat ring. They skittered off with a jangling clatter and fell down the habitat duct with a dull crash. It might buy her a minute or two as they went to investigate, but then, that might be all she needed.
Keller pulled herself toward the cargo bay, choking down the shame. She knew how things worked in the real w
orld. She’d seen moleculars take apart entire fleets; she’d seen hungry corporations snacking on their bones, through dropped promises and subverted ceasefires. She should have known. She should have guessed. She shouldn’t have gotten comfortable.
Yanking the bolts out of the hatch to the cargo bay as she’d done in the core access room, Keller pulled the hatch into the tunnel. She sat on the edge of the bay, swinging her legs into the open space, four feet above the floor. Above her, a single backup light gleamed, casting the cargo bay in bare, gray twilight. She clutched the sides of the hatch with sweaty fingers, swinging her body into the cargo bay with as little sound as she could manage. The low gravity made it an easy landing.
The traitor’s locusts had already been here, but they weren’t done. They’d left their tools and their dollies strewn about like they were coming back to get them. She jogged over to Len’s wall interface and brought up the pod status, swearing under her breath.
Her perfect escape was foiled. The pods were already gone, and both pod airlocks were being used for boarding umbilicals.
A howling drop in air pressure dragged at her upper body, spinning up from the center of the ship, spiking at Keller’s belly with sloshing nausea. She choked down sudden panic, and heard a terrible, sucking roar somewhere far above; she guessed that Ramsay’s people were using the grav-engine to suck the fire out the secondary exhaust filter into the darkness of space.
Exactly as Keller had taught her to do.
Which gives me twenty seconds before they get back to what they were doing. Thirty. Maybe.
She looked around. Crates. There were plenty of crates. Big ones. She’d stocked up, expecting a profitable salvage run. The invaders had been in the middle of loading the hard-earned Christmas list on dollies—in particular, the greenhouse kinetics in the largest cases, the ones it had taken Natalie three days of painstaking, suit-sweaty work to defuse. They were rare. Rare and dead. If she folded her legs, she could hide. They’d probably find her, but they might not. It was a gamble.
Architects of Memory Page 14
