Shadow of Forever (Eaters of the Light Book 2)

by J. Edward Neill

  Her face paled.

  Her eyes widened.

  She didn’t say a word.

  Home Away from Home

  The moment we docked, my tension escaped.

  With a thump, the clamps closed on the union between the Sabre and the interstellar vehicle we knew only as the Ring. I heard the hiss of pressurized gas and the pop of two gravity bubbles joining into one. For one last moment, I thought of Aly, of Maura and Samison, of everything I’d left behind.

  And then, as the doors between ships slid open, I let it all go.

  After all, the Ring was more of a home than Sumer. Whether awake or in hypo-sleep, I’d spent more time on it than any other place in the universe.

  This is where I belong.

  Cal noticed the lightness in my step as we walked into the tunnel joining the Sabre and one of the Ring’s eight pods.

  “What’s with you?” She stopped in front of me.

  “I don’t know.” I shrugged. “It’s strange. Being out here with no people is…relaxing.”

  “I’m a person.” She blocked the circular hatch ahead of us. “Are you counting me?”

  “You’re not just any person.” I smiled and slid past her. “And don’t be sensitive.”

  The Ring, its eight pods joined by eight hollow spokes, opened up before us. We entered the storage pod first. It and two others were filled with white crates full of sealed and dehydrated food.

  …from Earth.

  In all my years of traveling between the stars, I’d only emptied two of the eighty-some crates. It occurred to me, as I peered at the stars through the pod’s wall-length window, the Ring’s food stores would have to be enough for two.

  Even so, it could last us decades.

  Cal headed for the door to the next pod. She was in a hurry, though she hadn’t said why.

  The sound of my voice stopped her.

  “What kind of food do you like?” I asked. “I mean…you’ve only been in your human body for a week or two. Found any favorites?”

  “I don’t think I know yet.” She looked almost sad.

  “Well, hope you don’t mind vacuum-sealed protein wafers.” I slapped my palm against the nearest crate. “Or amino broth. Or maybe some reconstituted griddlecakes.”

  She looked over her shoulder at me. I couldn’t tell whether she was upset or amused.

  “I’ll manage,” was all she gave me.

  We began our walk through the Ring’s eight pods.

  With the Sabre docked, the Ring had resumed a slow spin around its own center, meaning the gravity was almost earthlike. In peaceable silence, we strolled through the three food storage pods, cut quickly through the noisy recirculation pod, and took our time ambling through the kitchen, sleep, and recreation pods. The floor and ceiling of each pod were solid chrome, but the walls were windows, giving us glimpses of the star ocean spinning slowly in the void.

  Everything was as we’d left it years ago.

  Every chair was where I expected, every table, and every mess.

  The familiarity felt good, though for Cal it seemed as if she’d never been inside the Ring before.

  Seeing it with new eyes, I thought.

  I wonder what it’s like.

  At last we came to the observation pod, whose ceiling and floor were packed with lead plates to counterbalance the storage pods on the Ring’s opposite side. The observation pod was my favorite. It was empty save for a single chair I’d long ago placed before its massive window. The impossibly clear window, made of a polymer whose name I’d never been able to pronounce, gave us full view of Sumer’s daylight side. The violet planet spun in the darkness, a shining marble I’d only pretended to call home.

  “This feels odd,” Cal stood beside the chair.

  “You mean the spinning?” I said. “Don’t worry. The feeling goes away. You’re not used to it yet, being a new human and all.”

  “No.” She pressed her palm against the window. “I mean being out in the stars again. I remember being here as the old me. I thought it would feel different. But it feels the same.”

  I stood beside her. She looked at me as though wanting to touch me, but then lost herself in the wheeling stars.

  “Lonely?” I asked.

  “No.”

  “Feeling small? Out here in space…so far from everyone?”

  “No.” She shook her head. “I was scared to leave Sumer. But now I’m at peace. Because I’m with you.”

  I shared her view of the stars beyond the window. Though I said nothing, I felt closer to her than ever.

  “We have to chart a course,” I said after a short silence. “We’re going to a place called Nosfera. It’s farther out than anywhere we’ve been. There’s two of us now, so one of us will have to sleep in the Ring’s hypo-chamber, and the other in the Sabre’s. It’ll be just like when we rescued Aly.”

  “We have work to do first.” She faced me. “We have to fix the Sabre’s grav-controls. And you need to get back in shape.”

  “Am I that bad?” I regarded myself. I knew I was still covered in nicks and tiny scars, and that I’d lost weight while tramping through Sumer’s woods. But I still felt strong.

  “No. Not bad.” She smiled. “But you’re no teenager anymore. For that matter, neither am I. They gave me this body in peak condition, but I’ll have to maintain it. We’ll exercise together. When we hit hypo-sleep, we need to be in top condition.”

  …in case we have to fight the Strigoi when we wake.

  And so we began.

  * * *

  For the first few days, life on the Ring felt as if we’d never left. Old habits came rushing back, and I found the routine I’d longed for. I worried Cal would be miserable, but she took to our new life with ease. While living on Sumer, I’d dreamed of living alone, but I soon came to understand life without my friend would’ve been miserable.

  Even if she’s not tiny and blue anymore.

  We exercised twice every day, once after waking and again before dinner. I envied Callista’s body, which Arcadia’s scientists had fashioned to be twenty years old. She outpaced me on the tread-track and bested me at nearly every game of skill we played. All I had was my raw strength, which hadn’t abandoned me since training in Doctor Abid’s earthbound fortress.

  We ate our meals together. We didn’t plan it; it just happened. Sitting across a table from her reminded me of the way my mother and father had always done.

  “It’s like we’re married,” I mumbled during one dinner.

  Cal didn’t say a word. Her smile was enough.

  During all other hours, we worked. I practiced flight sims, mapped approaches for reaching Nosfera, and cleaned ash deposits from the Vezda suit. Cal studied the Ring’s technology archives for hours on end, seeming happy to lose herself in schematics that would’ve hurt my head to read. She’d traded in her nano-cells for a human brain, but her thirst for knowledge was no less and her ability diminished none.

  She’d predicted months before learning how to repair the Sabre’s grav-controls.

  She managed it in six days.

  * * *

  On our seventh day, while crouched in a duct in the Sabre’s underbelly, I began to think, why couldn’t she have taken a little while longer?

  I’d grown to like our life on the Ring.

  Finishing our work meant hypo-sleep.

  And hypo-sleep meant we’d be apart.

  The Sabre’s ducts weren’t meant for someone as tall or broad-shouldered as me. Its metal sides chilled me to touch, while the hiss and thrum of life-support emissions hurt my ears. Behind me, standing comfortably in the hallway, Cal called out instructions:

  “See the burned out wave-emitter on panel two? Pull it out. Don’t pull the one from panel three. If you do, gravity will decentralize and we’ll both be smashed to jelly.”

  “Mmmm.” I smacked my lips. “Been a while since I’ve had jelly.”

  “Joff, I need you to concentrate.”

  “Right, right,�
�� I grumbled.

  She’d wanted to be the one to do the work. I’d talked her out of it. I’d grown up repairing machinery and operating heavy equipment. Even though the Sabre’s systems were far more complex, the basics remained the same.

  Unbolt this.

  Take bad parts out.

  Screw this back on.

  But never in frozen holes quite like this.

  We weren’t exactly repairing the grav-controls. To perform a true restoration, we’d need gear that didn’t exist anywhere in the universe. Instead, we were removing one of the three emitters responsible for controlling the Sabre’s localized gravity. A glancing blow from a Strigoi energy weapon had frozen part of the Sabre’s hull and corrupted the emitter. If somehow the corruption caused the gravity to rise or fall during flight, the localized field would’ve shattered.

  And since we’d be traveling at faster-than-light speeds, we’d be turned to jelly.

  Just like Cal said.

  “And you’re sure taking this out won’t mess our gravity up?” I shouted back to her. “Even a little?”

  “Not if you powered it down first,” she said. “We still have two grav-controls operational. They’re redundant. In theory, we could survive on just one. Not that we’d want to.”

  After a while longer in the cold, cramped duct, I emerged victorious. Strands of frozen and cracked filament hung from my grasp. The Sabre’s grav-controls wouldn’t be tested until we undocked from the Ring, but I felt better knowing we’d tried.

  “Is that it?” I stretched. I’d been in the duct for three hours. Everything hurt.

  “That’s all.” Cal looked proud of me. If I hadn’t been filthy with dust, coolant, and grease, I’d have hugged her.

  Much later, after I’d eaten and showered away all the sweat and grime, I lay awake in bed. I’d sealed the shutters to block out the stars and switched off every light and console in the room. The darkness felt complete. I was at peace.

  Only one thing was missing:

  Cal.

  I never asked her where she wandered while I slept. Each time I went to bed, she said her goodnights and left me alone. I knew she had to sleep; her body was human after all. And yet if she used a cot, pillow, or blanket, I’d yet to find it. I wasn’t even sure the Ring had such things. My bed, though enormous, was the only one on the station.

  Does she sleep in the Sabre’s chair?

  On the mats in the recreation pod?

  Or does she wander, sleepless and alone?

  Most of the time, I didn’t worry for her. My slumbers were usually deep, capturing me moments after my head hit my pillow. I rarely had time to think.

  But tomorrow will be different, I knew.

  Tomorrow we go into hypo-sleep.

  And when we wake, if we wake, we’ll never know peace again.

  I didn’t know how long I searched for sleep. I tossed in my pillow pile, peeled one blanket off for another, and sat up in bed, breathing deep of the cool air.

  For once in my life, I couldn’t sleep.

  As I sat, gazing into the dark, the pod’s door slid open.

  Cal?

  A sliver of pale light invaded from the kitchen pod. Cal’s shadow glided in. I wasn’t sure why, but I sank back into my pillows and pretended to be asleep.

  With my eyes just above my blanket, I watched the door close behind her. Darkness conquered the pod again, and though I sensed Cal coming nearer, I couldn’t hear a thing. She’d become comfortable in her new body. She could be silent whenever she wanted, lighter than air with every movement.

  I closed my eyes.

  I sensed her standing beside the bed.

  I barely breathed.

  After what seemed an eternity, she peeled back the blanket I’d tossed aside and slithered beneath it. She was warm, and her body lying so close to mine felt like sunshine. She’d just showered, I knew. I remembered she’d taken a single vial of Arcadian perfume from the hotel we’d shared before Aly’s wedding. I breathed it in, the scent of flowers washing over me.

  She thinks I’m asleep.

  She rolled onto her side, facing me. I couldn’t move. Every cell inside me screamed at me to face her, to whisper to her, to press my lips against hers. But for all my courage, I had none.

  Within minutes, her breathing slowed. I sensed the quiet falling over her, and I knew she’d fallen asleep. I lay there, paralyzed for what must’ve been an hour, until finally I reached to touch her.

  My fingertips grazed her bare shoulder. She stirred, but didn’t wake. I closed my eyes again. I realized she was naked.

  In my bed.

  I know what happens every night.

  She comes in here after I’m asleep.

  And leaves before I wake.

  It hadn’t been hard leaving Earth. After climbing into the stars, I’d rarely touched any feeling resembling homesickness.

  It hadn’t hurt to leave Sumer. No one wanted me there. I should never have gone in the first place.

  But I knew what would be hard.

  Sinking into hypo-sleep without her.

  Waking up to face the darkness.

  Losing her.

  Never having her.

  I’d never truly doubted myself before that moment. My war against the Strigoi had been my reason for existing.

  But as Callista lay next to me, I questioned everything I’d always believed.

  We could go anywhere.

  We could be together forever.

  She wouldn’t resist.

  All I have to do is ask.

  Hollow

  I’d never felt such pain.

  When the door to the Sabre’s hypo-chamber opened, I wanted to scream. But I had no voice. I opened my eyes and saw nothing. I heard someone speak, but the sound crumbled before I could make sense of it.

  A metal arm grasped my metal bed and pulled me into the light. I managed a shiver and a groan, but little more. Needles punctured me in many places, delivering stimulants, sodium, and powerful pain-nullifiers, and yet I remained in agonizing stasis. I was blind, deaf, and frozen. I began to think I was dead.

  I’d endured hypo-sleep twice before, totaling more than two decades.

  Each time, I’d awoken with no pain, no loss of sensation.

  Callista had once warned me of hypo-sleep’s unpredictable effects.

  I hadn’t listened.

  Frozen on a metal slab, I did the only thing I knew to do. I let myself float away, drifting into a place where only pain existed. I’d done it as a child when I hit my thumb with a hammer, when I’d fallen down the stairs, and when I’d come home after a long day with my body singing from soreness.

  My thoughts fled. The pain washed over me. Another needle pierced my neck, and sleep stole me away.

  * * *

  “Joff?” I heard her say. “Can you hear me?”

  I lifted my eyelids half-open. The room’s light was soft, but stinging. My breaths hurt. My bones felt like putty.

  “Callllllllliiiiiissssssttterrrrriaaaa,” I slurred.

  “It’s me,” she said. “I’m here.”

  I reached for her. I felt her warm fingers close around my frozen hand. Few things in life had ever felt so good. I wanted her to hold me forever.

  “What…happened?” I managed to say.

  She sat beside me. The bounce I felt beneath me gave away that I was lying in my bed on the Ring. I couldn’t see straight, not yet. My senses crawled toward consciousness, waking me one minute at a time.

  “You can hear me now?” She whispered, sparing my ears from anything louder.

  “Yes.” I kept my eyes closed.

  “We had to stop,” she said. “We’re not even halfway to Nosfera, only about three years away from Sumer. Sorry to wake you like this. We couldn’t do it gradually.”

  “Three…years?” I stammered.

  “Yes. Three.” She squeezed my hand again.

  “Why?”

  “The Ring detected a debris field,” she explained. “If we�
�d have kept going, we might’ve hit something. At our speed, even with the quantum field protecting us, the ship would’ve disintegrated.”

  “Big…debris?” I couldn’t keep my eyes open. “Big…things?”

  “Very big things,” she said. “When you come around, I’ll show you.”

  “What…happened…to me?”

  “Joff, you know how it goes.” She caressed my forehead. “The hypo-chamber is supposed to wake us up over two weeks. With the disruption, it woke you up in twelve hours. That’s why it hurts. At least there’s no permanent damage.”

  “Hurts…” I grumbled. “A lot.”

  And I slept again.

  * * *

  The next time I woke, I knew many hours had passed. My sleep had been dreamless, and most of my pain had evaporated. Creaking and groaning, I sat up in bed against a mound of pillows.

  All I wanted to do was eat.

  Standing at the bed pod’s primary console, Callista glanced back at me. She wore a sleek blue gown the same color as her hair. I hadn’t seen her bring it aboard.

  “Not exactly what I expected to wake to.” I tried to smile.

  “You don’t like it?” She went back to tapping on the console. “I could take it off.”

  I didn’t know what to say to that. So I said nothing.

  I slid my legs out of bed and touched my feet to the floor. My senses had returned, but my body moved as though I were wading through mud. I looked at my hands and flexed my fingers. Somehow, even though I felt weak, my arms looked stronger.

  Then I remembered. Before entering hypo-sleep, Cal had added a Pulse Therapy program to my sleep cycle. During the three years I’d been under, my muscles had been pumped full of micro-stimulations. I flexed my right arm and patted my palm against my thigh.

  Never been bigger, I thought with a grin.

  Cal looked over her shoulder as I staggered toward her. My white tunic and pants felt tight against my body. I grew surer of myself with every step.