Shadow of Forever (Eaters of the Light Book 2)

by J. Edward Neill

  I was in too deep.

  “Use the Ring. Get out of here,” I said to Cal. “Just do it. I’m sorry. It’s too late for me.”

  I swung the Sabre to a halt. It hovered just meters above the crack’s bottom, where the blue light gleamed across a walkway made of bone. The cratered walls were stuffed with Strigoi containers. On the walkway, thirteen Strigoi stopped and stared up at my ship.

  “Joff, answer me…” Cal’s voice began to break up. “…come back. Fly…together…out of here.”

  I ignored her cries.

  I have to.

  The Strigoi gathered beneath me. I considered leaping out of the Sabre and blasting the unarmed horrors with my arm-cannon, but decided they were too dangerous even without their weapons. Firing the quantum engine one final time, I seized the control stick and spun the Sabre in a tight circle. Everything the ship’s quantum field touched disintegrated: the black bone walkway, part of the wall, and ten of the Strigoi, whose bodies turned to ash and whose white eyes burned away.

  I brought the Sabre around and stopped it dead. I leapt out of my chair, moving faster than ever in my life.

  The Sabre’s airlock hissed open, and I jumped out, landing on the one part of the bone walkway the quantum field hadn’t destroyed.

  Two of the Strigoi stood as if to fight me. I hadn’t seen their faces in so many years, and yet it felt as if I’d walked among them only yesterday. Their white eyes smoked, their black skulls smiling. They were as tall as remembered, a vile blend of skeleton and machine. I walked toward them, firing volleys from the arm-cannon into their black carapaces. When the two in front of me collapsed into smoldering piles, I faced the one at my back. It stood a full meter taller than me. In its skeleton fingers, it carried a long black tool resembling a human femur.

  I didn’t care what the tool was for.

  I didn’t care that at any moment the Strigoi ships would find me at the crack’s bottom and burn me away.

  Looking into the lone Strigoi’s four white eyes, I saw everything I feared and hated.

  “This is your fault.” I fired the arm-cannon into the thing’s body more times than I remembered.

  Afterward, I stood on the black bone walkway and breathed. A stream of data inside my visor told me everything I needed to know:

  Atmospheric pressure – zero

  Air quality – no air present/unsafe to remove suit

  Temperature – negative 12.0 Celsius

  Gravity – 1.113 Earth gravity

  Cold. Airless. Heavy, I thought.

  I’m inside a giant coffin.

  Cal’s voice crackled in my ear. If I’d wanted, I supposed I could’ve climbed back into the Sabre and made a run for the Ring.

  If I dock and she fires the Ring’s engine, maybe we could escape.

  Maybe she’d forgive me.

  No.

  I can’t.

  I stood above a Strigoi cadaver. A river of oil snaked out of its smoldering ribcage and tumbled over the bone walkway’s edge. Its skull, which I’d blown off its wretched body, gazed up at the Sabre. Its eyes had gone dark.

  When will the draining start? I wondered.

  I waited. I expected dizziness. I was sure at any moment my muscles and organs would start shriveling, that I’d crumble on the walkway and collapse. Without Cal’s tiny blue nano-body to rejuvenate me, I knew the Strigoi draining would end me.

  I’d known before I left the Ring.

  I’d thought about it for days.

  And yet, as I stood near the three fallen Strigoi, I felt nothing.

  Good, I thought. I get to kill more.

  I left the Sabre floating above the bodies of the Strigoi I’d slain. I didn’t look back at my beloved ship; I knew I’d never see it again. Striding across what remained of the bone bridge, I came to something resembling a door. Puckered and blue, it looked like a giant heart valve. I squinted and swore I saw it pulse.

  “Joff? Answer me. Please.” I heard Cal beg.

  I pushed the door’s fleshy center with my left hand.

  It swallowed me into the darkness beyond.

  Invader

  “I’m not leaving,” said Cal. “I’m coming to get you.”

  Somewhere in a dank Strigoi sewer, I hid alone. Bundled oil-tubes dangled from holes in the bone-metal wall. Black puddles of half-frozen fluid lay still beneath my boots. The visor’s display told me the air was toxic enough to kill a human in a matter of seconds.

  “You can’t,” I said into the helmet. “The Ring won’t fit down here. They’ll turn you to ashes before you get within a thousand kilometers. And…even if you did get in, you’d die. Your suit isn’t meant for this place.”

  I waited for my message to reach her. Every time I spoke, I was sure it’d be the last thing she’d hear from me.

  She didn’t answer.

  “Cal? You listening? If you can hear me, you have to leave,” I said. “Go back to Sumer. Or find a garden world somewhere else. Anywhere but here will do. I’m sorry for what I did. I’m just going to break as much of this place as I can.”

  Again, she said nothing.

  “If you don’t leave, they’ll trace your signal and find the Ring,” I warned her. “You know they’ll do it. They’ll kill you. I can’t stand the thought of it.”

  I realized then why she hadn’t answered.

  I listened close and heard her weeping.

  After a long silence, I rose and walked to the tunnel’s end. Even in the pitch black, I saw everything through the Vezda’s visor. Obscured by a curtain of hanging tubes, the hole I’d used to enter the tunnel lay before me. I’d ducked into it and hid for more than an hour, hoping the Strigoi would lose me.

  I pushed the tubes aside and emerged into a corridor that seemed to go forever in both directions.

  With my finger sweating against the arm-cannon’s trigger, I walked and observed.

  The floors were made of a dark metallic substance, rough and cratered as a meteorite. The walls and ceiling were buried in twisted pipes and coiled tubes. I didn’t feel as though I were marching in the halls of a great, dark space station, but instead flowing through the artery of a monster fossilized centuries before I’d arrived.

  I sensed no movement. The ceiling wept a cold blue light. Wandering the desolate corridor, I expected the Strigoi to haunt my every step, to peel themselves from the walls and hunt me down.

  And then it occurred to me.

  They weren’t expecting me.

  Most of their ships aren’t for war.

  The Strigoi in the crack didn’t carry weapons. Their draining powers were off.

  Me being here…almost impossible.

  “Joff?” Cal returned.

  “Yes.”

  “...find a terminal.” Her voice sounded tiny. “Find symbols, language, anything. Use your visor’s recording system. Send what you see to me.”

  “You’re not leaving?” I said.

  After a too-long quiet, she answered.

  “You worry about you. I’ll worry about me. Now shut up and start looking. And remember this: you’re not allowed to die.”

  Through a long, dark hall, I counted my steps.

  Nothing felt real.

  In the walls, I swore I glimpsed Strigoi faces, their black jaws smiling behind tangled, oil-filled vines. The floor was sticky with a nameless grey fluid, and my footsteps fell in a silence I couldn’t comprehend. I was a ghost haunting a house I’d never lived in. My fear had become something else.

  Maybe I’m already dead.

  “See anything?” I heard Cal ask. Her voice sounded farther away than ever.

  “No.” I’d turned off the Vezda’s exterior sound emitter, which made my voice echo inside my helmet. “I’ve passed twelve doors, I think. But they’re sealed. I can’t get in.”

  “Keep looking.”

  After a long while of aiming the Vezda’s cannon into the darkness, my right arm quivered. I’m hungry, I knew. I’m weak. My visor saw everything, and yet t
he gloom weighed on me. I’d walked two kilometers deep into the Strigoi sphere. It felt like I’d only scratched the surface.

  The corridor took a sharp right turn.

  I pressed myself against the wall and peered around the corner.

  A hundred meters away, I spotted a junction of four dark hallways. The ceilings were higher, the walls farther apart. I stared, waiting for what I knew I’d see.

  And there they were.

  A pack of Strigoi, black rifles in hand, sprinted through the shadows. I caught only a glimpse, a flash of white eyes, skeletal legs, and weapons as tall as any human. At least ten of them moved through my sights, and then they were gone. I tried not to shiver. I couldn’t help it.

  “Ten Strigs,” I whispered to Cal. “Fully armed. Only a matter of time before they find me. If they activate their draining power, I’ll die.”

  I waited for my voice to ride the signal through the sphere and across the void to the Ring. Cal had tightened the feed between us, projecting it at a powerful enough rate to reach me inside the Strigoi fortress. I considered cutting the signal to protect her, but I knew she’d find another way.

  “Hide,” was all she said.

  I waited for the thunder of the passing Strigoi to evaporate. When all fell silent again, I stalked toward the junction of halls. Halfway there, I heard more sounds.

  Their bones creaking as they run.

  Their rifles clattering in their fingers.

  Their voices.

  More are coming.

  I didn’t have time to run back the way I’d come. Frantic, I looked to the walls, searching for an open door, but I saw only bundles of black tubes. As the ghoulish clamor neared, I pressed myself into the tubes’ midst, burying myself behind a web of twisted, oil-filled cables. As I hid, I heard oil pumping and the distinct sound of a heart beating.

  They came.

  Eight of the horrors clattered down the hall, white eyes shining in the shadows. My fear washed over me, and though I dreamed of leaping out to face them, I froze in my hiding place. Through a crack in the tube-curtain, I watched them pass. I heard their hisses, the sounds of their ribs expanding, and the cold mechanical thump of their hearts, which matched the thrum of the oil in the tubes.

  “What’s happening?” Cal’s voice cracked.

  I took another three breaths.

  I felt my courage rushing back into my blood.

  I knew I couldn’t hide anymore.

  “Goodbye, Cal,” I whispered. “I love you.”

  When the Strigoi were forty meters away, I burst out of my cover. Three bundles of tubes ruptured, showering the floor with oil.

  I didn’t say anything.

  I just started firing.

  My first shots hit their marks. The arm-cannon’s golden fire struck bundles of tubes on each wall, raining sheets of oil between me and the eight Strigoi. The rearmost horror spun to face me.

  My third shot hit it between its eyes.

  My fourth shot ignited the oil.

  The Strigoi roared.

  Sunlight, I remembered how I’d seen the others die. And now fire.

  A firestorm awoke in the corridor. I saw the Strigoi flailing on its other side, and I heard their voices thunder through the flames. Jets of black energy from their weapons swarmed through sheets of burning oil, but every shot missed.

  The light hurts their eyes.

  Good.

  I knelt on the frigid bone floor and fired more shots than I could count. The golden orbs tore through the wall of fire, striking Strigoi bone, metal, and ruined flesh. I heard them scream. It was as if they’d feared nothing until that moment, and that I’d awoken their terror.

  For more than two minutes, I fired the arm-cannon.

  The oil flames consumed two Strigoi.

  My shots carved the rest to tatters.

  As the oil tubes drained and fires burned atop the puddles and smoldering Strigoi remains, I stood. Smoke poured out of the arm-cannon. I felt wobbly on my feet. I knew why.

  They marched past me.

  Their draining power touched me.

  I wanted to go to them. To see their smoldering skulls and burning bones would’ve made me smile, if only for a heartbeat. Instead, I staggered away. I hoped the moment of draining wouldn’t be enough to kill me, but with every step I felt my blood pump slower inside me. I marched ahead and stood in the junction of four halls. My vision blurred, and my fingers went numb.

  I’ve got a minute, maybe two.

  I looked right. A tunnel wormed away into the distance, unknowable and deep.

  I looked straight. It was the same.

  I looked left and saw the same kind of door I’d seen when leaving the Sabre behind. It resembled a fluttering heart valve, only loathsome and black.

  That way, my brain instructed me.

  I wobbled toward the fleshy door. When I reached it, I pushed, and it opened. Shadows began to close in all around me. In the next room, I staggered to a stop. Twisted pipes and glass tubes snaked across the floor and through the walls. I saw cylinders filled with grey oil, and in the oil I glimpsed floating skeletal appendages.

  Arms. Legs. Ribs. Skulls.

  A breeding pit.

  I knew what I’d encountered. Row upon row, stacked half a dozen high, the cylinders were growing Strigoi body parts. With just a glance, I guessed there were enough bones to build several thousand horrors. I wanted to retch, but my belly was empty.

  In a daze, I heard a sound behind me. I blinked hard and faced it. A dark tide of Strigoi streamed down the halls for me, rifles raised.

  Twenty, I counted.

  No…thirty.

  I fired a few lazy shots in their direction. The fiends must’ve been surprised. They slowed and stopped well beyond the door, their spines clinging to the walls. My ears rang with Cal’s voice, but I lacked the words to answer her. I only hoped she’d decided to fire the Ring’s engine and flee Nosfera.

  “Come get me,” I shouted at the Strigoi massing beyond the door. “I’m right here.”

  Grinning with morbid glee, I fired shots into three Strigoi cylinders. Piles of black bones broke out and shattered on the floor. Grey, sickly oil flooded the floor.

  The Strigoi screamed again. I laughed.

  With a final few shots through the door, I shambled away into the labyrinth of cylinders. I understood why the Strigoi had been reluctant to open fire. When I’d guessed there were thousands of cylinders, I’d been wrong. I staggered through the darkness, and it seemed there were tens of thousands, enough to populate entire cities.

  …or maybe a whole planet.

  With ragged breaths, I lost myself in the maze. I didn’t destroy any more cylinders. I’ll die faster, I told myself. And some small part of me still wanted to survive.

  “I’m alive…still alive,” I murmured to Cal. “Strigs chasing me. So many eyes. Keep moving. If they get closer…more draining.”

  Her reply was mud in my ears.

  I kept moving in the dark. I slogged over piles of oil-filled tubes and shouldered through curtains of twisted black cables. I heard the clatter of bones on the breeding pit floor, the rumble of Strigoi voices chasing me.

  “Surround it,” I thought I heard them say.

  “Use blades. No death beams.”

  “Pull its bones apart. Drop it in the waste.”

  How am I understanding them? I thought.

  Wait…did they say waste?

  In the breeding pit’s heart, I chanced upon it – a vast open hole with a covering grate, oil and grey sludge pooled around its edges. The Strigoi gathered on all sides; I glimpsed them in the shadows, moving like wraiths between the cylinders. They carried long, curved blades made of the same bonestuff as their bodies. If I’d have stumbled, they’d have been on me. Not even the Vezda suit could’ve saved me.

  I pointed the arm-cannon at the grate covering the waste hole.

  I fired six shots, blowing a hole in the bone-metal.

  And I jumped in.


  Down, down I fell into a bottomless black pipe. Huge enough to swallow five of me, the pipe’s slick insides curled deep into the Strigoi sewers. The draining pulled at my insides, cooling my blood and dulling my mind. As I fell, I tried only to stay conscious.

  The pipe network devoured me.

  I lost all sense of time and direction.

  Many times, I fell through Strigoi doors. The orifices ate me up and spat me out into pipes still deeper in the death-sphere. I felt like food sliding through a stomach. There was no pain, no sensation beyond falling.

  I hit a wall. The Vezda suit broke through.

  I tumbled through kilometers of cold, oily waste.

  I crawled back to consciousness, lost it, and awoke again.

  And I heard Cal calling my name.

  When I hit the bottom, I felt nothing. I remembered only the blue letters on my visor’s insides. I couldn’t move, speak, or breathe. I lay floating atop an oily lake in a cavern made of bones. I wondered if the Vezda suit had broken, if the poisonous Strigoi atmosphere had invaded my body.

  I tried to read the blue letters on my visor.

  But I knew only darkness.

  Crawl

  Her voice was a whisper.

  I heard only fragments of what she said.

  “…signal from your suit.”

  “…signs are weak…not gone.”

  “…hope they didn’t…one of them.”

  “…not sure…can you hear me?”

  I drifted in and out and in again. For longer than I knew, my eyes revealed only darkness. I tried to flex my fingers, lift my arms, and speak, but my faculties failed me. All but dead, I drifted on an ocean of shadows.

  And yet I heard her voice.

  Every time I crawled out of my shallow coma, I heard her talking. Sometimes she told stories of the dreams she thought she’d had when she’d been her blue-nano self. Other times she remembered our days on Earth, the long hours of training, the nights we sat in my chrome-walled room and talked until sunrise.

  She didn’t sound sad anymore.