INFILTRATE THE HOLLOW STAR
The words mean nothing to me. I rub a hand over my chest and the movement dislodges something sickly in my gut. Acid gorges up my throat and I vomit into the drain. Abruptly I'm sweating hard.
"Ray," I say, "Far."
No voices come.
I'm sick. I need help. I lift a numb foot and step into the corridor. My left leg spasms and goes weak, nearly dropping me to the floor, but I catch myself on a damp-stained pipe.
What's happening?
The screw is silent; there's not even the churn of lava or the drip of tsunami water. I look to left and right and see the barren corridor stretching away. The other six forging pods are empty.
"Shit," I whisper.
Another rush comes up my throat and I vomit, then trigger the shock-jacks in my suit. They stir silently to life and quickly I feel some sense of normalcy return as endorphins and adrenaline flood my system. The flash-sweat fades, the trembling ebbs and strength returns to my palsied muscles.
I stride down the corridor looking into each forging pod where my chord members should be. "Ray!" I shout, hoping perhaps they have woken before me. "Doe!"
As her name comes out I remember that she's dead. Of course she is. She died in the aether over a year ago, bringing down half of King Ruin with a supernova suicide, and there was no coming back from that.
The thought makes me sad. I stop at the end of the pods looking at the space where Far should be. Are they all dead? Where are they, and where am I?
My fingers trail across the words on my chest, remembering many messages like this left by Far to guide me on my way. I remember the distant days of Ritry Goligh's War when every jack into a Soul was new. I was only half alive then, really only one seventh alive, and now I am just…
What?
Enough. I break my vapid stare and start for the conning tower; I need answers. I don't have my HUD so I take the measure of the Bathyscaphe through the metal and air as I go: no vibrations from the screw, no familiar stink of burning brick, no watery mud dripping in from a Sunken World. Rather there is only a faint, underlying tang in the air.
Ozone.
I hit the pipes as I go as a signal to anyone else in the ship, tapping out my name in Morse code.
-- .
ME
I aim for the top of the sub but somehow find myself in crew quarters, standing outside Doe's room. I don't know how I got here; it's not on the way to the conning tower. Still I push the door open and peer in, as if I might find Doe inside. For a moment my heart leaps, hoping against hope that she will be here, but…
She's not. Of course she's not. A fresh wave of sickness rushes through me and I take more shock-jacks before my legs give out. There's no Doe here, just a neat regulation bed like an EMR tray deployed from the wall. A wall-locker hangs open and I peer in: a white dress uniform, rank first lieutenant, some ancient sticks of unbranded chewing gum, a plastic flashlight and a penknife. So few things, we leave behind.
I hadn't even realized we had crew quarters on the Bathyscaphe. I'm the captain but I didn't know that, and there's something desperately sad about it. The forging pods are the only place I ever woke. This place is like the echo of a cry that never sounded, more an intention than anything real.
I don't mean to start crying, I only find the tears leaking down my cheeks. To wipe them away would seem crass, too purposeful, so I let them flow. If I was Ritry Goligh now is the time I would find a bottle of vodka and start to drink.
But I'm not Ritry Goligh. I stride in and pick a stick of gum from Doe's locker. I never saw her chewing it. The silver wrapper unfolds like the metal jacket circling a gunpowder round, and the gum slips through my fingers as a desiccated powder. How much time has passed with her gone? All this is like the dreams of a child stumbled upon in later life.
Something is very wrong. I shouldn't be here alone like this. Where the hell are my chord?
I stride out, leaving the gum wrapper behind.
The conning tower lies waiting for me, empty and sterile under raw white lights like a vision of the past. To the right lies So's radar and sonar deck, at the front are Doe's controls for glassbomb and Quantum Confusion foils, to the left are La and Ti's stations for trim tank override, screw readouts, and a dozen minor corrective mechanisms for the fins. Ray would stand at my side with Far in back, and in the middle is the periscope where I belong.
I don't belong there now. I don't know where I should go. I head to the engine screw readout and tap the screens to life. Digital readouts flash red then fade. I follow the ignition process, stamped into my mind like letters into metal, but nothing responds. The Bathyscaphe is dead and without La and Ti there is no way I can repair it.
I press my face to the periscope's rubber eyepiece, expecting to see the churning orange magma of a Molten Core or the writhing black mud of a Sunken World beyond, but it is neither. Rather I see a gray wall of rock, stippled and blotchy like a moon's cratered face. A faint reddish light illuminates it from the side, outlining every pockmark with a shadowy crescent. I swing the periscope to the left, but it clanks hard against something, reverberating back through the metal and into my forehead.
I mutter a curse and try to swing the other way, but get the same clank; the periscope is jammed on rock. I cycle the screen through infras, ultras, radiation and spectrographic seeking a pattern in the rock or the light, but there is no clue in either of them.
I'll have to exit and see for myself.
I head for the captain's hutch. Past the racks of heavy concrete Extra-Vehicular Activity suits and outlandish QC weapons, I duck in and look over the little lockers built into the walls and ceiling. Last time the mission folder was in locker 47, or so I recall, for the proto-Calico Skulk Ritry Goligh lived on.
It won't be that now. I go to the number seven, for seven tones in a chord, but it too is locked. I turn to another locker, perhaps one that more truly represents what I am now.
1.
It opens easily and I pull out the long metal box from within. The lid opens with a twang; inside is a piece of scratchy yellow vellum sketched with some kind of architectural plan; a large arch standing atop two long columns.
It means nothing to me.
I turn the paper and see there are labels on the reverse, written to seemingly match up with the two pillars of the arch.
ME
YOU
I don't know what it means. Maybe nothing. Still I fold the paper and tuck it into an inner suit pocket, then head back to the conning tower. I suit up with Durance packs, candlebomb, a Quantum Confusion pistol at each hip and Doe's bondless accelerator mounted to the shoulder of my suit. Last of all I slip on my HUD, old friend, and whisper into blood-mic.
"Anybody there?"
No answer comes.
I climb the ladder, spin open the inner hatch and outer hatch, and the ship gives a gasp as the seal is broken and the metallic smell of ozone floods in stronger than ever. The inner layer of red brick cladding hangs above me and I hammer into it with the pickaxe. Bricks chip and shatter. I bash my way through one layer, two, three until another hiss sounds as my air escapes outward.
Overhead there is a rock ceiling, as lifeless as the Arctic but for that strange red light. I ask the HUD for an atmosphere report on the atmosphere and it comes back moderate: low levels of oxygen, low nitrogen, low carbon dioxide. There is just enough here to breathe but not one iota more.
I emerge to stand atop the brick back of my sublavic ship, taking in the strange sweep of this place.
It's a huge cave. Strange stalagmites rise up and cradle the Bathyscaphe; strange stalactites hang down and jam the periscope. The walls are rounded rock. I can't see any way in or out; certainly nothing big enough to admit the Bathyscaphe. How did I get here? I feel lonely and weary and sick. The Bathyscaphe's broad back lies like a brick coffin before me, mirrored by something that doesn't even register at first, it's so strange.
Another sublavic ship.
&nb
sp; It lies next to mine like a lover, two whales beached within a cave and wrapped up in brick. Thrown by a tsunami, perhaps. Rotting and lost. I don't understand. It doesn't make any sense. As I stare its periscope circles steadily, scanning the rock walls, scanning the Bathyscaphe until finally it settles on me.
B. SOLFEJE
My hand twitches over the QC pistols. I could destroy this ship with a few blasts from Doe's cannon. Whoever's watching me now would die and I'd be safe.
But I don't want to be safe. More than anything I want to find the chord, and maybe the person on that ship can help. I toss the QCs to the brick cladding and unlatch the cannon from its mount on my shouder. It crunches behind me as I advance, palms out.
The periscope tracks my approach.
At the edge of the Bathyscaphe, where the brick cladding corners down too steeply to follow, I stop and wait. The periscope remains steady. Moments pass, then there is the muffled thump of a pick smashing into brick. I wait until a glint of metal breaks through this twin ship's outer cladding, and I wait as the hole widens and a figure climbs out. There's just one, wearing a sublavic suit with QC pistols in hand.
I try a smile then realize this person cannot see my face through the visor. Trust has to begin somewhere. I raise my hands slowly to my HUD and unclasp it. It lifts clear. The air inside the cave is bitter with ozone but breathable.
"What are you doing?" the figure asks, surprised. It's a woman's voice. She doesn't take off her HUD. With my helmet off her QC pistols would dissociate me in seconds, and maybe she finds that alarming.
I smile again. It's not a comfortable moment, but what does that matter? I had all the advantages; my suit, my weapons, the element of surprise, and I gave it all up just to hear her voice. I'm glad not to be alone.
"Making friends," I say. "My name's Me."
"I don't want a friend."
"I can help you. We can help each other."
"I don't need help."
Maybe that's true, maybe not. I don't really know what to say. "Take off your helmet," I try. It's not an order. Not a suggestion, really. Just a next step, because what else are we going to do? I don't think she understands any of this either.
She does it. Slowly, watchfully, waiting perhaps for me to spring a trap or pull a hidden QC, her hands go to her HUD and twist it clear. When I see her face my heart skips a beat. She could almost be Doe returned from death. She has albino-pale skin and near white hair. I remember to breathe. I peer at her closely; of course it isn't Doe. There are differences in her eyes, her cheeks. It's not Doe, because Doe is dead.
"Where's your pulse?" she asks.
It's a good question. I consider lying. I consider the truth, that I wasn't part of a pulse but a seven-tone chord. I settle on a mixture of the two, by omission. "Not here. I don't know where. What about yours?"
Her eyes, a translucent blue so pale it's like looking into ancient glacier ice, bore into me. "Dead. And what do you mean, not here?"
"Didn't come through with me in the forge," I say, careful not to say 'they'. It seems important to keep my seven-tone chord to myself. "I woke up alone. What happened to your other?"
"Died after forging," she says.
We study each other in uneasy détente. The strange reddish light ripples over the rock roof and walls in familiar patterns, like waves from an EMR. I take the moment to rub my eyes.
"What's the 'Hollow Star'?" she asks. It doesn't make sense for a moment, then I realize she's looking at the yellow paint written on my chest.
"I have no idea. It was there when I forged."
She grunts.
"What's your name?" I ask.
"Solfeje. And you?"
"Me."
More gazing, more assessing. "I woke sick," I say, to break the silence. "Not like a usual forging. Alone. I vomited and felt like I was going to die. How did your other die?"
"He vomited to death," she says. Her voice is flat but I sense the emotion underneath. I can make out the reddened marks around her eyes and down her cheeks. Even the most hardened marine can't help but weep like a baby when a part of them gets cut away.
Doe, I think. I know how I felt when we lost her.
"I don't want to die like that," I say. "I don't think you want to either. We could help each other, if our missions align. But first, I'd like to see your other."
She stares at me. "See my other."
"To understand. I'm sick. I want to know what's coming."
She stares at me for a long hard moment, weighing me up. "No QCs. No cannon."
"Same goes for you," I answer.
She stares a moment longer then drops her pistols to the brick cladding. She might have more secreted in her suit, but what does it matter? Whether I'm unarmed in her ship or unarmed in this cave, it doesn't make a difference.
"Come on then."
I make the leap to the back of her ship, landing smoothly. She looks about my height, about my build. If it came down to a brawl I can't say who would win.
"After you," I say, pointing to the gouge she smashed through brick to the ladder leading down. She jumps without taking her gaze off me, straightening perfectly so she slips like a needle through the narrow gap. I hear the thunk as she lands in the conning tower below.
I hadn't expected that. She'll have time to do whatever she wants; prime a trap, ready a shield, but there has to be trust. I could fetch a QC of my own but that would ruin it already.
I climb down the old-fashioned way, hand-over-hand. Her conning tower looks much like mine, though maybe a newer model. The screens look sleeker, the angles better designed, the corners more rounded.
"Nice," I say, standing beside her periscope. "Did you fight in the War?"
Her ice-blue eyes lock on mine like missile sights. "Which war?"
I smile. I'm not sure I remember anymore. "It's always a war, isn't it?"
Her head tilts slightly, then she points. "This way."
She doesn't wait for me. I follow her down a ladder then along narrow corridors constricted by paneled pipes and ducts in the walls, around structural bulkheads, walking in this bubble of tenuous trust. In silence we pass down a corridor that looks like crew quarters, with names engraved on metal plaques just like on the Bathyscaphe.
Solfeje and Solmiz.
"Do you remember him?" I ask. "Solmiz?"
She answers without turning her head. If having me walk behind her makes her uncomfortable, she doesn't show it. "No. Do you remember yours?"
I think again of Doe; I know there's a tragedy there, but the others have reduced to vague notions now. This place is dimming my mind. I know their names but that is all.
"Not like I should."
She continues on down ladders and along corridors until we come to the forging pods. Even the pipes here look much the same as aboard the Bathyscaphe, painted the same gray color and stained with the same stains.
"Here's mine," she says, pointing to an empty pod, "and here's Solmiz."
He lies curled on the floor of his pod, dressed in the same sublavic suit as Solfeje and just as pale-skinned, though his skin has a sick, waxy sheen. He doesn't look familiar, he just looks dead.
"May I?" I ask.
She gestures to go ahead.
I step into the pod with no clear idea what I'm looking for. I kneel by his side and turn his face slightly. I can see he's been sick.
"How long did it take?" I ask.
"Less than ten minutes. I forged with him already choking. I tried to stop it but I couldn't."
I do a quick calculation in my head, counting how long it took me to leave the Bathyscaphe. "We might have come through at the same time," I say. "To this place, however we got here. Does that mean anything to you?"
"Should it?"
"I don't know." I think hard. "Am I familiar to you? Do you know me? I can't imagine we're here at the same time, in near-identical ships and both alone, by accident."
She looks at me for a long hard moment. "Perhaps. You do feel familiar,
but I don't know why."
"You're familiar to me too," I say. "You look like my other."
She frowns. I catch a faint twitch in her throat that tells me she's subvocalizing a suit command on blood-mic, though without a HUD that would be meaningless, unless…
"You're sick too," I say.
"What?"
"I just saw you taking shock-jacks. You've got the same thing. You're sick."
"I'm fine."
"Why lie? We want to fix this. It killed Solmiz. It may kill you and me next. You're sick."
She stares at me, giving nothing away. "Yes, I'm sick. Not like him, maybe not like you, but I'm sick."
I nod, thinking. "It's this place. Or maybe it's the way we came through. Do you think we're in a Solid Core?"
"I don't know. I didn't see anything except the rock."
Here I know she's lying. I don't know how. Something in those eyes, maybe. A different shade of pale.
"We have to tell each other the truth," I say. "Otherwise why not just go duel it out with QCs?"
She stares, gives the slightest of nods, then taps the wall. A rectangle of glass lights up, taking me by surprise. A screen of some kind. Controls flash up and her fingers dance over them, and in seconds a video autoplays. I recognize it at once; a view of my Bathyscaphe from the fore and side, lit by the same red glow rippling off the roof.
I lean in to see better. "This is from your periscope?"
She grunts. "Watch."
I watch. The periscope turns. Hers is not blocked by stalactites so it strafes down a full three-sixty view of the Bathyscaphe, across a barren expanse of rock wall then the screen starts getting brighter. The contrast dials down and the rock turns near-black as the periscope approaches an oblong block of roiling red and orange.
"Look familiar?" Solfeje asks.
I am entranced. It's like looking through the open mouth of an oven into, well…
"It's a Molten Core," I whisper.
"It's not mine," Solfeje says.
I blink. Striations of red and orange billow through the oblong of churning magma like flexing muscle. It isn't possible. Anything that hot would burn through this rock in seconds. The sublavics should be engulfed and the air baked out of existence. We shouldn't be walking around, but somehow we are.
Soul Jacker Box Set Page 43
