by Rob Dearsley
Grayson stepped up to the door running his hands over the seams, looking for a way through.
“Wait.” Hale pulled Grayson away from the door.
“What?” He frowned through the faceplate. “The power signature is behind this door. If there’s anything worth finding, then it’s here, right?”
“Maybe. But the Turned, it was trying to keep us out of the research labs. There’s something in there that scares it.”
“How can you know that?” Fyffe asked, stepping back from the door, her movements nervous.
“It reached out to me with its mind, communicated with me.”
“I didn’t know they could do that.” Ellis kept scanning the darkness. “Creepy gits, aren’t they?”
Creepy indeed. “Neither did I. But without the ships’ Core-Minds controlling them for thousands of years, who knows what might have changed. But my point is, there’s something in there that scares them.”
Grayson turned back to the door. “If the Turned don’t like it, then I want to know what it is. Fyffe, give me a hand. Hale, cover us”
Ellis glanced over his shoulder. “You sure about this, boss.”
Grayson met the rangy sniper’s eyes. “If there’s something in here that we can turn against the Terran ships, our orders are to check it out.”
Grayson and Fyffe grabbed the manual release leavers mounted either side of the door and pulled. Hale raised her coil-gun, aiming it at the slowly widening gap between the doors, into the pitch darkness beyond.
The doors looked like a void into the starless depths of hell, just seeing it sent the skin on Hale’s neck crawling. Maybe it was the Turned’s thoughts, but the dark beyond that door felt very wrong. The same primitive fear that made ancient humans invent fire to chase away the shadows.
The others formed up, their armour lights petering out before they could offer more than meagre outlines. As though the darkness was fighting back against them.
Hale shook her head. She’d never been scared of the dark before. Had communication with the Turned done something to her?
As she followed Grayson through the door, Hale’s eyes started to adjust to the darkness. Ranks of isolation suits hung from the walls, their air hoses hanging from the back of the enclosed hoods like tentacles. Opposite them, another pair of doors waited.
Grayson and Ellis moved through the room and, with a whirring of motors, forced the inner doors. Behind them, Fyffe shifted nervously.
The doors opened into an equally dark lab complex. Their lights glinted off steel worktops, killing Hale’s night vision and plunging the periphery of the room into inky blackness.
Grayson ordered, “Lights.”
Fyffe pulled a pair of spheres from her harness, they looked similar to the ‘throw drones’ she’d used before. She tossed the drones upward. They came to life with a soft hum of motors and hovered, bobbing in place half a metre above Hale’s head. Lights arrayed around their bases flickered to life, casting the area around them into stark light, shadows from the workbenches stretching out around them.
The lab was clean and orderly, completely untouched by the war that had raged just metres away, and by the passage of centuries.
“Check this out,” Fyffe called, gesturing to a bare metal chair. An array of scanner wands and surgical instruments arrayed around the chair’s head glittered like raindrops in the light.
Hale’s mind flashed back to memories of another sterile room. She picked up a heavy Faraday Cage and turned it over. “That kit’s used to implant the ship-link.”
Fyffe glanced over her shoulder. “You okay, Commander?”
“It’s this place. Something feels wrong.”
The young tech shivered beneath her armour. “I know what you mean. It’s too quiet.”
“Don’t complain,” Ellis said, joining the two women. “Next thing you know we’ll be neck deep in Turned.”
Grayson moved further into the lab. At a gesture from his hand, one of the drones followed him, casting its lights over ranks of containment cells. Their clear curved surfaces distorted the light and cast odd, shadows that seemed to twist and flow. He hefted his coil-gun, panning its light over the isolation chambers. “Looks like they were experimenting on the Turned.”
Despite her misgivings, Hale moved closer. The decaying body of a Turned crumpled against the cracked wall of one of the tubes in a tangle of broken, twisted limbs. Its flared head had caved in on one side. What had happened to it?
A voice came from behind her. “It battered itself to death trying to get out.”
Hale spun, bringing her gun up before she realised it was Ellis. Damn, she was jumpy. “What do you mean?”
“It looks like it broke its arms trying to break out. Like the one on Pyrite.” Ellis peered into the next tube. “Huh?”
“What?” Hale moved around to get a better view into the chamber. “Oh.” What had they been doing here?
She looked down at the remains in the tube, the blue of an Imperial officer’s uniform still visible across its shoulders. Although it was hard to say given the decomposition, he didn’t appear to have any signs of turning. Were they experimenting on their own? Or had he locked himself in?
At Grayson’s beckoning, the light drone moved further down the ranks of containment pods. Hale followed it, her eyes darting from side to side, watching the constantly shifting shadows. The back of her neck itched like someone was watching her. Something was right behind her breathing down her neck.
She spun to find nothing.
“Jumping at shadows?” Ellis asked, forced joviality not quite covering his own nerves.
The Turned’s final thoughts rattled through her mind. They shouldn’t be here.
“Commander Hale, you need to see this,” Grayson said, gesturing for them to join him at the far end of the lab.
Arland, Ellis and Fyffe moved cautiously between the ranks of shadowy containment tubes.
Grayson stepped back to let them see.
Oh, Angels.
Hale couldn’t move. Couldn’t think. It was impossible. But it was there. Here. Her feet carried her forward, floating as if in a dream. She brushed past Grayson to look down into the cryo-pod.
A dark-haired man lay on the white foam interior, military short hair and a square jaw above the collar of his deep blue Imperial Navy uniform, perfectly preserved, creases still razor sharp. Hale’s breath caught. There was someone in there. Someone else from the Imperium was still improbably alive after all this time.
“We have to get him out.” Hale reached out to touch the cool surface of the glass. Memories of being on the other side of that glass filled her mind. The cloying suffocation of the drugs, Matthews’s hand pressed against the rapidly cooling glass in a final farewell.
Damn.
Hale scrubbed her hands over her face and blew out a breath, trying to centre herself, to focus.
The cryogenic pod was active and inside was a person. A real person, from the Imperium, like her. Even in sleep, he looked tense, ready for action.
The chance to be around someone like herself again was more than she’d dared dream for.
“We have to get him out,” she said again, reaching for the pod’s controls.
“Wait.” Grayson grabbed her hands, stopping her.
Hale rounded on the man. “Why?”
“We don’t know why he’s in there. What if waking him like this kills him? We should at least have medical facilities on standby.”
Hale stepped back, casting longing looks into the cryo-pod.
Ellis and Fyffe shifted, uneasy, uncertain.
“Commander?” Grayson’s voice held a note of warning.
“Yes,” Hale said through clenched teeth. Her hands moved to the control panel. A flick of her fingers brought up his life signs. Strong and steady. “He looks healthy enough and we can’t take the pod with us.”
“Commander,” Fyffe said. “This doesn’t feel right. You said it yourself, the Turned were scared of someth
ing in here.”
“We can’t, in good conscience, leave him here.” Hale’s fingers hovered over the revival controls. They couldn’t stop her.
“I hate to say it, but she’s right, Boss,” Ellis said. “We can’t honestly be considering leaving him. You said it yourself, orders are to bring back anything that might help us against the Turned or the ships.”
Hale tapped the controls. The inside of the pod flickered, turning a hellish red as the revival cycle started.
Grayson rounded on her. “Stars damn-it, Hale. What are you…”
The Terran’s eyes flew open, mouth opening in a silent scream. His eyes were black as pitch.
Hale’s hope started to crumble back to the harsh, unfair, darkness of reality. A barren wasteland of hatred and anger.
The pod released with a soft click.
The man within let out a breathless scream. Grayson and Arland stepped back, their weapons rising, but uncertain.
The Terran’s hand’s clamped around the lip of the pod, pulling himself up.
He blinked, his eyes shifting back to a human brown. “Damn it, I said get out of here. Lock the place down. It can’t-” He crumpled, darkness swirling in his eyes. This wasn’t the Turned, this was something else.
Hale knelt beside him, cupping his cheek, pulling him upright maybe they could help him, save him. She didn’t want to be alone. “It’s okay. The war is finished.”
“Finished?” He looked up at Hale, his eyes clearing. “No. It doesn’t matter. You need to-” He convulsed from Hale’s grip, another cry breaking from his throat.
Hale knelt, frozen in confusion as he thrashed clear of the cryo-pod. The blackness in his eyes seemed to grow and expand, filling Hale’s vision, filling her world.
Ellis and Grayson brought their guns up. The Terran recoiled from the light. The swirling darkness receding.
“Move!” Grayson grabbed her arm, pulling her away.
As she brushed Grayson off Hale caught movement in the corner of her eye. Tendrils of shadow lashed out at them, more intent than form, just a rolling cascade of emptiness, like dry ice. Hale threw Grayson’s armoured body away and dove for cover. Behind them, Fyffe and Ellis fired, the flechettes whickering overhead.
Hale scrambled to her feet, groping for her own weapon. The Darkness had consumed the Terran, poring off the humanoid form like smoke. Grayson fired again, the flechette disappeared into the rolling dark without any effect.
Hale swung her own rifle, dialling its flashlight up to max. The shadows recoiled, a voiceless scream filling the room.
“Illumination to maximum,” Grayson ordered, activating all his armour and weapon lights.
Above them, the drones’ lights flared into incandescence, burning back the darkness. Another scream reverberated off the walls, echoing through Hale’s head.
“Fall back,” Ellis yelled, back-stepping toward the door, his rifle aimed at the humanoid form.
The darkness lashed out, shattering the drones, plunging the room into shadows. Only the tight beams of the armour lights cast any illumination.
As Hale watched, the darkness rolled further into the room, seeping into the containment tubes. Smoky tendrils twined around the broken remains of the Turned, filling the containment tube until it was a matte black so deep it devoured the light from their flashlights. A hole in the universe.
Something slammed into the glass from the inside.
“Go, go, go.” Grayson’s voice held the edges of panic.
Another crash and the containment tube cracked and crazed, the darkness spilling out.
Hale raised her rifle, hoping against hope that she wasn’t right, that whatever this strange new force was, it hadn’t-
With a crash, the glass of the tube shattered and the Turned, or what was left of it, leapt for Grayson. Shadows cascading from it.
Twenty
(In orbit over Terra Prime)
Lloyd looked out through the hound’s cupola at the planet beneath him. The shadow of night crept toward the base of the space elevator. The unbroken darkness was odd. Lloyd couldn’t think of the last time he’d seen a planet without the scattering of artificial lights on its night side. Primal darkness.
“Captain,” Slater’s voice filtered through the com system, breaking him from his thoughts. “Scout Alpha has gone dark?”
“What?” Lloyd flipped the hound around and brought up the shared scanner feeds. Nothing. The Nowhere scout ship wasn’t broadcasting at all. “Let’s get eyes on.”
Lloyd’s hands danced across the controls, sending the fighter gliding away from the sunset and around the Feynman’s cylindrical bulk. Passing in front of the massive ship’s main gun gave him the heebies. He’d heard about what the carrier’s plasma cannon did to the Terran ships at the Battle of Pyrite.
He let out a breath as they swung alongside the larger ship, the Nowhere scout coming into view. Scanner enhancements on the heads-up zoomed in on the squat rectangle of the Scout Cruiser. It didn’t look like it had taken any damage, and the energy signatures read as normal.
He thumbed the com over to tight-beam. “Scout Alpha, this is captain Lloyd, respond.”
Nothing but the slight crackle of background radiation.
“Scout Alpha, come in.” He switched over to Slater. “You seeing any damage?”
“Not a scratch. Well, nothing that wasn’t there before we left.”
He was about to try again when the com system cracked to life. “Captain Lloyd, please bear with us, we’re having some difficulties with the com system.”
Lloyd frowned, rolling the hound to look up at Slater opposite him. She shrugged with her hands, indicating she didn’t know any more than him about this.
“What sort of problems? Anything we can do to help?” he asked, not quite sure he believed them. Were they playing some sort of political game? Messing with the SDF?
“Not necessary, captain. It’s just a glitch with the SDF com protocols. We’re on it.”
That was a bunch of crap. The scout ship was a bloody SDF built cruiser, it would be compatible with normal coms protocols. This was just political crap. “We can relay a message to Feynman, get them to switch it up on their end.”
“We’ve got this. We don’t need any damn SDF help.”
Oh, for crying… Slater’s hound bumped his. He looked up. She had a flex out, held so he could see the screen. At his touch, the head’s up zoomed in on her flex.
‘Niels wants 2 know what’s going on’, was printed on the display.
Lloyd flipped his own flex open on his lap. And tapped in ‘nothing good’. The he opened a com channel to the scout. “Right, I’m docking with you. I’ll download clean com setting from my hound.”
That sounded like a terrible plan. But what choice did he have? He wasn’t about to let Niels fire on them. Damn, he didn’t have any good options.
‘Tell Niels they’re having com issues. I’m going over to see what’s going on’, he tapped into the flex.
‘OK’, Slater replied, then, ‘I don’t like this.’
Neither did he, but at least Slater had his back.
◊◊
Darkness cascaded from the Turned as it leapt. Hale snapped her rifle up and fired – no time to aim. The shot went wide and the shadowy Turned crashed into Grayson,
Fyffe and Ellis had their rifles up, but couldn’t get a shot. Without thinking, Hale charged for the downed marine. She gabbed Grayson’s armour and heaved him away, painting the Turned with her armour lights. The Turned reared up, its arms lashing out. Hale met the blow with her coil-gun. The blow was viciously hard, buckling the rifle and driving her to her knees.
Flechette rounds whickered past them, the blasts knocking the Turned back. Leaving her own broken rifle, Hale scrabbled away, pulling Grayson along behind her.
The darkness lashed out, flowing over them, and for a moment they were falling through endless, starless night.
I am eternal and I will return.
The
presence, the Darkness, pounded against Hale’s thoughts, ripping against edges of her sanity.
Join me in the before.
She could do it. Stop fighting and join her friends. All she had to do was give in and let this Darkness bear her away. Would it be so bad? She sure as hell didn’t belong in this future.
Fire and light, bright enough to bind, burned away the darkness, leaving Hale’s vision whited out. Hands grabbed at her and Hale thrashed out on instinct, connecting with something hard and cold.
“You’re okay.” Ellis’s helmeted face appeared in her vision. “We’ve got you.”
She blinked until her eyes cleared. A pair of the light drones shone down on them, driving back the shadows. Hale pulled herself up, while Ellis grabbed Grayson and they bolted for the doors.
Behind them came the splintering of broken metal and the light winked out.
“Fyffe?” Ellis called.
“No more drones,” Fyffe shouted through the squad channel.
“Flashbangs?” Grayson asked as they ducked through the first set of doors into the antechamber.
Fyffe and Ellis threw themselves against the inner doors as the Turned and Terran charged through a swirling darkness that seemed to expand to fill the space.
Hale looked at the three marines fighting to survive, even after everything, struggling, fighting to drive back the night, the sight driving down her loss and galvanising her into action. She threw herself against the doors, helping the marines force them closed.
“Leave it,” Grayson ordered as he backed through the outer security doors.
Ellis tossed out a flashbang and they sprinted through the already closing security doors. Hale was the last to squeeze through the vanishing gap. She stumbled away from the door, breathing hard.
The doors deformed inward. The creature’s clawed hand groping through the gap. Hale and the others scattered backwards. Ellis was too slow, the claws clamping around the shoulder of his armour, crushing and tearing at the hard-shell.
His screams flooded the squad channel for a second before Grayson muted his link. Hale grabbed Ellis’s dropped coil-gun and fired it into the Turned’s arm. It retreated through the damaged door.
