Crescent (40 page)

It was followed by another. The things continued to sprout from the walls, the floor, and the ceiling. Soon, the hangar was raining with brilliant sparks and
falling
hunks of twisted metal. The floor ripped open and a mass of black, violet, and red erupted like a living torrent of light and dark. It began to take on a shape.
That’s it,
Gerald thought,
it’s becoming.

The colony ship lifted off from the flight deck and careened toward Bean. A second later, a massive spike pierced its belly. The explosion that followed was huge and blinding. Flaming debris bounced off Bean’s hull with thundering impacts.

“Bean,” Gerald commanded, “Go!”

The hauler took off and rocketed out of the firestorm. The small ship roared down the hangar in reverse as more spikes
erupted
its wake.

And then they were in open space.

The docking hub’s massive glowing portal had become a ring of sharp metal teeth, like the hungry maw of some obscene creature. Before Gerald could consider it further, Marisa was on top of him, peppering his face with kisses.

“You magnificent son of a bitch.”
She kissed him long and hard enough that he had to push her away to catch his breath. “You smart piece of shit. When did you get so smart? You fucking son of a bitch!” She kissed him again and again. Her lips tasted salty with perspiration.

“Captain,” Bean said, “I’m detecting major energy fluctuations coming from Crescent.”

(•••)

Kendall staggered into his bed chamber and shrieked when he found Angela sitting at the foot of his large bed. Surprise and fear were quickly replaced by hatred and he lurched toward her with extended arms, intent on strangling the bitch. He would have ripped her throat out if an alarm had not started wailing. Instead, he limped past her and to an emergency closet. There he climbed into a neon orange environment suit and only then did he go to her. He kept his hands at his sides, but could still feel the echo of the snarl contorting his features.

“You look crazy in that suit, you motherfucker. You’re going to die looking like an idiot. You’re going to—” her words were replaced with gurgling, sputtering noises.

Kendall turned then. The room filled with a heavy white fog. He smiled as he watched her claw at her throat, realizing his providence then. Angela was as fine a canary as she was a whore.

Leaving her body, he went to his personal terminal and entered a string of commands into it. The gas vented from his chamber and was replaced with fresh, clean atmosphere. The display screen above the keypad indicated that his air was safe and breathable again. Now all he had to do was wait for
Darros
to come and rescue him. Kendall’s
comm
chimed with an incoming message. He removed the environment suit’s helmet and played the transmission. It was audio only and riddled with static.

“The
Habeos
gate has been destroyed. We have taken heavy casualties. You set us up, Kendall. You are on your own. I hope your death is a long and painful one.”

Kendall swallowed hard.

“What are you
gonna
do now, old man?” a mocking voice called. Kendall swiveled in his seat.

Naheela
stood at the foot of his bed; she knelt beside the dead hooker, examining her with wonder. She touched the flesh of the dead girl’s stained cheeks and brushed away a trickle of blood that had dribbled from one of Angela’s nostrils.

“Still warm,”
Naheela
said, absently. “I
ain’t
one for the speeches. Well. That’s a lie. But you
ain’t
worth a speech. I’m tired, Ezra. Even the ageless get weary. I’m done with this place. I’ll take my chances with my immortality and erase it all. It is time for me to shed the burden of pride. I’ve failed here. But it ends now.”

“What madness are you prattling about now, crone?”

“This is going to hurt, Ezra. Mortal eyes, they cannot handle looking upon the true face of the ageless.”

It occurred to him then that
Naheela
should have been dead. He saw no signs of an environment suit. The gas should have killed her.

Naheela
yawned and her skin started to change. Expanding black spots covered her cheeks and arms. The blossoming patches were fringed by the most brilliant light that Kendall had ever seen. So bright, it hurt his eyes. The spots continued to grow—they looked depthless. The patches filled with shimmering points of light. Each pinprick blossomed into brilliant sun.

“We are the glue that binds all universes together.” She smiled and opened her mouth wide.
More radiance.
God, how his eyes pained him, but he couldn’t tear them away.

Soon,
Naheela
was a figure of pure incandescence. A figure of sable grew up out of the wavering floor to fill the space between Kendall and
Naheela
. He thought the darkness would soothe his burning eyes, but instead when he looked upon the dark
figure,
it filled him with a cold that burned far worse by comparison. It was then that Kendall understood the true essence of light and dark, of good and evil. He saw that as a man, he was mortal and nothing.

Suddenly,
Naheela’s
shape flared, Kendall screamed, and something else—something inhuman—screamed along with him. Ezra Kendall had never known so much pain in his life. The world winked out around him. He was blind. He fell to his knees amidst so much heat that his mind couldn’t comprehend it. He could, however, comprehend the burning smell. His thin, gray hair was on fire. He cried out again,
then
inhaled sharply. As he drew his last breath, the air itself caught fire. He was fortunate to die then.

(•••)

Gerald and Marisa sat at the edge of the flight couch, gripping each other’s hands with white-knuckled intensity. Crescent erupted with swirling arcs of white light. The blinding streamers wrapped around the curve of station like a cocooning tornado. Red, violet, and black ribbons of light spun out in countering circles, but the ribbons were soon overwhelmed by the white hellfire. There wasn’t an explosion but a retina-searing flash of light, and then all that remained of Crescent was a floating afterimage.

“Bean…
 
What the hell was that?”

“I don’t know, Captain. I do know that the station is no longer registered on our radar. It is gone.”

“It’s not there anymore, Gerald,” Marisa whispered. “It’s not…
 
anywhere.”

Debris floated where the station had been—refuse and old, discarded cargo containers. Nothing to indicate the station had blown up. The small leavings retained the shape of the station for a few minutes, but then became dissociated. The only evidence that mankind had built a station above
Anrar
III began a slow descent into the planet’s atmosphere, only to face eventual disintegration.

Bean was silent.

Minutes turned into hours, and they still did not move from
Anrar
III’s
shadow. Gerald and Marisa held one another, not out of love, or relief, but just to hold onto something living and real. Gerald felt himself falling asleep and didn’t fight it. He was exhausted. Marisa was already snoring softly with her head buried in his neck. She would probably start drooling on him soon.

He didn’t care.

(•••)

The next several weeks went by in a haze. There were medical exams and endless questions from Core Sec security officials. They always asked the same questions, and each time Marisa and Gerald were only able to provide the
most vague
of answers. When they had awakened from their catnap on Bean, memory of what happened on Crescent was fragmented, dreamy, and fast to fade. Bean’s memory banks from the past month had been wiped clean. Apparently, Gerald had executed the command himself, but he didn’t remember doing it. In the end, those events on Crescent that Gerald remembered most clearly were the ones he believed the least.

“Mr. Evans, we’re not accusing you of anything. We really don’t think that one man, one woman, and a beat up salvage ship could be capable of making an entire station disappear. We just need your help to piece things together. We need to know if this region is unstable. We need to know if Galatea could suffer the same fate as Crescent.”

“Look,” Gerald said, “I told you. I don’t know what happened. I can’t remember, and it causes me pain when I try to. I just want to get out of space altogether. I want to feel the soil of a planet beneath my feet. How many more times do we need to go through this?”

“I apologize, Mr. Evans.”

The session went on for another hour, apology notwithstanding.

Marisa was waiting for him in the lounge area outside the Core Sec office. Her back was to him. She stood in front of a large viewport and watched the rolling asteroids and glittering stars. He placed his hands on her shoulders and she leaned back into him.

“How did it go?”

He shrugged.

“They’re letting us go on the next colony ship out of here,” he said.

“On what condition?”

“That they get to keep Bean for an undetermined amount of time.”

“And you’re fine with that?” She raised an eyebrow.

“I’m not fine with it, but I do know we need to get out of this part of space for good. When they’re done with Bean, they can send the hull to me wherever we end up and we’ll use him as a big planter. Don’t
worry,
I’ll hang onto the parts that count.”

Marisa chuckled. “I’m sure he’ll love that.”

“I don’t think he has much of a choice.”

Gerald tapped his breast pocket and the data wafers therein. Bean’s personality constructs and memories were close to his heart—where they should be. Core Sec could have Bean’s hull, his machinery, and his data banks, but Bean would make a fine estate computer for the house that Gerald had just purchased with the mystery funds in his bank account.

The line to the docking tube remained long and slow as passengers filed onto the colony ship. It seemed that the closer Gerald and Marisa got to leaving, the slower things went. Finally, they reached the security check. Gerald removed his shoes and placed them on a narrow conveyor belt. He proceeded through a metal arch and was scanned for contraband. Once cleared, he stepped out of the checkpoint, retrieved his shoes, and slipped them back onto his feet.

Marisa stepped into the docking tube ahead of him.

“I’m off Galatea before you, sucker.” She winked. He turned for one last glance at the station. A young woman with a wild mane of dark hair and cappuccino skin stood watching him. She waved.
At him?

“Do we know her?” he asked Marisa.

“Nope,” she said and tugged his belt loop. “Come on, Gerry.”

In an instant, he remembered. He remembered everything. The woman he saw now was ancient, and he saw the whole story in her face. His mouth fell open and he closed his eyes. Marisa tugged on him again. He opened his eyes and the woman was gone.

“You okay?” Marisa asked as he stepped into the tube.

“Yeah.”
He hesitated for a moment and then answered honestly. “I’m fine.”

The pair boarded the colony ship, and left that piece of space behind them forever.

Epilogue

Gerald was cold.

A violent shiver woke him from a heavy sleep. He was intimate with the fact that it got very cold at night in the desert, but that didn’t prevent him from falling asleep with the window open time and again. He rolled onto his back and let out an audible groan. His head pounded. He forced his eyes open. Blue light pushed into the bedroom through wind-blown curtains and pooled on the gray carpet. Gerald realized he was lying on the floor instead of face down in a stack of pillows on his big, cozy bed. And he was naked. He lifted himself onto his knees and his hands came away from the floor wet. He probed the spot with his fingers only to discover the carpet was saturated. He became aware of the shower—it was running. He looked in the direction of the bathroom. The door was closed, but no light shined from the crack beneath it. He looked next toward the large bed. There was a lump under the sheets and a wash of dark hair spread out over a scrunched pillow. A pale, bare foot stuck out from beneath the twisted blanket.

Gerald went into the bathroom and he flipped on the light. He turned off the shower and watched the last of the water trail down the drain, carrying a few grains of red sand with it. A towel in the corner of the bathroom was mostly dry and didn’t yet smell of mildew. He used it to rid himself of the excess moisture and then wrapped it around his waist.

Back in the bedroom, he sifted through his discarded clothes for a pack of cigarettes. The beat-up box held only a single stick of tobacco. He shook his head and stuck the final smoke between his lips—he didn’t remember going through a whole pack earlier that night, but his lungs did feel tight. It might be time to consider giving the damn things up.

He went to the open window and his gaze trailed up along Cutter’s Spine. The low mountains scraped at the glittering stars. His eyes moved out to the mesas and rested on the glowing lights that were the fledgling core mine. If Gerald strained and the wind was right, he could just barely hear the electric generators burning their stinky, liquid fuel. The wind changed direction and all he heard was quiet; all he could smell was dirt. He turned his eyes down to his own stretch of land.
To his magnificent dirt gardens.
He laughed. Bold salvage pilot turned dirt farmer, he mused. Long boxes of dark, fresh, and very fertile earth stretched out along the flat desert plain. The dirt looked black in the moonlight.