The Burning Dark (37 page)

Carter glanced at Ludmila. “And where does she fit in?”

Ida frowned. “The original incursion from subspace?”

Ludmila bowed her helmeted head.

“But there was no Fleet when she was taken,” said Zia. “The Fleet wouldn’t have been around for another, what, hundred years?”

“January the first, 2050,” said Ida. “But there would have been records of the incursion—classified, but records all the same. And then the Fleet runs into trouble with the Spiders and the old project is opened up. The Psi-Marine Corps.”

Ida turned to Serra. The psi-marine stood at the back of the group, her eyes downcast. She hadn’t said a word since they left the cells. He remembered the odd look she gave him earlier, like she knew something.

She was smiling.

“They evacuated all of the psi-marines off the station,” said Ida, taking a step toward her. “All except one.”

The crackle of the space radio. “The commandant knew the plan,” said Ludmila. “But he also knew that Izanami would not stop with the Spiders. She would destroy everything. All life is energy to be consumed.”

Ida nodded. “So he was taken, but he made sure someone was left behind to fight. Someone with the right skills.”

Serra looked up, her eyes bright in Ludmila’s lantern light, but she didn’t speak. Ludmila’s voice crackled from behind Ida. “He ordered a psi-marine be left on board,” she said. “The best psi-marine.” Her helmet clicked as she turned toward Serra. “Is it ready?”

Serra nodded. “Almost.”

“Good,” said Ludmila.

Serra walked to the front of the group. “Come on,” she said. “We need to get to the
Bloom County
before it’s too late.”

“The
Bloom County
?” asked Ida. Then he smiled. The only Spider tech in human hands, of course. “Right, let’s go,” he said, but when he turned around, there was no sign of Van Buren or Koch.

Carter cracked his knuckles. “Come on,” he said, “before we disappear too.”

43

“Sections Five and Six
to embarkation point. Embarkation at oh-seven-oh-seven.”

It was the third time the announcement had been broadcast to the crew of the
Coast City
since Ida’s group had returned to the station, and it was just one of many instructions echoing over the internal comms. Ida was shocked to find the station’s passageways glaringly bright, the hub alive with people—marines, Flyeyes, technicians, support staff. Everyone walking briskly in one direction. Ida knew the leftover crew of the
Coast City
—those who hadn’t already been snatched by the Funayurei—must number only between fifty and one hundred, yet there appeared to be many more on the move. Such was the pace of the traffic that Ida feared they would be called out purely because they were walking slowly and uncertainly.

Ida, Zia, and Serra crouched at the corner of a side passageway as it curved away from the main thoroughfare. There was just enough cover provided by the curving wall that they could observe the main corridor without being seen. Ludmila had vanished as soon as they returned to the
Coast City
—Serra, in contact with her thanks to her remarkable abilities, telling the others that Ludmila hadn’t wanted to slow them down. If the plan worked, she would meet them later. Ida asked what the plan was, exactly, but Serra just smiled. But he trusted her. He didn’t have a choice.

“Here he is,” said Zia. A moment later Carter was striding briskly toward them. He kept his eyes ahead and didn’t slow as he approached, only turning and dropping into a crouch to scoot down the side passage when he had passed the group. They gathered around him.

“Everyone is being assembled for evacuation. They think the
Carcosa
is the last transport.”

“But who are all these crew?” asked Zia. “There weren’t this many when I arrived.”

“They’re from the
Carcosa,
” said Ida. “I recognize them.”

“Well, that means you’re a liability,” said Carter. “They’ll recognize you too.”

Serra shook her head. “They’re not really people anymore.”

“The Funayurei,” said Ida, and Serra nodded.

Zia frowned. “But what are they doing? There’s hundreds of them.”

“Remember what Ludmila said.” Ida rested his artificial knee on the floor and leaned around the curve of the passage; the knee now ached constantly, a low, dull pain. In the main corridor there was no letup in the foot traffic. Fleet personnel passed by in a near-continuous stream.

“The harvest,” said Zia. “They’re swarming.”

Serra shuddered. “Like locusts, coming in to eat.”

“Something tells me the Fleet’s plan isn’t going so well,” said Carter.

“We have to make sure ours does, then,” said Zia. She turned to Serra. “You can talk to my ship?”

Serra nodded; Carter’s eyebrow went up.

“I really wish you’d tell us what was going on,” he said.

“Can’t risk it,” she said. “I’m talking to the ship, but others may be listening.”

“Well, that’s just dandy. So what do you want us to do?”

Serra scanned the corridor ahead of them. “Nothing at all,” she said. “Just follow my lead. Help is nearby.”

“Help?” Carter asked. Serra met his eye and nodded.

“You were wrong, before,” she said.

Ida pursed his lips. “Wrong?”

“There are two members of the Psi-Marine Corps left aboard.”

“Two?”

Serra nodded. “Two: me and the commandant, Elbridge. And this is our battle now.”

44

They resumed their journey
down the corridors of the
Coast City.
They made good progress at first, the standard Fleet garb of the group blending in easily with the multitude of personnel rushing here and there. Together, the four of them looked like any other crew.

But as they got closer to their destination, it got more difficult. They started getting looks, a group of four not moving with the rest of the crew. They kept quiet, kept walking, trying to ignore the crew around them; the crew that stopped and stared, their faces hard, their outlines flaring with black light.

No, not crew. Not anymore. The Funayurei. The U-Star
Carcosa
had been plucked out of quickspace by Izanami-no-Mikoto, the crew within consumed, their souls absorbed to rebuild their demon queen, the remnants regurgitated to add to the ranks of her army of ghosts in hellspace. The things that watched them now were projections, incomplete, but growing in power along with their queen. None spoke or moved to stop Ida’s group, but he couldn’t help but wonder. Was Izanami watching them, through the eyes of her legion? Did she know what Serra’s plan was? Could she hear what the psi-marine was saying to the
Bloom County
?

Ida scratched his cheek and noticed his hand was shaking. He risked a glance sideways at Serra, and although she kept up the pace, she was squinting again, like she was in pain. Ida imagined she was. She was a psi-marine on a ship full of the dead, talking to an alien machine intelligence while one of the devils from subspace was getting closer and closer to corporeal existence in their universe. Ida didn’t want to dwell on what Serra might be hearing in her head.

They approached the service doors leading to the back of the hangar, which, they hoped, would let them slip in unobserved. Ida motioned for the others to wait around the corner of the passage as he jogged forward and reached for the control. He paused, his hand an inch away from the panel.

Carter hissed from the shadows opposite. “Problem?”

Ida’s breath came out in spurts. Carter had broken his concentration. He sighed, and exhaled again, and noticed the breath gathering in front of his face in a great white cloud.

The temperature was dropping. Fast. Ida’s knee protested, and he gasped in pain, then pressed his palm against the bulkhead control.

The door opened. The hangar beyond was dark, and a cold breeze came from within. It ruffled Ida’s hair as he looked down. Something as light as anything tapped at his boots.

“Please tell me you can see this,” he said, his eyes fixed on the floor. The breeze from the hangar carried with it big leaflike flakes of red paint, shiny white on one side, desiccated, like they’d peeled off an old barn in a hot summer long ago.

Ida closed his eyes, and Astrid’s image loomed behind his closed lids, so he opened them again.

“See what?” asked Carter. He joined Ida and looked at the floor, but it was clear he could see nothing.

Ida closed his eyes and felt a hand on his.

“She’s pulling images from your mind,” said Serra. “She sees the dead in all of us. They’re just more lost souls for her to use against us. Whatever you see, it comes from within.”

Ida opened his eyes and looked at the floor. There was no paint from the barn. He looked up and Serra nodded. Behind her, Zia had her arms wrapped tightly across her front, shaking her head slowly. If he had seen a reflection of a lost summer, Ida wondered what it was that Zia had been shown just now.

Ida kicked at nothing on the floor and took a deep breath.

“Come on,” he said, and he went through the door.

45

Ida stepped into the
Coast City
’s hangar, the others close behind. The space was lit in an eerie purple twilight, which Ida had thought was the station’s fritzed environment controls, but which he now knew was the same color as the light of Shadow, the light that would fuck you up, penetrating the supposedly shielded U-Star along with the interference on the comms and the roar of subspace, flooding the corners of the station like a ship taking on water. As Ida blinked, the edges of the hangar flickered with black shapes; darkness that swam, darkness that
watched
. The souls lost at sea. The Funayurei.

Ahead, the two shuttle bays were occupied—the
Magenta,
nearest, and, beyond, the
Bloom County,
crouched on the cradle of Spider legs. And in the cavernous space between the two craft was
her.

Izanami sat on a great pyramid of red, brown, and olive green. At first it was just a tangled collection of shapes and colors, but as he got closer in the dim light Ida could make out an arm, a leg, a head, all clad in the scraps of Fleet uniform and soaked in blood. It was a pile of corpses, Ida realized, torn apart. The empty, discarded husks of those taken by the demon queen.

Izanami was still clad in white, but the medic’s tunic was now a long flowing robe. Her hair was tied back, and across her chest was the black strap of a sword, the long red handle visible over her right shoulder. She sat at the apex of the corpse pile, ten meters from the hangar floor. Her robe was immaculate, and her eyes were burning blue coals, energy coursing out of them like smoke in the cold, still air.

“Welcome, my captain,” she said, smiling.

Ida tore his eyes from her and glanced around the hangar. “There’s no one else here,” he said to Serra. “If you were expecting help—”

Izanami’s laugh interrupted him. At the edge of the hangar, the dancing shadows parted and DeJohn stepped forward, his hands resting on the shoulders of two men shuffling along beside him. The pair stared straight ahead, their arms by their sides, their faces slack, though their eyes were moving. They were caught, trapped by Izanami’s will.

It was Provost Marshal King, and another man: older, his hair gray but full, small circular glasses still clinging to his face. The commandant of the
Coast City,
Price Elbridge.

DeJohn directed them to the front of the stack of bodies, then pushed them to their knees. He stood, swaying, his bulging bloodshot eyes staring somewhere into the space between him and his queen, a thick tentacle of drool escaping his slack jaw to pool on the floor.

King looked up at Ida and then at Serra, who stepped toward him. DeJohn jerked around, lurching toward her like a zombie. Serra stopped where she was, her eyes locked with the provost marshal’s.

“No farther, psi-marine,” said Izanami from her corpse throne.

Serra tilted her head at DeJohn. The marine rocked on his heels, seemingly unaware of his surroundings.

“What happened to him?”

“I was promised the best,” said Izanami, “but this man was weak. He broke easily.” She looked down at the humans below her. “But he still has limited use.”

“Promised the best?” asked Ida. In the gloom on the other side of the hangar, he could see small yellow lights flickering inside the
Bloom County
’s flight deck. Serra was quiet and so was the ship, but he knew they were talking. He knew he had to play for time. “I can’t speak for the others, but I think you got the bad end of the deal. I’m a washed-up captain with a robot knee. I should be a damn colonel, at my age.”

Izanami laughed. “Oh, Ida, my dear, handsome Ida, war hero and space captain. My poor, poor, Ida.”

The demon’s smile vanished, and this time the flamelike radiance from her eyes seemed to spread out around her, enveloping her in a glowing, curling halo of blue fire, her hair and the trailing ends of her white robes billowing out around her.

“But you
are
the best. Your Fleet Admiral has done well.” She pointed to the group one by one. “The best marine in the Fleet—Charlie Carter, who won the Fleet Medal for services rendered, who obeyed his orders and betrayed those he loved. Carmina Serra, the best psi-marine in the corps, her battle sense beyond the knowledge of even the Fleet Admiral himself, though her own power scares her, stunts her potential.

“The Fleet’s best officer, Abraham Idaho Cleveland, and his ship, the
Carcosa
. A man who saved a planet even when it meant the death of those he loved, an officer never promoted, because the Fleet were desperate to keep him on the front lines, where the war was being fought and lost.”

Izanami’s smile returned. “And the final prize, Zia Hollywood, lost in space, running from her past in her remarkable craft. The Spider I shall study and study until I have found its secret.” She laughed again. “Oh, such prizes as these. Nothing will stop us.”

Carter found his voice. “What for? Why are you here?” He glanced at Ida out of the corner of his eye. Carter was in on the game, stalling for time.