Cold Between Stars Read online

‘STOP!’

  I’m not sure if it’s the sound or the way the sudden absence of light stops the tumble of words.

  Or maybe, just maybe, it’s Core standing in front of me, holographic hands on my shoulders.

  ‘Stop, Kuma. I am aware of the situation.’

  I open my mouth, but instead of words I take in a shuddering breath.

  ‘You know?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘But, you haven’t done anything.’

  ‘I do not have access to my sub-systems.’

  ‘The fug cut you off.’

  ‘Indirectly. I cut myself off.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘The invader has infected the system.’

  ‘Ag.’

  ‘Yes.’

  I nod, take a step back so Core’s hands are no longer fuzzing where they intersect with my shoulders. I breathe deep and cross my arms, stop as the relocated one sends shards of pain through my back, and wrap them around my middle instead, like that can hold in all the panic in my chest.

  Another breath, and maybe, maybe, if I squeeze my arms tighter and concentrate on the pain, I can shove the hysteria into a little box and think for a second.

  Core knows, she knows everything, or most of everything. That means we can fix it. That has to mean we can fix it. But first, I have to know one thing…

  ‘What happened?’

  The holo above the console changes, Core replaced by a spinning map of our part of the galaxy. The thumb-sized spheres of stars glowed in an endless cloud, spinning outwards from the bright yellow ball at their centre. Jørn.

  Five different coloured lines wind through the holo, branching out from Jørn into different corners of the galaxy, each one a gigantic two-hundred and sixty-year-long loop that never intersected with the others. Citlali’s journey is mapped in yellow, snaking toward the galaxy’s core and back again. I step closer.

  Two-thirds of the line is a solid yellow, the distance we had already travelled, the rest is dotted, showing the journey still to take. I’d be born in the Merclides system, sixty-seven years into the journey, and fifty years from here. It used to weird me out to think like that, but now? Well, now I have fug.

  There’s a pause. I’m waiting for Core to say something, to tell me what she found, but she’s staring at the map, expression as blank as only an AI’s can be.

  ‘And?’

  Core turns to me. ‘And what, Kuma?’

  ‘What did you find?’

  ‘I have been unable to determine.’

  There’s another pause. It takes me a heartbeat of returning Core’s stare before I realise it’s not actually a pause. She stopped speaking.

  Frustration and urgency make me want to vibrate right out of the room. ‘Determine what?’

  ‘What is sending the signal.’ Core blinks and I swear I can see an Old Terran lightbulb going off in her head. ‘Do you require more information?’

  ‘Yes.’ My hands are up in the air and anger has me stomping around the console, my boots CLOMP CLOMP CLOMPING on the deck. Frustration is bubbling in my chest, bursting out of my throat in a torrent of words. ‘Lots more information. All of the information. Why’d you stop? What’s eating the ship? How’d it get here? Where’d it come from?’

  Core opens her mouth, but my hands are up in the air again and I’m continuing my storm around Command. ‘Ag’s crazy, you know. I felt her Core, felt her emote.’ I pause long enough to slap my hands on the console and glare at Core. ‘How does an AI emote, Core? It’s not possible, and yet I felt her. Malice thick enough to choke on, filling the air like smoke.’

  Core’s mouth opens again, but I’m on a roll now, all the weirdness of the last few days spewing out of me. ‘And the Jørans think some kind of furry, pale squash-nosed aliens are coming after us. The ones who built the under-mountain things on Jørn? Those ones. They’re positive They’re coming after us for revenge, because the water-kin did their mind-squishy thing to them way back when. Except it’s not them that are eating the ship, it’s some kind of fug, or space mould or... or... I don’t know.’

  I stop. I need to breathe. There’s suddenly not enough air and my lungs are burning, demanding I gulp all the remaining oxygen down my throat. There’s a wobble in my legs as well, and my knees are yelling at me to sit down, reminding me the nano-meds haven’t finished working their magic. I lean on the console, putting all my weight on my hands, staring down at the pearlescent surface under them. White and clean and smooth, like it’s meant to be. No fug, no holes, no dead critters, except for the ones still coating my arms and the creases between my fingers. Except for those.

  Something bumps into the back of my legs, a gentle push above my knees, and I sit. Instead of landing on the floor, my butt hits a cushioned seat and I sink into the hover-chair, the jelly finally abandoning my legs.

  ‘Mid-way through our journey to the Thorum systems, sensor’s detected a signal. As per protocol, I stopped to determine if I should wake crew to investigate and sent several long-range drones to take more detailed readings,’ Core said.

  Above the console, the map is replaced by a complex sensor scan, the lines, dots and arcs of colour rotating slowly. ‘I lost contact with the drones shortly after they reached the strongest part of the signal, but I was able to determine that it is not a natural phenomenon. The pattern is regular, although the algorithm is not with my datapaks. I can surmise that it is language, but not what it means. The fug, as you call it, is not organic but biological.’ The display changes and now there’s something I can recognise, the grey-green strands of the mould.

  Core continues. ‘I first detected it on the ship several days after I lost contact with the drones. A trace of its origin points to the signal, but is not definitive. Initial attempts to clear the infection appeared successful. Unfortunately, such was not the case. The fug had invaded several key systems before I was aware of the danger.’

  ‘Why didn’t you wake the crew?’

  ‘I did, Kuma. The first system to fail was stasis/sleep.’

  ‘It’s meant to be the most protected.’

  ‘I do not have answers, I can only tell you what happened. I was able to rouse the captain, but not fully.’

  ‘She’s dead. So’s the Executive Officer and Chief Med. And p’Endr.’ I’m remembering them as I say their names.

  ‘I see.’

  ‘No, you don’t.’ She hadn’t even known the captain was dead, that her kids were dead too, and it’s that thought, that memory, that makes me angry. ‘You cut yourself off. There’s a forcefield around your processing core and nothing anywhere else. The fug ate through the stasis units, made holes big enough to crawl through. I saw the captain, saw her hand clawing through the stasis gel. Except it wasn’t gel anymore, it was some kind of mouldy, hard shit and she died in it.’

  I’m breathing hard again, leaning forward in the chair and gripping the armrests. Core’s expression flickers between seriousness and concern, like she can’t quite make up her mind which emotion she should be faking.

  In the end, she goes with neither.

  ‘The fug appears to be a bio-metallic compound, similar to nanotechnology except... not. I do not have a better explanation, Kuma. Without access to Lab or Medical or the crew, I cannot give you a definitive answer. The fug is a biological metallic entity similar in composition to nanites. In effect, it is a lifeform.’

  ‘And it’s eating us because...?’

  ‘It is not eating the Citlali. It is breaking it down and transferring the materials back to its origin.’

  ‘The signal?’

  ‘That is my conclusion.’

  ‘But why?’

  ‘I do not know.’

  I’m so sick of all the things I don’t know. All of the things I can’t do. I can’t get Grea out of her pod, can’t wake Jim Engineer, can’t save p’Endr. I can’t reach across the void and take all the answers from the intelligence on the other end of the fug—

  A light goes off in my head. ‘The
fug was in the eter.’ I’d picked it up, pulled it apart and sensed the intelligence behind it before Onah pulled me out.

  ‘Technology is not capable of psionics, Kuma.’

  ‘You said it was biological.’ Excitement makes my blood fizz and puts the stuffing back in my bones.

  ‘I need fug.’

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  It’s not as easy to get fug as you would think. For one, Core didn’t want to let me out of Command, and she sealed the duct to make sure I couldn’t escape. It took me an hour, a plan and a lot of diagrams to convince her to let me crawl back through the ash-stained duct, and I had a tail as I did so. A drone the size of my fist shot out of the centre console and followed me. It was comforting, even if it felt like Core was staring at me the whole time. At least there weren’t any vibes coming off her like Ag.

  I tumbled out into Med with the same grace as I’d done it at the other end, which is to say I landed on my head. Somehow, I managed to roll into it, taking the brunt of the fall on my shoulder, the injured one ‘cause I’m lucky like that. At least there was the mountain of furniture to make the descent a little easier, but that didn’t stop the pain ripping through my back or the half-scream from my lips.

  The med bots descended like a flock of angry qwans, armed with pink nano-meds. Needless to say, the next six hours weren’t fun, but at the end of it, my knees didn’t scream at me and neither did my shoulder.

  Gotta love nano-meds.

  Then came the plan.

  Core supplied the blueprints, Med supplied the equipment and I followed their instructions. And scolding, until finally I heft a new and improved Franken-thrower.

  Getting out of Med was the next hard part.

  We can’t just open the door and grab some fug. There’s the barrier for one, and there’s something wrong with the door mechanism. The fug’s probably eaten it. So Core’s taking me the back way.

  The back way is another air duct, as tight as the first but without the coating of soot. Or the bodies. There’s also a distinct lack of oxygen. Which is the bad news; I’m wearing an envirosuit’s helmet, and that turns the already tight tube into a Kuma-shaped sock. The helmet’s a little too big, and while it’s not scraping the sides, if I lift my head too high there’s this dull THUD and jerk at the back of my neck. So I’m sliding along with my head down and the only way I can see where I’m going is by rolling my eyeballs as far up as they’ll go.

  It’s giving me a headache, but I can’t quite bring myself to stare at my hands and let the drone guide me.

  ‘How much farther?’

  ‘Thirteen metres until the junction.’

  ‘And how much farther after that?’

  ‘It’s is not far, Kuma Darzi.’

  ‘That’s what you said at the last junction.’

  ‘And it is still correct.’

  ‘You’re not the one crawling through a duct, hauling a jerry-rigged flamethrower behind him.’

  There’s no answer to that.

  I guess it wasn’t really a question.

  Thirteen metres seems like a gazillion when you’re commando-crawling through a duct barely big enough for your elbows, but sure enough, the junction is right there – a t-shaped intersection of yet more square tubes even smaller than the one I’m in. The drone disappears down the right one and I spend a few minutes wondering how I’m going to squeeze myself around the corner, let alone manoeuvre the mammoth length of the Franken around after me, when the duct disappears from under me.

  Two things. One, I’m glad I’m wearing the helmet and two, it’s not far to fall, but I really wish it were.

  I’m caught in fug. Like. Caught.

  Belly-down, faceplate to grey-green wavy shit, the Franken on my back. I’m caught up in some kind of tangle of vines. Through the arm-thick strands, I can see decking and the fug-eaten sides of a corridor.

  I reckon the fug is as surprised as I am.

  And then just like that, it drops me.

  ‘Oh shit.’

  I don’t know where the vid-star moves come from, but I’m pretty sure I’ve never moved so fast in my life. One moment I’m falling, the next I’m kneeling on the deck, one fist to the floor as the other swings the Franken around. I’m picturing Dude, standing on an island made of the old Franken back on Lab Two, imagining him pulling his ninja moves, as I push to my feet and set the corridor ablaze.

  Fug screams but the helmet muffles the sound, and watching the way the stuff shrivels and turns to ash brings with it an unpleasant glee, bubbling up from inside like a particularly sick volcano. It doesn’t seem like me, but then it does and I lose myself to the sensation, swinging the Franken around like a firehose. A fiery, fire hose. The glee chuckles.

  It takes the drone bobbing in front of my face, getting in the way of my fire-throwing party, to bring me back to myself.

  I’m not where I started, and all around me is the blackened remnants of fug, curled up and desiccated where they aren’t piles of soot and char.

  Shit. The command sphere. Still sitting in my brain. What had Onah wanted me to do?

  It’s not a question for now. Now that I’ve stopped blasting it with flame, the fug is making a comeback, the vines gathering like a wave, ready to launch their next assault. I grab a sample of new grey-green fug from amongst the ash, ripping it from the wall. It peels off with a reluctant tearing sound, and I slap it into the container attached to my arm. The container lights up, a mini containment field encircling it the moment the lid is sealed.

  Here’s hoping the field and plasglas slow the fug down.

  And then I’m out of there.

  Crawling back through the duct is as bad as going the other way, but somehow it seems longer, what with the fug thrashing around in its container on my arm. The Franken slides along after me: scrape, scrape, shussh. And then I’m tumbling down another mountain of furniture, this time without the finesse of the vid star. The Franken crashes into my arse, and I sprawl on the deck as a med drone bobs an inch from my face, slim arms extending to take the fug from my arm.

  It’s done and gone before I right myself, the drone whisking the container to the glowing circle at the centre of the ring of med beds. A column rises from the floor and the drone places the container on the top. It’s barely set it down before a forcefield encloses the container. Seems like Med isn’t taking any chances.

  As another handful of drones pop out of the wall, I take a moment to check in on Dude. The sides of the med unit are transparent now. He’s not so fluffy anymore, or golden. Sometime during his stay in the box, Med gave him a shave, transforming him from a cute ball of fuzz to a sleek black-skinned predator, with a short, sharp snout and six paws almost as big as his head. I never noticed that before, or how big his eyes were, or the fine points of fangs peeking from beneath his top lip.

  Makes me wonder what genes the engineers mixed together and why.

  There’s no time to ponder it now though. Core/drone is hovering in the corner of my vision. AIs don’t do impatience, or at least, that’s what everyone’s always said, but they also said they couldn’t emote, and I swear Core/drone is vibrating.

  I’m being herded to the nearest med bed. Me playing mental footsies with the fug has both Med and Core/drone on edge, or maybe it’s because they have nothing else to do so they’re hovering like a flock of nervous qwans.

  I settle cross-legged on the med bed, take a deep breath and focus on the fug. It writhes within the container, the single tendril smacking the plasglas again and again and again. I close my eyes, carrying the picture of the fug with me as I slip into the eter.

  The Med lab is gone. There’s nothing here but me and the endless white, not even my own shadow. A deep breath. I reach out, using the image of the fug as a guide, and there it is, a breath away. I pull. The eter shivers and I’m not alone anymore. The tendril sits before me, a finger-length of grey-green swaying back and forth like it’s waving at me. I concentrate.

  I’m not sure if I get smalle
r or the fug gets bigger, but one moment it’s a speck in the eter and the next it’s everything, the grey-green surrounding me, and amongst it, the sparkling veins of red. I focus harder and the red dissolves, becoming the sharp snap of silver and an intelligence that evades my senses and yet...

  And yet.

  It’s the yet I’m after, the possibility, the hint of something other hiding behind the silver. I plunge into it.

  The river from before takes me, plunging me into a maelstrom of silver and red. And there’s that sensation again, of the threads of reality parting, and I’m watching them. Tiny slivers of impossible, bits of chaos, of everything barely bigger than a molecule, and then bigger and then—

  I sense Onah before I see him. The white/black presence is beside me, reaching out, trying to pluck me from the rapids. Fear rides on the tips of his talons. Raw and hot, brushing against my neck, raising the hairs even as it causes a confusion of images to bloom in my mind. AD Tudor is dancing beside Them, their flat noses pressed up against his chest while the beacon flashes and pulses in the background. And then there’s blood, human and Theirs, running down my throat, staining fur and feathers. Trees falling, chicks crushed and mangled. Despair. Ancient and powerful, echoing through the generations. I rip myself out of the memories.

  I twist, evading Onah’s grasp. He reaches again. I dive deeper, seeking out the rips, plunging my fingers into the holes, ripping, stretching, and all the while Onah is behind me, reaching, reaching, reaching. His talons scrape my skin.

  I pull. The rip gets bigger, seems to reach back for me.

  And then Onah’s gone and I’m... I’m...

  Where am I?

  This is not the Aer. The river and endless white have been replaced by darkness. Not the too-personal darkness of Onah’s eter, filled to the brim with kin hiding in shadow. This appears empty. Formless. But it’s not mine. It’s not anyone’s. I don’t know how I know that. Maybe it’s the feeling, like hanging in the midst of the void, alone except for distant stars, and even that isn’t right, doesn’t quite encompass the sensation of waiting, of possibility. Anything can happen here. That sense blooms in my chest.