Cold Between Stars Page 16

That thought lodges in my brain and burrows deep, heading straight for the itch at the back of my brain where it’s swallowed up like it never was.

  The shuttle is mapping the ship’s power now, lighting up the holo where it detects the greatest concentrations of energy, and since it’s brightest at the sharp, fin-shaped bit, I’m guessing that’s where the engines are. Assuming, you know, that aliens build ships like us (which apparently, they do) and use their engines to generate gravity.

  I point the shuttle in the same direction the fug trail is heading, toward the broadest part of the bow, under where the curve starts to slope back to the stern. Can anyone say, “shuttle bay”?

  I hope aliens can, otherwise I might have directed the shuttle into some kind of disintegrator or something. Or molecular destabiliser or hokey-pokey thing that’s going to turn me into itty bitty chunks of frozen meat and bone.

  I open up my brain and reach for the ship, ignoring the sense of stretching too far. I have to know why. Why they’re here, why they’re attacking us.

  But there is no why. Nothing except that flat lifeless-but-not hum.

  Whatever is on that ship, it’s not aware enough to give me any answers.

  We dock.

  There’s a THUNK and a sharp jolt as the landing gear touches down. The fug continues to go around us. The floodlights cast stark shadows.

  There’s nothing in here. Nothing. If the... I guess I’m calling it a shuttle bay. If the shuttle bay had decking, it’s gone now. As far as I can tell, the landing gear is resting on the struts between the superstructure, the beams where the plating should be. There are holes in the inner bulkheads, and I’m pretty sure I can see the leftovers of something that might have been a crane in the gaps. Everything in here is dead. Eaten. The only thing that appears untouched are the outer bulkheads and the airlock.

  The place must have been huge when it was intact, twice the size of the Rec decks. There was space in here for a dozen of Citlali’s shuttle bays. And now, with the decking gone and the holes, it seems bigger, like the inside of some giant skeleton. The shuttle’s scanners are beeping and whirling, flooding the viewscreen with data. There’s too much to look at, let alone take in and now that we’re here...

  I rub my nape, trying to ease an itch that won’t go away.

  I have to get out.

  That thought comes out of nowhere, but I’m out of the flight chair and halfway across the cabin, making sure Dude’s still in his pouch and reaching for my helmet before the train of thought finishes crossing my mind.

  I shake my head.

  No. No, that’s not right.

  I mean, I have to go out there, because why did I come all this way if I don’t? But I have to do something else first. Must do something else first, I know I do I just...

  The itch at the back of my head is making it hard to focus. I rub it and rub it, trying to push the fog out of my brain long enough to figure out what it is I need to do.

  It’s like trying to find my shoes first thing in the morning. I know I put them right there where I wouldn’t forget them except sleep’s still fogging my brain and that spot that seemed so logical last night is the most cryptic place in the universe. Damn it, why can’t I remember?

  I glance back at the viewscreen, at the skeleton of the shuttle bay, the fug floating past us, the blocks of Citlali, the heat and radiation signatures...

  It hits me like a brick in the head, or maybe that’s my palm connecting with my brow. Of course. Radiation.

  ‘Shuttle, what’s the outside atmosphere?’

  ‘The immediate area is exposed to vacuum but scans suggest the inner structure has atmosphere. I am unable to analyse atmospheric makeup. Radiation levels are within acceptable limits. I would suggest full enviro protections until a more detailed analysis can be made.’

  ‘Gravity?’

  ‘None.’

  Okay. So when I step out of the shuttle, I’m not going to die immediately.

  The itch at the back of my brain settles as I turn toward the airlock, like it’s happy that I’m headed in the right direction.

  Which is weird, but there are other things to worry about.

  Dude is tucked in his pouch against my chest, the helmet snicks into place over my head, the plasglas exploding into its dome as the airlock closes behind me. The hiss of air seems louder than usual, but it’s only a second, and then the outer lock is cycling open and the ramp is extending.

  There’s no THUNK as it touches down. For one, sound requires atmosphere and two, the end of the ramp has missed the superstructure and is hanging out over the innards of the ship like a diving board. Good thing there’s a whole heap of no gravity to go with the absence of atmosphere or I’d be taking a swan dive into the bowels of the ship. I step down the ramp far enough to clear the shuttle’s tail, and then leap.

  Zero gravity is kinda funky. It seems fun enough at first, floating and hanging out in weightlessness, but it’s a real pain when you’ve got places to be and things to do. It’s also not so easy to turn yourself around, and even though I aimed for the top of the shuttle bay when I took my leap, I must have fucked it up because I’m headed toward the bay’s doors, the huge open doors with a really great view of the void beyond.

  Shit.

  Good thing EVA suits have thrusters.

  A nudge to the spot inside my elbow activates the HUD on my faceplate and the suit controls blaze to life over the palm of my left hand. Like the shuttle, the suit’s controls are little spheres only they’re hovering over the tips of my fingers. It’s the outer two I need, the ones over my thumb and little finger that control the thrusters attached to my back. I take a deep breath, trying to remember my last EVA training: Dad a pale dot hanging out in the void, barely visible to my eyes but lit up on the HUD, his voice in my comms.

  ‘A gentle touch, Kuma. Like holding a critter. Too hard and you’ll overshoot. Just take it slow.’

  Just take it slow.

  I hadn’t of course, or at least, not slow enough. But I’m ignoring that bit, ignoring the memory of alarms screaming as I overshot Dad and went spinning into the dark.

  ‘Okay, easy now,’ I say to myself, holding on to the memory of Dad’s voice. For a second, I think I sense him, the touch of his emotions, a warm golden glow that soothes my nerves.

  A gentle touch.

  I move my thumb.

  The right thruster kicks in, humming against my back. I start to turn.

  Thumb off.

  The thruster cuts out. I keep turning, a little bit faster than before, but slow enough that there’s time to get a good look at the void as it drifts past.

  My heart’s in my throat for those few, molasses-like seconds. Half awe, half fear. The memory of spinning into the void hisses and spits behind my eyeballs, the three hours I spent in space, alone except for the voices in my comms. Yeah. Good memories.

  And then the bulkheads are cutting off the void and the HUD’s scanning the bay, and I can shove the memory aside, concentrating on what comes next. There’s a warm spot over my heart. Dude, fuzzing his shaven fur off. It helps, reminds me to take a deep breath and get ready for the next part.

  There’s a spot on the inner bulkhead, like a squashed egg lying on its side. I think it’s a door. I aim for that.

  Just before I’m facing the door, I hit the left thruster, a touch only. I stop spinning. Okay. Here’s the hard bit.

  Another breath. Focus, Kuma. Focus.

  The HUD locks on the door, outlining it in bright green lines. More lines show up, outlining obstacles, distance, the fug. It’s an obstacle course, up, down, sideways. A straight shot to the airlock would be best, but there’s the trail of fug everywhere. It’s parting around the shuttle like the vehicle is a stone in its pond, here’s hoping it does the same for a lone Jørgen blitzing through its midst.

  I hit both thrusters.

  There’s no jolt, no sense of movement, I’m being thrust across the bay like a mad rucnart. The shuttle disappears in the bl
ink of an eye, the fug scatters, and the door is coming up too fast, getting bigger and bigger with every nano-second.

  Too much, too much! I take my fingers off the thrusters but I’m still rocketing toward the bulkhead. For a second, my brain is blank. All I can think of is the metal rushing at my face and that this is going to hurt. Then my brains come back and a little voice says, not if I slow down.

  That little bit takes over, rolling the control sphere above my index finger, steady even as adrenalin makes the rest of me shake. On my HUD, I see the thrusters swivel, and then, as the distance passes the double digits and into the single and the proximity alarm starts to blare, I hit the thrusters again.

  It’s like being jerked off your feet by the band of steelglas around your middle. My head and legs keep going even as my torso goes back. There’s pressure on my chest, and a spurt of alarm as I imagine Dude getting squished in his pouch, and then it’s over and I’m touching down on the lip of the airlock.

  I take a moment to breathe. And then I take another to check on Dude, stretching my senses, searching until I find the fuzz of his thoughts. Brown stains the gold, a hint of discomfort but no pain, no fear, only the gentle golden glow and something different, not bad just… new.

  But he’s okay, and I let that be enough.

  My heart settles.

  So. I spread my hands over the door and activate my mag-boots. For a moment nothing happens and then there’s a thud as I hit what’s left of the deck-plating. How do I get past this?

  The door is huge. Spreading my arms as far as they go doesn’t even cover a fifth of it. Ten of me could stand like this, fingertip to fingertip and we might reach the other side. What was beyond it? What did They have to move that required shuttle access this big? They certainly didn’t need it to walk through. If this was even one of Their ships. They didn’t seem that big in the training memories, taller than a human, wider and bulkier, maybe the same size as a rucnart, if you ever got one to stand on its hind legs.

  The back of my head itches, and I roll my shoulders, trying to ease the discomfort.

  I gotta get through this door. But how?

  The HUD’s scanning the surface, but it’s not really hooked up for detailed scans. I can see heat signatures and movement though, and there’s a trace of power running through the bulkhead, a thin red-orange matrix. Most of the lines are too thin and too cold to see, but a few glow a thick, yellow-orange, hotter than the others, and they’re all headed to the same place. I follow them, deactivating my boots and pushing off the door enough to propel myself in the direction of the energy stream. A few moments of floating through the vacuum and I’m hovering in front of something that might be a control pad.

  The circle of... I don’t know what it is. It’s not made of the same, smooth, cold stuff as the door. There’s power in it and some kind of curved, swirly ridges that look like a pattern but could be anything. I poke one of the smaller swirls. It’s squishy, like biogel and I jerk my finger out before it sinks into the stuff. On the HUD there’s a pulse of heat, faint but detectable, from the spot where my finger was. It runs through the pad and ricochets through the matrix within the door.

  I wait. And wait. And wait some more.

  I don’t realise I’m holding my breath until my lungs start to burn.

  The door opens. Not with a shudder or a slide or a cycle, but a snap, like a rubber band. I don’t even see where it goes. One moment there’s a huge slab of whatever is in front of my face and the next there isn’t.

  The air leaves my lungs in a rush.

  Right.

  Note to self, don’t stand in the doorways.

  A small hit on the thrusters and I’m scooting through the hatch.

  The space on the other side is as huge as the door. Wide and tall, deep enough to fit Citlali’s shuttle bay. I look up; except without the EVA vehicles hanging overhead. There’s another huge door and another panel on the other side. I propel myself across the space. Parts of the decking here are intact and I’m able to land before the control pad without falling into the cavity below.

  I stick my finger in the same small swirl. Power shoots outwards, and this time I remember to breathe and watch. There’s a rumble behind me, and when I turn the door to the bay has snapped closed. I have a moment to panic, and then gravity takes hold. Literally.

  I hit the deck hard, the shock running up from my soles, all the way through my shins to my teeth. It’s not my mag boots, because my boots wouldn’t make my head heavy. It’s actual gravity. The HUD’s flashing data, something about oxygen and nitrogen, but there’s no time to see it. I’m concentrating too hard on not falling over, into the hole behind me. I don’t know how I managed to find the one spot with the shaft under it, but I’ve got a good view of the long, dark hole an inch from my feet. It didn’t seem so scary when I was floating about in vacuum, but now? Yeah, gravity’s a bitch.

  The inner door snaps open as I’m losing my fight with it.

  I leap.

  I hit the opposite decking with my belly, hands scrabbling for purchase, legs kicking at the sides of the endless shaft. Somehow, one fingernail at a time, I slide out of the hole.

  Is it me, or does this ship hate me?

  My feet have cleared the doorway when it snaps closed, so close it scrapes the soles of my boots.

  I roll onto my back. I’m going to lie here for a moment, remembering to breathe and admiring the ceiling while my heart slows and my body readjusts to not being dead.

  The ceiling is really tall. And round, and intact. Mostly. There are few gaps in the... plating? I squint and my HUD enhances the image. It doesn’t look like plating, at least not any that I’ve seen. It looks more like—

  The HUD spits out data. Mineral analysis, depth, the ever-present heat map. The mineral analysis is weird, but then, I’m on an alien ship so what’s not weird? Lying here, lying here is definitely weird. Not a great survival tactic, Kuma. What if one of Them comes... clomping (Strutting? Mincing?) down the hallway?

  Yeah. Unlikely. Like five-hundred years unlikely.

  I get up, and as I do, wonder why there’s gravity. With the power so low and the engines off, it surprises me. But it’s there, a little heavier than I’m used to. My screen is telling me it’s one point zero four of Jøran gravity, not as heavy as some of the places I’ve been but enough to make it harder to lift my feet and make my muscles sore in the morning. I’m going to have to watch my oxygen use too. It’ll be too easy to run the tank out with the slight increase; not so heavy as I’m going to feel it right away, but enough to make me breathe harder without realising. I set an alarm.

  Two hours. That’s how long I have to explore the ship, stop the fug and save Grea.

  Yeah. Good luck to me.

  At the moment, the only things in my favour are the ship’s similarity to Citlali and the presence at the back of my skull. It’s not the same as the itch at my nape, although that’s still there too, making me wish I could take off my helmet. No, this presence is dragging me forward, guiding my feet like a lodestone. Following it is like muscle memory. Instinctual almost. And let’s face it, with little else to go on, following it is better than wandering around an alien spacecraft trying to sort shit out.

  The corridor outside the airlock heads off in two directions. I pick one and start walking.

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  It’s quiet, as quiet as the Citlali and yet not. I expect my steps to echo, to make the same TANG TANG as they do on the Citlali’s decks, but the floor seems to swallow the sound. It’s eerie.

  The presence is somewhere ahead, a scent carried on the psychic breeze, sharp with the tang of copper and something else. Familiar in its unfamiliarity. Alien like Onah but not. Something about it reminds me of Ag, standing in there with a carpet of dead critters at her feet, staring at me like she’s calculating my mass and water content, deciding on the best way to use my constituent parts.

  It’s unnerving, and I wonder what the fug is turning Ag into. Wh
atever it is, the presence grows with every metre I move down the corridor, the itch at my nape growing with it.

  It’s strange being here. As familiar/alien as the presence is, the ship is even more so. The corridor curves like the Citlali’s, but where the Citlali’s bulkheads have corners and crevices, sharp edges where wall meets ceiling, there’s none of that here. There are no corners. The bulkhead is a continuous oval curve, if the oval was on its side and flattened on the bottom edge. There are no corners, not even where floor meets bulkhead, and the only sharp edges are the ones carved into the otherwise smooth walls.

  I wonder what they are? Signs? Words? Pictograms? Or are they decoration?

  I run my hands over them, tracing the curving lines and swirls. The carvings are shallow but the edges are sharp, my gloves catching on the ridges.

  For some reason I imagine fingerprints carved into stone and now I’m wondering if ships can have fingerprints and why anyone, alien or not, would build a vessel out of stone. There’s an Old Terran rabbit hole in that thought, and the urge to follow it is strong, a pulse that seems wrong.

  I shake my head and step away from the bulkhead. It takes another few seconds to tear my eyes from the carvings. The whorls want to drag me into their centres and the lines want to drag me back to the whorls.

  Pain spikes through my ear, jerking me out of the carving. Slapping the side my head is reflexive, but instead of the culprit all I hit is the side of my helmet.

  A warm fuzz sneaks under my chin.

  ‘Dude? Did you bite me?’

  Dude fuzzes again and chitters in my brain.

  ‘Well, thanks. I guess.’ My eyes are drawn back to the walls. ‘There’s something strange about these carvings…’ I don’t realise I’ve stepped up to the bulkhead again, hand reaching out until another bright burst of pain shakes me loose.

  ‘Holy Terra.’ There’s some really wrong shit going on with those carvings. Really wrong. ‘Okay, Dude. New plan. Don’t let me stare at the walls.’

  Again, that chitter in my brain. Maybe I’m imaging it, maybe I’m not. Maybe the days isolated aboard Citlali and now in the heart of an alien ship have made me crackers, but it’s better than being alone.