Dark Between Oceans Page 18

  My heart's pounding hard, the SNICK SNICK of my fug-claws boom in my ears, and I can't get my breath.

  The hatch pulses under my hand, the vibration rippling up my arm, beating in time with my heart. Whatever's behind the door is going to change my life, change it in ways that the fug-armour has only hinted at, and I can't help remembering Grea whispering to me in the dark. 'We're going to live forever.'

  I don't want to live forever. That knowledge blooms in my anima, in the very core of me.

  I'm gonna live for now though. Got to find a way to get to Grea and out of the mess she's landed us in, and that way is on the other side of the hatch.

  I take a step, draw in a breath to fortify my courage, and nod. 'Okay,' I say. 'Let's do this.'

  A pulse of acknowledgement, and then the wall snaps back.

  The space beyond is cavernous, three decks tall and four times as wide. For a moment, I imagine a half-dozen shuttles crouched on the deck, furred, flat-nosed aliens scurrying between them, carrying tools and dragging hover-sleds laden with cargo, and struggle to know if the imagining is mine or Aeotu's.

  The hangar is dark and deserted now, the massive expanse of deck empty but for dust and the metallic sentinel waiting for me on the other side; the only light comes from the corridor and the glow hovering over my shoulder. It's barely enough to make out the thing's feet.

  The thought has barely crossed my mind before light floods the space, and I know by the pulse through the umbilicus, that it's Hunt responding to me.

  It's huge. A steel grey colossus of metal. The HUD is mapping the… armour? Human-shaped shuttle? Mechanoid? Mech? Whatever it is, the HUD outlines it in white and red and blue.

  Eight-point-three-five metres. The awareness tells me that a second before my HUD starts popping numbers, readouts and power levels and material scans flying outward from the centre of my vision, cluttering up the sides of the screen.

  I ignore them. Numbers and scans can't quite encompass the enormity of the thing before me, can't quite describe the unreality, the coolness, the deep-seated freak-out happening in my chest.

  The mech is Hunt, and it looks like me. There's no face, no nose, no eyes, just a blank space on the top of its neck. It barely even has a neck, the head sloping into the shoulders with a short stump between. No hair. No nothing that would immediately make you sit up and go 'Holy Terra, they turned Kuma into a robot', but somehow... Somehow it looks like me. There's an aura coming off the mech, a sense of identity that wasn't there when I first saw it, was just a nascent glimpse of the future. And now, now its identity radiates off it and… It's me but not.

  I take a breath, a big one. There's no time to wonder at it.

  Dude chitters, his paw on my ear as he rears up for a better look.

  The multi-hued thread connecting the critter to Hunt, pulses.

  Brother. Hurry.

  Aeotu's voice shivers through the air, pushing me forward, reminding me of Grea and the ships outside.

  I hurry, fug-feet padding across the deck.

  I'm at the mech's feet, the top of its toes coming up to my chest, before I wonder how I get in. Do I get in? Aeotu made it sound like I was taking a shuttle, so in makes sense but—

  Knowledge smacks me in the back of the head, and there's that golden web moving under my skin as Dude takes control of my feet. I'm jogging, feet aiming for a circle carved in the deck before the knowledge finishes sinking in. I'm in the circle and the outside of it is glowing, my HUD picking up the surge of power, and then we're shooting into the air as Dude releases my muscles. It's fast enough to make me wobble, to find myself peering over the edge of the platform as it leaves the deck behind and... Oh shit, I did not expect that.

  The platform stops.

  There's a ringing in my ears that I'm pretty sure is because my heart is beating a million parsecs an hour. The deck is a long way down – six metres whispers Hunt – and my foot is a really close to the edge – eight centimetres – and I'm not really sure I want to move, until awareness urges me to turn my head. I'm staring at Hunt's back. At dancing patterns and cords of metal-stone rippling with movement, writhing like there's something under them, pushing to the surface. And then the cords are parting, a curtain drawing back and outward, individual strands reaching. Reaching for me. There's a moment where my heart stops thumping and lodges in my throat, a moment when I remember the viyusa and the endless, furious red of Grea's anger. And then I'm reaching back.

  Strands wrap around my arms, my waist, and the fug-armour shifts, changes. It's merging, me and Hunt, the fug armour. We're all part of a whole, little bits slotting together like we were made for each other.

  No. Aeotu whispers. Made for you, little brother.

  Made for me.

  'When?'

  There's no reply, nothing save Hunt folding around me, drawing me into the hole in its back. Even Dude. The world goes black, and there's a moment of confusion, a sharp spike of fear as nothingness claims me. No sight, no sound. Just the throb of Hunt and squeeze of the fug.

  And then light, awareness but not the awareness of Hunt. The awareness is mine, is ours, flowing between us from senses that baffle my brain, that make my head hurt just trying to comprehend–

  {{ Here. }} The voice is not a voice. It's in my head but not like Onah or h'Rawd, not even like Grea. It's my own, and yet there's that tingle that is Hunt. But now it's me too, and it's directing my attention, drawing it away from the chaos of new information, toward something simpler, something I can understand.

  My arm. I lift it, and even though it feels like my own fleshy Jørgen self, what moves can only belong to Hunt. Metallic and strange. I lift hands the size of a rucnart, clench fingers, one at a time, into a fist. One. Two. Three. Four. No fifth, just the three thick digits and a long thumb, wrapping around my knuckles. Left then right, both hands clenched like one of the old Terran boxers, held in front of my face. Two hands, and yet I'm not finished, can feel other limbs twitch under my armpits, the flex of new muscles in my back, and Hunt is whispering again, showing me how to move them, how to lift those limbs, how to make the hands at the ends work.

  And now I'm holding up a second pair of fists, just below the others, and it's weird and not, and I'm thinking I don't know what the fuck I'm doing, and that my brain is going to explode, and–

  Gold swarms over my thoughts, a blanket calming the roil of tension building in my gut, leaving behind a... It's almost an emote but too much like a Jørn thought-packet, sinking into my brain, sharing the sensation of skittering through tubes and over bulkheads on six legs, the movement of muscles, the automatic placement of paws.

  I breathe again.

  'Thanks, Dude.'

  He chitters, and for the first time I realise that my ears still work in here, that I can hear stuff. Stuff like the CLUNK CLUNK CLUNK of the trapdoor opening under Hunt's massive feet.

  'Oh, shi—'

  CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

  It's slightly better than getting sucked into space in just my fug-armour.

  One moment I'm figuring out how to make fists, the next I've been jettisoned out a small tube and Aeotu/Citlali is getting real small, real quick. Being spaced notwithstanding, this is the fastest I've ever left the confines of a ship. Usually there's the gentle lift off the deck, the trip through the ice hull with stars slowly taking over the viewport.

  Aeotu must have spat us out like a year-old protein slab. Already, the ships are small enough to blot out with a fist, the blue light of the system's star shining off the bulge of Citlali's engines.

  Eighty-seven-point-three-two kilometres a second, that's how fast we were expelled from the launch tube. The knowledge comes as it has before, appearing at the back of my mind. Hunt's knowledge sits uneasily with my own, floating on the surface like oil on water, a part of me yet not; separate as Hunt and I are separate, held apart by a thin film of self.

  We're turning now, smaller thrusters just behind our ribs firing in short bursts. Aeotu is still above, get
ting smaller and smaller, but now, instead of the void, I'm facing the planet, a gas giant, or so Hunt tells me, heavy with carbon monoxide and iron. All I know is it's the colour of fug, all the different types swirled together – the grey-green of viyu, the red of viyusa, and the human-made gold – and as much as Hunt insists it isn't, that none of them can exist in that atmosphere, I can't help the dread that curdles my stomach.

  Or maybe it's just the shipyard orbiting the equator, a space station standing guard at its centre.

  Sisters. Hope shines in Aeotu's voice, names and radiation signatures swirling beneath.

  I add one to the pool. Grea.

  A pause and then, Grea.

  The thrusters kick in again, stronger this time, and we're shooting toward the planet.

  It's not a shipyard, it's a graveyard, and there's a fence around it.

  The fence registers on Hunt's sensors as an electric pulse, but it doesn't tingle or pinch or do anything to keep us out. Hunt traces the energy signature, throwing new symbols up on the HUD, shuttle-sized platforms spaced evenly around the graveyard. Fence posts.

  Inside the fence, ships are stretched out a hundred kilometres, some still transmitting, some dark and silent.

  Skeletons orbiting the gas giant, slowly disintegrating. Piece-by-piece. There are trails between some – thin, weak streams of nanites winding through vacuum. Hunt is picking them out in lines of brilliant green. Ships cannibalising each other.

  Hunt can't tell me how many there are, not that I've asked. The wreckage confuses its readings, the engine parts and bare superstructures making it difficult to tell the ships from the pieces.

  In the back of my mind, Aeotu grieves. Every wreck we scan, she has a name for: Awa, Brachi, Halix, Ipo and more, so many more. Each has a place in the golden web of her home, brings with it memories of warmth, connection, sisterhood, and every one of them sticks to my heart, tiny pieces of grief layering one atop the other. Soon enough I'm having trouble breathing, finding it hard to expand my lungs under the weight of it.

  We've barely been in the graveyard an hour, wound our way in just a few kilometres but with Aeotu's grief beating at me it feels like days.

  Hunt keeps scanning, keeps recording, keeps whispering in my ear; damage reports, wrecks with power, wrecks without, the final transmission of dying AIs. I shut it out, slip into the eter and wall myself in just to escape. It doesn't work, can't keep the umbilicus out, can't stop that flow of information. It stops Aeotu though. Her emotions wash up against my shields, the memories piling against them like space debris.

  I shake my head.

  I need to find Grea, not submerge myself in memories of the dead.

  I focus on the fading radiation signature on Hunt's sensors.

  It twists amongst the corpses, flying in and out of the wrecks.

  Hunt follows.

  The trail ends in the midst of a battlefield. Pieces of ships strewn through the void, floating chunks of superstructure, hull, engines. Hunt catalogues each one – composition, age, battle scars – giving some of them names. Most of the wreckage matches the metal-stone of the Sisters' hulls, the same ancient metal-stone as Aeotu. A few pieces are bright with the glow of nanites, and Hunt traces them too, the strings of nannies trailing through space, each one connecting to another ship. But some of the pieces are different, are newer, aren't made of the same stuff. Those blaze on the HUD, and in the back of my head Aeotu pauses, examining them.

  {{ Creators. }} It comes on a wave of emotion, duty and affection ringing with memories that feel like home.

  Hunt's scans are showing other things; carbon scoring and radiation blooms, the aftermath of violence, of weapons. And bodies. My heart stops in my chest and I remember other bodies, remember Mae Lu's lifeless, frozen face as the fug carried her corpse through the void.

  Not again. Not again.

  Like it can sense my panic, Hunt enlarges the scan, bringing it to full, graphic life on the HUD.

  Pale things floating in space.

  The bodies aren't human, not in the slightest. Six limbs, huge dark eyes set in flat-nosed faces.

  I know these, have seen them before, have chased them through mountains and tasted their flesh. Have driven them from my home.

  The training memories bubble in the back of my mind, coloured with the snarl of an ancient rucnart.

  It's Them, their bodies floating in the dark. We drift closer, the HUD lighting up the corpses, highlighting the arms – two sets, the bottom ones practically in the armpits of the first but slightly back. Three fingers, a long thumb. I clench my own fists, feel Hunt do the same, feel too that shadow on my ribs, the ghost of the mech's other arms.

  It makes sense now, I guess. Aeotu didn't give the mech four arms because the kin have six limbs, but because its creators did. The Wohol. Their feet are the same, bent back at the ankle, three stubby toes on the end of large pads.

  I am in Their image.

  Yes. Aeotu whispers. Creators.

  'I'm not Them.'

  No. More. Less. Other. There is a pause, a moment that's not quite silence. Expectation is heavy, gravity pulling me down, weighing Aeotu's mind. Precious.

  Precious.

  It reverberates, diamonds sparkling in the space between us.

  Precious.

  'Why?'

  Silence. It stretches between us, a shroud covering her thoughts. Hiding them.

  'Aeotu?'

  Aeotu is gone, leaving just a shadow of herself behind.

  A blast killed the alien, ripped its face off and charred its skin. Its eyes are open, wide and unseeing. The HUD is still scanning, trying to give time periods, while Hunt continues to scan the rest of the debris field. A scenario is forming in the back of its mind, drawing an image behind my eyes. In it, a small sleek ship twists through the graveyard, moving slow, unconcerned about the wrecks drawing in behind it, getting closer and closer.

  There's a flash, a bright sunburst and then a shockwave, invisible to my eyes but seen through Hunt's sensors. An electro-magnetic pulse. And then... I expect fire, like in the Old Terra vids Mac watches, missiles streaming through the void, bright trails of flame propelling them. Or even lasers, shooting out in yellows and blues, even reds, striking the Wohol shuttle. There's none of that, not even on Hunt's sensors. There's fug.

  Where there was nothing, now the field is full of colour and energy signatures. The shuttle's engines go first and then... I don't know if Hunt is speeding things up, or if the fug was just that fast.

  The hull crumbles in slow motion, first a dark spot, getting bigger and bigger, swallowing the vehicle's nose and then... An explosion of atmosphere, bodies sucked into space. I imagine them screaming, just for a moment, before the void took the air from their lungs, leaving them to freeze.

  Fug trails away from them too, threading through the debris and into the graveyard, each going to a different place. There's one that's thicker than the others, newer almost. Nanites still move along it, a sluggish river of parts, following what's left of Grea's trail.

  Hunt is already moving, giving the fug a wide berth.

  The deeper we travel into the graveyard the more it feels like dying, not death but dying. Cold replacing life in my bones, eating away at me.

  It's the sound, the moans. Sound has no right to exist in vacuum and yet somehow, right here, it does. Hunt is telling me of radio frequencies, transmissions hitting the hull and vibrating the metal, becoming sound waves. I wonder what it sounds like when something bigger than electromagnetic energy hits it. It's tracing the transmissions, showing them as dotted lines disappearing into the graveyard. Some have origins, leading to not-so-silent wrecks, superstructures like skeletons, devoid of hull, the barest flicks of power zipping through their bones, and the others…

  The shivers rise from the deepest part of me, the part that knows there are things in the dark worthy of fear, things I can't explain, things that raise the gooseflesh on my arms and send ice down my spine. Things like ships with the
ir guts open to the void, engines dark and cold, beings that should long be dead and yet…

  The moan rattles my ears, rising above the others. Hunt has it pinned on the HUD, outlining the wreck in thick yellow. It floats by itself in the midst of a debris field, an ovoid skeleton, dark and lifeless. Except for that moan, echoing through the void.

  Grea's trail leads there.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

  I should have wondered where the newer aliens came from, why they were cruising through a graveyard of ships. Should have taken a moment, paid attention when Hunt picked up the massive energy discharge at the centre of the graveyard. Of course, I probably wouldn't have known what I was looking at, wouldn't have picked up on the sweep of an active scan or the movements of a dozen little ships, living ships amongst the wrecks.

  Hindsight is twenty/twenty and all that.

  Pain shears down my back, a long hot line of molten agony.

  Red soaks the HUD, flashing lights and dialogues popping up all over the place. The calm hum of Hunt's processors doesn't change, doesn't spike with fear or adrenalin, but one moment it's ticking along in the back of my brain, supplying a steady stream of information that doesn't feel that important, and then it's racing.

  I barely see the new scans, the three-dimensional map with the bright points of ships bearing down on us. I'm still drawing in air, still processing the fire engulfing my back, cutting across my left shoulder all the way down to my other hip. Still deciding just how loud to scream.

  Hunt takes over, is diving, thrusters burning at full, propelling us toward the shelter of Euiva's skeleton.

  I slip into the between place, the ora.

  There's no pain here. No fear. Just Grea/Euiva and a web of golden minds.

  Waiting for me.

  Brother. Aeotu at my side, a kaleidoscopic version of Mac in his armour.