Dark Between Oceans Read online

  Horn's neck is a dark, ragged mess.

  There are claw marks in the flesh. Blood. Dried and old. Flaking. Fug doesn't kill like that, doesn't open flesh and expose bone. Fug doesn't leave anything behind except the desiccated skeletons of its victims. Skeletons that crumble at the slightest touch.

  Kin killed Horn.

  Kin.

  I stand there, waiting for that to sink in, for what I'm looking at to make sense, to find a place in my brain. I'm standing there for a long time, waiting for enlightenment to strike.

  I just...

  Kin killed Horn.

  It's not like I didn't know they'd killed other Jørgens, hadn't smelled the blood on h'Rawd's breath, but it doesn't stop the thought echoing in my brain, over and over and over. Bouncing off the sides of my skull even as I turn to the other pods. The rest of Horn's family was in here, his dad and mum. His aunt too. He didn't have any siblings, just them, and I guess only his aunt got out, 'cause the pods on either side of him are occupied. Although, I guess his mum could have got out, I didn't really know her that well either, and she looked a lot like her sister.

  It's all moot at the moment. The only way I know Horn's dad didn't get out is because he's the only other one with a penis. His dad's face is gone, not just covered over or obscured, but gone, and the rest of his flesh isn't far behind. I can see bones and muscles and tendons, the thick rope of intestines spilling out of the hole in his belly. I'm pretty sure fug has done most of it, is doing most of it, but some of the holes... They look more like tears, like the ragged marks on Horn's throat.

  The awareness is cataloguing the damage, highlighting parts of the body, outlining the claw marks, picking out lumps of yellow-gold and flooding my eyes with information, but I don't need it.

  I don't need to see more.

  This is enough to fuel my nightmares, to refill the spot where the image of Captain Lyn's hand had started to fade.

  This is enough.

  Enough knowledge, enough dread, enough anger.

  I tromp out of the unit, pausing on the threshold, dragging air into my lungs. Just, standing there, taking it in. The corridor, the crumbled bulkheads, the fug, the glow of emergency shields, and the hatches. So many hatches, some standing open, some still shut. How many of them are filled with corpses? Were Horn's family the only ones the kin killed? And why?

  Kin and human have shared Citlali for decades, have saved each other, helped each other. Been allies, if not friends, ever since the first exploration ship launched from Jørn. It was part of our purpose, part of the reason the ships had been built as they had, with organic and technological components. One species could not survive this journey without the other.

  So why?

  Like so much since I woke up, it doesn't make sense and the awareness in my gut isn't helping.

  It's Aeotu who answers, reaching up through the awareness. Sorrow rides her hard, apology and guilt bringing up the rear. Sisters, she says and I have an impression of many kaleidoscopic minds connected one to the other in a sprawling network. The impression changes and the minds become restless balls of energy – Jørgen minds – shrivelling, rotting as she ties them into a new whole.

  Wrong, she whispers.

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  My spine stays frozen for a long time. All the way down through fug-eaten freight tubes and another hole in the deck. It's still with me as I squeeze through a crack that used to be a section of decking and is now an access hatch to the deck below.

  I drop, fug-ankles absorbing enough of the impact that my knees barely need to bend, Dude not even wobbling from his perch on my shoulder.

  If I have my bearings right and I haven't slipped through a wormhole to the other side of the universe, this is A/Rec One, the first of the accommodation and recreation decks where the crew lives when they're not in stasis/sleep. There's a clone of it below – A/Rec Two – where Mac used to live with his mum.

  Used to live. Those words ring in my brain, pause my feet, and I wonder when I started thinking of Mac as dead, especially now I have proof that at least some of the crew live.

  I shake it aside and keep walking. And finally, finally as I head deeper into the deck, the ice in my spine starts to thaw.

  I know these corridors – the way the hatches fit into the curve of the corridor, with a new one every ten strides; the extra springiness in the decking that's supposed to make it more homey, but make you feel like the gravity's turned down instead – and yet they're strange to me.

  There should be voices in the air, the gentle hubbub of people talking and laughing, the smell of pancakes. The bulkheads are scratched and grey, looking like the steelcrete they're made of rather than flowing with a shifting landscape of holos; scenes of fields and forests, interspersed with the never-ending human-made canyons of the floating cities and wild explosions of abstract colour.

  Instead, all I hear is the grind of malfunctioning air-cyclers grating along my ears like the anger and grief grate along my brain. Harsh. Cold. Hopeless.

  I hold the emotions back, shoring up shields and trying to ignore the dread gripping my insides. Dude helps, fuzzing his butt off in my shoulder, but the NICK NICK of the fug-claws are a boom in my ears and the sound of my breathing is hard, a gale rushing in and out of my nose.

  There's light up ahead, the first glimmer of warmth. The awareness tells me there are heat signatures, but can't say more. There's something wrong with this sector of the ship, something keeping it out.

  The light spills from an open hatch, staining the scarred grey decking a warm gold.

  I stop in the shadows, the light a millimetre from my toes, heart beating hard, fighting back the hope and fear, making a mess of my breathing.

  '...repaired the shielding around the faster-than-light engine but there's still not enough material to kickstart the fusion.' Jim Engineer, there's a new hardness to his voice, but I remember the deep, slow tones well enough. 'Without it, we're not going anywhere.'

  'We'll scavenge it from the stasis generator.' Mac's dad. I picture him as he was the last time I saw him – short and broad, some of it fat, most of it muscle.

  And what about the crew still in their pods? White around a core of boiling black, Onah projects his mental voice.

  Do you truly believe they live? I recognise Mwat's voice. The female qwan's clipped, precise thoughts conjure the memory of her looking down her muzzle, inspecting me like a bug. Stasis is Their domain.

  Can we take the chance that our people do not? Onah says.

  'It's all moot unless we can sever the grappling cables.' Mum. My heart jumps in my chest. 'The viral slag laid by the neo-critters is sticking.'

  'I thought the nanotech we reverse engineered from the alien ship wasn't functional?' Mac's dad says.

  'It's functional now.' And now my heart stops a second time, because that's Dad's voice. 'Someone altered the programming.'

  'Who?'

  'Do you even need to ask?' That's Jim, his voice thick with anger. 'We should have dealt with her already.'

  'The way you've dealt with the others?' Anger may have rolled in Jim's voice, but Dad vibrates with it, and he has just enough empath in him to make the air shake.

  They were in pain, Onah's words drip with grief and the same guilt I sense in the dark place, before h'Rawd—

  I cut the memory off.

  'That's not the only reason.' Accusation joins the anger in Dad's voice, makes it thick and hard, has the weight of a grievance older than me.

  'Jori…' Mum begins, and there's something in her voice, a hardness, a warning, that twigs that sense of wrongness.

  'They were our friends, Aino. The children of our friends.'

  'They weren't there anymore, their minds were gone,' she says.

  'You don't know that.'

  But we do. There's no emotion in Mwat's voice, only the weight of age and authority.

  'And we're to trust you? Like we did with Arthur?'

  Your friend caused his own downfall, M
wat says.

  'Arthur Tudor was part of this crew.' Dad's voice shakes. 'And you killed him for doing his job.'

  Arthur Tudor. The name rings in my head, bouncing from side to side, conjuring a memory… Arthur David Tudor. AD. The beacon in Dad's lab, the alien beacon.

  Oh shit.

  I can almost imagine Mwat, the slow deliberate blink, first her lower eyes and then her upper, before she pins Dad with the full weight of her stare. We are here because he went against our wishes.

  'How was he to know—'

  We told him. Silence greets Onah's statement. And still he connected with the beacon, as only an empath could.

  'It was a ruin, ancient. We weren't to know…' Dad's voice trails off, the heat gone from his words. 'She can't possibly know…'

  I almost miss that last bit, the quiet anguish on the "she", 'cause I'm still reeling over the fact that AD Tudor was an empath, a freaking empath. Like me. Like Grea.

  Everyone had always said we were the only ones…

  'Jori—' A pause, and I imagine Mum putting an arm around Dad's shoulders, rubbing his arm. 'We'll figure it out.'

  My head's still reeling but it doesn't stop me staring at that rectangle of light like if I concentrate enough, I can transport myself in there and see them, watch them, touch them. Just a few steps, a couple of metres and I could do it, could feel Mum's arms around my shoulders, breathe in Dad's warm scent, and just... Just what? Be me? Rewind until before the fug?

  Pain radiates though my hands. I look down, at the claws piercing my palms, at the fug crawling over my skin, and then further, at my feet, at my bent-back ankles and three stubby toes, the talons gripping the deck.

  I step back.

  Dude chitters, tiny claws pricking my neck and sticks his nose in my ear.

  I jerk, fug-feet tangling at the sudden movement, and stumble over the cables.

  A crash.

  The voices cut off.

  My heart stops.

  Boots pounding the deck, wings beating, a snarl.

  The golden rectangle is full of shadows, people rushing out, light glinting off pistols and multi-tools.

  And now I'm on my arse, staring up at familiar faces.

  Dude hums.

  Fear and anger saturate the corridor, turning the air thick with clouds of black and red before surprise, hope and horror blast it all away.

  I get to my feet, careful to move slow.

  'Kuma?'

  'Hey Dad.'

  'I—?' I'm enveloped in a hug. Arms wrapping around my shoulders, lifting my heels off the floor. I smell Dad, bury my nose in his shoulder, wrap my hands around his back and—

  'Step away, Jori,' Jim says, pointing a pistol at my face.

  Jim Engineer's expression is stone – cold and hard. And scared. Med-gel wraps around the lower half of his face, completely covering one cheek and half of his mouth, before slipping over his throat and disappearing under his shipsuit. The uncovered half of his face is... eaten, I guess. Pock-marked and massed with the white mesh of hastily regrown skin.

  Pain radiates from him, a dark murky pink, and not just physical pain. There's grief tangled in it, void-dark strands threaded through every breath. It matches the emotion in his eyes. Jim had a partner, and I know without asking that Jess is dead.

  Dad is turning, one arm around my shoulders, holding me close, confusion saturating his aura, and maybe a touch of outrage.

  I step away, dropping my arms. One step, two, putting distance between us, 'cause I know what Jim Engineer has seen, and I know what Dad hasn't seen, hasn't realised, and I know it's not going to be good when he does.

  Because I can see Mum, standing behind Jim, and she's seen. Her eyes are locked on my hands, are travelling up my arms, taking in my face, and when I move, her attention drops to my feet.

  The light's not good here, casts stark shadows over noses and under brows, makes skin grey, but I don't need it. Mum's aura has gone sparkly with shock.

  ...and that step back she takes tells me everything.

  'It's okay, Dad.' My too-deep voice is scratchy, squeezing past the lump in my throat. 'He's just worried.'

  Dad whips back around and that thread of outrage in his aura is turning to anger. 'Kuma—'

  I hold up my hands.

  He stops.

  Stares.

  Sparks are going off in the air around him, the muddy grey of confusion giving way to disbelief, and then the bright orange of comprehension. He steps back too.

  It's just a half-step and I know it's involuntary, that it's shock as much as instinct, because he takes it back immediately, reaches out to me, but it's still a knife in my heart.

  I push him back.

  'It's okay,' I say again, this time to Mum, half-hidden in the shadows behind Jim Engineer. 'It's not... eating me or anything. It's actually been kinda... helpful.' If helpful involved defending myself from h'Rawd and h'Lott. Of course, if I hadn't been half-fug, they probably wouldn't have attacked—

  He is part of Them. Mwat's voice booms in my head, filling me with the echo of ancient training memories – rucnarts pursuing flat-nosed aliens down curving corridors. You attacked the tree-kin, like It did. A newer image; a dark, sleek figure cutting through tree-kin, blood flying from its talon-like fingers.

  Hope fills my chest, chases out the questions about Horn and being "whole". 'There's someone else like me?'

  The worst part about silence are the things that fill it. Dread fills this one, rising around my knees, cold and toxic, reeking of secrets and pain.

  It makes my blood curdle.

  There's a conversation going on that I can't hear, I can tell from the tiny frown over Dad's nose and the way Jim and Mum's eyes glaze. Onah's the only one whose expression doesn't change. 'Course, it's hard to read a qwan's face, the ridges between their upper and lower eyes always seem to be drawn in a frown and their muzzles wrinkled with distaste, for all I know, Onah is smiling.

  'It's Kuma,' Mum says. 'It's my son. We take the chance.'

  I'm not sure what chance they think they're taking. Fug-feet aren't contagious, at least that's what the awareness tells me, but the faces in front of me haven't got the same message.

  Mwat. Mac's dad. Jim.

  Their judgement hits me in the face.

  Mum's the worst. She stands against the back wall of our old kitchen, arms crossed, no emotion stains her aura or her expression.

  Dad echoes her pose but where the workbench separates me from her, Dad's a solid presence at my side, his protectiveness washing over me like a shield. Its strength hasn't diminished in the whole time I've been sitting here, recounting the events since Onah pushed me out of stasis/sleep, a lifetime ago.

  You told the AI to attack Citlali, Mwat says.

  'Not to attack—'

  Jim doesn't let me finish. 'It's taken over Citlali, Kuma, how is that not attacking?'

  Another breath. 'We're still here.'

  'Here?' Jim is leaning across the table, pointing at his face. 'It killed my wife. I woke up and she was dead, Kuma!'

  His grief pounds at my head and I feel like I should look away, should acknowledge his loss without challenging him but…

  He doesn't know loss, my twin whispers in my head. With her presence comes anger, comes a harrowing loneliness, comes the sensation of death creeping slowly through my bones. It shoves me to the back of my own head and takes over my mouth, my face.

  Grea is behind my eyes, twisting my lips, using my too-deep voice. 'It ate Mae Lu, he saw it carrying her parts away, he tried to do something.' She pushes me away from the bench, stalking around it, ignoring Dad and Mum and Onah as she/I advance on Jim, singling him out like a rucnart on the hunt. 'What'd you see? What'd you do? What'd you feel?'

  She/I are in his face, and it's strange to notice that I'm taller than the man who used to ruffle my hair and tease me about being a shrimp. In the part of my brain not in shock over Grea's invasion, I wonder how much of it is because of the fug-feet and how much is
me.

  Jim's face is pale, the ridges of his scars white, while anger and not a little fear radiate from him. He opens his mouth, but Grea/I are poking him in the chest, and there must be more force behind it than I think, because it slams him against the bench.

  'You did nothing,' Grea/I say. 'You saw nothing, you felt nothing because you were asleep in your little pod while we were saving your lives.'

  Jaws are wide open, surprise, confusion and shock saturating the room, a miasma thick enough it's almost visible.

  'Kuma, what's going on?' Dad is the first one to find his voice.

  Kuma does not speak. Onah stands straight and tall. Hello Grea. We have been trying to find you.

  Grea's/my eyes narrow, and although she/I direct our words to the qwan, her/my finger doesn't move from Jim's chest. 'I know, but I don't need your idea of help.'

  I want to know what she means by that.

  You already know, Grea says. You've already seen it, felt it.

  The teeth in the dark. H'Lott's hot breath in my face. The stench of blood. Horn's ruined throat.

  'Grea? Sweetheart?' That's Mum, reaching up to cup our face in her hands. 'Is that—'

  Grea/I pull away, and this time the sneer on her/my face is full of teeth and anger. 'Don't think I don't know, Ma, don't think I didn't see, that I wasn't there. It was your idea,' she whispers.

  Mum shrinks, and if I thought Jim's face was pale, Mum's is bloodless, turning her golden complexion a strange shade of beige.

  Guilt. Sadness. Anger. Fear. Suddenly I'm swamped in it, drowning in emotions, buried under their weight – Onah's, Mum's, Jim's. Everyone but Dad's and Mwat's.

  They're stoic, pillars of nothingness in the midst of the torrent.

  Even Grea is flooding me with the sweet, heady sense of victory, except… It's not just her emotion, there's a darker red to the cherry of her presence, a shadow like the one I sensed before.

  In my gut, the awareness stills, recognition blooming. I'm reaching for the darker red, stretching like Mum reaching for Grea's/my cheeks, hope in her eyes.

  There's a jerk, Grea's attention on me, a moment of alarm and then she's gone, taking the dark red with her.