The Burning Dark (20 page)

Carter’s last thought before the blackness descended was that it wasn’t DeJohn in a spacesuit. It was a woman, her curves unmistakable even under the silver padding. And it wasn’t a Fleet-issue spacesuit. It was old-fashioned, like something from an old movie. Silver quilting and white plastic, and across the front, four large, bold letters in red:
CCCP
.

Carter stared at the closed helmet visor, trying to work out who the reflected image was. A man with cropped hair and a mouth stretched wide and screaming.

20

“What the hell?”

Ida heard the scream, and so did the two armed marines. The one inside his cabin shifted, helmet turning toward the door. Through the semi-frosted square window, Ida saw the guard stationed outside turn his head, looking down the passage. Ida stood quickly from the bed, where he had been reading a book on his computer pad—with no space radio, no mystery recording, he actually felt a lot better, and had started to think about his edited personal history again and what he would do and whom he would see back at Fleet Command in a couple of months to get it sorted out.

He put the pad down beside him and looked at the marine. The marine said nothing but shifted on his feet, clearly itching to check out the sound.

Ida pointed at the door. “Aren’t you going to see what that was?”

The marine looked between his prisoner and the cabin door.

“Come on, don’t be a jackass,” said Ida. “Someone’s in trouble. It’s your duty to check, marine.”

Outside the cabin, the second marine had been joined by somebody else. It was impossible to see who, but they were shorter and weren’t dressed in battle gear like the guards. The marine’s helmet, nothing but a dark spherical shape, bobbed as he conversed with the newcomer.

“Oh, for crying out loud.” Ida took a step forward, hesitating only a moment as his robotic knee panged with pain.
Too much lying idle,
Ida thought.

The marine snapped back to full attention and made a move to stop Ida, but then seemed to think better of it and nodded instead. Ida slapped the chrome control panel next to the door, which snicked open.

“I can’t get through to the bridge.” It was Serra. She was dressed in her off-duty fatigues, her green singlet damp with sweat; clearly she’d come straight from her cabin at the sound.

“What’s going on?” Ida’s gaze flicked between the marines.

Serra looked at him; her eyes were wide and wet, her lips parted and quivering slightly with rapid breaths.

“Marine?” Ida looked at his guard.

The guard raised a gauntlet to the side of his helmet, and Ida watched his index finger twitch as he manually cycled through the comms channels. Normally it was automatic, controlled by a combination of jaw movements inside the helmet and selective thoughts as part of the combat suit’s low-level psi-fi field. The manual control was there as a backup only.

The marine shook his head. “Some kind of interference on all channels.”

Serra’s face dropped into a worried frown. “Me too.” She tapped the silver comms tag slotted onto her belt.

“Interference?” Ida stepped back and, standing in the doorway to his cabin, reached around to the door control panel. The room’s main comms channel control was embedded next to the lock.

Ida thumbed the call button. “Bridge?”

As soon as he released it, the cabin was filled with a harsh burst of static. First the lightspeed link, now the station’s internal comms channel? It was impossible. Ida flicked the button a few times, each resulting in a burst of noise. He bent over and absently rubbed his artificial knee, which seemed to throb in time to the static.

There was something else in the noise. Ida depressed the button and held it, focusing on both the sound and the way his knee ached. There was something else buried underneath the random sound. A rhythm, a roar that waxed and waned with a sharp edge that made the edge of Ida’s jaw tingle like he was sucking on a lemon.

He’d heard that sound before. He had been listening to it just recently.

The static of subspace.

He hit the button again and again. “Bridge! King, come in.” Nothing, just the empty roar of the universe that lay underneath their own.

He pressed the button one more time, but then he saw Serra wobble on her feet, her hands on her forehead. She was a psi-marine, he knew that … Maybe the alien noise of subspace affected her like it affected the psi-fi link between his knee and his brain.

Serra closed her eyes and rubbed them. She muttered something in Spanish, just a whisper, and looked at the floor.

Ida turned to the marine next to her. “Go to the bridge. Inform the provost marshal that we have a ship-wide communication failure and that there may be crew in danger. Go.”

The marine turned his visor from Ida to Serra and back again, before looking over Ida’s shoulder at his companion now standing in the doorway. The marine who had been guarding Ida nodded, the movement exaggerated by his helmet.

Ida tapped the first marine on the shoulder.

“Go!” he said, gently pushing on the jarhead’s armor. The marine finally seemed to make his decision and turned, jogging down the corridor. The marine in the cabin pushed past Ida and made to follow, but Ida grabbed him by the elbow.

“Come with us. You’re the only one with a gun. Serra?”

Serra snapped out of her reverie and raised her eyes to Ida’s. “Yes?”

“What happened? Who’s in trouble?”

“Carter. It’s Carter. He … We saw DeJohn. He was acting up, so Carter went to get him. He didn’t come back.”

That snagged it. DeJohn, the nastiest, stupidest marine on board had finally flipped and jumped Carter. That had to be it. They were all in this together now.

“Come on,” he said, and he led the way down the corridor.

*   *   *

They found him by
a bulkhead, clockwise around the hub and only a few hundred meters from his own cabin. He was out cold, and Ida was pleased to see Izanami had got there first. The medic was kneeling on the ground beside Carter, his head in her hands, her long white fingers pressed into his face.

Ida was at her side immediately. “Is he okay?”

Serra dropped to her knees and rolled Carter’s head toward her, brushing off Izanami’s hands. “How should I know? He needs a medic. DeJohn must have jumped him.
Fuck.
”

Ida eased back a bit, giving Serra a good clearance around Carter’s supine form. He was breathing, and as Serra clutched at his head he groaned and his eyelids flickered.

Ida looked him over briefly, not really sure what to look for. He wasn’t bleeding and he seemed to be in one piece, although his uniform—off-duty greens like Serra’s—was crumpled and saturated with cold sweat. Carter coughed and tried to get himself up onto his elbows, hissing in pain as he did so.

“Easy, marine.” Ida laid a hand on Carter’s shoulder, and the marine gave him a hard look.

But Serra’s hand rested on his other shoulder, and she pushed him back. He looked at her and blinked, and seeing her face, he seemed to relax a little.

“What happened?” Ida asked. “Are you hurt?”

Ida gently took Carter’s forehead between the fingers of one hand and rolled the marine’s head to expose the back of it. There was a grid pattern in his closely cropped hair that showed where he’d lain, and the scalp underneath looked red, but otherwise he was unharmed. If he’d been attacked by DeJohn, the other marine hadn’t managed to land a blow to the head.

Carter gave Ida an unfocused look, like he was concentrating on a particularly difficult engineering problem. He blinked again.

Ida recognized the signs of a concussion.

“Ah … that’s a very good question, sir,” Carter said quietly.

Ida smirked. He’d called him
sir
. Perhaps a concussion was good for him.

Then Carter’s hand grabbed at Ida’s chest, pulling the front of his shirt into a bunch as he sat up from the floor. Ida looked down and could see the veins bulging in the marine’s biceps. His jaw was tight, the muscles under his ears bunched and white. His eyes were wide.

“I … remember…”

“Charlie, what is it, babe?” Serra asked, trailing her fingers around his face.

He flinched at her touch, but then relaxed, the red flush on his face sinking back into his bones. He breathed quickly in a controlled way, trying to calm himself down.

“I saw someone. It … I don’t know who it was. A woman. Never found DeJohn. But … nah…” Carter shook his head, his eyes now fixed on the floor between his legs. The armed marine shifted to give him more room. From farther down the passage came the sound of more booted feet, running to the rescue.

Ida turned back to Carter. “Who was it? What did you see?”

Carter laughed. The laugh was empty, spent of emotion, an expression of fear and resignation at impossible things.

“Whoever it was, I don’t think she’s part of the crew. I didn’t recognize the suit either. It was strange. Not Fleet issue. It had letters on it, maybe some kind of insignia.” He moved his hand in the air over his own chest, miming his description.
“C—C—C—P.”
He shook his head.

Ida frowned, unsure whether he should recognize the initials or not. He pushed the thought to one side.

Serra looked at Ida and then up at the armed marine. “A stowaway?”

“Or an infiltrator,” said Ida. “That would explain the suit.”

Serra nodded. “Spacewalk between the hub and their ship?”

“Could be. The manifest bug can’t be a coincidence. If they’ve tampered with the station systems so we can’t detect their ship, they might also be able to knock out life scanners
inside
so we can’t see them as they sneak around the station. Maybe that’s what’s caused the manifest to bug, DeJohn to drop off the system. Right?”

But Carter was shaking his head, his agitation returning. He rubbed his greasy temple.

“No, there was something else, like … like they weren’t really there, they weren’t part of … ah, I dunno.”

Ida stood up and stroked his chin in thought. A trio of marines jogged around the corner, pulling up as they saw the group standing around the man on the floor. Ida’s former guard stepped toward the newcomers and filled them in on what was happening.

Ida glanced over at Izanami, who was standing well back in the shadows at the edge of the passageway, giving everybody room. He nodded to her, and then looked back at Carter.

“Okay, we’ll let the medic take care of you, and then we’ve got to take this to King. This facility is supposed to be on lockdown.”

Serra looked up at him. “He’s not going to like this.”

“Well, he can like it or he can lump it, but this time he can’t brush it off.” Ida rolled his neck a little, conscious now that he was bringing the subject back to himself. He felt everyone’s eyes on him and quickly moved back to business. “We have an intruder. That’s about as serious as it gets.”

Ida turned on his heel. The marine at the front of the new group brought himself to a quiet attention, but Ida wasn’t looking at him. He was looking past him.

Ida looked at Izanami. In the half dark of the corridor her eyes flashed with pale blue light.

Ida looked over his shoulder, down at Carter. “Do you think you can walk, marine?”

Carter snorted and bent his knees. “I’m not a cripple.”

Ida smiled. Carter’s old attitude was coming back, which meant he was feeling better. Damn.

Carter stood, Serra and a marine on each side for support. Ida stuffed his hands in his pockets and stepped back, eyeing Carter up and down, making sure there wasn’t an injury he’d missed.

Carter froze.

Serra’s eyes searched his face. “What is it?” she mouthed.

But he wasn’t looking at her. He was staring straight ahead, into the shadows. His face blanched to a deathly white, and when he opened his mouth, his scream was long and high.

Ida swore and turned, following Carter’s eye line. But there was no one there except Izanami, standing apart from the group, keeping out of everyone’s way. Smiling in the darkness. Her eyes moved from Carter to Ida. Then she turned and walked away toward the bulkhead door.

Ida frowned. Behind him, Carter collapsed into the arms of Serra and the other marine.

21

“This is exactly what
I don’t need.”

Ida snorted and shifted the weight on his feet. The provost marshal paced back and forth in the ready room, apparently talking to himself. Ida wasn’t sure whether King was more concerned about possible infiltrators attacking his marines or about this screwing up his carefully planned schedule.

King stopped pacing and glanced at Ida and Serra. Serra stood to attention, looking pale and ill as she stared at the wall behind King’s commandeered desk. Ida followed her gaze to the painting there—a print, Japanese, of some nautical disaster. It must have been as expensive as the desk and the rug. The desk was clear, the book Ida had seen open there now absent.

“Where is Sergeant Major Carter now?” asked the marshal.

Serra’s heels clicked together. “He’s been admitted to the infirmary, sir, and is under sedation, sir.”

King nodded. “Very well. I’m moving this station to alert status. Our guests are due in just two cycles. We are going to sweep this station from top to bottom and get rid of our rats. Captain Cleveland…”

Here it came. Confined to quarters to twiddle his thumbs. He wondered if Izanami would at least keep him company. Ida glanced to his left, where she was standing demurely, smiling but staring ahead, her eyes apparently focused on the same point as Serra’s. Maybe she knew what the print was about. Ida wondered who was looking after Carter.

“You and Psi-Sergeant Serra will lead the search. Dismissed.”

Ida blinked, then coughed politely into his fist. “I don’t believe I heard you correctly, Marshal.”

King ground his teeth. “This station is operating on a skeleton crew, if you hadn’t noticed. Retired or not, you hold the second-highest rank on board. For the moment I’m going to forget about the radio—”

Ida drew breath to speak but the marshal held up a hand.