Chapter 18
EIGHTEEN
EDDIE
Darkness, all engulfing
The twinkle of stars unlit
Images flashed before Eddie’s eyes, appearing for just a second but leaving lasting impressions. Words spoke, gave form to the images; a voice that was and was not darkness itself.
Limbs, bones, skin
Bodies slumped and still
Crystalline shattering exploded as the doors opened. And Eddie’s visions faded as shock and confusion passed through his bond with Jett.
In the feed from Jett’s helmet, dozens—perhaps hundreds—of bodies reflected in the light. Standing with arms outstretched, bent double, or contorted like dancers paused mid-step, the first people came into view, flashing ice-white in Jett’s cam feed.
“Hash, Kepler, Rot, clear each of the floors above this one. Keep together and mind your six.”
Three bodies stepped forward and around the figures before moving out of frame.
“Auguste, tell me what’s going on with these…people.”
A blue-tinged face crusted with frost came into view as Jett stepped toward the nearest body.
Their features were oddly serene, as if they’d paused while speaking and never resumed.
An eerie color clung to the outline, that Eddie couldn’t attribute to the frost. He wished he was in there, wished he could see this with his own eyes.
But he’d promised Jett that he wouldn’t board the ship under any circumstances, so he would stay where he was and be a spectator.
The view panned right to left, settling on first one figure and then the next.
“I see no movement.”
Eddie couldn’t pick out most of the figures from the rest. They appeared as one sparkling mass when light flashed across them.
“Confirmed on our end.”
The shock and confusion in Eddie’s chest settled into a dull throb as Jett moved across the atrium, pausing at one contorted body and then the next.
Some were in positions so crumpled or exaggerated that Eddie couldn’t imagine a humanoid would survive them.
Clusters of people spread throughout the room and up the stairs, where they draped over railings and steps.
“Report for you, sir.”
“Go ahead, Auguste.”
Eddie felt strangely detached from Jett, despite feeling the man deep in his chest. It was the newness—the strangeness—of seeing him as a soldier for the first time.
The strange way he slipped between Lieutenant Valla and Eddie’s Jett in the same conversation, the same unending, recorded feed.
Eddie wondered what his superiors would make of them, but decided he didn’t care. He couldn’t remain detached.
Death; endless and absolute
Screams drawn out in exquisite agony
The words were whispers from the dark, directly inserted into Eddie’s conscious mind. Further flashes of frozen corpses dazzled before his eyes, both here in the Atrium and spread throughout the ship, in corridors both familiar and unknown.
The voice that whispered was an absence as much as a presence, as if the Void itself cast the words and images fully formed into Eddie’s head.
It was strange, shocking, confusing—but Eddie wasn’t scared.
The Voice and Song were like lullaby’s sung to children in the womb.
But this was a lullaby of death, of darkness, of Void.
“Did you hear that, Golden Lion?”
Eddie shook himself slightly, cleared the words and images and the scattering stars from his mind.
“Could you repeat it for me?” he asked, hoping he sounded normal and not halfway to insanity.
“The people were dead before freezing, Captain.”
Eddie played back through the stream, looked at the contorted frames, the ice-caked hair, the blue-stained skin.
“Does that mean they were…placed there?”
There was a pause before Auguste confirmed.
Eddie tapped back to the current feed from Jett’s cam.
“That means that none of what we’re seeing was an accident. Someone was behind what happened on the Golden Lion.” Jett was calm again, a soothing ache in Eddie’s chest despite the horror that surrounded him.
“And, sirs?” Auguste interrupted. “I don’t know how they died. The scanner picked up no wounds of any kind.” He sounded defeated, even to Eddie’s ears.
“Anything upstairs?”
Eddie’s console pinged, altering him that Ollie Wort wanted to speak. He flipped over to his cam.
“What’s the story, Ollie?”
“Someone—or something—got in here and fucked everything up.”
Ollie panned to show Eddie the remains of primary machinery, electronics, and databanks.
Console tabs stood with their steel-glass panels shattered on the floor.
Jumbles of cables and broken conduit spilled from towers, and sparks flew, casting odd shadows.
Dark fluids dripped from hidden breaks in the ceiling.
In the background, the Astra drive dominated a wide, featureless oval of space.
“What happened?” Eddie couldn’t parse all the individual details of destruction, he needed Ollie to fill them in.
“We’re trying to figure that out. But, as I said, someone or something fucked up the machinery.”
Eddie pursed his lips in thought. “What do you mean by something?”
Ollie approached a large metal tower where four parallel gouges crossed the centimeter-thick metal. Dark droplets stained the satin grey.
“No human could have done this much damage. Not without some sort of weapon.”
Eddie agreed, though he didn’t personally know the limits to which a desperate humanoid could be pushed.
“What’s the status for the ship’s systems? How long before it’s too dangerous for the teams to be aboard?”
“Life Support is failing on all levels. Electrical is dodgy, heat and ventilation are practically nonexistent.” He scrolled through a cracked console tab showing graphs and percentages before turning his attention to the Astra drive.
Astra drives were state-of-the-art engines that combined Terran engineering and the ancient tech left by the Astral Gods.
It was a clear plexi cylinder with five metal supports built into the oval compartment.
The cylinder itself should have been full and glowing a dim, saturated, purple.
But it was dark, barely lit, and the fuel appeared black in the light of Wort’s flashlight.
“The Astra drive is still running, but at a fraction of its power, even at rest.”
Eddie sighed. The ship—his ship—was ruined. It mattered only on the surface, a sting that he couldn’t help but feel, even though he’d decided he didn’t want this life.
“Is there any way to fix the damage? Or is it dead?”
“It would take a whole team of engineers weeks to sort through the mess in here. I’ve only got Michi and Art.” He panned to the two green-suited engineers talking on a local channel.
“Can we hook the Golden Lion up to the Shibuya and pull data off the systems?”
Wort’s video shook from side to side. “Negative. The Shibuya is too small and the Golden Lion too drained for that.”
Eddie sighed. Jett was still heading for the Bridge, but the black box would contain only high-level reports, not raw systems data that could help them determine what happened and when the catastrophe began.
“Thank you, Ollie. Gather as much data as you can and report back to the ship.”
“Will—”
Ollie was cut off as a metallic voice thundered.
TWO HOURS REMAINING UNTIL DETONATION