The Dark Between The Stars

FORTY-NINE
ZHETT KELLUM

The swirling clouds of Golgen were restless, and increasing winds whipped across the atmospheric layers. As Zhett stepped out onto the skydeck, she could smell the foul chemical vapors coughed up from deep below. For years, she had watched this planet, staring at the kaleidoscopic tangles of cloud bands, the ever-changing cauldron of colors. She knew the gas giant’s moods, and right now Golgen was in a surly one.

Near the edge of the deck, Shareen and her friend Howard peered down into the clouds, shoulder-to-shoulder, hypnotized by the storms. The studious young man seemed to be mapping out meteorological equations in his mind, while Shareen impressed him with the story of an enormous vortex storm years ago that had caught the skymine in a slow maelstrom for two weeks before the hurricane forces dissipated.

They were so preoccupied with each other that Zhett startled them when she stepped up. “I think this is something different, Shareen. I don’t like it.”

The clouds looked bruised and discolored, but the weather satellites detected no large-scale storms brewing. On a planet the size of Golgen, storms were huge but ponderous. They took months, even years, to rise and die. Zhett and her skyminers should have had time to prepare.

This vortex, though, was changing in a matter of hours.

Kilometers-long whisker probes dangled into the cloud decks beneath the skymine, analyzing chemical compositions and vapor layers. Sounding stressed, the shift chief called Zhett to the control dome. “You’ve got to see this for yourself—I have no idea what it means.”

“On my way.” She glanced at Shareen and Howard. “Coming?”

Howard continued to stare out at the stormy clouds. Shareen called over her shoulder. “We’ll be there in a few minutes.”

Taking a lift up to the control dome, Zhett could hear the skymine groan and rattle in the increasing winds. The powerful antigrav engines would keep them afloat, but the skymine could be in for a rough ride.

Del was already in the control dome, doing his best to appear knowledgeable and commanding. “Gas giants are capricious things, by damn.”

The control crew turned to Zhett as she arrived, relief clear on their faces. “I’ve never seen a cloud layer profile like this,” said the shift chief. He called up a display of uncharacteristically jagged traces from the probes, as well as color-coded chemical analyses of vapor content.

Suddenly the signal spiked, and the entire skymine lurched as the dangling probes went taut, then snapped free. The skymine tilted, as if being tossed about on rough seas. The shift chief yelled, “Something just tore off our whisker lines!” Sparks flew from the control decks. Alarms whooped. “Stabilizers are working overtime—but they can’t handle it.”

Zhett raced to a set of screens that showed images from exterior cameras and scout flyers circling the skymine. A maintenance man called from one of the drifting ekti silos. “The clouds are opening up! Something’s down there.”

A lump as heavy as cement formed in Zhett’s chest as the misty layers parted, and a dark and angry stain swirled up. Shapes moved deep below—ominous diamond spheres studded with pyramid spikes.

“By the Guiding Star!” she whispered in awe, then slammed her hand down on the station-wide comm. “The drogues are back! Prepare for evacuation!”

Ten huge hydrogue warglobes rose from the depths of Golgen and surrounded the skymine. The sight reminded Zhett of the horrors of the Elemental War, how these seemingly unstoppable diamond spheres had destroyed whole EDF battle fleets and wrecked countless Roamer skymines.

Del Kellum’s face paled. “But—they’ve been quiet for twenty years, by damn.” His own beloved Shareen Pasternak had perished aboard a skymine that the drogues had annihilated.

She got on the comm. “Fitzy, get Toff and Rex! Time to go.”

Evacuation alarms sounded throughout the skymine. The crew had been drilled thoroughly for this situation, which they had hoped never to see again. Now they scrambled to their stations.

An eleventh hydrogue warglobe rose to the top of the clouds and bobbed there, motionless.

“The drogues aren’t opening fire,” Del Kellum said. “What the hell?”

Zhett realized that her daughter and Howard were still out on the skydeck, but before she could manage to say anything, Shareen signaled her. “Mom and Dad, I need you here—now! You have to see this. He—it—says it needs to speak with you!”

Zhett nearly collided with her husband as he rushed to the control deck with a crying Rex and a flushed and breathless Kristof. “I’ll lead the evacuation,” Patrick said. “Our ships can spread out in the sky until we get vessels to take us up to orbit. We just might be safe there.”

Shareen’s voice hammered through the comm. “Mom and Dad, please—on the skydeck, now!”

The lifts were jammed with people trying to get to different decks, but Toff bounded ahead of all of them. Reaching the proper level, they all ran out onto the windswept skydeck where Shareen and Howard still stood side by side.

A living hydrogue stood on the open skydeck—a human-shaped avatar fashioned out of liquid metal. The elemental figure faced them, silent and unmoving, like a statue.

As soon as her parents appeared, Shareen pointed out to the sky. “Look at the warglobes! Something’s wrong with them.”

The diamond hulls were stained, as if suffering from some kind of blight. Black splotches seeped into the curved crystal, and dark cracks appeared. The smooth spheres rolled slowly in the thick clouds, and the discolorations grew and swelled, hardening like rough scabs.

“I… think they’re dying,” Howard said.

Del Kellum pushed his way close to Zhett and Patrick. “By damn, they look like fish floating belly up.”

The hydrogue figure regarded them with its blunt-featured face, a poorly molded doll made of metallic clay. The figure took one lurching step toward them, as if uncertain how to move its limbs. It turned toward Zhett, and she could make out only the shadow of a representative nose, eyes, mouth on its face.

The hydrogue avatar spoke in a hollow tone that held a background of thunder and clanging metal. “You must depart.” The deep-core aliens had learned human language from the prisoners they had taken during the long war. “Leave this planet.”

Alarms continued to sound on the skymine. In the past, the drogues had given no warning, simply annihilated any Roamer facilities that trespassed in their clouds.

But the warglobes surrounding the skymine still had not opened fire.

“Why?” Zhett demanded. “What did we do?”

“Leave this planet,” the avatar repeated. “It has been contaminated.”

The figure flinched. Its facial features sharpened, then transformed into a caricature of agony before the face melted away, streaming back into smooth blankness. Its arms and legs twisted, flailed, and it bent over as if having a seizure. When the hydrogue straightened again its body was distorted. Its mouth opened so wide it filled most of the simulated face.

“Leave this planet! Escape…”

Shareen turned quickly toward her parents. “It’s not threatening us—it’s warning us.”

“There is a breach through the transgate,” the hydrogue continued. “The shadows are bleeding through from our core…”

Patrick grabbed Zhett’s arm. “I think we should listen. Let’s get the hell away from Golgen.”

The hydrogue’s quicksilver skin looked tarnished, blotched, and leprous. The thing’s mouth opened to let out a long hollow moan, like a blast of cold wind on a lonely night.

Then the figure bent backward at an impossible angle and staggered to the edge of the skydeck. With a last burst of energy, it leaped away from the skymine and plunged down into the endless sky.