Static Ruin Read online

  “Fuck.” The word falls from my lips. Three more destroyers wait for us, distant shapes vivid against the backdrop of stars. They’re spaced wide, prows tracking us as Waren pushes the throttle and steers away.

  “Hold on,” Waren says. We turn sharp and my stomach churns again, acceleration twisting gravity as we dive beneath Joon-ho’s structure, trying to put the temple-station between us and the pursuing warships.

  I swallow a mouthful of hot saliva, resisting the urge to spit or vomit. “Where are Pale and Ocho?”

  “They’re in Pale’s living quarters, already strapped in.”

  I don’t bother replying, I just nod and lean my head back in the seat, fingers digging into the armrest, gripped tight. I key a rear-view onto the main screen and see the cubed structure pointed with shimmering gold minarets growing smaller behind us. The destroyers sink below it like diving birds of prey, sleek hulls shining in starlight.

  Lasfire streaks through the void, thud and shudder as the ship rattles, armor plating vaporized, clouds of molten steel visible in the rear-view.

  “We need to go now, Waren,” I say through gritted teeth, watching calculations flash across the nav computer.

  Another barrage of laser cuts across the darkness, then blinks out of existence before it can strike—the ships, the space station, the stars disappearing as we fold into worm-space.

  “I had the situation well in hand,” Waren says with a hint of disdain.

  “Sorry,” I say. My hands ache and I realize I’m still holding white-knuckle to the armrest. I let go and flex my fingers. “Where are you taking us?”

  “I selected a random point in a distant system. If we make multiple arbitrary trips through worm-space it should make us harder to track. I still won’t get to pick our destination, will I?” Waren asks.

  I unclasp my harness and lean forward, resting my head in my hands, greasy hair falling through my fingers. I can’t remember the last time I bothered to wash it. “Not yet, Waren. But we’re doing this for Pale,” I say.

  “We’re going to find your father.”

  I shake my head. “How did you know?”

  “I’m an unnaturally intelligent entity who’s read enough of the MEPHISTO documentation to realize that Pale needs specialist treatment.”

  “Were you listening in on my conversation with Ahlam?” I ask.

  “I overheard some of it while checking on Pale,” Waren says. “You must have known we were never going to find help at Joon-ho.”

  “I hoped,” I say, but even I can hear my lack of conviction. “Do you have his last known coordinates?”

  “Of course,” Waren says. “After the series of random jumps, I’ll set that as our final destination. Why don’t you wish to see him?”

  I stand and walk to the cockpit door, pausing in the opening. “Do you like what you are, Waren? Do you like how you were made?”

  There’s a long pause, practically an eternity in terms of AI processor cycles. “It’s not something I can change, so I haven’t dedicated much time to considering it.”

  “You AI are smarter than any human, but most of us treat you like servants or slaves. Any one of us could unplug your core and do whatever we liked with it. But what if you’d been given an autonomous body?”

  “That would be illegal.”

  “But not impossible. So imagine: what if you had a body? What if people treated you like a human? What if you were normal?” Pain festers in that word and a shiver wracks my body.

  Waren remains silent, and I can’t tell if he’s thinking, or waiting for me to finish.

  “Teo made me what I am,” I say, “but I could have been normal.”

  “You’re better than normal,” Waren says, but I can’t tell if that’s an AI’s calculation, or a friend’s reassurance.

  “There’s no such thing as ‘better,’ there’s only ‘different,’ and people hate what they don’t understand,” I say, leaving the cockpit behind to wander down the corridor.

  And I don’t even understand myself.

  CHAPTER THREE

  I watch the stars beyond the viewport instead of sleeping. We’re in a binary system—the two suns locked in a protracted dance, one that will end in flash and fury a billion years after I’m dead.

  When I lean back from the port there’s a smudge from my oily forehead. I carry my cup of ersatz coffee through to the mess hall, switch the cookstation on, and sit. I start awake when the machine beeps its completion—those unscheduled moments of stolen rest are all I can hope for.

  I take the bowl of rehydrated egg-like protein to my quarters and sit on the floor. I spoon food into my mouth—cheesy taste of yeast flakes and salt held together by rubbery bits of I don’t even know. The egg-like protein was better on the Nova. I’m not sure why; it should be exactly the same.

  Before I’ve finished eating, the twin stars fold away—Waren taking us into another wormhole. I put my bowl and cup to one side and lie on the cold polyrubber, staring at the ceiling.

  After Homan Sphere, I can’t sleep in beds. In prison I slept on the floor, surrounded by the snoring and farting of the other inmates. Here it’s too quiet, the bed is too soft, the guilt is too sharp. The first time I tried the bed after we settled into the Rua, the mattress was suffocating. Fear gripped me every time I sank into it, heart pounding and sleep further off than ever.

  Now when I try to sleep, I lie on the floor. I did the same thing when I was a kid because I felt like I didn’t deserve a bed, I didn’t deserve comfort. Don’t know how I fooled myself into thinking I did.

  At least when I was a child I had nothing to feel guilty for, no reason for the self-loathing that kept me awake.

  Even on the floor, I don’t really sleep, but I rest. Free from fear with the hard floor at my back, and Ocho curled up on the bed, her slitted eyes watching over me.

  * * *

  “We have arrived in-system.”

  Waren’s voice comes through loud over the static hiss of falling water. I’m not sure how long I’ve been dozing in the shower, water filtered and recirculated, kept a steady temperature thanks to reactor heat. I could stay like this forever, pretend that there was nothing beyond the Rua’s bathroom, not even empty void.

  “How does it look?” I ask, water sputtering from my lips.

  “Quiet.”

  “Good.”

  I take my time getting out of the shower, drying off, and getting dressed. Walking from my quarters, I put my hair in a loose bun to keep it from soaking the back of my shirt.

  When I reach the cockpit, Pale is in the pilot’s seat with Ocho curled up in his lap. Her eyes open slightly when I take the other chair, but she doesn’t move.

  A sphere of green and indigo looms huge in the viewport; Waren ignored minimum safe distance laws to bring us in close. Illegal, sure, but what are they going to do—arrest us?

  Gray-black clouds obscure a third of the surface. If there are oceans, I can’t see them, or any large bodies of water, just some gleaming white lines that carve through the land—either rivers or mountain peaks.

  Sanderak. My father’s last-known location. My birthplace. I exhale; chest rattle, heart thud, sick churn in the pit of my stomach, worse than any g-force. I inhale deep and hold it, try to focus on slowing my heart, but it doesn’t work.

  “What do we know, Waren?”

  “Not a great deal; census data is fifteen years out of date.”

  “Means they haven’t let an imperial ombudsman on the surface in all that time. Must value their privacy.”

  “It could be dangerous,” Waren says, “dropping in uninvited.”

  “Your concern is sweet, but I can handle whatever they throw at me.”

  “It’s not you I’m worried about. What if they damage the ship?” he asks, modulated voice high and innocent. “It’s mine once you’re done with your errands.”

  “Asshole,” I say, but I’m smiling. Errands? If curing Pale’s seizures and getting answers to the questions I’ve car
ried since childhood are fucking errands then I’d hate to see an ordeal.

  “One of the population centers from the census perfectly matches the coordinates for Marius Teo,” Waren says, drawing a small square dot on the viewport to mark the location. “I’ll bring us down.”

  A choir of metallic vibrations floods the cockpit, and my ass rattles in the seat as the engine noise climbs. Slowly Sanderak grows larger, filling the viewport and stealing the void from sight.

  We hit the atmosphere—constant roar as flames lick at the Rua, casting the cockpit in a dull orange glow. The seat turns violent beneath me; I fix my harness then check Pale is wearing his. Ocho leaps out of the boy’s lap onto mine, and I curse as she digs her claws into my flesh for purchase. She stands rigid with her back arched, mraowing low and long, barely audible beneath the din. I put a hand on her back to force her to sit, then hold onto her tight.

  We keep dropping and the atmospheric burn dies. A billowing black cloud rolls fast across the stratosphere from starboard. It hits hard and the ship lists to port, pitched on the black tidal wave. Sirens blare deafening from the roof, warning lights across the dash flickering in nonsense Morse code. Not a cloud. Black flakes stick to the wide viewport then blow away—ash thick in the air, even this high up.

  “Waren, this is bullshit,” I say through gritted teeth. He must silence the warning systems because the klaxon stops screeching and the lights flicker and die—cockpit dark, enveloped in the vast plume of ash.

  “Sorry,” he says.

  The Rua is deathly quiet with the engines idling, free-falling below the smoke. Once we’re clear, Waren blasts us forward. Rich greenery reaches toward the horizon, singed by wildfire. Beneath us, fire fronts scrawl brilliant lines of orange-gold across mountain and plain.

  To the north, beyond the smoke, a black lake shimmers in sunlight. We drop again, gently this time. Waren’s waypoint grows larger, the square dot now a wide rectangle marking the outskirts of the unnamed city or town. I punch a quick series of commands into the dash, zooming in tight.

  There’s nothing.

  “Waren, can you scan that area?”

  There’s a pause. “Scans don’t reveal anything of interest.”

  “Damn it,” I say softly.

  “It might not mean anything,” Waren says; “these scanners aren’t particularly sophisticated.”

  “No scanner could miss an entire town.”

  We come in low, flying just above the treetops. Sunshine cuts beneath the cover of cloud and smoke; the sun slowly setting, painting the sky a gradient of purples and opaque grays. Blue haze drifts from the forest, fields of dry brown grass between tall copses, but still no buildings, no settlement.

  Continent-spanning forest fires and smoke-thick air. What if the population fled a dying planet? What if there’s no census data because no one lives here anymore?

  “Still nothing on scans,” Waren says lightly. “Should we try one of the other population centers?”

  “No; I want to look around. Something was here.”

  Waren stalls the ship and the nose of the Rua lifts, offering a final glimpse of the pastel sky. There’s a distant thud when we land and the low whine of the engines shutting down. Huge eucalypt trees with black-dark trunks block the falling sun. Shadows stretch over us, wrapping around the ship—I shiver, blood cold in my veins.

  I lift Ocho from my lap, using a finger to unstick her claws from the fabric of my clothes, and give her to Pale. “Stay here and mind her.”

  Ocho leaps away from him the instant I let go, and Pale stands. He shakes his head grimly and grabs my hand.

  “There might not be anything there,” I say; “you’ll be bored.”

  “I’m coming,” he says in his whisper-soft voice.

  “What about you?” I say to Ocho, staring up at me with her eyes wide. “Alright, fine.”

  I open the locker on the rear wall of the cockpit and grab my rebreather and the child-sized one for Pale. There’s a special satchel for Ocho with filtration threaded into the fabric—I put it over my shoulder, but when I try to pick Ocho up she hisses. Someone’s getting stir-crazy. I get it though: she’s been stuck on ships and space stations for weeks now, maybe months, and no matter how big a station is, sometimes you need to feel some dirt beneath your feet. Paws. Same thing.

  “Just try not to die, you jerk.” She rubs against my shin and then walks out of the cockpit toward the exit.

  Pale and I follow her to the ship’s main air lock. I hit the door controls and the sour smell of sulphur drifts in.

  “Fucking ‘errands,’” I mutter. I exhale sharply through my nose and shake my head, then fix the rebreather to my face.

  Electric laughter fills the ship for a second, but I step outside and the door closes behind me, cutting Waren off mid-ha.

  CHAPTER FOUR

  I reach the bottom of the ramp and the ship’s floodlights flick on with a heavy chank, surrounding forest lit stark by the too-white bulbs. Insects flit through shafts of light. Ghost-pale wood is visible where bark has shed, scattered at the roots of the trees like discarded clothes. Birds sing to announce the dusk; trills, squawks, and piercing cries that echo through the stillness.

  I walk ahead, dry rasp of grasses brushing against my legs, crisp crunch of dead leaves underfoot. Colossus moths flutter overhead, foot-wide wings glowing with stripes of faint yellow luminescence.

  I pull the shard from my pocket, the one containing all the info I’ve gathered on my father. I check the photo again: his handsome, smiling face, thick forest behind him. They’re the same trees, thick black trunks and branches gnarled as ancient fingers. This is the place.

  “Hey, Waren, could you kill the lights? Gonna have to get used to the dark out here anyway.”

  Artificial daylight fades to dusk, but the white afterimage persists vivid in the center of my vision. I blink until that fades too.

  Ocho rushes through lengths of grass taller than her, either playing or hunting, scratch of desiccated litter scattering at her passage. I make a kiss noise and she trails behind me and Pale as we walk off, still tracking whatever critters she can smell, but staying close. We leave the grassland where Waren landed and move into the trees.

  The ground is carpeted with leaves so dry they crumble beneath my step. I adjust my ocular implants for night vision, depth perception dropping until the scene before me looks 2-D, like the forest is an elaborate hoax.

  A cold drop of rain hits my arm and goose bumps follow the trail it makes along my skin. I hold my hand out and catch another drop; the water is flecked with black, washing the ash from the sky on its way down. The rain starts to fall heavy, steady hiss building. Pale clutches tight to my waist and Ocho walks a figure-eight around my legs, the two of them treating me like an umbrella. I pick Ocho up and put her into the satchel, then make a shield over our heads. I feel the rain patter in my mind, a phantom shower drumming against my skull from the inside.

  Low-slung bushes shake with a strong breeze, and water sprays in under my makeshift canopy. I pull the hood over my head as though it might do something, and keep stalking forward. In my oculars the rain falls like a sheet, my vision filled with static. The rash of movement tricks my eyes and shapes shift inside every bush and beyond every tree.

  “Do you see anything?” Waren’s voice comes through my comms, dulcet against the sharp noise of the rain.

  “Nope. Could have been a city here once, but if one of those fires came through . . .” I shrug even though Waren can’t see it.

  I pause, resting a hand on black bark, wet and rough to the touch. All I can hear is the rain and my own breath rasping through the rebreather. When I lift it from my face the air is sour—sulphur heavy on the air, with the scent of grass and dry packed dirt yielding to the storm.

  The rain stops just as suddenly as it started, the torrential downpour reduced to a light spattering then gone altogether. The clouds overhead disperse and moonlight shines through.

  A new sh
ape rises from the darkness: a glass dome glowing dully from within. Stalking quiet through the forest only to find a mysterious glowing dome feels like a trap. You want to trap me? You don’t know who you’re messing with.

  Ocho sticks her head out of the satchel, her eyes wide black saucers. Pale points to the dome as though I could have missed it, visible in shafts between the trees.

  “Come on,” I whisper.

  He reaches out to take my hand, but I shake my head. He’s been around me enough to know what that means: I need to be ready for anything.

  I creep toward the dome, every step carefully placed, waiting for the trap to spring. We leave the tree line and the structure stands before us in the middle of a circular meadow. I disable my night vision: a dim shape lurks inside the structure, its edges contorted by the bend of glass.

  We dash across the hollow field. There’s a hatch built into the dome, a panel between two metal struts with a thick steel handle. I pull it open with a piercing shriek of rusted hinges, and step inside with Pale close behind.

  The floor has been dug away, polycrete laid three meters beneath ground-level, with wooden stairs following the side of the dome and leading to the landing below. A statue towers over us, lit from all sides. It’s a figure cast in sallow white: a woman with cascading hair, sculpted fabric flowing from her as if caught by the wind, and one arm resting on a swollen belly.

  “It’s you,” Pale says, breathless.

  I glance down at his furrowed face, and look back. I’m about to argue, but then I imagine I’m him, looking at me from below.

  He’s right.

  She has my jaw, my nose. She has the overly long neck I was self-conscious about for most of my teen years.

  My chest tightens, blood strangling my veins. My breath goes fast and shallow, head light as tiny black spots encroach on the edges of my vision. Mediag suite flashes a warning on my ocular Head-Up Display, but I don’t read it, I just keep staring.

  It’s not stone like I’d first thought, it’s wood—the pale flesh beneath the black bark of the eucalypts outside. The woman’s legs—my legs?—grow from the dirt, two living trees, somehow twisted and sculpted into this effigy.