Crescent (38 page)

“Go down the hallway and you will understand.” The boy clapped Donovan on the shoulder and gently guided him out of the room. “The
Other—
the Three-to-be—is counting on you to hold it over until its chosen vessel can get down here.” The boy looked at his watch. “I sure hope they hurry!” He flashed Donovan a grin and joined the freckle-faced girl at the surgical table.

(•••)

Donovan traveled back the way he had come. A man covered in tattoos waited at the intersecting corridors. Without a word, he led Donovan to another glass door.

“Ina?” Donovan whispered.

The door opened, and the tattooed man nodded and indicated for Donovan to enter. Donovan stepped over the threshold and the door slid closed behind him. In the room beyond, several open crates were scattered about on the floor with large black rocks nestled inside. Each chamber wall had a door. Light bled from beneath one of the exits. Donovan took a breath and placed his hands on its surface. The door slid into the ceiling.

He found a circle of black stones in the next room. In the space between each pair of stones was a flickering candle. A metal pedestal was at the center of the circle, with a cylindrical glass aquarium atop it. Cables ran from the base of the pedestal and into the walls. The
Other
was close. Donovan could feel it. The presence reached out and caressed him. It was dying, but Donovan was not too late to save it.

He approached the center of the room. There was a metal ring around the pedestal with tiny rock fragments set into it—a smaller version of what Donovan had seen in the
Anrar
III photographs.

Donovan looked in to the glass cylinder. Something small and pink swam in the liquid. It looked like a tiny fetus with ridges on its back that tapered at a curling tail. The small creature swam in lazy somersaults, trailing threads of color—violet, red, and black—behind it. The fetus-thing stopped moving when Donovan put his face close to the glass, and it opened its eyes.
Black eyes.
Donovan looked into them and saw a thousand stars being born and saw a thousand stars die. He saw universes writhe and fold in on one another like they were living masses of dark and light. Donovan grabbed the sides of the large tube with the intention of setting it down on the floor, but instead, it tipped off its stand and he was too weak to hold onto it. The cylinder tumbled and shattered.

The creature wriggled in a steadily evaporating puddle of liquid. Donovan picked the thing up and cradled it in his hand. Its flesh was painfully cold to the touch. Donovan raised his cupped hands to his lips and opened his mouth. Something sharp anchored itself into the back of his throat. His eyes went wide with the pain of it. The fetus-thing snapped from his hand and into his mouth.

Before Donovan’s eyes, he saw a flash of violet.

A flash of red.

And then the shadows began to flow off the walls, flooding the room in devil darkness. He was consumed by the Black. It devoured what was left of his
mind,
suckling at the last few shreds of Donovan Cortez’s being so that it could sustain itself until the true vessel arrived.

The last thing Donovan saw in his mind’s eye was his daughter. And right before he ceased to exist, it all made sense.

(•••)

The floor rocked beneath Ina’s feet. The station corridor tilted one way and then the other, throwing her into the walls with enough ferocity to rattle her teeth. She burst into the apartment and ran to the bedroom. It stank of urine, feces, and vomit, but it was empty. She began to cry and scream uncontrollably.

“Dad?” she yelled. There was no response. She looked in the bathroom. He was not there. She went to the study. The light was on above the desk. His surgical implements were scattered about, along with tiny red shards of
sanguinite
.

Oh, Dad, no.

There was a pad of paper beside his surgical tools and she flipped through the pages rapidly. A sketch showed a crude map of the station—the forgotten tunnels and crawl-spaces she herself had once crept down. She stared at the map with the sinking realization that her father’s part in things was not yet done. She began to tremble.
Get it together.
She forced herself to take a deep breath but still, her body shook.
Get it together, damn you.
She repeated the deep breaths, one slow inhalation and exhalation after the other, until she felt some semblance of composure return.

She would find her father and get him to safety, but by that time surely all the station’s lifeboats would be gone.

“Gerald,” she said aloud. The salvage pilot might already have fled the station. Or maybe he’d just laugh in her face. But really, Gerald Evans was her only hope. She went to the terminal and called up his PDA. “Please pick up,” she said. “Please. Pick up.”

(•••)

Ina’s distraught face appeared on the small LCD screen of Gerald’s PDA.

“Gerald, please, in the name of all that is holy,
tell
me you’re still on the station,” she said.

“So glad you’re concerned about my well being, Ina. I’m still here.” He looked around the auditorium and then back to the pile of smoking metal and concrete that had once been the stage. “For how much longer, remains to be seen. But I’ll make a bet and say it won’t be any longer than it’ll take to fire up Bean’s engines.”

“I need you to wait for me, Gerald.”

“Wait for you? For all I know, you brought this
shitstorm
on us,” he said.

From below, Marisa groaned.

“We all did,” Ina said. “I’m sorry…
 
is Marisa okay?”

“No,” he said, clipping the word short. “I’ll get you off this falling-apart hunk of metal, but I’m not willing to wait to do it. Why do you need me to wait?”

“My father is gone, Gerald. I need to find him. I know he’s still alive.” The desperation was apparent in her voice. She was crying now. “He went down…
 
there.”

Gerald didn’t need to ask. “If he went down there, he’s a goner by now.
Sorry, Ina.”

“No. I need to get him, Gerald. He’d do the same for me. I’m going, but I know the lifeboats will all be gone by the time I find him and get back.”

“You’re right about that, Ina. No one is sticking around here for much longer. And those that get stuck here—and there will be a lot of them—will rip apart any ship that was stupid enough not to launch ten minutes ago. I don’t want to be on the receiving end of that.”

“It won’t take long, Gerald. I promise. He couldn’t have gotten too far. He’s very sick.”

Gerald hesitated and shook his head. He didn’t couldn’t believe what he was about to say next.

“Fine, goddamn it. I’m going with you, then.”

“You’re what?” Ina said. He heard an equally incredulous sound from Marisa down below.

“You heard me. If I’m
gonna
wait, I might as well make sure the job gets done right. Now, where the
hell are
you?”

“My apartment,” she said.

“I’ll be there soon. Don’t you do anything until I get
there.
Understand?”

“Yes. Thank you, Gerald.”

He snapped the phone shut, grimaced, and let loose a string of obscenities. He was no
hero, that
was for damned sure. And apparently, he also wasn’t
very
goddamned bright. He snapped his PDA open and hit another number. The device chimed.

“Captain,” Bean’s voice came from the small speaker.

“Bean, initiate
prelaunch
.
We’re going to have to get out of here quickly.”

“That, Captain, is one of many understatements you’ve made since we’ve known each other. Please do not allow it to be your last.
Initiating
prelaunch
.
Hurry, Gerald.”

“I think I’ve lost my good judgment altogether,” he called down to Marisa as he snapped the PDA shut.

“When did you ever possess it?” He could hear her moving around.

“Can you get to Bean on your own?” he asked. Shouting echoed in from the atrium. Something new was going on now. He turned his head toward the sound. People were fighting out there, fighting and moving back toward the auditorium in feral packs that lashed out at any vulnerable living thing in their paths.

“What’s going on up there?”

“Killing.
I’m going to have to find another way to get to Ina.”

“Leave her, Gerry,” Marisa said.

“I can’t, Marisa. Not in good conscience.”

“It’s your funeral, Gerry. But, I’ll upload something to your PDA that’ll help.
A map of the back channels.
It’ll get you around with out having
travel
the main drags. Make sure you lock the hatches behind you.
It’s
close quarters and you don’t want to be followed.” She hesitated a moment before speaking again. “Gerry, if you don’t make it, you better make sure that Bean is prepared to get my ass out of here. I’m not going to die because you decided get chivalrous in the last few hours of your selfish life.”

“Thanks,” he said.

“Yeah, well. You better fucking make it, okay?”

There was a scream. A body went sailing through the air and hit the ruined floor just meters away from where Gerald stood—it was the young girl who had given him the ear plugs.

“Holy shit,” he managed.

Two hulking collector robots careened into the chamber. Long, articulated limbs—they looked like docking tethers—snagged a woman and lifted her in the air. The machine held her there for a long, agonizing second, then slammed her into the ground with one quick swoop. The pack of wild humans scattered. Robots pummeled those who weren’t fast enough to get away, stacking the bodies in a crude pile. One robot swiveled its head. Six orange eye nodes looked directly at Gerald.

It was time to move.

(•••)

Kendall watched the pandemonium on the desk
LCDs
. If his mouth could have opened any wider, his jaw would have hit the floor minutes ago. It was happening. The worst case scenario was now in full tilt. There were riots everywhere. People were killing each other brutally. Even with the cameras zoomed out
fully,
he could see the heinous acts in far too much detail. The Beast was coming up from the depths of the station. It would devour everyone and save him—the best—for last.

Unless…
 

“You look like you finally have a plan, Kendall,”
Albin
said, and leaned forward in his chair. He had been prodding Kendall for the past three hours, and the former mayor’s patience for it was slipping. “Kendall. Do you have a plan? Tell me. What is it?”

“
Albin
,
shut the fuck up.” The bullet that flew from Kendall’s revolver took off the top of
Albin’s
head in a burst of hair, skull, and brain.
Albin’s
chair went over and all Kendall regarded now were the bottoms of the dead man’s twitching boots. Calmly, Kendall set the revolver down and drummed his fingers on the desk.
A plan.
He needed a plan. He knew that. A decompression of the station would take far too long—air had to be purged deck by deck because of hard-wired
failsafes
and by that time, the rioters would be banging on his door. All that was left was to gas the station. He entered the commands on his desk terminal for that final contingency plan. Paranoia had prepared him for the worst. In the end, Kendall supposed he hadn’t been paranoid after all. He hesitated with his finger above the execute key. He would be helpless, with everyone dead on the station. When Core Sec came to investigate, he’d be arrested all over again. He needed a lift.

He activated the
comm
terminal and recorded a message for
Darros
Stronghold.

“
Darros
, this is Kendall. The situation at Crescent has become critical. Send ships to come get your guns and that’ll be the end of it. There are twelve hundred cases of firearms. They are yours for free if you come rescue me.”

Kendall hit send.

And then he hit execute.

Crescent would be flooded with poison gas, and that would be that. No more rioters. No more
monster
.
Just freedom.
Kendall would fade into obscurity in the frozen wilderness of
Habeos
.

The station shuddered beneath him and he toppled out of his big chair. Kendall growled and got to his feet.
It will all be over in less than an hour,
he told himself. He flipped a toggle on the desk’s surface and one of the bookcases slid into the floor. He darted into the revealed tunnel as fast as his old knees would carry him.

(•••)

Ina hugged him so
tightly,
Gerald thought his eyes were going to bust right out his skull. He held her back at arms length. Tears were streaming down her face and she was shaking her head back and forth. He thought he was going to have to slap her, but she came around an instant later.