The Burning Dark (11 page)

Ida tapped his index finger against the plastic frame of the computer screen.

“Not much about this does,” he said. “Subspace isn’t used for communication—it’s a banned channel, has been for, oh, years and years—”

“Banned?” Izanami’s eyes went wide. “Is this going to get you in trouble?”

Ida waved away her concern. “No one will find out. U-Stars aren’t fitted out to monitor subspace, so it’s not like anyone can listen in. Anyway, my point is: what’s the signal doing there in the first place?” He scratched his chin and regarded the silent silver box on the table. “A signal broadcast from somewhere near the Earth, using a disused, prohibited system, spoken in something other than the Fleet’s official language.”

He poked the computer display, rotating the map of the solar system, new vectors drawing themselves from several points near the schematic representation of the orbit of Earth, each line suggesting possible source coordinates.

“I wish I knew what she was saying,” said Ida. “I don’t think anyone on the station speaks Italian, and the signal sounds too poor to feed into the station computer for a translation. If King would let me near it, of course.”

“Italian?”

Ida turned and looked at Izanami. She looked confused.

“Don’t you hear the accent?” he asked.

“Oh,” she said with a shake of the head. “That’s not Italian. Russian.”

Ida’s eyes widened. “And you know that because?”

She shrugged and turned away from Ida. She walked to his bed and sat delicately on the edge. “I worked in Russia once. That’s the beginning of the recording—she’s counting down, then up, like she’s testing something.” She held a hand up before Ida could ask the obvious. “That’s as much as I can manage, sorry.”

Ida crinkled his nose. Then he spun his chair around to the computer, switching the map back to the data tables. He flicked a hand near the radio, and the playback began. On the computer screen, the table began scrolling as the audio ran, a smaller window beneath plotting another graph of the audio analysis.

“She’s talking to someone else, that much is clear. I only patched on one side of the transmission.”

“Why do you care?”

Ida stopped, hands frozen above the computer’s touch screen. He turned slowly. Around them the Russian voice crackled on. “What do you mean?”

Izanami had lain down on Ida’s bed.
Well, make yourself at home,
he thought.

“You don’t know who the recording is of,” she said, looking at the ceiling. “You don’t even know where it is from. If she was in an accident, she’s probably dead. And even if she is or she isn’t, if it was near Earth, the Fleet would have picked her up, because if it was some kind of distress call, or if she was reporting on something, she wouldn’t have been using subspace. She’d be on the lightspeed link. What you patched into was an echo. That would explain the quality of the signal.”

Ida didn’t know what to say. He played his tongue along his teeth, and he felt cold again. Another environmental glitch. But she was right. The signal couldn’t have been broadcast in subspace at all. What’d he’d picked up, completely by chance, was some weird echo bouncing around the hidden dimensions of the universe.

“More to the point,” she said, “weren’t you supposed to be working on something else? Your old crewmates?”

Ida blew out his cheeks. Why
did
he care? Izanami’s question was fair enough: the signal was a distraction, something to keep him from going slowly mad as he tried—fruitlessly, it seemed—to get answers to his own little mystery.

But the lightspeed link was a waste of time now, the interference from Shadow growing so strong as to make it almost unusable. Even if he could break through the static, all he could do was call Fleet Command again and get some Flyeye to read him the same abbreviated reports he’d already heard a dozen times now.

“Ida?”

Ida coughed and looked at Izanami. The recording had looped again. “I’m working on it.”

“Okay.”

“Yes, okay.” Ida felt a tightening in his chest. He sucked cool air over his teeth and changed the subject. “An echo, you think?”

Izanami shrugged. “Could be?”

Ida frowned. He’d never heard of signal leakage from one dimension to another, but it sounded feasible, especially when there was a strange star just next door pulling all kind of tricks on the communications networks.

But Izanami’s question scratched at something in his mind. He repeated it over and over to himself, looped like the recording.

Why do you care, Captain Cleveland?

“Hmm,” he said at length. He turned his chair around a few degrees and looked at the radio set and computer screen on his desk. She was right, it was a pointless exercise. But …

“Distractions can be useful sometimes,” he said, turning back to the medic.

She nodded, and her smile reappeared. “I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to make you feel guilty.”

Ida laughed, but maybe that’s what the feeling was. He tried a smile, and found it worked a little. “And, you know, there’s something about her voice … it makes me feel … sad. But in a good way, somehow. I don’t know. That doesn’t make much sense.”

Izanami tilted her head, her frown a thoughtful expression. “Melancholy can be good for the soul.”

Ida blinked. “So says the neurotherapist.”

They looked at each other, then both laughed. Izanami closed her eyes and pointed at the ceiling as she lay on the bed.

“Play it again.”

Ida pushed his screen away, waved at the radio, and sat back with his eyes closed as the Russian woman’s voice faded into the cabin.

“Pyat, cheteeree, tree, dva, raz…”

10

After another replay or
two, Izanami left Ida to it. It was very late, and Ida wanted to use the main comms deck on the bridge to start a translation running before he tracked down Carter and got the marine to sign off on the next demolition briefing. And boy, was he looking forward to that meeting; he’d delayed it as long as he could, but the paperwork had to be done eventually. Over the last few cycles, Ida had realized his official duties took up maybe an hour per cycle, which made it easy to let them slide altogether. The marines resented having him poking around, giving them small, annoying extra tasks in order to get the demolition signed off. And the provost marshal, despite his apparent love of procedure, hadn’t asked to see any completed documentation yet anyway.

Ida shifted on the bed and lay awake for a few minutes, then absently turned the recording loop back on and listened to it as he lay in the dark.

He dozed and dreamed of the farm, Astrid leading him into the red barn. When they got to the door, red paint streaming off in it a breeze that was colder than it should have been in summer, he discovered it led to a corridor of the
Coast City
.

Standing by the door was her father, his eyes narrow as he and Astrid argued. Argued about Ida, probably. But every time the old man opened his mouth, nothing but white noise came out. Astrid screamed and ran off down the corridor.

Ida woke with a start, thinking there was someone standing over the bed, watching him. The cabin was silent, the playback having stopped apparently by itself. Ida sat up and watched the blue light of the radio set for a while, thinking he’d probably turned it off sometime during the night and didn’t remember.

He got up, showered, and headed to the bridge, subspace recording in hand and the silver Fleet Medal insignia shining on his breast pocket. As he walked, it crossed his mind that his self-imposed isolation was bad for his health. The last thing he needed now was to have some kind of breakdown.

It was the recording; he knew it. The mystery woman was becoming an obsession. Something mysterious but trivial to ease the wait until the interference on the lightspeed link cleared and he could try again to get some real answers about his missing past.

Ida picked up his pace. He was nervous, and more than once he checked over his shoulder, and more than once he thought he saw someone disappear just out of sight. Someone with blond hair, wearing a blue survival suit, like the one he’d last seen Astrid in.

Ida took a deep breath and shook his head, trying to snap himself out it.

He felt better as he entered the busier part of the station. Here the lining of the corridors was intact, and the station’s remaining crew went about their duties, none paying him much attention as they rushed around. As he got closer to the bridge, he kept an eye out for his special friends, DeJohn and Carter, but he didn’t see them among the green- and blue-uniformed personnel.

*   *   *

Normally the bridge of
a U-Star was out of bounds except for those with explicit permission to be there or those of a high enough rank to make such a formality meaningless. Ida wasn’t sure he had either, not anymore, but the elevator didn’t protest as he requested his destination, and as he stepped out of it he fingered the Fleet Medal on his tunic, making sure it was still in place. Its constant presence made him feel a little better, anyway.

Despite the customized design of the space station, the bridge of the
Coast City
was fairly standard: the regular semicircle layout common to all Union-Class Fleet Starships was here extended around to form a completely circular room, with the elevator rising in a column in the center. The column continued up through the ceiling, leading ultimately to the top of the station’s main spire.

Ida stood quietly by the elevator, jiggling the recording disk in his hand, scanning the half of the bridge he could see. It looked like only the minimum regulation crew were manning their stations: two pilots, who on a station had damn-all to do; two other officers Ida didn’t recognize, both of whom were several rungs down the ladder from him; and a marine-engineer, recognizable in his olive green T-shirt and combat pants, checking something at the science station.

Ida frowned. The marine was DeJohn. But his expansive back was turned, and if Ida went left around the central elevator column, he could reach the unmanned comms deck, placing the column between him and his rival. He wanted to talk to DeJohn at some point, but it could wait.

“Can I help you, Captain?”

Ida jumped. He turned, finding his nose not two inches from Provost Marshal King’s face. Ida smiled, trying to ignore the man’s garlic breath.

“Comms deck free?”

King’s eyes flicked sideways toward the side of the bridge that housed the communications station and then back to Ida. “The comms deck?”

Keeping his smile fixed, Ida casually strolled over to the comms deck and rested his hands on the back of the vacant chair. “May I use the communications deck?”

King stood stock-still near the elevator column, following Ida with only his eyes. He looked nervous. Ida could see it in his face, no matter how hard the bullethead tried to assert his authority. It was like the whole thing was a façade, one the man was desperate not to let slip.

“It won’t make any difference,” said King finally.

“What won’t?”

King clasped his hands behind his back and slowly walked over, a ghost of a smile playing lightly over his lips. “The lightspeed link is down, ship-wide. Interference from our friendly neighborhood star.”

Ida frowned. “Happen often?”

The provost marshal shrugged. “Sometimes. The star has unusual properties. It’s what this station was built to study, after all.” King’s smile tightened. “That comms deck will be needed when the channels have cleared.”

Ida nodded. “Oh, no doubt. But while the lightspeed link is out of action, maybe I could borrow it for a little while?” He jammed one hand in the back pocket of his fatigues and offered the small black rectangle of plastic that held the subspace recording toward King. “Won’t take that long. I just need to run some data from my little radio shack through the mainframe. You know, crosscheck some of my programming. I’m not as good as I used to be.”

“Oh yes,” said King. “I heard you built a radio set.”

Ida grinned and waggled the disk in front of the marshal’s face. “You did say I needed a hobby.”

King’s lips twitched, the tic pulling at one side of his nose. Ida widened his eyes expectantly.

“Very well.” King had barely snapped out the words before he turned and marched swiftly back to the elevator. He pressed the call button, but as the elevator indicator light above the door began counting the floors toward the bridge, he turned back to Ida.

“One more thing, Captain.” King folded his arms and took a few steps closer.

“Marshal?”

“I know you have relocated from your assigned quarters without authorization.” King unfolded a hand from his arms and held it up, stopping Ida’s protest before it had started. “And while I would normally issue a reprimand and insist you go through the regular channels, I’m prepared to overlook it for the moment. So long as our mission runs its correct and proper course, I don’t care where you sleep at night.”

Ida huffed a laugh. King’s expression tightened.

“However, the station will be receiving VIPs in the next few cycles. If you could add your new cabin to the list of occupied spaces, I will add that stretch of the hub to the security detail.”

Ida nodded. Anything for a quiet life. “Fair enough. I’ll do it now.”

“Thank you, Captain,” said King. “Also, for the duration of the visit, all personnel will be required to wear their station tags and have them turned on at all times.”

Ah. There it was. Always a catch. “So you can track my movements?”

King nodded. “So I can track everyone’s movements, Captain. This station may not be in active Fleet service, but it is now a construction site. A
dangerous
construction site. For the safety of both our crew and the visiting party, we will need to keep security tight and to restrict access to some parts of the station.”

“Don’t want any important people stepping through the floor and floating away?”

King ignored the comment, turning away to head back to the elevator. The door slid open with a pleasant tone.

Ida called out after him. “Who’s coming anyway? Anyone I know?”