Black Hole Sun (22 page)

The drones roar in unison. The sound is so loud, I clap both hands over my ears and bend low to the ground as the other tanks shatter, glass flying, nutrient bath exploding like a ruptured dam. Diving across the floor, I grab Vienne and hang on as we're swept against the wall.

Hundreds of drones erupt from the tanks, a wall of screaming chigoes climbing over each other to get to their queen. They swarm Eceni, who is still clawing at the mucus on her face. They pour up her body, legs and shells clacking, oozing, oozing, oozing, dissolving her flesh the same way they can dissolve stone.

Within seconds, she is jelly. I catch a flash of her bare skull before the tower of drones topples.

“Let's get out of here,” I say to Vienne, though she can't hear me. I grab her hand. “Before they decide to eat us, too.”

Using the rack of a fallen tank for leverage, I push my way across the chamber, carefully dragging Vienne behind me. I find a dry patch where I can stand, then gently pull her out of the nutrient bath, thankful that the liquid is drying quickly.

I lift her into my arms. Carry her out. Behind me, the chigoe drones make a humming sound, the noise of contentment. As if they've finished enjoying a good meal. I set Vienne down on the ground and begin checking her vitals. Her boot is soaked with blood, and she's freezing. I pull her close, trying to warm her.

“Mimi, how is—”

“Still in mild shock but stable. You need to get her to the infirmary.”

“Can you tell the armor to heat up her body or something? She—”

Then I hear a chattering noise that makes my blood turn
cold—the unmistakable sound of claws on stone. I'm frozen with fear, my brain seizing up from panic. My feet kick at the ground, trying to move my body away, but it's like being in the beanstalk elevator again—I can't move.

The chigoe queen slips out of the antechamber. She's followed by the mass drones, and slowly, excruciatingly, they surround us.

“You're having a panic attack. Breathe, cowboy!” Mimi implores me, but it's no use. I can't.

They click their mandibles in unison. But they don't scream. The queen scuttles forward so that she's standing at my feet. The knife that I threw is still embedded in her shell, and she raises herself on all eight legs, so that she reaches my knee.

She inclines her shell, and I reach down to pull the knife out. The queen chatters. She sinks low to the ground, and all around the circle, the other chigoes do the same.

Not knowing what else to do, I touch my two middle fingers to my forehead and bow. They hum with delight, and the queen scuttles away, the drones following her in single file as they disappear into a dark tunnel.

Exhausted, I fall back on the ground, panting to catch my breath. I'm still shaking.

“Mimi,” I ask. “Was this the right thing to do?”

“Right or wrong, you have no choice now,” she says. “But if we're making moral judgments, then yes, you did the right thing.”

“I didn't know you were programmed for moral judgments,” I say, lifting Vienne into my arms.

“I wasn't,” she says. “But I
am
capable of adaptive self-programming. Just like you.”

“Thanks,” I say because I can't think of anything else, and what would be the point? She can already read my mind and knows what lives within my heart.

Near Outpost Tharsis Two, Tharsis Plain
ANNOS MARTIS
238. 7. 13. 11:59

The road ahead unwinds like a coil of wire toward Olympus Mons and its cousins, a family of volcanoes thousands of kilometers from Hell's Cross. As the sign for a petrol station rises into view, I cut the power on the snowmobile and drift into one of the pumping islands. All the station's signs are written in the bishop's Latin, with prices crossed out. In front and behind us is a pock-marked landscape formed by volcanic lava flow. The sky is dark, the clouds low, swift, and angry, and I wonder if this was what the Earthers saw when they first settled the planet.

My snowmobile, like me, is caked with dust, and when Vienne slides off the seat and beats the soil out of her miners coveralls, the stiff wind makes us look like a rolling dirt devil. She unstraps her helmet and shakes out her hair.

“You ought to keep that on,” I say. “Might be bounty hunters hereabouts, and there's a price on your pretty head, after all.”

“If there are bounty hunters in this godforsaken wilderness, they should worry about me, not the other way around.” She walks past the station clerk, a swaybacked old woman dressed in a tattered blue CorpCom jumpsuit.

“Mimi?”

“I read only three biosignatures, cowboy.”

Silently, I nod. That's what I thought. It's better to be safe, though, when you're a wanted man.

“This way to the latrine?” Vienne says, too loudly. It seems innocent enough. In reality, she's sizing the woman up, a hand near the armalite she has strapped underneath her jacket. Despite what she says, the bounty on our heads—a gift from Dame Bramimonde, who swore charges of murder against us—makes her cautious.

The clerk nods. “You're a long way from home, miner.”

Vienne barely glances at the woman as she passes.

“Pumps need to be hand-cranked, mud puppy.” The old woman pushes me aside and starts pumping the fuel into the tank. “Won't nothing electronic work out here. Satellites and dust see to that. Hope you got coin on—oh.” She sees that my hand is missing a finger.

I'm thankful to have both the miners' payment and the missing half of the Dame's fee, which the miners decided the Dame owed me and lifted from her purse before she left. Of course, it only inspired the Dame to add grand theft to her charges against us.

I hand her coin in payment and display my hand like it's
nothing to be ashamed of. “Lost it to a Manchester when I was a kid. Thanks for the help with the pump.”

“Funny things, them Manchesters. Most times, they take off a man's whole arm. Never seen a snowmobile with wheels before.”

“It's a custom job.” Spiner did it for us when we left Fisher Four. It was a going-away gift from the miners and Fuse and Jenkins, who decided to remain at Hell's Cross and leave military service behind. Though I couldn't blame them for staying, we miss their company. Well, I do. Can't say the same for Vienne.

“Where you two headed?”

“Outpost Tharsis Two. Know it?”

Fuel spills out of the tank. The clerk curses and shuts off the pump.

“I'll take that as a yes.”

“You got a death wish, son? Most of Tharsis Two is controlled by Mr. Lyme's men, and what ain't is full of angry spirits.”

I know all about Mr. Lyme. It's the reason I'm looking for the outpost. “What do you mean, angry spirits?”

The old woman lowers her voice. “Men killed by unseen forces. Meat stripped clear down to the bones. Folk used to say it was the Dræu, but they ain't been in these parts for half a year. And the Dræu always left marks, if you know what I mean.”

“That I do.” I think of the rumors we've heard the past
couple of weeks as we've traveled north from the mines—unexplained deaths, usually blamed on the Dræu or other boogeymen. The possibility that it might be the chigoe turns my stomach. “Still, that's where the work is. Tharsis Two.”

“Hope you're getting paid a fair wage, then,” she says.

While she's cleaning up the last of the spill, Vienne returns. She slides onto the seat behind me and lets her head, for a moment, rest on my back.

“All set?” I ask her.

“Affirmative,” she says, and I can almost hear her smile. “All systems copacetic.”

The old woman grabs my forearm. “If I can't change your mind, then may god let your death be a beautiful one.” She holds up a hand. The pinkie is missing. She makes the sign of the Regulator and bows. “One eye. One hand.”

“One heart,” Vienne says as she puts on her helmet.

“We're not Regulators,” I say. “Not anymore.”

“Once a Regulator, always a Regulator, son.” She shakes her head. “Watch yourselves out there. Watch the road, too. There's a fresh hell of trouble waiting at the end of it.”

“That's funny.” I gun the engine. “There was hell at the beginning of it, too.”

With a nod to the old woman, I point the snowmobile toward the towering image of Olympus Mons, which is now my guiding star. As we accelerate, the foothills streak by, a vast volcanic plain filling up our horizon.

“‘Boundless and bare,” Mimi says, “the lone and level sands stretch far away.'”

“Wordsworth?”

“Shelley,” she says. “I've told you that a thousand times.”

“One hundred seventeen times, to be precise,” I say, flipping down my visor and leaning over the handlebars. “But who's counting?”

Many heartfelt thanks to those folks who read and critiqued the early drafts of
Black Hole Sun
: Patti Holden, Denise Ousley, Steve Exum, Julie Prince, Shannon Caster, Lindsay Eland, Lauren Whitney, and Jean Reidy.

To all the bookmakers at Greenwillow: Martha, Tim, Paul, Michelle, Barbara, Lois, Steve, Sylvie, and Virginia. And to Emilie, Laura, and Patty in HarperCollins Children's school and library marketing.

To my fabulous agent, Rosemary Stimola.

Finally, to Deb, Justin, Caroline, and Delaney, for not letting me get the big head.