To Dream in the City of Sorrows (22 page)

“Since when did you start getting up this early in the morning? And when did you start meditating, of all things?”

At that, William opened his eyes and gave his brother a you-figure-it-out look.

“Of course,” said Marcus. “The Rangers. Though what meditation has to do with being a soldier ...”

“You’d be surprised,” William said, getting to his feet. “So what’s up for today?”

“We’re going planetside. You’re going to get the grand tour, so I hope you didn’t eat a heavy breakfast.”

William gave him a curious look. “No. Why?”

Marcus just smiled. His little brother was going to get a close-up view of Perdition Bridge and his big brother’s flying skills, but he wanted it to be a surprise.

Marcus carefully eased his XO-Sphere out of the IP docking bay, and set course on a leisurely arc that would first take them past the Orbital Refinery, then back past the Inhabitants’ Platform, and finally toward the planet. William had seen the platforms from the Minbari ship when he first arrived, but Marcus wanted to give him another, all-around look.

William gave the appropriate reaction of approval, but was clearly eager to get to Arisia 3 itself. They were already in their pressurized excursion suits. “I never got to go planetside on a Class 4 world. Heck of a thing for a miner’s son to say, but somehow it just never happened. I was always too young–“

“And then you left,” Marcus said without thinking. No. He wasn’t going to start that argument again. Not now. “You were a skinny little rugrat,” he said in a lighter tone. “Father was afraid the 2-G’s would collapse you like a cheap tent.”

Marcus finished their turn around the ORP, and was taking a wide turn back toward the distant IP. “Is it as hellish down there as they say?”

“Worse.” Marcus was about to elaborate with as gruesome a word portrait as he could conjure up, when a warning alarm interrupted him. “What’s wrong?”

“I don’t know,” Marcus said, checking the control panel. “These readings don’t make any sense. They indicate some sort of massive disturbance straight ahead.”

Instinctively, both men looked up from the controls to see if they could spot the cause of the disturbance. The Inhabitants’ Platform, still some distance in front of them, began to fade from view into total darkness. Marcus suddenly realized there was something between his ship and the platform, a large spidery shape of shimmering black. And beyond it, similar things were solidifying out of empty space. In his ears – or was it only in his head? – he heard a terrible shriek that cut through to his soul.

His brother’s voice broke the horrifying spell. “Get us out of here! Now!”

Even as Marcus frantically brought his tiny XOSphere around, the first energy beams from the alien ships sliced into the Inhabitants’ Platform.

“Oh God!” Marcus pointed the tiny ship away from the destruction behind them. “My people! We have to do something!”

“We have to get away – that’s all we can do!” William shouted over the ghastly shrieking that seemed to fill the tiny cockpit.

Marcus realized he was right. The XO-Sphere had no weapons and no defensive shielding. It was just a short-range personal flyer. Had anyone else gotten away?

“What the hell is that?”

“The Shadows. They may not have seen us yet!” William shouted. “Do we have enough fuel to get to the jump gate?”

“No! Computer, set and maintain course for Site 13.”

A blinding flash of light filled the cockpit. Without looking, Marcus knew: the Orbital Refinery with its full load of Quantium 40 had exploded.

“We have to get to Arisia!” Marcus shouted. “There’s a fully fueled emergency shuttle down there. It can get us to the jump gate if we can get to it first!”

He could only hope the aliens had not yet gotten to the planet.

His computer sounded a warning. “Object on collision course, approaching starboard aft, one two four by one six three, distance–“ Another flash of crackling light cut the computer off mid-sentence, as simultaneously the small craft shook violently. The smell of ozone overwhelmed the cockpit. The XO-Sphere spun out of control toward the upper atmosphere of Arisia.

Marcus struggled to regain some manual control of the craft as the computer came back on line.

“Port engine gone,” it intoned calmly. “Compensating. Attempting to reestablish attitude control. Descending through planetary atmosphere. Outer skin temperature approaching critical.”

The temperature inside the craft was rising steadily, the heat almost unbearable, as they plummeted through Arisia’s atmosphere at too steep an angle. Marcus and the computer fought to bring the nose up.

“Emergency landing procedure in effect,” the computer intoned again. “Approaching landing area Site 13.” The surface of Arisia 3 was coming up at them far too fast.

“Hold on!” Marcus shouted over to William. “I’ve done this before.”

Their approach glide was far steeper than Marcus wanted, and as the braking engines fired to slow them down, he tried to level the craft off. One hundred feet. Seventy-five feet. With only one engine and extensive damage, he didn’t have the control or the fuel for a hover landing, or to pull up and try for a better glide angle. They were going to land in a few seconds, one way or the other. Fifty feet. Twenty-five feet. The XO-Sphere leveled off, but not soon enough. The landing gear lowered and the wheels hit the level patch of ground that served as Site 13’s runway. The XO-Sphere bounced several times off the hard surface, then flipped over to skid toward the field of boulders at the end of the runway. The screech of metal against rock deafened them as the whole ship seemed to disintegrate around them. Then, all at once, it was over. Marcus did not believe in miracles. But he was alive. He was on his side, still strapped into his seat, still in the cockpit – what was left of it. The other half, where William had been sitting, was simply gone, and Marcus was looking up at the open sky. His body was pressed under the planet’s heavier gravity, and every movement he made was difficult and painful. He struggled to release himself from the safety harness.

“William,” he said over his pressure suit’s radio. “Can you hear me. Will!”

There was a burst of static in his ears, then, very faintly, “Marcus.”

William was alive. Marcus freed himself from the harness and slowly pulled himself up. Had they been unconscious? He wasn’t sure. The pressure only afforded them two hours of safety from the planet’s naturally occurring high levels of radiation. They had to reach that shuttle.

“William. Hang on. I’m coming.” Marcus climbed out of the wreckage. It was nearing sundown at this site, and with the thick atmosphere and overcast skies, it was almost too dark to see. Did he dare turn on his pressure suit’s beam lights? There was nothing else at the site to attract attention from the aliens above. There was no refinery or mining equipment here. This was a safe storage area and emergency shelter, built far from the mining areas in one of the region’s most geologically stable areas, consisting solely of low-built storage buildings that were so covered with dust they were almost indistinguishable from the surrounding rock.

He took the chance and swept the area with the light, finally spotting his brother less than a hundred feet away. William had been thrown clear of the wreckage and was lying facedown on the rocky runway. When Marcus reached him, he turned him over as gently as he could in the punishing gravity, and saw that his brother’s faceplate was smeared with blood.

“William,” he said frantically. “Jesus! Talk to me. Come on!”

“Marcus.” His brother’s voice was even weaker now.

“I’ve got to get you to the shuttle,” Marcus said. “It’s just a couple hundred yards away. Can you sit up?” He helped his brother up as best he could, propping him against his own chest. But it was clear his brother wasn’t going anywhere under his own power, and in the heavier gravity Marcus couldn’t lift him, couldn’t even drag him. It would be like trying to drag over three hundred pounds while carrying an additional hundred-and-seventy-pound weight on his own shoulders.

“Marcus. Go on. Leave me here. Take the shuttle. Warn–“

“I’m an idiot!” Marcus said suddenly. There was a surface rover in one of the buildings. “Listen, Will, I’m going to leave for just a little while, but I’ll be back with a–“

“No,” said William more forcefully. “Don’t you see them?”

“What?” His brother was obviously hallucinating. “Come on. Stay with me, Will. Don’t do this.”

“Marcus, listen. We didn’t think the Shadows would attack an Earth settlement. You have to go to Minbar ...” His voice trailed off again.

“I’ll take you there myself. Just don’t die on me here. William!”

“Go to Minbar. Tell Sinclair. Take up the fight. Promise me, Marcus.”

Tears stung Marcus’s eyes, which he blinked back angrily. He tried to speak, but couldn’t.

“Promise me,” William said again insistently. “You were right. I never finished anything in my life. Help me finish this. Finish the job I started, Marcus. Please promise me.”

“I promise.”

“Then it’s all right.” William closed his eyes.

“Will!”

Marcus fumbled for the small panel covering the vital-signs monitor on the front of the pressure suit. The digital display lit up weakly: respiration, zero; heart rate, zero; brain wave function, zero ...

It was pitch-dark when he heard a voice speak loudly and clearly: “Go!”

It startled him out of his fugue. William? No. His brother was dead. Lifeless in his arms. How long had he been sitting there? He checked the radiation monitor on his own suit. He was nearly at maximum safe exposure already. He had to get to that shuttle, get off this planet.

Abruptly, he was furious. He would go to Minbar, by God. He’d find a way to make these bastard Shadows pay for this. For all of it. For William. For Hasina. For all of them. He had to get to the shuttle. He could bring it back here, pick up his brother’s body, then head for the jump gate. The Shadows must be gone by now.

Gently, he lowered his brother to the ground and, with a great effort, stood up. He couldn’t see a thing, couldn’t see his hand in front of his face. He turned on his helmet beam, but that only penetrated a few yards into the night. How would he find it? Location beacon. A low-powered location beacon was broadcasting at all times from the storage area. Turn on the pressure suit’s location finder. Follow the sound.

Marcus stumbled slowly, painfully across the uneven, boulder-strewn landscape, adjusting his path whenever the steady beeping in his ears grew fainter, bringing it back to full level, focusing on that until he was aware of nothing else. The Universe consisted only of that sound and his forward motion.

He didn’t know how long it took before he reached the first building, but when he did, time and space became real again. Exhausted and sick, he quickened his pace as much as he could to get to the shuttle hangar. He pulled the wide doors open, entered the building, and climbed into the shuttle.

He powered up the controls, and they hummed to life with a satisfying sound. He engaged the engines, eased the shuttle off the ground and out the hangar doors, across the boulder field toward the runway. He would get his brother, then leave.

His head began to buzz. “Stay conscious, damn it!” he said, trying to shake it off.

He heard the energy beam slice through the night behind him, heard the explosions that destroyed the first building, and then the next. He felt the first shock wave shake his vehicle. The Shadows had found Site 13. What about his brother?

He heard the voice again.

“Go!”

The aft monitors showed the silhouette of a Shadow vessel against another explosion. Barely conscious of what he was doing, Marcus ordered full acceleration and sped away straight and low across the landscape.

He couldn’t afford to waste any more fuel. He said a silent good-bye to his brother, and brought the shuttle into a climb through Arisia’s atmosphere and out into space. His sensors detected no unusual energy readings. He saw no Shadow ships. There was nothing to see but the expanding cloud of debris that had been his mining colony.

“Computer, set course for jump gate. Engage and maintain. Emergency procedure three.” Marcus took one last look at Arisia on the monitors. Strange red and orange lights glowed brightly in the lower atmosphere in various places on the surface.

He released himself from the console chair, floated up in the zero G, and pulled himself over to the medical station. He wrestled his pressure suit helmet off, pulled out a hypo of antiradiation serum, and injected it into his upper shoulder.

Then he lost consciousness.

C
HAPTER 18

HE was being lifted onto a gurney and rushed down a corridor. Was this Arisia? Was he back at the IP? He would have to get word to Hasina, apologize for missing dinner. Where was his brother?

“Take him to Medlab 3,” said a male voice. Oh, God. Marcus remembered. He had left his brother behind in the fires of Hell itself. “William!”

“You’re going to be okay,” said the voice. Who was it? Who was speaking to him when they were dead, all of them were dead? Where was he?

He couldn’t focus his eyes – couldn’t see anything but shadows moving in and out of his field of vision. Shadows. He started to struggle, tried to get away. Powerful hands held him down, then immobilized him. He heaved against the restraints, tried to break them, to get free.

“William!” he called out again. His brother was injured. Why weren’t they helping him?

“Tranquilizer!”

He felt the hypo on his arm, the hiss and then the tingling as the medication penetrated the skin. He sank back, floating gently as the voices continued around him, fragments of meaning penetrating the haze, then skittering away.

A male voice. Dr. Hobbs, over here. A female voice. What happened? The voices mixed and overlapped. We’re not sure – ore freighter found him – alone on a shuttle – radiation poisoning – some kind of accident – Q-40 mining operation – only survivor ...

“Marcus.” Unlike the others, the voice was clear and strong. It was Will.

He tried to open his eyes, but couldn’t. Yet, then somehow, he saw his brother. Wearing that stupid outfit.