The Dark Between The Stars

FIFTY-FIVE
SHAREEN FITZKELLUM

The clouds of Golgen continued to erupt with black storms, and the gas giant seemed to be tearing itself apart. Mist plumes thrashed like serpents, and the cloud layers ripped open as atmospheric quakes rumbled up from below.

One huge warglobe lurched above the dense clouds, so close that it sent the whole facility reeling, and then lay like a dead fish, its crystalline hull turning black. From within, the stain spread and swirled like poisonous smoke. Black cracks shot along the diamond hull, and then the warglobe split open. Curved shards tumbled down into the clouds. Nearby, two more warglobes blackened and shattered.

Shareen realized that the open skydeck was not a smart place to be, now that the blight-stricken hydrogue had thrown itself off the edge and into the open air.

With Rex tucked under his arm, her father shouted, “Down to the launching bay—we have to get to a ship!” From below, the first escape vessels streaked out of the skymine’s lower bay doors.

Toff bolted for the open doorway. “I’ll get a tow-skimmer. We can hook a tether to the ekti storage silos and pull them to safety.”

“Don’t you dare,” Zhett yelled. “We can get more stardrive fuel, but I have no intention of replacing my children.”

To the untrained eye, the evacuation looked like complete chaos, but the skyminers knew what they were doing as they raced to assigned gathering stations. Ever since she was a little girl, Shareen had been drilled for emergency evacuation. She took Howard by the arm and raced him along. “Follow me, and I’ll keep you safe. Everyone on the skymine is trained for this.”

“For this?” The young man seemed more fascinated than terrified.

“Sure. We plan for every contingency.”

Down in the launching bay, the doors were wide open, the atmosphere field dropped. Breezes whipped inside the bay, tossing debris around and scattering lightweight equipment. Ships launched out in all directions, somehow managing not to collide. As five skyminers tumbled into an escape shuttle, the pilot yelled to anyone else in the bay, “There’s room for four more. Get your asses aboard!” Four more people got their asses aboard. After the hatch sealed, the shuttle took off.

Out in the open gulf of clouds and wind, another hydrogue warglobe succumbed to the black stain. During its death throes, the pyramidal projections crackled with blue fire and lanced out in uncontrolled blasts. One stray burst struck a nearby ekti-storage raft, and the detonation created an expanding fireball in the sky.

Rex wailed, but Del didn’t let go of him. Patrick shouted, “Which ship, Zhett?”

“That one. I have the launch codes, and I’m taking the controls. Anybody want to argue with that?”

Nobody did.

“Classes were boring on Earth,” Howard said to Shareen, “but…”

“Trust me,” Shareen said, “you’ll learn more in fifteen minutes of this than in a dozen exams.”

The skymine shuddered, and the deck tilted so severely that a wheeled loader slid sideways toward the open bay, blocking the exit. A husky skyminer leaped into the cab, powered up the engines, and rolled the loader out of the way, but it began sliding toward the opening again. The driver gave up and jumped out just before the loader rolled off into the sky.

Zhett’s ship scraped along the sloped deck, its struts sending up sparks. The roar of wind in the cargo bay, the monotonous alarms flooding the station comm, her little brother crying, and warglobes exploding out in the clouds all mixed together to make a deafening din.

Toff’s face was flushed with excitement. “I can fly a swooper out there, round up any stragglers.”

Zhett grabbed him by the arm, then by the ear, and pulled him up the ramp. “I don’t think so.”

Shareen helped push Toff onto the ship as her mother raced to the cockpit. “This whole planet’s going insane.” Six additional evacuees followed them aboard, breathless and windblown.

Zhett activated the comm, listened to a gabble of reports from the skyminers. Shareen thought everyone sounded remarkably calm considering the circumstances.

Her father dropped into the empty copilot seat, handed Rex off to his sister, and called up report screens. “We have enough ships for everybody to get away, but we might not have enough time. This skymine is breaking up.”

“Once our people evacuate, where do we go?” Shareen asked, bouncing her little brother in a vain attempt to calm him.

“Away from Golgen,” Zhett said. “I don’t think we have any choice.”

Deeply concerned, her grandfather fussed over Shareen. She handed him the toddler again, so she could make her way up to the cockpit and help. “Watch Rex—and Howard.”

“I can take care of myself,” Howard said.

“Then take care of my grandfather so that he doesn’t get into any trouble.”

Del looked scandalized, but Howard said seriously, “I’ll do my best.”

Zhett powered up the thrusters and launched the ship out of the skymine’s cargo bay as the passengers scrambled to secure themselves to seats. They flew up and away from the skymine, while winds buffeted them from side to side. Patrick worked in the copilot seat, scanning ahead as his wife dodged other struggling ships. “Never seen wind shear like this,” he said. “It’s not natural.”

Zhett gave him a wry look. “You think?”

Behind them the skymine bounced about like a discarded toy, its exhaust stack bent. Pieces broke away from the lower decks, and the bottom sensor array twisted free and dropped spinning into the mists. The last few evacuation ships shot away from the structure.

Shareen and Howard leaned toward the windowport. Golgen’s pastel cloud layers had turned dark, and she saw only one remaining warglobe, blackened and dying, before it sank into the depths like a drowned corpse. The clouds looked as if great gouts of ink were vomiting through the atmosphere.

The evacuating ships climbed to orbit, while the blackness continued to bleed into Golgen’s clouds. Shareen was shaking, and when she realized that she was clutching Howard’s arm, she was embarrassed, but she didn’t let go. She tried to joke about it, her voice dry and raspy in her throat. “Well, that was exciting.”

He forced a faint smile. “You did promise I would find it interesting.”

“Let that be a lesson to you,” she said. “I always keep my promises.”