What's There in the Dark

((Co-written with Ciarente))

A room this colorless, with its few lonely, functional furnishings would have screamed 'poverty' back home. After long enough around Caldari, though, you picked up that sparse, dull, and probably really expensive was their idea of elegance.



Esbridar Otulker stared at the flowers on the desk and tried to put her thoughts in order, with limited success.



The summons from Captain Night was wholly outside her experience, and she would have preferred to be back in the lab, watching the chem-techs analyse the samples she'd brought back. Back in the lab or anywhere else. But too junior to have attracted the captain's personal attention before now also meant too junior to do anything other than head top-side at the double when the call came.



Didn't even comb my hair, she thought, checking her reflection in the polished chrome of side of the reception desk and smoothing a few unruly strands back into their place in her mohawk.



"You look fine," Haikiwa Panasen said.



Otulker shot him a glance. Someone's yet to explain to me what he's doing here, too. We have a section full of anthropologists with their cross-cultural-sensitivity seminars and crew-courtesy-course and suddenly we need another one, hauled all the way over from the Krenshaw Institute?



Still, he's nice enough, for someone who wouldn't know real science if it bit him in the ass.



"Thanks," she said grudgingly. "I should have changed when we got back from the surface, but I didn't think ..."



She glanced at the door in the far wall that must lead to Captain Night's office, and then returned her gaze to the flowers.



"A mutually satisfactory conclusion to our meeting," Panasen said.



"What?"



He nodded at the flowers. Real flowers, Otulker realised for the first time. "That arrangement. The crossed stalks symbolise a meeting or discussion, the tieleto flower, in full bloom like that, means a successful outcome, and the fact that there's three flowers on each stalk, exactly the same size, says that the success will be equal for each party."



Otulkner looked at the pale blue flowers. "Is that what you teach at Krenshaw? Flower arranging?"



Panasen laughed. "No. That's a pretty common arrangement in offices. You'd be hard pressed not to have seen it, if you grew up in the State."



The young man behind the desk raised his head. "Dr. Otulker, Professor Panasen. If you'd go through."



Otulker stood, wiped sweaty palms on the side of her trousers, and headed for that unremarkable door.



If under-furnishing was what the Caldari saw as good taste, Captain Night’s office was less tasteful than the antechamber. Otulker felt marginally better at the sight of a desk with a little bit of clutter on it: datapads, printouts, a few actual, printed on paper and bound in dead-animal skin, books. Some of the languages the titles were in were familiar to Otulker, many of them were not. A small table holding a holo-call unit stood off to one side with chairs clustered around it. Potted kresh plants stood in the corners, and one wall was lined with shelves, holding mostly books with a few small knick-knacks interspersed between them.



Captain Night finished slotting a book back into its place – Otulker caught a glimpse of Gallente writing on the spine – and turned. She judged he was in his mid-thirties. Blandly good looking. Brown hair cut short, and grey eyes. A suit cut in a conservative, Caldari style. Something seemed off - Clone skin she realized. Ever-so-slightly too smooth, un-weathered, looking younger than those eyes. He smiled with a flash of white, even teeth and greeted them in a smooth, practiced voice,



"Dr Otulker, Professor Panasen. I trust you had a good flight up?"



“Yes, sir,” Otulker said promptly.



"What did you find? Just walk me through it, briefly."



"Sir,” Otulker said. “We didn't use the PARB lights, of course, as per Federation regulations on access to sites of possible historical significance. The lumols gave us enough light to find the branching tunnel that led down to the cavern more or less where the scans said it should be, in the area behind the door Commander Invelen described. There were three separate slopes, at one time or another someone'd cut steps into them, switching back on each other, and the cavern was at the bottom of the last one.”



“The steps were definitely the result of human action?” Captain Night asked.



“Sir, yes. No question.”



“Professor Panasen? Your opinion?”



Panasen, Otulker realised, had wandered over to Captain Night’s desk and started leafing through one of the books there. “What? Oh, yes. I think the wear is down to natural erosion rather than use but there were definitely tool marks in places. Your people have the images I took. Is this an actual first edition of Krenshaw’s Compendium?”



Captain Night inclined his head slightly. “It is.”



“Wow!” Panasen turned a page. “He printed these personally, you know, when no publisher – ”



“Indeed,” Captain Night said politely. “However, perhaps we might discuss the subject another time.”



Panasen closed the book with a sheepish smile. “Sure. Sorry. Where were we?”



“The stairs to the cavern,” Captain Night prompted.



“Oh, right! Yes. Definitely made. Impossible to say when without better climate records, but not recent, not at all recent. Not the tunnel itself, though, well, some parts opened up a bit, I got images of those as well, but it’s definitely an adaptation of a naturally-occurring access-way. Narrow as Heth’s mind and as cold as – what was it you said, Esby?”



Otulker felt herself color. “I don’t recall exactly. I remarked on the low ambient temperature.”



“No, that wasn’t – here, I made a note on the shuttle up, it wasn’t one I’d heard before –“ Panasen dug through his pockets. “I’m thinking of doing a paper on temperature comparisons in colloquial expressions, you know, I don’t think it’s ever been – oh, here we are. ‘Cold as Jamyl’s nipple’.” He beamed at them both. “And it was. Cold as Jamyl’s nipple.”



“There’s still snow on the ground in the area, sir,” Otulker said hastily to Captain Night. “The ground’s largely frozen, according to local reports. A low ambient temperature is to be expected below ground under those circumstances. Precisely how low is impossible to predict given the variables of soil composition, air movement and the different thermal absorption and retention rates of geological strata.”



Captain Night nodded. “And the cavern?”



“Contained what appeared to be an aphotic lake, sir, but …” Otulker trailed off. Appeared to be. Nothing had appeared in that thick, heavy darkness that swallowed the dim glow of their lumols and seemed to grow fatter on the food.



“Dr Otulker?”



She cleared her throat and tried again. “On closer observation it became evident the body of liquid was not water, sir, not H2O, I mean, or at least, not without a significant additive of some sort. Samples are currently undergoing analysis in the lab, but it was clear immediately that it was more viscous, and liquid at a temperature several degrees below the freezing point of water. Volatile, too. And there’s the color, and refractive qualities.” Captain Night raised an eyebrow and Otulker realised he had not seen the sample. “Uh, it’s black, sir. I don’t mean, dirty, muddy. It’s black. And doesn’t seem to reflect much light back, not much at all.”



“Quite extraordinary,” Panasen said. “Like a black hole in liquid form, almost. Imagine, Captain Night, a cavern of that size, which is not all that small to begin with, in which everything but the smallest ledge of rock at the entrance is awash with this stuff, black as pitch, unreflective, coating the walls near the waterline so the horizon line vanishes. The place just seemed, subjectively, huge –“ His enthusiastic illustrative gesture caught the tip of one of the stems in the arrangement on Captain Night’s desk and the whole thing wobbled precariously as Panesen grabbed at it. “Whoops! Sorry. Oh, my, is this – it is, isn’t it, a Choysen original? I didn’t know there were any in private hands – “



“Professor Panasen,” Captain Night said.



“Yes. Sorry. The cavern.” Panasen set the vase carefully upright. “Where was I? Oh, yes. Huge, subjectively. Infinite, even.”



"Any signs that people had been there previously? Signs of ritual use?"



Panasen nodded vigorously. “A ledge near the entrance, again, tool marks indicating a natural feature of the rock had been enhanced for use. I found traces of a substance that didn’t appear to be naturally occurring in the cracks, too, samples at the lab. At a guess, and it’s just a guess, mind, I’d say some sort of wax, possibly a soap, but more likely a wax.”



“As in candlewax?” Captain Night asked.



Panasen beamed at the Captain as if he were a particularly bright student. “Exactly! As in candlewax.”



“Anything else?”



“Yes,” Panasen said, turning serious. “There was a sense of … a presence. Of some sort.”



Captain Night frowned slightly “A presence?”



Panasen nodded. “A malevolent one, too. We weren’t welcome there.”



“Dr Otulker? Do you concur with Professor Panasen’s assessment?”



“No, sir,” Otulker said. I’m a scientist, not some touchy-feely let's-all-learn-to-get-along anthropologist. I look at the evidence, not hides my head under the pillow because there are shadows under the bed.



There’s nothing there in the dark that isn’t there in the light.



Usually a comforting thought, today it reversed itself immediately. What’s there in the dark will still be there in the light. Nameless, shapeless dread seized her, like a fist as cold as that cavern closing around her heart, and her vision blurred and dimmed as icy sweat sprang out on her face and neck.



She blinked, blinked again, and saw Captain Night studying her as Panasen rattled on.



“Oh, come on, Esby, you felt it too,” he said.



“Felt what, precisely?” Captain Night asked.



“Fear,” Panasen said simply. “A sense of … dread, a certainty of impending doom. And before you ask, Captain Night, I’m not claustrophobic and I’m not afraid of the dark. And Esby’s a geologist, I bet she spent half her life down holes in the ground when she was a student. There’s something down there, and it doesn’t like us, and it doesn’t like being disturbed.”



“Sir,” Otulker said, and had to swallow hard and try again. “Sir. I … felt something similar.” The faint susurration of the thick, black liquid that stretched out from the edge of the circle of light into unfathomable distance and depth, the darkness so dense it seemed to press against her face, trying to fill her mouth and nose with every breath … the effort of courage it took to walk a few steps and drop the sample jar down, then beat a hasty retreat. “It wasn’t the sort of place you’d want to hang around, sir.”



“I see,” Captain Night said. He glanced aside for a moment, and then looked back at Otulker. “I have instructed the lab technicians to treat the samples you retrieved as biohazards, Dr Otulker. And you will both, along with Sergeant Jaedald, report immediately to medical.”



“Sir,” Otulker responded automatically, and then: “Sir?”



“There are a number of neurotoxic chemicals that produce exactly those symptoms Professor Panasen described, Dr Otulker,“ Captain Night said. “You will be screened for exposure to any of them."


It was clearly a dismissal. Otulker saluted and turned to the door, then turned back. "Professor. Come on."

"Oh? Oh! Of course. Sorry." Panasen hastily put back the book he'd picked up from the Captain's desk and obediently followed Otulker to the door.

She took the precaution of holding it open and gesturing for him to preceed her, just in case he spots something else interesting.

Panasen stepped out into the cheerless antechamber. Otulker followed him, with one glance back into the room she'd never seen before and if I'm lucky, never will again.

Captain Night seemed to have already forgetten them, turning back to his desk. He picked up the book Panasen had been so excited about and opened it, frowning slightly.

"The darkness no light can pierce," Otulker heard him murmur. "The silence no sound can break. Nameless and forgotten."

The hair rose on the back of her neck.

She turned smartly on her heel and left the Captain there, with his pod-pilot implants and his priceless vase and with whatever nameless dark that book described, headed straight for medical, where they would test and name and treat whatever that cavern had held.

A toxin. Just a toxin.

Absolutely nothing else.

[OOC] Win a Faction Battleship.

I'm running a Fiction Competition for the next 3 weeks. Here in this thread. The TL;DR version is that you can enter your short story for a chance to win your choice of Faction Battleships. I will be giving away three of them (in addition to 4 faction cruisers)!

Check out the thread for rules and details.

Syndicate Files: The Doctor - Part 9

((Co-written by Ciarente. Part 8 Here))

Turning my back on the Stripper took more courage than I would have thought I had. I could feel that cold, speculative gaze on the back of my neck all the way to the door. When it closed behind me, I breathed a sigh of relief, took Cariot by the arm and pushed her towards the entrance.

She resisted. "Where - "

"Shuttleport. Walk." I shoved her through the front door into the street and yanked her in the right direction.

"Oh, no," she said, planting her heels. "I'm not going back."


I took her by the shoulders and gave her a little shake. "Listen, doc, I don't care where you go, but you're through here, you understand? If you stay, they'll kill you. And then me. And I don't care much about you, but I'm kinda attached to my skin. So I'm going to put you on a shuttle back to the more law-abiding regions of the cluster. After that, it's up to you."

I started towing her towards the shuttleport again and this time she came along. "What happened back there, Tarva?"

"I made a deal," I said. "You leave. We all stay alive."

The shuttleport was crowded, but I waved a fifty syn note at the guy keeping the lines in order and he waved us to the front, making the note disappear as I held it out to him.

The next shuttle was heading for State space. Not cheap, a last minute seat on a shuttle bound for Jita.

Lucky I had a what was left of the doctor's husband's thousand syn burning a hole in my pocket. I counted it out and pushed it across the counter, and the girl sitting there stopped painting her nails exploding-warp-core blue long enough to ask boredly, "ID?"

Cariot hesitated, and then held her arm up to the scanner. "Janianial," she said. "Nerila. Doctor Nerila Janianial."

Something changed in her face as she said it. Aniac Cariot, medguri, had a life not many would envy, stitching up the Cluster's most desperate for whatever cash she could wring out of them. But looking at the woman next to me, I had the feeling that for Nerila Janianial, Aniac Cariot had been an escape as welcome as an emergency capsule on an exploding carrier.

I walked her to the shuttle, watched her board.

The doors closed, cutting her from view.


I turned and walked out of the terminal.

In this business, some days start bad, and get better. Some start out with fried protein and egg substitute and end up with you working for Myla Navanier and watching a beautiful woman walk away from you.

"Hey, you."

I looked up. Auvy was standing outside the doors. She'd changed her clothes, into something green and silky with just the right amount of cling, and she looked as fresh and sharp as an apple - a real one. I know, because I had one once.

She came to meet me and tucked her hand through my arm. "Think you promised me another dinner. After the way the last one ended." She smiled " I already made the reservations."

"Auvy, I - "

"Not a word, Rory. Not one word."

In this business, some days start out bad and get better. Some look okay, and end with you working for Myla Navanier.

And sometimes, when I get lucky, they end up with Auvy, and dinner reservations.

Syndicate Files: The Doctor - Part 8

((Co-written by Ciarente. Part 7 Here))


When they'd all gone, and the door was closed, Myla asked, "What do you think you know? And what's to stop me from just killing you and tracking it down. Who's it with? That girl of yours? Auvy, is it?" She musta seen my wince, "One call, Tarva. One call."


"You don't wanna do that. You know how it works. This isn't my first long-limb roast, Myla. Yeah, Auvy had the package. Not now. And I've set up insurance, in case any of us don't walk away from this. There're copies of the data.


"As for what I think I know: You're a cop. CONCORD, maybe? Or a Fed? Doesn't matter. You're fuzz, and that'd be enough for your oh-so-loyal troops out there to rip you apart. We found a marker isotope in your blood. They use it for ident for undercover jobs. Classified, but not classified enough."


Her expression hardly twitched. "Not a anymore, Tarva. I went native a long time ago."


"Think it'd matter to those animals out there? You know'em best."


She just looked at me, "I might risk it. Make me an offer, Tarva."


"We all walk. I send you the evidence and the info. I keep a copy, just in case you change your mind. The doctor leaves the station."


"Not good enough." She leaned forward slightly, "Sometimes I maybe have jobs, jobs I need someone with your skill-set for. You do those for me."


I hesitated. Myla Navanier is not someone you want to owe favors. She pressed, "It's a good deal for you. You want to stay useful, Tarva."


What could I do? I nodded, "I'll leave my card. Rate's 500 syns a day, 2 day minumum, in advance."

Syndicate Files: The Doctor - Part 7

((Co-written by Ciarente. Part 6 Here))

Cariot wasn't hard to find. She hadn't been thinking clearly enough to hide her trail - or even to try and find a dealer who wasn't connected with the Serps. Which meant they were probably speeding toward us - like a full battery of cruise missiles, but deadlier.


I grabbed her arm and she turned around and gave me a big, lopsided grin. "Tarva! Honey!"

I cursed. I'd found her but not before she'd found what she was looking for. "Come on, honey. We have to get out of here."


She came along without arguing, paying less attention to me than to whatever piece of peace she'd bought herself.


Auvy called with the results of the analysis while we were on our way back. We were still a couple blocks from the safe house when I nearly ran into One-eye. His goons surrounded us. He gave me a nasty smile, "The Stripper wants to see you, Tarva."


They didn't call Navanier 'The Stripper' because she'd danced in the dockside clubs. What Myla Navanier could do with a belt sander would make a blooder swear off red meat. You really don't want to know.


We met her in the back room of a dinky bar, not far from Cariot's office. No-one seemed to be real clear on how old Navanier really was, and that much money could buy a lot of youth. Pale, almost frail looking, with void-black hair. Pretty. Sitting stiffly in her chair, a legacy of whatever Cariot had patched up for her, maybe. She still looked like she should be selling Quafe on a billboard, not running a criminal empire. At least, until she was looking at you - studying you. I've heard stories about out on the other side of the cluster, where explorers have found entire regions occupied by rogue drones. How the drones will break into the ships, infest them. Take the parts they want and discard what's of no use to them.


As Myla studied me and Cariot, I understood what the crews of those ships must have felt in their final moments, in front of glittering, inhuman eyes. She spoke, "You could have saved yourself a lot of trouble and just called me, Tarva."


"You aren't paying me. Doubt you could afford me. We might be able to make a deal though."


She laughed, "A deal? What do imagine you have that I might want, Tarva? Making an example of you sounds tempting. Enough people in the know know you that it could be instructional."


"We should discuss it more privately, just me and you. Your people missed something, when they hit the doc's place. I had it analysed." I jerked my head toward Cariot, "She had no idea, and she still doesn't."


Something got through to Cariot, or maybe her dealer had shortchanged her and the high was wearing off. "No idea about wha - " she started to say.


The Stripper cut her off. "Everyone out. Take the medguri." Myla regarded me with narrowed eyes, "If you misbehave Tarva, she won't have any skin the next time you see her."


I waited while everyone filed out. One-eye looked like he wanted to protest, but I think the look on The Stripper's face stopped him. It woulda stopped an Erebus mid-warp.

Syndicate Files: The Doctor - Part 6

((Co-written by Ciarente. Part 5 Here))

I told Cariot I needed to go meet a contact about getting the Serps off our back. Managed to get my coat on without ripping any of the stitches. I'd lost my stun-stick in the tussle somewhere, but if I needed it, it probably wouldn't help.

I made my way back to Cariot's neighbourhood. Carefully. Found the laundry, circled it a couple times, but it didn't look like there was anyone watching it. Like One-eye had said, they thought they got what they needed.


The laundry looked like a thriving enterprise. That's the thing about poverty, right down where it hurt. You can't afford to live somewhere with a stove, you have to pay extra for take-away. Can't afford somewhere with a laundry in the building, you have to pay someone else to wash your clothes. And then haul 'em home and string 'em whereever you can, hoping they'd dry before someone even poorer stole them.

For enough syn the proprietor was willing to hand over Cariot's unwashed clothes. Blood still on them. I bundled them up and got out of the area as fast as I could. Then I called Auvy, explained what I needed, told her it was urgent.


I met Auvy at a greasy spoon too small to have a name, wedged between a drycleaner's and a place that sold life insurance. I know which one I'd invest in, in Syndicate.


She was dressed in a plain blue top and a black skirt that almost managed to not show off her legs - and she'd done something to her hair, it was dark, held in a simple ponytail. It was the closest to unremarkable I'd ever seen her - which meant she stood out in that diner like a Titan in Empire space.


I sat down and she smiled, "Heard you've been running around back alleys with some woman. Her husband must be important. There was someone around asking questions about you."

I started to slide the clothes over to her, but at that, I paused, "Maybe I should-"


"Don't be silly, Rory. I can take care of myself. You've obviously got your hands full just looking after yourself, you look terrible." She reached out and grabbed the bundle, stuffing it into an oversized purse, "I'll get these analysed."

"Thanks Auvy."

She smiled, "Can't say I never did anything for you."

She got up and disappeared into the flow of people. I headed back to the safe house.

When I got there, Cariot was gone.


I'd gotten too close, and forgotten: she still had a habit to feed.

Syndicate Files: The Doctor - Part 5

((Co-written by Ciarente. Part 4 Here))

Half an hour later we were holed up in a safe house. In my line of work you never know when you're going to need a bolt-hole, and when my last missing person's case had dead-ended at a grimy apartment paid up six months in advance, I'd kept the address. And the key. It was only a matter of time until the Serps tracked us down, though.


Cariot glanced around and made a beeline for the bathroom. She was back a moment later, holding one of those cheap first aid kits that station regs mandate landlords provide, and what looked like a sewing kit.

She tossed it on the kitchen counter. "Take off your jacket. Shirt too."

"Aren't you going to even buy me a drink first?"

"You're a big boy, you'll do fine without anesthetic." Cariot opened cupboards in the kitchen until she found what she was looking for: a pot, which she filled with water and set on the stove, a couple of sharp knives, some tongs and a bottle of gin with maybe an inch left in it. "Off, or I'll cut 'em off. Doctor's orders."

It was my favourite jacket, the one that, up until today anyway, didn't have any holes or stains. I eased it off, shook my head sadly at the rent in the shoulder, and then the shirt.

Cariot dumped the knives and the needles from the sewing kit into the pot of boiling water and propped the tongs in, business end down. She came over to look at my shoulder, and gave me a less-then-gentle shove towards the kitchen.

"Put a bandage on it," I said. "I'll get it looked at later."

"Uh-huh, tough guy. I've seen corpses with prettier tans. Bullet's got to come out."

Great.

As much to distract myself as because I wanted to know, I asked her: "So what did you do to get so much personal attention from the Serps?"

"Fucked if I know. I thought they owed me one." Cariot set the pot on the floor, then washed her hands at the sink, splashing some of the gin over them, tipping the rest of it over my shoulder.

"Son of a - "

"Infection hurts more," she said. "Sit down. I don't want you fainting on me. On the floor, moron. Now hold still. You might feel a little discomfort."

That's what doctors say when they mean I'm about to cause you excuriciating agony. Still, criminal record, Serps trouble and fake ID and all, Cariot knew her job. It wasn't more than a moment or two of sweating and swearing before she was stitching me up with -

"Is that dental floss?"

"It's sterile. Ish. Hold still. This isn't embroidery, but you still want me to get the stitches straight."

"Uh-huh."

I held still, or tried to. "So the Serps owe you one?"

"Yeah. I stitched up one of their bigwigs last night. Whatsername, Myla Navanier."

There'd been news on a botched attack on one of the Serp's clubs this morning, but no-one had mentioned that the station's biggest player had been involved. "You fuck it up?"

Cariot yanked the next stitch a little harder than she needed to. "I never fuck up." She leaned over to look me in the eye. "Unless I mean to."

She had the kind of eyes it was hard to look away from. I swallowed hard, and said "Shouldn't you be watching what you're doing?"

"I could stitch you up in my sleep, Rory Tarva," she said, and it was a threat and an invitation all rolled up into one.

"Still," I said. "I'd be more comfortable if you kept your eyes on your work. Doctor."

She laughed at me the kind of way women have been laughing at men who are out of their depth since time began, and leaned back. "No. To answer your question. I didn't fuck it up. I did a fucking stand-up job, in fact, bitch was bleeding all over the place and thrashing around like a hooked fish. Thought for a while she'd bleed out on me. Place looked like a slaughterhouse. Had blood clear through my scrubs, woulda thought I'd been swimming in it."

"And that's it? No bad debts? You owe your dealer?"

"I don't owe a soul in the Cluster," Cariot said. "There. You're done."

I turned to try and peer down at the wound as she shuffled backwards and sat down, leaning back against the cupboard. What I could see of it was neat, professional looking. The kind of thing you'd usually have to go to Station medical for, if station medical used dental floss.

Cariot tossed the bloody knives and needles back in the pot. "Not my usual kit," she said. "Don't look so fucking surprised, Tarva. You'll hurt my feelings. I was top of my class, you know."

She reached for the bottle and took a small swallow of what little was left as I gingerly turned myself around to sit beside her, keeping my bad shoulder clear of the cupboard. "And now you're a back-alley leech with the Serps on your tail."

Cariot grinned, and offered me the bottle. "Harsh but true, Tarva. Harsh but true."

There wasn't more than a mouthful of gin left, and looking down at the bloody kitchen knives in the pot, I figured I deserved all of it.

Bloody knives ... "How are you going to clean those up?"

"We're staying long enough for you to cook me breakfast?"

Fortune help me, but I blushed. "How do you normally clean up your ... kit?"

"Boiling," Cariot said. "Fancy places, they have these machines, you know? Or they just use all new, every time." She shrugged. "Boiling's the best I can do."

"That get rid of everything?"

"Off the cutting surfaces, sure. You get splashback onto the handles, blood builds up in the little grooves, and so on."

We got what we need, One-eye had said.

They'd headed for Cariot's instruments before making any move towards Cariot herself.

Blood in the little grooves. Had to be.

"You said Myla bled a lot. On your clothes?"

"Yeah."

"What'd'ya do with them?"

"Nowhere to wash 'em where I live. Dropped them in at the laundry this morning."

"I see," I said - and I did. More than Cariot did.