Midnight’s Second Station – Chloe Smith
Errant had studied the reports, had marveled, had thought he’d understood as much as anyone did—but his eyes still rejected their first sight of Midnight’s trees.
He squinted down through the shuttle’s window. A few hours before sunset, the passing terrain was a crumpled expanse of ashy browns and pinks, covered by the pale, irregular blooms of fungal webs and the fine, regular lines of insulated pipes. Interspersed among both of these patterns, though, was another: an array of shapes cut out of absolute darkness. As much as Errant tried to make out gradations of color or get a sense of form, he saw only absence, shapes like holes gnawed through to the realm of antimatter, even as the pilot angled their craft downward and the ground rose to meet them.
