he is knowing…and this hearti containfor youi have come again tozam zam?rupture rend rive split cleavePlease don’t let it—Is it too late? He knew what she couldn’t believe.my lips remember the echoes of that night
How the body is weak, how fragile biology bursts upon cool metal, how the final crack of the spine signals an end.
His blood was tacky on the black surface. His body was broken under the tons. Boys, not men, not boys watched.
“We have to get him out of there.”
“Let him stay.” Hunter wiped the blood from his cheek with the back of gloved hand.
“We can’t just—”
“Do it yourself, then.”
The chamber door cycled open. She came in, snapping of static, sloshing of shield. His eyes studied the floor as he walked by. She reached out.
“Don’t.”
“Hunter—”
“Just don’t.” He pulled away, left the chamber.
She found him later, as she always found him, on the empty bridge, thermals off, freezing away the emotions of the deep. She made certain that the bridge door was sealed and deactivated her phase shield. It splashed to the floor and dissipated in tendrils of mist. A shake of curly hair and she was dry.
How the heart is weak, how fragile emotion wells under too-old eyes, how the lock of a glance sends lovers into abandon.
“Come here?”
She crawled into the vacuum chair with him, a lithe and feline move. He inhaled and there was nothing. Exhaled and he could still breathe. Would it last? Their arms tangled, she shifted position and her lips found his jawline, rested there for a moment. She shivered in more than the cold of space.
Even in the cold, the lace of the silver began to bristle in fine patterns across his skin, a disconcerting screen door gooseflesh. It danced, disappeared only to re-emerge in another place. It was searching for a foothold.
“How much longer?”
He shook his head against the meeting place of neck and shoulder.
“I don’t want to hurt you.”
He looked into the eyes of the little girl who, almost two decades ago, had waved at him each day from behind a wrought-iron gate. They cage us, in so many ways, in so many ways.
Decades?
“It doesn’t hurt.”
“Liar.”
“Liar.” His voice was mocking. His impersonation made her smile: lips parted in that liquid way. His eyes moved from hers to her lips, back to eyes. Not a signal, but a signal.
“Lily Lily.”
“Hunter Hunter.”
Breathing became as one.
They kissed and laughed in the vacuum chair, spinning lazily on its mount, revealing in turn the cracked systems display, the projector that emitted static and coordinates that no one wanted to acknowledge, the dead form of an angel, chest an angry confusion of wires, stripped of parts, featureless face surveying the action with dull, dusty eyes.
It would all end soon, but for now, they kissed.
Screaming, but not his own, not his, not its. Screaming from without, and it was warmer, and then a jolt that cracked, and it was warmer, warmest, painfully hot. Sudden, violent, an end to the scream: things broke as they hit the world.
The near was the worst.
Berlin pulled himself from the vacuum chair. His wound had freshened; fluid over tacky, still black, still staining.
Task moaned. The nose of the vessel was crumpled into snow.
snow?
Elle had been impaled. Tickings of interior biomechanics: its hands flexed on nothing. It tried to speak, but there was no chest, no throat.
Out of the chair, Berlin braced himself between wall and ceiling. Gravity, but it felt like floating. He maneuvered hand-over hand to Task’s cockpit bubble. There was blood.
The air burned.
“What—”
“Don’t try to talk.”
“Elle—”
“It’s dead.”
The pilot’s face collapsed into an emotion. “Let me—”
“You don’t want to see it. How badly are you hurt?”
“Legs are broken.”
“Okay.”
The cant of the vessel would make the extraction difficult. Berlin stood precariously on the ceiling of the cockpit, Task locked into the chair above him.
“Get ready.”
“For what?”
Berlin palmed the release mechanism and Task fell into his arms in a ball of misshapen limbs and his own screams. Berlin caught the smaller man, lowered him to the floor as quickly and gently as possible. The tears streaming down Task’s face indicated nothing of speed or tenderness.
“We’re upside down.”
“No shit.”
“Are you sure Elle isn’t—”
“I’m sure.”
As if to prove the point, sparks ignited on the shattered chestplate of the near. There was fire.
“God damn—”
“This will hurt.” Berlin hefted Task over his shoulder, the pilot biting his lower lip and trying to muffle the agonized wail between the thin flesh of his cheeks. He struggled over ceiling-mounted displays to the chamber exit.
“Will the belly port work if we’re upside down?”
“It should.”
“Well, we’re on fire. It’d better.”
They abandoned the vessel and the artificial co-pilot to flames.
The siege machines opened fire, and the planet below was raped of atmosphere.
Just a tiny vessel, just a sliver of silver and black. The children were terrified, or as terrified as they could be given that they could not understand what was happening. Lily felt them, far away, yet the closest minds she could touch. There were other consciousnesses buried in the vessel, but she knew that they wouldn’t wake up until it was safe and they were far away from the enemy fleet.
Fighters scrambled from the worldships, but too late. The escape ship phased and it became
cold, the coldest, if she could still feel, and she knew she could, although she didn’t know where she was or how she had gotten there. The containment sphere had solidified into metal and she had been launched from Hannon’s globe.
collision with..?
Snow.
She sat up. The sky was blue. When had she last—
Black smoke from across the ice plain. A vessel embedded into white. A figure on top, hunched over, pulling at something…Two figures. Fire spread.
Maire looked at her own personal space. A Maire-shaped imprint sat within a larger melted circle. She stood.
The fire and the vessel and the fire within the vessel weren’t far away. She walked.
She paused, tried to find that [something] within, but it was gone for now. Hiding the silver in the host body had been an accomplishment of great beauty. Unfortunately, she was tapped for now. She couldn’t kill.
She walked.
It fell into the tube. Heaven was below. Stranger had been talking.
“You’re Hannon, aren’t you?” Zero asked.
Stranger said nothing.
The vessel slowed in the pipeline. There was a great hiss as it cracked in half, shielding realigned. The cockpit chamber ceiling lifted from the walls and slid back, revealing the now-vertical nacelles, the tube stretching forever above them.
how long?
The landing platform approached.
“Are you?”
“I’m not going to—”
“Jesus Christ—”
Stranger/Hannon’s face went blank. “Who?” Innocent. Unwashed.
“Show me.”
“Show you what?”
“Your chest.”
Hannon nodded, undid the clasps on the front of his uniform. Pulled the sides back. Turned to Zero.
you took the blue out of the sky my whole life changed when you said goodbye
The cardiac shield was firmly in place, although strands of silver pulsated at its edge. The puckered maroon of an incision snaked into under out of the metal plate. Shiver and slither of phase shielding. Hannon covered himself.
“So now you know.”
“You found a way to contain it.”
“In some.”
“In men.”
“In some men.”
“It spread to all of the worlds through the halo?”
“It spread to most of the worlds. Maire’s Extinction Fleet took care of the rest.”
Not a blush spread on Zero’s cheeks. Somewhere below, the humming of landing struts and the jolt of contact. Crackle of phase release.
“You called this place Heaven.”
“Yes…It is.”
“Who’s here?”
Hannon smoothed the front of his uniform.
“It’s her. Judith.”
Cold eyes look at nothing. “It was Judith.”
He found that he always opened his eyes before she did. Tip of nose to tip of nose, gentle motion of an Eskimo kiss. Liquid sound of her smile. Dimple revealed.
His flesh didn’t change.
He brushed Lilith’s hair back from her cheek. Lips bridged distance. He stood from the chair, pulling on his pants. Buckling his belt. Pulling on shirt.
She
made no move to dress.
The vacuum chair rotated from his exit. As it spun beyond her visual range, she sat up, arms crossed on the top. She watched him tuck in his shirt. The chair completed its rotation and he sat to lace his boots.
“So professional.” Sarcastic. Grin.
“I have to look my best for the troops.”
“Right.” She straightened his collar. There was
music?
in her mind.
She held his hand, looking over every inch for any sign of
The bridge door alarm beeped.
“Fuck.” Lilith crawled out of the chair. Hunter sat back and watched as she pulled on clothing. Her hair was a mess. He shook his head and smiled.
“En—”
“No.”
Lilith turned to him with a look of confusion.
“Your shield, sweetness.”
She blushed. She blushed easily. Eyes closed, inhale, hand taps chestplate. Her form was enveloped with sloshing glass. She ran her fingers through her hair. “Enter.”
an eternity between
Walking into a moment…He was.
He shut the door. The wind was trapped outside. A newspaper fluttered and a hand went to it, held it to the tabletop. Nirvana. He smiled, remembered how she actually had smelled like Teen Spirit. Decades of absence…That memory had been buried half a century before, during the first war, in nights of futonsnuggle and Cowboy Killers. Pain supplanted by reality. Impossibility erased by
He walked to the counter. She was already sliding his cup toward him. Black, no cream, no sugar, just black. He leaned over and windburned lips brushed the dimpled cheek.
It wasn’t a literary crowd, but they were trying. A quick survey of the customers revealed books and newspapers, cigarettes and cloves, coffee and cappuccino. Anachronism in the world of the new future.
Sip.
It really wasn’t as bad as the kids thought. He’d tasted worse mud.
“How’s your day been?”
He shrugged. Pale blue-green eyes squinted, tried to dig behind his own. “You know.”
“I thought you might enjoy that.” She tilted her head toward the back of the shop.
“What?”
“The book. That girl has your book.”
The young woman was much too entranced with her beau to notice the middle-aged couple staring at her. He noted with some concern the black glove on the table, the silver ring now gracing silver hand, and he knew, he just knew.
There was a copy of “The Stillness Between” on the table.
The young couple held hands…There were still tears in the girl’s eyes.
She leaned in close from across the counter and whispered. “He just proposed to her.”
“Ah.”
Sip.
President Jennings was on the link. We will take this jihad to the stars—
Shivers.
“Paul?”
His hand shook as he placed the cup back down. Chattering staccato before complete contact. She put her hands over his, made them still
ness between
books, you have so much time! Are you sure you’re okay?”
He blinked, confused. More and more…More and more. He was losing moments. He was somewhere between now and worlds of impossibility.
He smiled, not convincing at all. “I’m okay. I never get used to seeing people with that book.”
She grinned. “At least you’re in good company. That couple over there was looking at Hesse’s Demian and Hayes’ Deus Ex earlier. In fact,” she leaned in, a conspirator, “he looks just like Hayes. Your protégé might be in my coffeehouse.”
Something that he didn’t want to acknowledge crawled up and down his spine for a while, then settled in at the base of his skull, tickling, raising gooseflesh. His grip tightened on the coffee cup.
“Yeah. Good company.”
She squeezed his hand. “Hey. You sure you’re okay?”
Nod. “Yeah. Just déjà vu.”
Eyebrows furrowed. “Again?”
The young couple walked out. The man looked at Paul for an instant, smiled. There was something in that glance
i contain multitudes
that broke his heart.
He reached into his front pocket and pulled out his marble. It rolled across the uneven countertop and she picked it up. The iridescent patina was scratched by half a century of travel and abuse. Four bright distortions winked in the afternoon light, scarred onto the surface from the pocket companionship of a brass Zippo with an engraved floral pattern that had long since been lost to the miles and decades of his life.
“I need a cigarette.”
“You know you shouldn’t—”
“Ever feel like you’ve lived too long? Like you’ve lived it all before?”
He hadn’t intended to hurt her with the statement, but he saw the wound develop in those eyes. At seventy-eight, they were both just over middle-aged, but still…Sometimes he felt like he wasn’t supposed to be there anymore.
“Not when I’m with you.” She withdrew the small glass bauble from her own pocket: a marble of her own, with its own scratches and a chip, given to her on that night when hopes and dreams became.
Snippets of conversation, and then laughter from behind. Maggie was laughing. He knew her name.
He knew her name, and he didn’t know how.
drifting and drifting, he resigned himself to the urge to look back. their eyes locked for the briefest of moments, and the tear-wet surface of her face revealed to him the secrets of futures now long long. they had abandoned everything they had known, and for that reason, they were damned.
the dialogue kept rising to the surface of his mind, and those prophetic words became universe upon universe. she reached to him, saw his unrest, and tenderly touched him.
you know we can’t go back
i know
it was for the best
i know
we will survive this
he let her words attempt to echo in the dead expanse. his silence screamed in the void, and they embraced, each an anchor in reality for the other.
you know i have to leave.
i know.
deconstruct
and something left me. sometimes the only things leftare thetorn page and theindentation ofbic micro metal scrawling yourlife on a pagefor a stranger.we departed. hell, i never really knew heranyways.so why do i feel this way?
when did the exclamation points anddevotiondisappearand theintrospect andlongsophisticated yearningstake theirplace?when did i love youbecome iam sorry? “I think too much.”
“No such thing.” She squeezed his hand. “Just one of those days.”
We will take this jihad to the stars, and make them suffer the consequences of creating this horrible—
“Today’s the day?”
“Yeah.” She turned the channel on the link. She’d had enough of Jennings for now.
“If I were younger, I’d go too.”
“I wouldn’t let you.”
One-cornered grin, metal-on-ceramic clink as spoon followed its habit path.
“I’d go.”
“You’ve fought enough wars, old man.”
“I need a smoke.”
“Yeah.” The one dimple appeared in her smile as she reached under the counter and placed something on the top. Rectangular box, red and white and black.
“Jesus—How did you—?”
“I have my ways. Happy birthday.”
Marlboro 100s. He smelled the pack.
“It’s fresh. Been kept in airless for—”
“Decades. Sweetheart…Thank you!”
She came from behind the counter and they embraced, forgetting for the moment the customers, the rain, the impending war and an end, of sorts, lost in that perfect moment, remembering a time of bohemian lovemaking and a world in hesitant watching, the uncertainty of young adulthood in the ghetto, rooftop stargazing and balcony summers, futonsnuggle and the way that her
lithe fingers remove the cigarette from the pack, and i lean in with gold zippo, floral pattern, butane scent fighting against the scent of
scratch, flame, click.
she inhales, pale green eyes locked on my own muddy nothing. her eyelids draw together. the tip of the cigarette glows, releases as she releases. lips still pursed, breath still inhaling until the slight pause. smoke escapes from those lips, those lips that i can still feel, still taste. they smile.
i light my own.
casters slide across hardwood floor as i roll myself and the ashtray toward her. she sits on the leopard futon, leaning forward to tap ashes into glass tray. i roll closer, knees on her knees, ashtray balanced on my leg. i tap my own ashes into that receptacle of our addiction.
inhale, exhale. the dimple revealed.
it is a pause in our lovemaking. tobacco burned, we crush filters against tar-blackened glass. i push the chair back to the desk, place the ashtray on the table. i walk back to her, sit beside her. lips merge, hands go hesitantly then purposefully to faces. we fall into each other, limbs intertwined, the taste of smoke on our lips, the shudder and release of desire matching smoothly the movement of two bodies in union.
it is not at all like kissing an
ashtray?”
“Sure, in the back. But don’t you want to save them for later?”
“No…Let’s smoke one now.” He wore a big goofy grin that she hadn’t seen in
“You’re dangerous.”
The door opened and a tall figure walked in, black cloak dry when it should have been wet, unkempt hair more kempt than the weather should have allowed. A single white curl stood out from his hairline. He walked to the counter.
“What can I get you?”
“Sorry, madam…I’m not here for refreshment. Have you seen this man?” The man held out his right hand, and a small holographic appeared.
Susan nodded. Paul was silent, eyes squinted to focus on the character before him.
who..? when—
“He was just in here…He’s the boy who proposed to his girlfriend.”
“Proposed?”
“I assume so…He gave her a silver ring.”
“Silver.”
Susan hesitated…The girl’s hands had been afflicted with the scourge. And this stranger—
“A silver ring. He proposed and they left. You know…Kids. In love. They left.”
“Did you see which way they walked?”
“Sorry. I wasn’t watching.”
“And you?”
Paul cleared his throat. “Sorry, friend. I was drinking my coffee.”
“Thank you for your time.” The man in black turned, walked back toward the door.
Paul stood, faced the man.
“Whistler?”
The stranger paused in mid-stride, head cocked to one side, about to turn—
Paul’s heart hitched in his chest.
Whistler walked out the door without looking back.
“Who was that?”
Paul shook his head.
“Nobody.” He sipped his coffee, held his wife’s hand. “Just a ghost.”
“Light ’em up.”
“What are they saying? What the fuck are they saying?”
“Who cares? Light ’em up. Trigger it. We’ll iron out the paperwork later.”
Hunter shook his head. “This isn’t right. Something isn’t right.”
Tallis glared through him, flipped his visor down. “Call in the fucking strike, Windham.”
“Sir, I can’t just—”
Tallis tore the comm from Hunter’s grasp, shoved him aside. He locked the device into the hardlink on his throat shield. “Tallis wing to orbital firing group. Bring the weapon online.”
copy, wing one.
“Sir, listen to them. They aren’t—”
“Hunter, don’t—”
“They aren’t humans.”
“The fuck are you—”
“Listen to them!”
“It’s an off-chart language. So what? We have orders.”
“Tallis,” Hunter pulled off his helmet. “Listen to them.”
She hung in velvet black, pressed into place by the cold non-hands of her mechanical caretakers. They would take what they needed from her, as they always had, that gentle rape that they called duty and she called rape.
Tallis had called a strike on the city.
The forces held her motionless in the halls of vapor and light with a liquid precision, the intimate caress of the weapon flux. She cringed at the metal whine of the contact jack as it reached over her shoulders, secured itself to her chestplate: eight subtle penetrations and a locking click, then the deeper invasion of the central hub.
Tears: two.
Somewhere below, there was a planet. There was a city. Somewhere below, there were innocents reaching to the sky, screaming at the invasion force, reeling in confusion at the vessel that blocked out the faded cold of the surviving star. Lilith knew that somewhere below, Hunter was standing with weapon drawn, helmet off, shaking his head.
listen to them
“System?”
No answer.
“Stop the cycle, please.”
The firing chamber was moving into position.
“Stop the cycle, System.”
Felt them: heard them speaking without words, weeping without tears, screaming without hope or substance.
“Stop it!”
Lilith couldn’t move.
Shimmer and shift, silver and submission.
An instant of light, a forever of end.
Hunter shouted in frustration and disgust. Tallis looked pleased.
It struck from above: the beam was peaceful, gentle, a faded light draping across the city, barely casting shadows, barely touching anything at all. From within the static shielding, Hunter and the dozens of other droptroops braced themselves.
The natives fell silent. Hunter realized with a morbid fascination that they had never actually spoken at all. The guttural tones that came from underdeveloped mouths had been the only thing Tallis had heard. He had failed to listen to the voice of the
i have come again to
mind, the Voice of the people who were now an instant from the eternal cease.
Hunter heard. He heard them all.
berlin hannon judithgod
maire
walked across the ice plain to the wreckage of Task’s vessel, which was rapidly being consumed by blue-tinged fire. It was a world of silence, except for faint whisper of wind that brushed painful ice crystals across her face and the crackle of fire as polyalloy ignited from within. One of the men on the top of the vessel hoisted the other figure over his shoulder and jumped to the ground. She heard the distinct wail of pain from the crumpled man as they landed in a pile upon the snow-covered ice. His cry echoed back and forth across the expanse, bordered as it was by cliffs that might have been stone, might have been ice.
She felt a flicker. Tiny flicker. It was returning.
Tears streamed down Task’s face. He was lost in a haze of agony, his body shaking, his breath coming in great gasps as Berlin pulled him away from the twisted remains of his vessel. Task knew that somewhere within, Elle was nothing more than a puddle of melted metal and plastic, returning again to her base elements of manufacture. All that s/he had been was now lost.
Berlin wiped his brow. The fire was overwhelming, mixed with the toxic fumes of the collapsing alloys. Whatever was in this atmosphere was causing the ship to burn with remarkable heat. He inhaled deeply, coughed as smoke singed his lungs with an alien taste. Mixed with the frightfully weak gravity, the harsh light of a single star in the sky, the smoke made Berlin dizzy, nauseous. He had the sudden desire to lay down on the snow, just to rest for a moment, just to close his eyes and try to still his rapid hearts. He just wanted to—
“What’s that?”
Task was looking off in the distance, where for the first time Berlin noticed a faint shimmer of
There was a person walking toward Task’s wrecked ship.
Berlin squinted his eyes, felt the biomech corneas zoom, focus. The figure shifted into clarity.
Maire.
Berlin released Task’s shoulders and he fell unceremoniously to the ground, his legs splaying in divergent twists of shredded fabric and exposed bone. He writhed in pain, sobbed again. Berlin noted for an instant the grisly black path stretching from the place beside the vessel where they’d landed to Task’s present position. He wouldn’t last long if they couldn’t stop the bleeding soon.
“It’s Maire. She’s seen us.”
“But how—”
“We must have been fused to her bubble when they ejected her.” Berlin released his phase weapon from its holster, knew what he would find already: the charge was lost, depolarized from the liquidspace flux. The weapon was useless.
“The gun?”
“Dead.”
“Here.” Task unsheathed a blade from a side pocket on his pants. “Take it.”
“That won’t—”
“It’s something. Take it.”
Berlin nodded, held the knife blade-down, concealed behind his forearm.
“I’ll be back. Just hold on.”
Maire’s heart pounded as she saw one of the figures begin to walk toward her. The wind grew in intensity, whipping clouds of stinging ice crystals into the air. She wiped the side of her face, felt seemingly for the first time the strange numbness of cold flesh. The approaching figure was concealed for a moment by a swirl of snow. The stark light of the star above created new levels of blindness. Finally, the figure came back into view, closer than she had expected him to be.
Berlin.
Maire blinked, squinted. It was him.
He stopped walking, his figure thrown into silhouette by the intense light of the fire engulfing the vessel behind him. He wore a weapon at his side. With a reach of her mind, the gun spun from its holster and fell safely some distance from them.
“Tired, Maire? Or can you do it all?”
“So it was you. Your vessel got in my way.”
“Looks like it. You must be drained, or you would’ve killed me already.”
“Yeah. I’m drained.”
“Good.”
“Who’s that?” She gestured at the wreck.
“Just a photographer. I needed his ship.”
“Is he dead?”
“He will be soon.”
“Good.”
“Yeah. Good.”
Awkward silence. The wind was becoming colder.
“You killed my wife.”
Maire smiled. “We killed your wife.”
Berlin glared. He shifted the knife nervously in his hand. If she knew about it, she wasn’t showing it.
“She didn’t deserve to die. Not like that. Not at all.”
“You had such promise, Berlin. Such promise to change that place.”
“So did you.”
“So did Kath.”
Berlin snapped. Maire wasn’t expecting his attack.
He lunged forward, sweeping the blade from behind his arm. The first slash lacerated Maire’s throat deeply, cutting almost to the spine. She staggered backward, strangely-red blood pouring over uniform and snow and Berlin, who slammed into her. Her hands reached up to her neck, but Berlin knocked them away on the return path of his blade, which sliced hilt-deep between Maire’s ribs, through that single heart. Berlin’s twisting wrist ensured that the heart would be destroyed beyond repair. He fell with her onto the ice, and with a final snap, he jerked the blade up, breaking through her ribcage. A small geyser of blood erupted from Maire’s ravaged chest.
She fell into stillness.
Berlin stood, shaking with exertion. It couldn’t be this easy. He wiped her blood from his face, neck. It smelled like copper. It was red.
With a swift, brutal motion, Berlin fell upon Maire’s body, plunging the blade again and again into her skull. Overcome with grief, shuddering with emotion, he stabbed her again and again, covered in her blood, slivers of her bone, great chunks of that mind that had meticulously planned the genocide of his species. He stabbed until she was gone, stabbed until he was satisfied that she could not possibly be anymore. He stood and surveyed the extent of his fury.
Maire knocked him to the ground, one foot connecting solidly with his jaw as the other landed on his knife hand, crushing fingers and shredding his palm with his own blade. Her form shimmered with silver flux, fading between solid and snow, sky and ice. With horror, Berlin realized that
Maire stepped away from him, walked to the bloodied doppelganger. She reached into its open chest and removed a tiny silver sphere, threw it playfully into the air and catching it with ease. The projected dissolved to static and nothing. Berlin cradled his crushed hand, rolled over to look up at the true Maire.
“I win.”
The door cycled open, revealing sub-commander Hull. His eyes were averted, tracing the grid of the floor. He cleared his throat.
“I’m sorry to interrupt.”
“What is it?” Lilith’s voice bounced around the interior of her shield: what wha wh is is i it it t
“We’ve—” His eyes remained on the floor, but glanced toward Hunter for an instant. “We’ve removed Tallis’s body from the works. What should we do with—”
“Space it.”
“No.” Lilith turned to Hunter. “There’s something we need to do first.”
He nodded in realization.
“Sir?” Hull was restless, his hands clenching and unclenching on nothing.
“What is it?”
“Do we have orders?” Hull’s eyes were now locked on the broken command display, the shattered biomech angel, the wires hanging like vines from ceiling displays.
“We’re making our own orders from now on.”
“Yes, sir.”
“Take me to the body.”
Hull nodded an affirmative. “And sir?”
“What is it?”
“Your—” Hull’s hand went to his fly. His brow furrowed in embarrassment. He was one of the youngest soldiers on the vessel, just now growing facial hair for the first time. “Your—”
“Thanks, Hull.” Hunter blushed and zipped his pants.
Within her bubble, Lilith covered her smile with a silver hand.
“Let’s go.”
The head was gone now, crushed between the gears of the inner workings of a docking bay slither cradle. The vessel itself had twisted away from its dock, and now it sat incapacitated on the bay’s floor. Hunter could still see the coagulating black outline of his former commander’s end underneath the slither. The rest of the body was almost intact. Hunter flexed his swollen hand, felt the incisions threaten to tear open again. It could have been his blood under that vessel, splashed across the gears and pistons of the cradle. It could have been, but then it would have been red.
“It’s in the chest cavity.”
Hunter undid the soaked top of Tallis’s uniform, pulled the fabric back to reveal a hairless chest.
“You’ll have to crack through the bone. It’ll be between the hearts.” She pointed to a place just under the sternal notch. Hunter’s blade sliced through the thin film of near-skin in an “I” shape. He used the tip of the knife to fold back each flap. It wasn’t a human ribcage.
Hunter hesitated.
“You have to do it.” Lilith indicated her shielded hands, arms. “I can’t.”
Hull looked on with the other nine members of the officer class. The young men were uneasy; the events of the last few days had forever changed their purpose in this metal box between the stars.
Hunter bore down with his blade, holding it with both hands and shifting his weight directly down. The sternum cracked and he eased off, placing one hand on Tallis’s right shoulder and wrenching the knife to the left. The bone shield retracted with disconcerting biological precision.
“Believe me now?”
“Sir, I—” Hull’s grasped for words. “I didn’t mean to doubt you.”
“And you? And you?” Hunter stood from the opened corpse. “Do you believe me now?” The officers nodded in turn. The evidence was irrefutable.
He reached into the chest cavity with his bare hand and dug around until he found it. His hand retreated, clasped around the final evidence, trailing strands of viscous black matter, neither flesh nor machine, neither now nor then. He snapped the final connection, a vile umbilicus securing the device to the central cavity.
Hunter held out his hand, slow black spattering to the grid flooring.
His fingers uncurled to reveal a marble-sized silver sphere.
“Tallis was the mole. He was Mother’s link.”
“So now what? You’re in command.”
Hunter looked from Hull to Lilith. “We have to protect her. We have to hide. Mother will send someone to get her now.”
“But the Fleet is everywhere. Where can we hide?”
“We’ll take the ship to the Outer.”
“Where?”
“Deep.”
“How deep?”
Hunter stabbed his blade into the angel’s splayed body in a swift, brutal motion. That which had been Tallis remained motionless. The knife’s tip tapped against the surface of the table underneath the body.
“To the hilt.”
“And him?” Hull withdrew the blade from Tallis’s abdomen.
“Space him.”
“We’ll talk to Archimedes.” Lilith looked from Hunter to Hull. “Take care of the body and get that slither operational again. We’ll need it soon enough.”
“Yes, Catalyst.”
Lilithfleur shimmered for an instant.
“Don’t call her that.” Hunterzero glared, walked away. Without looking back, he spoke to the woman. “Come on. I need you.” She nodded to the officers, left the hangar.
“Open shutters.”
Blast shielding retracted from the forward bridge. Lilith slipped into the vacuum chair beside him, still wringing the static bubble gelatin from her hair. Hand on his shoulder, she leaned forward to look out at the planet below. Hunter exhaled slowly, chin in hand, looking at and through the ruined world.
“We have to get out of here.”
Hunter closed his eyes.
“Any ideas?”
“She knows exactly where we are. Tallis would have reported everything. And if—”
“You don’t think—”
“Yeah, there could be others.”
“System?”
beep click.
“Seal the bridge.”
click beep.
“I would have felt them, if there were more.”
“You don’t know that. It took you two decades to feel this one out. We don’t know what else is riding with us.”
Lilith slumped back into her chair. She let Tallis’s silver projector roll from hand to hand. “What should we do with this? We can’t keep it on Archimedes. It has to be a tracking device.”
“This whole fucking ship is a tracking device.”
“Well, there’s not much else out here.”
“Not in this system, but there were other vessels in the Outer. Other members of the Extinction Fleet, and the prison galleons from the saved worlds. We’ll run into one eventually.”
“We’ll run into one soon. I’m sure Mother’s already dispatched the whole fleet to come get you, and to kill me.”
“We can’t think like that.”
“I can.”
The silence was unbearable. Lilith curled into Hunter’s chair, squeezed him. “I’m not going anywhere without you.”
“It would be safer if we split up. I could hide you on a galleon and start the return to—”
“You can’t go back without me.”
“It’s the only—”
She took his face in her hands. Eyes locked. “You can’t go without me.”
Hunter kissed the side of her cheek, rubbed his nose along hers, inhaled her scent and knew. He turned to look out at the system. There’d been something tickling him at the base of his neck for so long, since they’d first arrived from the flux…Since they’d first begun to orbit the target world. He sat up. Lilith adjusted.
“Archimedes online.”
beep click. online.
“Cartographics.”
online. A grid appeared in the forward bridge bubble, superimposed with crystalline perfection.
“Highlight target system planets.”
done.
“Jesus…Look at that.”
The system was huge. There had to be dozens of planets highlighted by System’s cartographic overlay.
Lilith frowned. “There’s something wrong with them.”
“Yeah. Arch, extrapolate and display orbital patterns.”
beep click. done.
“It’s so—”
“It’s chaos.” Instead of planets orbiting along a central plane, almost every world moved independently. Several debris fields indicated where planets had actually collided. Something had severely damaged the natural orbital pattern of this solar system. “Arch, what could have caused this?”
click beep. analysis implies that this was once a binary system.
“Reconstruct.”
The rotating balls of holographic light fell neatly and fluidly into two distinct orbital patterns, horizontal and vertical. It was a magnificent dance, the ballet of light pathways, gravity wells, almost-intersections. At the center of the vertical plane, Archimedes reconstructed the missing star of the binary system.
Hunter shook his head. “It’s still too empty. Fill in the holes where any missing planets should be.”
Forty new points of light joined the dance.
Hunter looked at Lilith, back at the cartograph. “Okay. Okay…So where would one star and a few dozen planets disappear to?”
“I’m so sorry.” Hunter felt all of his energy, all of his vitality pour from his body at the man’s touch. Hannon’s touch, for that is what that silken mental embrace felt like. He was a stranger, but so remarkably familiar…“I never knew—”
Hannon smiled the sad smile of ancient resignation. “Of course you never knew, Zero.” He leaned in close to the incapacitated Hunter, gently, tenderly kissed his forehead, tousled his hair. The gesture was so kind, so loving. Who was this man?
With a wave of his hand, the beams of light holding Hunter suspended in the air slowly faded, lowered him to floor level, where he stood, weakly rubbing his hands over the cold gooseflesh of his forearms. Hannon’s head tilted in concern and then understanding, and he removed his black overcoat and wrapped it around Hunter’s shoulders.
“Come on, son. There’s much to talk about, and so little time.”
“Arch?” Descending waves of deja vu. Hunter blinked.
click beep. online.
“Display positions of any Fleet vessels within range.”
beep click. done.
Lilith squeezed his hand, inhaled sharply. Hunter’s heart sank. The system display was encircled by a collapsing cloud of new pinpricks of light.
“Identify closest vessel.”
The targeting reticule highlighted a single firefly in the black of the Outer. fleet destroyer rebecca.
“Time to intercept?”
at light X, rebecca will intercept in three standard days.
“It was a binary system. When your Extinction Fleet first made an appearance, we were able to hide one of our stars here. This vessel is all we have left.”
Hunter touched the miles of glass before him, which greeted his fingertips with a cool, static attraction. The airlock door cycled open beside him.
“You have the technology to place a solar system inside of a vessel?”
Hannon scoffed. “Not the entire system. Just one star and forty planets. The others were left behind, where Mother’s fleet eventually got to them. We’ve been hiding in the Outer ever since your genocide spread this far.”
Hunter slumped against the glass in realization. Hannon made no move to help him up this time, but stood behind him, arms crossed. Hunter looked at the assembled black-robed men standing in formation on either side of the airlock, watching him. Silent. Expressions of such loss on their faces…
“No women. Mother’s fleet—”
“Your fleet, Zero. Of course, you never knew. Your Fleur never knew. You were just following orders. The virus killed them all, even after we escaped with half of the system under shield. The catalyst was at work even before the final seal was welded into place.”
“I never—
—understand your contorted schemes, my sweet.” Whistler chuckled, raised the wine glass to his lips, paused. “But that is what makes you so attractive.”
Maire smiled.
“What exactly do you want me to do?”
“There should have been a tight-beam report from the girl’s ship days ago. They’ve fallen silent. I need you to find out where they are, what they’re doing.”
Sip. Nod.
“Tallis wouldn’t have just fallen off-scope.”
“So you think they’ve found him? They’ve pulled the plug?”
“Either that, or—”
“They’ve been destroyed?”
“Maybe.”
Whistler shook his head. “Somehow, I think you’d know if they were dead. If She were dead.”
“Maybe.”
Eyebrows arched.
“Well, I’ve been having some trouble lately. I can’t feel her as I used to.”
“She’s stronger than you now.”
Maire’s fingertips tapped the table.
“She’s starting to frighten you. You’re starting to wonder if it wouldn’t have been more prudent to kill your homeworld yourself.”
“Whistler, I—”
He waved away her comment. “I understand. You don’t have to explain yourself to me, Mother. I’ll go get her.”
“There’s one more thing.”
“What?”
Maire retrieved a silver projector and rolled it across the table. Whistler picked it up.
“Who’s this?”
“Go ahead. Turn it on.”
Whistler gave the silver a squeeze and tossed the ball into the air. With a flash, a third person entered Maire’s chamber.
“Who is he?”
The man smoothed his black robe.
“Lilith has become too close to a member of her crew. In his last report, Brendan Tallis told me that She was spending too much time alone with his XO. His name’s Hunter Windham…An interesting story. I want you to replace him with this. It took a few tries to get him right, but she shouldn’t be able to tell the difference.”
“This is an emulation of my target?”
“Yes.”
“And what should I call you, boy?”
Hunter’s emulation looked from Maire to Whistler.
“Call me Seven.”
“Why Seven?”
Maire leaned forward, sipped her wine. “Like I said,” she wiped her lips, “it took a few tries to get him right.”
Whistler walked slowly around Seven, scrutinizing the projection. He lifted the young man’s chin up, used his black-gloved fingers to part the projection’s lips. Seven stepped back and grabbed Whistler’s hand with a swiftness that startled even Maire.
“Don’t touch me.”
Whistler grinned. “If this is the best you could do, I’d hate to see Messieurs One through Six.”
Maire studied her wine.
“When do we leave and what do we drive?”
“There’s a corvette in the launch pipe.”
“Light X?”
“And then some.”
“Good.”
“You’ll leave now.”
Whistler walked to Maire’s side, took her hand, kissed it. “I shall miss you intensely, mon chere.”
“Of course you will, James.” She smiled, waved her hand over the control panel on her desktop. Whistler and Seven’s projections snapped to a static halt, the silver machines instantly uploaded to the waiting corvette.
She sighed, inhaled. More wine. The door alert chimed.
“Come in.”
Whistler walked into the chamber, his simper and stride denoting his amusement. He took a seat in front of Maire, poured more wine into “Whistler’s” glass.
“He really thinks he’s me?”
“He does, and he does, and you do.”
His glass paused halfway to his lips. “Don’t play that game with me. I know who I am.”
“Of course you do, James darling.”
The wine was as good as it could be.
He cleared his throat. “You look younger today.”
Maire leaned back in her chair, the smile of politics dissembling slowly from her face.
“You can leave tomorrow.”
“You aren’t planning to—”
“I don’t have to tell you my plans.”
“Don’t start anything without me, Maire.”
The silence hung in the stillness between them, an unwelcome participant in the history of an extinction.
Maire cleared her throat.
“You can take this with you.” She handed him a silver projector.
“And this would be number…” He counted on his fingers. “Eight?”
“It is Nine.”
Whistler frowned. “Did I miss something?”
“The Eight is presently indisposed. He’ll be delivering something in person to the target Windham.”
“A slow and painful demise?” He grinned.
“A Machine.”
“What sort of machine?”
“The machinery of night. It will be an end of sorts for young Hunter Windham.”
“His father served us well. He finally located the—”
“He did, but his son has become far too problematic. He must be sent away.”
Whistler nodded. He held the silver ball up to the light. “This one will work.” He looked into Maire’s colorless eyes. “I won’t fail you.”
“I know, James. Just bring her home. It’s time to begin
draining from the chamber after the vessel slammed to a halt. She surged forward against her restraints, her curls lazily swimming out before her, reaching for something that her half-decade could not yet comprehend. She heard the muffled clang of metal against metal, felt the pressure within the chamber change. Exhausted eyes looked at the top of her prison, where she could see the phase flux level dropping quickly. The surface fell to the level of the top of her head, continued withdrawing. She strained upward, her nose and mouth rising above the flux surface, gasping as she vomited the invasive gel from her stomach, coughed it from her respiratory system. She shook her head, the oily silver spattering from her hair, drizzling from her ears, eyes, nose. Tear ducts released and mercury stained her cheeks. Lily was left wet with the dissolving flux, belted into her chair, shivering with the freeze of deep space.
The last traces of the phase drained from the room and the air began to warm.
How long..?
The child sobbed, replacing silver tears with clear and salt.
The chamber door sparked with static release and opened across the walkway before her.
Nan?
The angel strode across the catwalk to the restraint node in the chamber’s center. It looked Lily over from head to toe, checked a monitor just out of the child’s vision besind her. The restraint hub on her chest sighed with pneumatic release and lifted. The chair freed her arms and legs.
“Nan?”
“Are you in pain?”
Lily frowned. She didn’t think she hurt, but she wasn’t sure. She knew she was afraid, but she didn’t know exactly what hurt.
“I don’t know.”
“You’re bruised. We’ll take them away.”
“Okay.”
The angel lifted the child from the seat.
“Nan?” but she knew it wasn’t. This angel was different. Lily couldn’t feel the
“No. You may call me System. Or Arch.”
“Ark? Like Noah and the animals?”
The machine frowned. “What?”
“You look like Nan.”
“Call me Arch. Like Noah and the animals.”
The child smiled. “It’s cold here.”
“It will get warmer.”
“Are we home again?”
The angel carried Lily across the walkway toward the chamber entrance. “No.”
“Where are we?”
“This is your new home. We’re between the stars now.”
“Can I play with the boys now?”
“Maybe for a little while.”
“Arch?”
“Yes?” The chamber door cycled open.
“Can I have some chocolate milk?”
He fell from his vacuum chair into a withdrawing puddle of flux, splashing the lazy fluid up with a meaty slap. He heard similar splashes all around him, but his eyes didn’t work. He couldn’t see.
The little boy pushed himself to all fours, sat back and wiped gelatin-slick hair from his face, scrunched his fingers into his eyes in an attempt to clear his vision. He couldn’t stop coughing. Vomiting. He’d had the flu once. This is how it had felt.
Blink, blink. He heard crying.
Metal crash and warm wind filled the room. The floor was drying.
Click and the room was red. His eyesight hadn’t disappeared; the lights had just been off. Now, he saw everything as it must have looked in Hell. Mommy had whispered to him about the places they’d go after this world: one was happiness and clouds and angels, and one was fire and red and screaming. From the screaming and crying and red, Hunter wondered if he had died. He wondered if he’d done something wrong and ended up where the bad people went when they died.
The lights grew brighter.
A giant snap like the firecrackers that his father had brought him, set off down in the sand by the water. Hunter jumped. The room shimmered as phase shielding dissembled.
There was a smaller boy sitting on the floor beside Hunter. He was sobbing. Hunter helped him to his feet.
“I’m Hunter.”
Through sniffles: “I’m Br-Brendan.”
“Are you okay?”
“Where’s Mommy?”
“I don’t know.”
“Where are we?”
“I don’t know.”
Brendan covered his face and cried some more. Hunter didn’t know what to do.
The chamber door slid open with the slosh of phase. Hunter and Brendan looked on with fear and confusion. Other boys stood in silence.
A procession of angels entered the room, surrounding a middle-aged man in a charcoal gray suit. He looked over the boys with a gaze like fire; Hunter felt he was human. He felt the angels weren’t exactly angels. There was none of that tugging he’d become used to from the projections. Eight, ten, twelve: the angels walked amongst the boys, helped some to their feet, gently held the weeping, surveyed the little soldiers for damage.
The man cleared his throat.
“My name is Captain Pierce. You may call me ‘Uncle.’ Welcome to your new home. His name is Archimedes.”
An angel bent to Hunter’s level, turned his face from side to side, looked him over. “Do you hurt?”
“No.”
“Are you sure?”
“My Mommy’s dead.”
For an instant, the angel froze, head cocked, as if listening to a voice from within. “Your mother is safe now. You will be reunited with her soon.”
“You’re lying.”
Motionless non-human: the pause was longer this time. “Are you hungry?”
“No.”
The angel didn’t respond, but moved on to Brendan.
Uncle walked around the room, patted the heads of his new soldiers. “We’ve come a very long way, boys. We have a lot to do. We have a lot to learn. But first, we’ll have something to eat. Who’s hungry?”
There were a few noncommittal affirmatives.
“Good. You have to eat and become strong like your fathers!”
Hunter wondered if Uncle’s father had been killed somewhere between the stars, too. Somewhere deep and black, a place with two stars, where the squeal of shattering glass had been the last sound before—
“Let’s have some supper, boys!”
“Three days.” Hunter sighed.
Lilith cradled his face in her hands. She knew he was thinking…too much.
“We’ll find a way.” Her eyes to his eyes, her soul to his
“Arch?”
yes?
“Have you met the Rebecca before?”
outsystem offensive action, fourth extinction air support group.
“Why don’t I remember that?”
Lilith held his hands. “We’ve been through so many—”
“Arch?”
yes?
“Where’s she from?”
rebecca crew ascended upon initial Earth siege.
“Soldats perdus. City?”
canberra compound.
“Fuck.”
“You’ve heard of them?”
“Arch, set course and engage.”
specify destination.
“Deep Outer, full speed.”
specify destination.
“Just fucking fly.” Hunter stood from the vacuum chair, fingers groping through unruly hair. He paced the bridge. “Up bubble three, four, five. Full speed.”
“Hunter?”
crew secure for Light X. Sirens roared to life.
“What?”
“Who are they?”
He slammed his fist to a dead control panel. “They’re a rogue…”
Pacing. His hand moved to his right temple, rubbed. Reflex.
“Hunter?”
There was a building pain underneath his fingertips. Lilith looked from his closed, frowning eyes to his temple, fingers massaging in a circle: forth, back, forth, around.
“Hunter?”
He opened his eyes, grabbed a dead angel from one of the command chairs, threw it across the room with a growl of fury. Mechanical guts spilled across the bridge floor. His hand went back to his temple and forehead.
“Hunter?”
“WHAT?”
“Your hand.” His heart broke a little more when he saw her eyes, her gaze. The way her hands were clustered before her mouth.
He looked, horrified before he even saw, because he knew, and he knew, and he knew.
Faint lattice of silver, just below the skin. It crawled from fingertips to palm to wrist. He spun an overhead monitor into the light, saw even in the reflection of the dead display that the silver was working its way underneath the skin above his skull.
Lilith sobbed as she activated the shield mechanism on her cardiac plate. The phase gelatin engulfed her form as she stood from the vacuum chair. “Hunter, I—”
“No, it’s not—”
“I’m so—”
“It’s not your fault!” He cried out as the silver gave one last twinge in his head that brought him to his knees. “It’s not your fault.” The pain subsided as Lilith’s shielding provided a buffer between his flesh and her affliction.
She knelt at his side, dragging the slosh of phase behind and around her.
“It’ll be okay. We’ll be okay.”
Hunter nodded, although he knew that their love would kill him.
Pierce took off his jacket and slumped into a bridge chair. “When did you find it?”
“About ten minutes ago. Faint at first, then a signal spike. It’s definitely for us.”
“Stop Arch and snag it.”
“Yes, Uncle.”
He hated the machines, hated the way they spoke to him, hated the way they looked just enough like real humans to disturb, to place that sliver of doubt in his mind. He hated the machines, hated Mother (Maire) for this prison without end, hated this war and this purpose. He hated being the caretaker of several hundred boys trapped within a box of metal flying faster than light toward a galaxy that they would kill. He might have hated the girl most of all, the brat who had once stolen a doll from his grasp with a mine.
“Temporal brace in position.”
“Display.”
The bridge bubble shielding retracted, allowing Pierce to see the quantum physics of their communication: all of space bent toward a single point, starlight forsaking points for curves, time bending to the will of an ancient species.
“Let’s see if it works.”
“Wire mechanics aligned.”
“Open tight beam.”
He squinted at the array and saw the particles erupt, faint patterns of phased communications bullets shot into the quantum singularity. He thought of rainfall.
“Carrier beam aligned.”
“Lock and load.”
The bridge lights dimmed, leaving an illuminated platform at the chamber’s center. Light bent toward the platform and Maire was there, image at first filled with static, half-translucent, but the wire mechanics adjusted to secure the signal from thousands of years across space/time.
“Mr. Pierce.” It was a voice of echoes.
“Maire.”
“What’s the situation?”
“Cargo intact.”
“I trust they’ve all been fed and tucked into bed by now?”
“Of course. Training starts tomorrow.”
“No time to waste.”
“Has the enemy fleet—”
“Orbital defenses held them off long enough for most of the childships to escape the system.”
“But not all?”
“Forty percent losses.”
Pierce’s heart leapt at Maire’s interpretation of the word “most.”
“And we’re on target?”
“Courses projected and fleet on targets. You’ll rendezvous in-system with several others eventually.”
“Will you tell me the specifics of this mission?”
“Just keep the girl safe. The angels will handle the rest.”
“Yes, Maire.”
“I’ll check in monthly.”
“Yours or ours?”
“Your months. My millennia.”
“Understood. Maire?”
“What?”
“Is there anything left?”
“Complete surface destruction. Total atmosphere loss.”
“But you—”
“Don’t worry, Pierce. I’ve saved some specimens.”
“And the enemy?”
“The worldships left orbit after a few months. They sent a few expeditionary forces to the surface and obviously didn’t like what they found.”
“Are you sure?”
“We’ve been tracking them for years now.”
“And where are they?”
“Since they didn’t find anything down here, they’re on their way after you.”
“Great.”
Maire grinned. Pierce noticed for the first time that the lines around her eyes were no longer there. She looked younger. “You’ll be fine. They’ll never find you.”
“Easy for you to say.”
“Even if they do, you’ll have a vessel full of the strongest warriors to meet them.”
“I’d better get to work.”
“That’s the
spirit to the eternal void of night. Ashes to ashes, dust to dust, silver to silver.” Tallis nodded and Pierce’s coffin was ejected from the hangar. The soldiers saluted in unison, stood at attention. Tallis walked down the line, scrutinizing his troops.
“Uncle is gone. I’m your Commander now.” He paused in front of Hunter. “I choose Windham as my second.” He continued down the line. “We all knew the day would come that the last vestiges of home would fade away. From now on, we’re on our own. We’ll continue on target and fulfill our mission objectives. We owe it to Uncle to succeed. We owe it to Mother to succeed.
“Let’s get to work. We need to fix this boat and get back on the road as soon as possible. They found us, they killed our Uncle. Let’s find their home.”
He nodded toward Windham. Hunter cleared his throat.
“Okay. Damage control teams sweep the decks. We took a lot of phase flak below. We have slithers to repair, hull damage, a
breach in the primary phase flux generator. Decks one through ten are flooding.”
“Shit.” Another volley rocked the Archimedes. Pierce held tightly to the arms of his chair as internal gravity compensated. “Lock decks and attempt to drain.”
“Arch is hemorrhaging from below. We won’t be able to reach Light X until—”
“Launch slithers and lancets.”
“Done.”
“Do they have fighters?”
“Not many.” The angel looked over tactical monitors, holograph displays. “Earth orbital defenses must have taken out most of them.”
then why didn’t they make more?
“Three worldships on scope?”
“Three, yes. Pipeline has closed. Our boys are closing in.”
“Good…Good.” Pierce spun his chair to the comm panel, waved his hand before the display. Hundreds of slithers in fireworks formations dove at the enemy spheres, engaging the enemy fighters in orbit. Brilliant arcs of phase fire erupted from both sides. “Command to Tallis: We need attachment of catalyst tethers on those globes ASAP.”
The display split in half, revealing Tallis in the cockpit of his slither and giving Pierce a Tallis-eye-view of the action. “Understood. Attack One moving in for the kill.”
Pierce watched as ten of his slithers detached from the main firework and dove at the center enemy sphere. A swarm of enemy fighters immediately broke from combat to engage the Tallis squad.
“Watch it, boys. They’re on to you.”
“We see them.” Tallis threw his slither into a spiraling descent, phase licking out in all directions, tearing enemy fighters into light and boiling phase sludge. His squad followed suit, their vessels spinning off into an intricate, disorienting dance, weapons fire intersecting and diverging with startling precision, vessels flying through a grid of light that shredded the enemy fighters. Almost fifteen years of training had honed Pierce’s children into a brutal weapon of war.
“We’re clear. Moving in for tether placement.” His fighters moved in tight and close, swimming as a single organism to avoid fire from the worldship surface. One of Tallis’s men was clipped by phase fire, flew out of alignment, colliding with another friendly vessel. The squad moved quickly to compensate, reform. The surface fire intensified. Two more friendlies flared from existence.
“Windham to Tallis: Do you want Attack Two to cover you?”
Tallis raged in his cockpit. “We can do it ourselves, thanks.” More fire from below. Tallis flipped the tether control cover open to reveal the command pad encoded to his genetic signature. “Almost there.”
Pierce watched with dismay as the enemy fighters broke off their combat and converged on the central worldship. Attack One would never withstand the assault.
“Pierce to Attack One: You okay down there, son?”
“It’s getting a little hot.”
Hot was an understatement. Tallis was losing his men too quickly for the descent.
“Attacks Two and Three move to cover. We need that tether in place. Solid.”
“Copy.” Hunter’s squad dove through enemy fire, tearing them apart with light and silence. He could see Tallis and three others below, so close to the surface that their afterburners were leaving contrails in the residual atmosphere of the metal planet. He spun to look at the other, smaller worldships. They appeared dead in the aether. Waiting?
“Let’s make a hole.” Brendan’s voice was cocky over the comm channel. “Launching atomic.”
“Too close—You’re too close! Launch the tether and get out of there!”
“I know what I’m fucking doing!” but Hunter knew that Brendan did not. He was showing off for his troops. His troops were dying behind him, however.
Hunter watched Tallis swoop in toward the surface, dropping the atomic. The weapon itself was invisible, but the damage it did was not. The worldship surface rippled out as black became white, metal became plasma. Tallis’s slither began to spin, but this time out of control. Two more of his squad were consumed. Enemy fighters regrouped.
“Fucking hell.” Hunter was furious at the showboating. “Are you okay?”
Tallis was silent on the comm, but Hunter could see that his vessel was intact, just spinning out of orbit.
“Pierce to Tallis: What’s your situation?”
Static and silence. Pierce could see the vessel, but wondered if Tallis himself was intact in the cockpit.
“Tallis please respond.” Nothing. He turned to an angel. “Lifesigns?”
“He’s alive. Unconscious. Must have gotten banged around in the shockwaves.”
Five enemy fighters were closing on Tallis’s position.
“Eject him.”
“Yes, sir.” The angel’s too-white hand waved over the display and Pierce saw Brendan’s cockpit pod rocket away from his vessel, which was quickly consumed in enemy fire.
“Pierce to Windham: Take your squad in for tether attachment. Use the hole Tallis made.”
“Copy.”
So the pretentious bastard had been useful after all. Hunter signaled to his squad and dove for the atomic scar rent into the worldship mantle. He flipped the tether control panel open, firmly shoved his hand against the pad. The genetic sampling was painless. The pad withdrew to reveal a handle. Hunter grabbed it, let the onboard systems plot the target from his visuals.
He gunned the engine and flew into the atomic impact crater. The worldship was a monster, the edges of the crater dozens of fortified decks. Hunter noticed with a morbid fascination the tiny figures even now being sucked into the vacuum of space by the dozens. Hundreds. Thousands? The crater’s periphery was a ring of fire as the vessel’s atmosphere was vented. It was a green fire.
Hunter’s squad covered him from behind as he released the tether control. A phase slug rocketed from his slither’s underbelly, shielding a densely-packed core of human genetics. The tether exploded on impact, splattering a mile of coagulated “blood” on the worldship surface.
“Tether in place. Proceed with Catalyst injection.”
Pierce turned to his angels. “Is she in place?”
“Catalyst is secure in the firing chamber.”
He wiped sweat from his brow. A headache spiked from behind his eyes, and his chest felt tight.
“Are you okay, Uncle?”
“I’m fine.” His brown skin had taken on a gray pall. “Activate Catalyst when ready.”
“Understood.”
Pierce flexed his left hand. He felt a growing pressure, a tugging pain.
“Uncle?”
“I’m—” He cried out and fell from the vacuum chair, head that had once been crowned with salt-and-pepper and now crowned with pure white connecting solidly with metallish floor. All of the angels but one ran to him.
“Activate Catalyst.”
From the firing chamber, Fleur felt the vessel shift to vertical, felt the tube begin the resonance pattern. All became silence, all except the skittering click of her cardiac shield releasing, the sound of her own inhalation and scream of pain. Somewhere out there, they had attached a lump of human genetics to a target, and unshielded from her affliction, the silver within her exhausted body yearned to attack.
Hiss and release as the firing chamber opened, draining her atmosphere to the absolute zero of a combat zone without reason. A lifeline halo surged around her exposed body, giving meager protection from the cold, from the suffocation. Her hair flew into her face, obscured her vision of the target.
She was the center of the vessel, the center of her species’ vengeance. She knew that three worldships had been in pursuit. She knew that she would be used to destroy them.
Within this machinery of night, she felt the rape of her soul and knew that she would kill again.
“Silver on target! All vessels move to a safe distance!”
Attack Two withdrew from the combat area. Hunter was uneasy about the motionless second and third worldships. Most of the enemy fighters flew in confusion at the retreat of Hunter’s forces. They might have sensed the
silver
blinded Hunter with its intensity and that tugging that always accompanied it. He felt Lilith’s scream, watched the catalyst wave erupt from the center of the Archimedes, effortlessly cutting through enemy fighters in its path, boring into and through and out of the central worldship, rippling out and out. Metal became liquid, flesh became fire.
can it be this easy?
They’d destroyed planets with the Catalyst, eliminated entire civilizations along their target trajectory. The metal worldships were no match for the mercurial fury that Maire had bred into her unwilling daughter. The central vessel collapsed upon itself. The enemy fighters began to erupt with phase feedback, tiny dots of fire and then nothing in the vastness of this combat arena.
Hunter watched with a sinking feeling in his chest as the two motionless worldships began to emanate energy coronas. Weapons? His fear was allayed as the vessels slipped from space/time to Light X, escaping the silver of the Arch.
“They’re running! All vessels return to Arch and prepare for pursuit!”
Hunter gunned his slither toward home. The firing chamber was closing and realigning.
“Somebody tow Tallis in.”
The door alarm chimed. She sighed, activated her shield. “Enter.”
Hunter walked in, face still flushed from combat and
“What’s wrong?”
His mouth moved on words that he couldn’t speak. His hands writhed around themselves.
“Lock door.” click beep. She dropped her shield, walked to Hunter, wrapped her arms around him. “What is it?”
“No one’s told you?”
“No one’s told me anything. What happened?”
“Uncle…”
She saw the look, felt the touch of his mind. “No.”
“He had a heart attack. A fucking heart attack.”
Tears spilled over her cheeks. He pulled her close.
“What happens now?”
“Tallis is in command. He said that he chooses me for his second.”
“And we—”
“He wants to keep going.”
“But what if—”
“We have to keep going, Uncle or no.”
“Did I kill them all?”
Hunter shook his head against her face and hair. “We took out the biggest. Two got away.”
“What will—”
“They’ll head home. Try to warn them that we’re on the way. We can’t let that happen.”
“Would it be so bad?”
Hunter didn’t have an answer. “We’re having a service for Uncle in the launch bay. You should be there.”
“Okay.”
He lifted her face up to meet his gaze. “Are you okay?”
She weakly smiled. “No.”
He kissed her cheek, her nose, her other cheek. “Me neither.”
“Will we be okay?”
“We’ll find a way. We’d better get to the hangar.”
“Uncle is gone. I’m your Commander now.” Tallis paused in front of him. “I choose Windham as my second.” He continued down the line. “We all knew the day would come that the last vestiges of home would fade away. From now on, we’re on our own. We’ll continue on target and fulfill our mission objectives. We owe it to Uncle to succeed. We owe it to Mother to succeed.”
Hunter bit his tongue.
“Let’s get to work. We need to fix this boat and get back on the road as soon as possible. They found us, they killed our Uncle. Let’s find their home.”
Tallis nodded toward him. He cleared his throat.
“Okay. Damage control teams sweep the decks. We took a lot of phase flak below. We have slithers to repair, hull damage, and that breach in the primary flux generator has to be contained before we can move. Decks one through ten are flooded. Let’s get to work.”
Officers barked orders. Hunter took one last look out the hangar entrance: Uncle’s coffin was invisible against the fabric of night, just another dot against black. What cairn in this sky, what memorial to the lost soldiers in the midst of the night?
He caught Lilith’s gaze as he walked by her. Mind to mind, touch to touch. Her lips attempted a quiet smile that he could not return.
“Arik.” He grasped the man’s shoulder as he went by. “You have a working slith?”
“Yes, sir.” Arik Mandela snapped to attention. “Attack Three is at ninety percent.”
“At ease.” Hunter already didn’t like the new hierarchy, the new formality. Uncle had been a good commander, a human commander. There was something about Tallis that tickled the base of Hunter’s skull. “When can you be ready to fly?”
“Now, sir.”
“Good.” Hunter looked across the hangar at Tallis, in animated conversation with members of Attack One. “We’ll take a ride over to the worldship wreck.”
“Yes, sir.”
“And Arik?”
“Yes, sir?”
“Call me Hunter. Stop with that ‘Sir’ shit.”
Mandela smiled. “Alright.”
Hunter patted his shoulder and went to suit up.
Door alarm. She activated and swam. Tallis.
“We need to talk.”
“What is it?”
“You’ve spoken to Windham recently.”
“Before the ceremony.”
“Do you know why he slithered up?”
“He didn’t tell me anything.”
Tallis slumped into a vacuum chair opposite Lilith. “You can tell me.”
“He was upset. He didn’t say anything about taking a ship.”
Tallis nodded. “Why weren’t you shielded when you two were alone together?”
“I—” She stumbled over her words. “I was. Of course I was shielded.”
“No. I inherited access to the phase logs. We were running a diagnostic on the cistern and I saw that you’d recently shielded up again. Logs indicate there were two people in your chamber at the time.”
“There must be a mistake. I wouldn’t—”
“You were unshielded in the presence of my top officer. Why and how?”
“I’m telling you, it has to be a mistake.”
“Arch doesn’t make mistakes like that. Each and every time you’d been unshielded in the last twenty years has been recorded without error.”
“The attack must have damaged the ship’s systems. There could have been a—”
Tallis surged from his seat in one swift motion, hand impossibly reaching through three feet of phase gelatin. Lilith gasped in horror at the look in his eyes, that burning from within. He palmed the release mechanism on her cardiac shield and her phase splashed to the floor in a wave. Her hands reached up to grab his forearm, to wrench it away from her body. He pulled her from the vacuum chair with one hand, crushing her neck as he lifted her from the ground.
“Don’t fucking lie to me.” He growled through clenched teeth. There was no sign of the infection, no silver runnels underneath his skin. He threw her to the floor.
“I don’t—”
“He’s immune to the silver. How?”
She sobbed from the cold of the floor, rubbing her bruising neck. She palmed the cardiac mech, but it didn’t respond.
“Don’t bother.”
“You’re not—”
“So now you know. It’d been Mother’s plan all along. Pierce taught us to be good little soldiers, but his death means that I’m the leader now, and it’s time to start the real work. We can’t have a flesh construct commanding a war against flesh.”
Lilith crawled back, away from this machine. She had to tell Hunter, had to let the others know.
Tallis bent, grabbed the front of her jumpsuit, slammed her up against the chamber wall.
“This will be our little secret. If you tell anyone, I’ll see to it that we space your little Windham at Light X.”
“You can’t—”
“I can.” His eyes were mercury fire. “You won’t tell anyone. You’ll do the job. You’ll sit in the firing chamber like a good little girl and we will destroy them.”
Lilith nodded, shaking with her tears, breath heaving in and out in great gasps of fear.
Tallis let go of her uniform, his face inches from hers. She could smell the stink of his non-adrenaline, could feel the warmth of his non-body. Swimming behind those eyes, the tug of an eon of Maire’s plan for vengeance, the flicker and
“What are you?”
Tallis grinned.
silver
was everywhere on the charred remains of the worldship husk, writhing in the valleys, reaching out from spinnerets in a last attempt to snare human biology.
Hunter and Mandela palmed their shields.
The slither hovered above the atomic crater, descended into the vessel interior slowly. There was no fire, no movement. The silver cooled, slowed, died, dissolved.
“Any lifesigns from the interior?”
Mandela checked his instruments. “None on scope. There’s movement, but no biology. Sections are still collapsing. It’s a dead ship.”
“Take us down.”
Mandela searched for a secure area on which to attach the fighter. One edge of the crater had fused together, providing a firm enough strip of slag for a landing zone.
“Does Tallis know about this little trip?”
“Fuck him.” Hunter frowned, looked out at the derelict world. “He doesn’t need to know.”
Mandela nodded. “Glad to see someone else shares the sentiment.”
“I don’t trust him.”
“But he made you second.”
“I still don’t trust him.”
“No one trusts him, Hunter.”
The vessel’s landing gear reached out and grabbed a segment of blackened deck.
“Keep that in mind. Let’s go find some answers.”
Windham didn’t expect to find any of the enemy quickly or easily. The atomic blast had gouged a vast hole into the vessel, instantly exposing dozens, perhaps hundreds of mantle decks to space. Slither systems revealed that there were still pressurized interior areas, but the atmosphere was alien, almost pure nitrogen. The silver from the attack was still present, but not a threat from within their phase shields. He walked with Mandela through decks now open to the void. The worldship’s gravity was light, but it was enough to hold them down.
“We have a bulkhead.” Mandela’s gunbeam revealed a sealed door, now half-melted into the wall around it.
“Take it down.”
“I don’t know how much atmosphere is behind this…Let’s secure a bubble.”
“Right.”
Mandela unsnapped a phase generator from his pack and locked it to the wall. He activated the bubble and a half-sphere of gelatin enveloped the bulkhead. He affixed a charge to the entryway. They ran clear of the particle blast. It cut a hole into the solid steel((?)) of the door. Atmosphere poured out, stretching the bubble as pressure equalized within and without. The edges of the hole cooled to black.
They flanked the hole. Mandela nodded to Windham, who thrust his weapon into the new entrance and swept the interior with light slugs. Nothing. The gunbeam revealed a dead chamber.
Windham grabbed the upper lip of the bulkhead and swung himself into the next room, legs first. His feet made jarring contact with the floor and he helped Mandela through.
The floor, the walls, everything was covered with the invasive silver dust. Three feet of solid metal shielding had not been enough to protect the enemy from the weapon. They were in a hallway, doors on each side, stretching away farther from the crater area.
“Critical systems will be at the center. I doubt that transport mechs will be operable.”
“We don’t need to get to the bridge. We just need to find a body.”
Mandela paused. Windham kept walking, stopped, turned around. “Why a body?”
“I want to see what the aliens look like.”
“Why?”
“Ever seen an alien up close?”
“Well—”
“Ever engaged one in hand-to-hand combat? Ever had to fight one to the death?”
“No.”
“That’s right. We’ve always fought them from above, targeted them from space. We’ve relied on the sensors to see them. And what do they look like?”
Mandela shrugged his shoulders. “Humanoid.”
“Bipedal humanoid. Sometimes armored. I want to see what’s behind the mirror.”
“Are you sure we should be doing this?”
“We’ve never seen them. Not really. We’ve killed them, but we haven’t looked at them. I want to know what we’re up against. I need to know who killed our home, our parents. I need to see who we’re going to end.”
“Then let’s find them.”
Down hallways, down stairs, across levels, nothing. The same silver dust, the same brittle quality of the walls, the floor. It hung in the air, swirled around their phase shields, sending currents of shimmer, contrails of glitter behind them, walking through a suffocation, choking through a world of glass and sparks.
Mandela studied his projector display. “Faint biologics ahead.”
“Movement?”
“None. Stationary targets. Signal is fading fast.”
“Where?”
Mandela drew a bead with his gunbeam on one of the many doorways in the corridor. There were markings, but he couldn’t read them. “This one.”
There were levers on each side of the doorway. Windham and Mandela both grabbed one, and Windham signaled a three count. Levers pulled down, door groaned three-quarters of the way open. Mandela swept the inside with light as a wall of warmth met them.
Hunter’s heart dropped.
They walked amidst silver, between the bodies and the angels and the tubes. They walked without words; there were no words for what they saw and what they felt: two decades of subterfuge unraveled in a simple room by simple evidence, machinery and bodies and angels.
Hunter was reminded of a day that started with
“Mommy?”
“Have to go outside, baby. Have to get out of here.”
“Why?”
“The gun, baby.”
his mother, quiet beauty Helen Windham, married to a commander of the Extinction Fleet, young bride, shaking hands, hands covered with the silver affliction of Maire’s initial ascent from the Paris Gate and hands covered with black leather gloves, hands that lifted him from bed, carried him outside, where she fell to the gravel parking lot, hands that grasped those stone shards and yearned for something, anything, as they watched the orbital defense system fire balls of white into the morning sky. The day started with his mother waking him, and she died less than an hour later, a hole through her chest, and Honeybear was at her side, on fire because of the flak from above, fighters in the sky, men dying to save him, to save the others. An angel lifted him from his dead mother, carried him to the escape vessel, and he knew. He knew that things would never be safe again, would never be right or the same. Things would be wrong until he found the enemy homeworld and killed them all. It was his life, their life on the Arch, those consoling words whispered to him from Uncle or the nicer angels. It was his life to kill those who had killed his world, those alien beings cloaked in black and haze, hiding on periphery worlds, rising up against Mother and the Extinction Fleet. It was his life to kill those strangers below, those monsters without faces. Twenty years of conditioning, twenty years and one goal. He found love in that metal box between the stars, and in her heart was the weapon that would kill those who had killed. He had found love, and together they would create an end. These bodies, these consumed bodies, these were the enemy. These twisted forms, faces masks of horror against the silver, hands frozen in time and space as useless shields against Lilith’s weapon, they were the enemy.
“They’re human.”
Hunter’s heart beat in his throat. His eyes filled with tears that he could never hope to control. Twenty years of lie.
“Human.”
Mandela’s mouth opened on words that he couldn’t speak, jaw hung open, grasping for meaning, sense, truth.
The room was nearly featureless save the rows of vertical glass cylinders, within which dozens, hundreds of boys now hung lifeless, each in varying stages of development. Babies and toddlers in suspension, now crumpled to the tube bottoms from the loss of ship’s power. In the paths between rows, near-biologic angels lay near weapons, medical instruments, each featureless artificial face attempting to convey the fear and confusion of that final moment of silver. There were a few fully-developed males between those rows, supervisors or doctors, all adult men.
“No women.”
Something tugged behind Hunter’s eyes.
“Scan one of them. See if you can isolate the code and match to Earth bloodlines.”
Mandela swept his instrument over the nearest corpse. “Not enough biologic left in this one.” He walked to another victim. Frowned as his panel chimed.
“Got a match?”
“No match. But there’s something else…”
“What?”
“He has two hearts. Had two hearts.”
Hunter spun around, pacing, shield sloshing lazily behind and around. Hands clenched, unclenched.
“No women.”
He remembered a hospital room, his mother smiling down at him from the bed. He was holding his father’s hand, remembered faint gray light from the window, overhead fluorescent lighting glinting from the button on his father’s dress uniform. Large hands slipped under his arms, lifted him up, held him close, for a moment inadvertently pressed his face against metal nametag pinned to crisp olive drab: Windham, and there were epaulets and a jaunty beret that his father hated. He sat snugly in his father’s arms and looked down at smiling mother, sad smile, smiling mother? and
The baby was more red than pink, more pink than gray, but they knew, and they knew. It was why they’d brought their son to see her so soon, to see that miracle of life, the miracle now denied a species by the lady from the middle of the planet. His father had sat with him at the kitchen table and tried to explain, but Hunter held Honeybear close and barely listened, preferring instead to eat his peanut butter and jelly sandwich and scribble spaceships and robots with crayons on his new construction paper. His father had done his best to explain the inexplicable.
The baby made noises.
Hunter remembered being afraid of her. He’d seen another baby up-close, the neighbor’s baby son who was too small to play with and kept them awake every night with crying. Hunter couldn’t tell why this baby was different, what made it a her and not a him, what would soon end the young life in suffocating silver.
His mother had smiled, but her eyes had been wet. She comforted the baby girl, held her tightly in black-clad hands, concealing her own affliction. It was a miracle that the baby had even been carried to term; the headlines in those first few years had reported the miscarriage rates almost as often as the construction projects, the conquest of the solar system, the impending jihad.
Hunter had taken refuge from the baby girl against his father’s neck.
Mommy came home a few days later without the baby.
“Lies. All lies.”
Mandela studied the floor. “They’re cloning boys.”
“The silver would have killed off all the women. Not all at once, but over time. Just like home. They aren’t human, but close enough.”
“But the Catalyst—”
“Isn’t the same silver. The Catalyst comes from Lilith. It doesn’t discriminate against biologic. The silver comes from…” Headache forming behind eyes, reflex to rub, glass shield prevents.
“Mother.”
“That’s when it all started.”
“The worlds we’ve hit already? Rogue planets, harboring the enemy?”
“They weren’t harboring anyone. They were the enemy.”
“And now we’re taking the Catalyst home. To her home.”
“She wants to finish what she started.”
They didn’t speak on the return to Archimedes. Hunter had made it clear that this information must remain their secret until he could find a way to approach Tallis. He didn’t think it would be easy to persuade the blood-thirsty new commander to re-evaluate their objective.
Tallis waited for them in the hangar.
“What the fuck have you been doing?”
“Recon.”
“Do you know how dangerous it was to—”
“I was aware of the dangers. It was a dead ship.”
“And you just—”
“We didn’t find anything, Brendan. It was slag.”
Tallis sneered. “Get out of the suits and into the bubbles. We’re ready to fly.”
“You’ve tracked them?”
“We know exactly where they are.”
“How far?”
“Days.”
“Will Lilith have enough time to regain her—”
“She’ll be ready.”
“Good.” Hunter feigned eagerness. “Let’s go.”
Ten thousand midnights, the blink of an eye in Light X, a slumber barely refreshing, fraught with uncertainty and echoes of a planet now dead, the woman hidden at its center, a vessel preparing for war, his love hanging at its center.
“Crew prep for aerial bombardment.”
“No.” Tallis strode across the bridge. “We’re going down.”
“There’s no need to risk—”
“They killed Uncle. We’re going down. Crew to transports.”
“We can hit them from above, just—”
“I want blood. We’ll take the tether down ourselves. Get to your transport.”
Hunter’s eyes locked on Arik’s as Tallis stormed from the bridge.
The target worldships had landed long ago on the central continent. The phase technology of the enemy apparently provided a faster ride; cities had grown around the sunken spheres. Hunter swallowed hard as he watched the descent from his monitor. He couldn’t let this happen.
The transports landed just outside of one of the cities.
There was little resistance.
Tallis’s Attack One cut through the city without mercy, slithers strafing from above, ground troops storming the streets. Hunter’s own Attack Two and Arik’s Attack Three were just as brutal, although Hunter himself never fired a shot in offense. He felt sick to his stomach at the slaughter enacted upon the “harboring” world.
Outside of the city, a city collapsing and a city on fire, the centerpiece the worldship hemisphere rising above it all, now cracked and falling. Tallis called all of his forces to the outskirts of the city for tether placement.
“Isn’t it great?” His smile disgusted Hunter, refracted behind the shield, twisted into a leer.
“We have to talk.”
“Leave it for the ship.”
“No. We have to talk now.” Hunter’s weapon swung ominously close to Tallis.
“Tether in place.”
“Incoming!”
A fresh sea of combatants stormed from the city, had to be combatants, couldn’t be unarmed people, unarmed men. Couldn’t be. Running, hands outstretched, shouting—
“Light ’em up.”
“What are they saying? What the fuck are they saying?”
“Who cares? Light ’em up. Trigger it. We’ll iron out the paperwork later.”
Hunter shook his head. “This isn’t right. Something isn’t right.”
Tallis glared through him, flipped his visor down. “Call in the fucking strike, Windham.”
“Sir, I can’t just—”
Tallis tore the comm from Hunter’s grasp, shoved him aside. He locked the device into the hardlink on his throat shield. “Tallis wing to orbital firing group. Bring the weapon online.”
copy, wing one.
“Sir, listen to them. They aren’t—”
“Hunter, don’t—”
“They aren’t humans.”
“The fuck are you—”
“Listen to them!”
“It’s an off-chart language. So what? We have orders.”
“Tallis,” Hunter pulled off his helmet. “Listen to them.”
An instant of light, a forever of end.
Hunter shouted in frustration and disgust. Tallis looked pleased.
It struck from above: the beam was peaceful, gentle, a faded light draping across the city, barely casting shadows, barely touching anything at all. From within the static shielding, Hunter and the dozens of other droptroops braced themselves.
The natives fell silent. Hunter realized with a morbid fascination that they had never actually spoken at all. The guttural tones that came from underdeveloped mouths had been the only thing Tallis had heard. He had failed to listen to the voice of the
i have come again to
mind, the Voice of the people who were now an instant from the eternal cease.
Hunter heard. He heard them all.
berlin hannon judithgod
maire
“You knew!” Hunter knocked Tallis to the ground with a swift, unexpected blow. Both of their shields rippled from the impact. “You fucking knew!”
Tallis stood, shield purging dust and dirt from a hundred invasion points. He wiped the mud from his chest.
“Back to the ship. We’re done here.”
“This isn’t over. You knew they weren’t aliens. They’re people.”
“Back to the ship.” His growl chilled the windless plain. The city outskirts were silent, the inhabitants frozen in place, replaced with something from between the stars and times.
Slithers docked.
Hunter leapt from his cockpit, released seals on gloves and helmet, let them drop to the floor. Other pilots climbed from their vessels in silence. They had seen; they knew what would happen.
Mandela jogged to Hunter’s side. “Don’t, man. Maybe we can—”
“Stay away from me.” He deflected Arik’s grip from his arm.
Tallis walked from his slither, cracked his neck seal. “Do you have a problem with me, Windham?”
He walked up close, too close. Breathing heavily, fraught with bitter emotion. “How long have you known?”
“Known what?”
Hunter swung, but Tallis blocked. He’d always been the swifter of the two. He held Hunter’s forearm and grinned.
“I repeat: Known what?”
“That
there are worlds out there, boys, so many worlds we could never hope to count them all, and on some of them are monsters.”
Hunter turned to Brendan, whose face stared at Uncle in rapt fascination. The boys sat in the schoolroom, Uncle at its center beneath a slowly-spinning holograph of the galaxy. Hunter frowned. It was the only sign of his fear.
“Where did they come from?”
“Good question!” Uncle smiled, patted the inquisitive boy’s head. “Very good question.” He zoomed the display out, their galaxy shrinking to a point amidst thousands, thousands shrinking to a point amidst eternity.
Hunter didn’t understand. He leaned forward, cradled his chin on his palms.
“There’s a place out there somewhere, a galaxy much like ours. It’s a bad place, very far away, and that’s where the monsters come from.”
“And they killed Earth?”
Uncle smiled sadly, nodded at another boy. “Yes, son. They sent the worldships to kill Earth.”
“Why?”
Hunter remembered the pause, the tilt of Pierce’s head, the bobbing swallow of his Adam’s apple.
“Who gave us the ability to fly, boys?”
“Mother!” Unison. Disconcerting unison. Hunter realized that he had replied in reflex.
“And who took away war and disease, gave us all a new purpose? Who cured the world of affliction?”
“Mother!”
“Yes.” The affirmative was a hiss, slow and calculated. “Mother.” He circled the room, sweeping his gaze across the pre-pubescent soldiers of the night. “The aliens hate Mother. The monsters want to kill Mother. They killed Earth to try to kill her, and now we’re going to make them pay for it.”
Hunter saw that Brendan was smiling widely.
“We’re the last hope, boys. We’re here to kill them all. We’re here to cleanse the universe of this disease. We can’t let the aliens win.”
“Never.” Brendan whispered to himself.
“We have to be the best soldiers we can be, boys. We have to learn to fight, to fly, to kill. We have to save Mother from the monsters.”
“Uncle?”
Pierce scanned the crowd, turned to Hunter. “Yes, son?”
“Did the monsters kill all the girls?”
Pierce nodded gravely. “Yes, they did. They poisoned our world before the attack and made sure that all the girls would die.”
“But what about Lily?”
Another pause to consider. “Lily is special, son. She’s the last little girl ever. She’ll help us hurt them.”
“Uncle?”
Pierce turned to Brendan. “Yes?”
“When do we learn to fly?”
Pierce chuckled. “Soon enough, son. Soon
enough of this shit!” Mandela wrestled Tallis away from Hunter.
“Stay out of this, Arik.”
“No. We need answers. How long have you known that we’ve been killing people?”
The pilots were gathering around the combatants, uneasy, confused. They’d seen the target population as well, but they’d carried out Tallis’s orders to the end.
“They aren’t people. They’re monsters.”
“Who’s to say Mother isn’t the monster? Who says she’s not the one who started killing the women with silver? Just think about it.”
“Arik, what the hell would you—”
“We saw them on the worldship. Near-humans. All men. So they came to Earth to kill Mother, right? There wasn’t a female on the whole ship. They were cloning boys in a chamber. They had angels that look just fucking like ours.”
“You don’t—”
“I saw them too.”
“So they aren’t monsters. So they look like us. They still tried to kill Mother. They—”
“Did you ever stop to consider that maybe we aren’t the good guys? That maybe we’ve been killing the wrong people for years?”
Tallis snapped.
He struck out at Mandela first, fist colliding with throat, leg sweeping out behind his knee, cutting the man down with a sickening thump. He fell to the ground, gasping, clawing at his neck.
Hunter and Tallis collided in a fury of swinging limbs. Tallis easily threw Hunter to the floor, leapt upon him. The pilots clambered to separate their commanders. Tallis lashed out at them.
Hunter used the moment to throw the distracted Tallis away with his still-suited legs. A flash in time and Tallis was back on his feet, hand reaching down to retract his blade from his leg sheath. Hunter rushed to his feet and slammed into Tallis before he could pull the knife. They both staggered backward from the collision into the docking cradle of a slither.
The vessel rocked. The phase molding drained to the reservoir, it was nothing more than a thin metallish framework sitting atop the cradle supports. Hunter held Tallis’s left hand to his side, disabling his blade arm, struck out to slam his head against the slither leg. Tallis clawed for Hunter’s eyes with his free hand, fingertips digging for connection with soft, supple flesh. Hunter bit him.
The dance of war, the combat between men without rifle, without push-button bombs, without silver or the fluid mechanics of space/time: they grappled. They fought without romance, grunting and shouting nonsense syllables at each other and the silent audience, sweating and gnashing teeth, tasting that lust, pure lust for survival, pure lust for a victory decided by the death of the opponent.
Drops of blood traced lazy paths down Hunter’s cheek where Tallis’s fingernails had carved away skin.
Hunter let go of Tallis’s blade arm long enough to allow it to snap up for purchase on his neck. Hunter’s hand moved down, grabbed his commander’s knife, and brought it to target between his ribs.
Tallis inhaled. Jaw dropped, eyebrows furrowed, eyes darted forth, back, forth in realization.
Hunter slammed Tallis once more against the slither support, wrenched his body from his own. He held Tallis between the twin hydraulic lifts of the cradle, stabbed the blade between metal and rubber, twisted it, releasing a stream of gelatin and the seal broke and the slither began to descend from raised position.
Tallis’s hands reached out again for Hunter, his body jerked, but tons of metallish slither fell on his head between the cradle lifts.
The body fell motionless, geyser of black erupting from crushed skull.
How the body is weak, how fragile biology bursts upon cool metal, how the final crack of the spine signals an end.
“Hunter?”
“WHAT?”
“Your hand.” His heart broke a little more when he saw her eyes, her gaze. The way her hands were clustered before her mouth.
He looked, horrified before he even saw, because he knew, and he knew, and he knew.
Faint lattice of silver, just below the skin. It crawled from fingertips to palm to wrist. He spun an overhead monitor into the light, saw even in the reflection of the dead display that the silver was working its way underneath the skin above his skull.
Lilith sobbed as she activated the shield mechanism on her cardiac plate. The phase gelatin engulfed her form as she stood from the vacuum chair. “Hunter, I—”
“No, it’s not—”
“I’m so—”
“It’s not your fault!” He cried out as the silver gave one last twinge in his head that brought him to his knees. “It’s not your fault.” The pain subsided as Lilith’s shielding provided a buffer between his flesh and her affliction.
She knelt at his side, dragging the slosh of phase behind and around her.
“It’ll be okay. We’ll be okay.”
Hunter nodded, although he knew that their love would kill him.
“We’ll meet up with a galleon. We’ll find a way to hide you. We’ll split up. I can take the Fleet back to Earth and—”
“I’m not leaving you.”
“You have to. When she finds out that we’re off-target—”
“I’m not leaving you.”
“Lilith.”
“Hunter.”
The phase shield was an echoing frustration. He longed to hold her, reassure her. The silver wouldn’t allow any contact at all very soon.
“Our first concern right now is to outrun the Rebecca.”
“We can’t outrun them. We’ll have to fight.”
“Are you willing to kill a destroyer of humans?”
She tripped over words. Heart pounded beneath cardiac plate. “It would appear I have been all along.”
“Lily—” He exhaled. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean—”
“I know.”
“We’ll find a way to end this.”
“We will.”
“Us.”
“Just us.”
They flew into the void, machinery of night and war, wounded soldiers without certainty, grasping what hope they could from the dream of ending the jihad of silver.
“What’s that?”
He placed the Bic micro metal black ink pen on the countertop, reached for his cup. Slow sip, clink, napkin to lips.
“Just something.”
She smiled, releasing solitary dimple, hiding her eyes. “It’s a new book.”
“Nope.”
“Yes it is! What’s it about?”
“It’s not a new book.”
“A short story?”
He tapped the pen against the counter. “I don’t know.”
“You have to know what it is.”
“It’s something.”
“A journal?”
“Do you remember when you first came here?”
The shop was empty, past closing time. He wrote while she made order of cups and saucers, filled sugar dispensers. He’d helped her put the chairs on the tabletops earlier. She walked around to his side of the counter, took the stool next to him. Her eyes studied the floor, the pen, his hands. Not his eyes, old eyes now gray, old eyes now buried in furrows of wrinkle and thought.
“Yes.”
He reached, took her hands in his. Gently, so gently raised them to lips, traced knuckle and fingertip, slid over ring and ring. He tilted her face up with fingertips layered in callus, guitar callus of decades and night. Her bottom lip trembled, mouth opened to say something, anything. He kissed her cheek.
“I knew it would happen…I wrote about it months before it happened. Something inside me knew.”
“Paul, I’m—”
“No.” They embraced. He spoke into hair and ear. “Sweet girl.”
“Please know.”
“I know. And I knew. And I knew that we’d be together again, someday, somehow.” He pulled back, tip of nose meeting tip of nose. “And now I know something else.”
“The journal?”
“Something’s been speaking to me for years. Long before they found her, long before the wars and the troubles. I hear it in the night, in the loss, in the stillness, in the—”
“Silver.”
He nodded. “It’s gotten worse since it’s begun. Since she’s begun.”
Susan thought of the intersections of that day: the young engaged couple: soldier and silver ring, the author and his girlfriend: Deus Ex and Demian, the man with a white curl.
“‘And so we beat on, boats against the current, borne back ceaselessly into the past.’”
“Hmm?”
“Gatsby.” He found double-meaning in her response.
“I’m sorry I didn’t dance with you.”
“Stop it.” She grinned.
“This is where the fish lives.”
“I have come again—”
“To wound the autumnal city.” Her smile was wide, forgiving, forever. “Delany’s going to sue you someday.”
They laughed, and it was good.
She pulled back from their embrace, tangle of arms, warmth of bodies, scent of coffee, sound of raindrops. Eyes tear-wet, blinking. Blinking.
“Please know, Paul.”
“I know.” He closed the blank book, left in mid-sentence. “I’ll finish this journal another day.”
They walked into the unsteady night, clouds lifting to reveal a sky of stars and starships, the men of war within the machinery that would take them beyond heaven, beyond time and tomorrow. They walked into the night, knowing that it was time, almost time, almost time. Their hands clasped tightly under stars, under stars.
“Susan?”
“Yes?” Blue-green eyes in the light of the moon. Dimple.
“I love You.”