Authors: Paul Hughes
peu de fleur
a voice and
“If you’ve no more use for me, just end this, Hannah.”
Her jovial smile fell from her face. “Don’t call me that here.”
Reynald grinned. “You will never win this war.”
She struck out again, letting more blood spill from the wound in his neck. “I’ve already won it, human.” Reynald gasped in pain as Maire dug into his flesh with her silver nails. “You were the perfect flux, the perfect medium... You’ve done your part already. You’ve spread the sickness further than you could ever imagine.”
Windham broke from the line of soldiers and ran down the side of the crater, weapon held before him, trained on the angel closest to Reynald. He pulled the trigger, watched the magball tear through the angel’s chest. The image dissembled, the silver projector falling harmlessly to the ground.
Reynald spun around. “No! Windham, don’t—”
Angels were scattering, and more human soldiers descended from the rim of the crater. EM slugs flew into the mass of angels from the soldiers’ weapons, but did very little damage to their numbers. Windham chambered another slug, brought his weapon up to fire.
“Joseph!”
joseph windham
“Don’t do it!”
don’t
Windham squinted and shook off the painful tug of the voice that seemed to come from behind his eyes. He shot from the hip, knowing by instinct and experience that his aim was true, and the angels closest to Reynald would be destroyed.
The slug struck out at the projecteds with that slurping crackle of the EM wave, but it was struck down in mid-air by a field of light projected by the hands of an angel. A flicker in time and it was right there before him, androgynous face only remotely suggesting human origin, eyes not burning with the fury that combat should brand into the eyes of an opponent, but simply staring back with an emptiness that transcended his comprehension. The angel knocked the weapon out of Windham’s grasp, threw him back on to the ground.
don’t
All around the interior of the crater, EM slugs were being knocked down, soldiers were tangling in metallish embrace with angels in hand-to-hand combat. The humans were already outnumbered, and more projecteds were emerging from the exposed entrance to the tunnel. The fighting was fierce, the din of battle a mixture of human screams and piercing snaps of static.
“Reynald?”
Reynald walked over and helped Windham up. The sound of battle had disappeared in just those seconds, and the two men surveyed the scorched expanse of the crater. There were hundreds, thousands of the projecteds standing in silence, the bodies of Reynald’s forces laying at their feet. The angels made no move to harm the two remaining men.
“Shit. Oh shit.” Windham unsheathed the knife from the front of his armored vest.
“Put it down, Joe.” Reynald looked toward the metal entrance of the tunnel at the bottom of the crater…
“Commander, they’re going to—”
“No. They could have killed us already.” The angels were looking at the crater’s bottom as well. “They’re waiting for something.”
“We can’t just—”
“Drop the knife, son.” Windham followed the orders, stood restlessly amidst the thousands of silent angels, completely unarmed. The knife echoed against the rock as it hit the ground. It was the only sound besides the wind.
A humming, an undertone. They could feel it more than hear it, but it was undeniable. The transport vessel arose from within the tunnel sunk into the earth with a cloud of dust and grit. It hovered above the entrance for a moment before humming horizontally toward Reynald and Windham. The angels silently moved out of its path as it passed through the assembly.
A man stood upon the boxy, saucer-ish transport, holding nonchalantly to a guardrail with one hand and smoking a hand-rolled cigarette with the other. He tossed the cigarette overboard as the vessel slowed to a halt. A stairway materialized and descended. He wasted no time in walking down, the folds of his black robe sweeping out behind him.
His hair fluttered in the breeze, an unruly coif of uncertain design and personality. A fine white tangle graced his hairline, adding contrast to a man who was almost entirely composed of dark.
Reynald sensed Windham tense beside him, preparing himself for anything. Reynald himself was more confused than scared at this newcomer from the tunnel in the earth.
He was direct in his trajectory, walking through the last few angels surrounding Reynald and Windham, each of whom looked to the ground as he passed in deference. At last he was there before them, looking at them with a gaze of silver, a gaze of familiarity.
“You are Jean Reynald?”
“Yes.”
“And Joseph Windham?”
“Yeah.”
“Good. My name’s Whistler. Come with me, please.”
It began
to fall apart, I think, the instant that I started to love you, Jean Reynald.”
He smiled, weak, fading. Hung in light, blood now coursing from the open wound in his neck. She looked younger, not older... How was that possible? The first time he had seen her, she had seemed ancient. Now, she was barely middle-aged. Could it be that she was actually feeding on the energy of the planet? A cooling husk of a world, the inhabitants about to face the realities of a sixth extinction engineered by a criminal exile from another galaxy... She was killing them all, growing younger. Dying.
“You never loved me.”
She touched his cheek in that tender way, the caress of the damned, whispered. “Of course I did, old man.”
Weaker and weaker still, lifeblood pouring down chest, torso, legs, winding down to drip on the floor.
“Just kill me, then. Finish it.”
A tender kiss on the cheek, glance in the eyes that turned into something too long to be a glance.
“Thank you, Jean.”
“For what?”
“Jihad.”
Eyes of silver, lines of fire reaching out in savage strokes, an old man feeling pain no more, an ungenesis begun.
Maire licked his blood from her lips as the body was absorbed into silver.
It began.
Hunter sat in his vacuum seat, pulled the metal frame down over his shoulders, slammed it home and heard the click of the lock. The escape vessel was cold, dark, filled with the sound of roaring engines and sniffling children. Boys. Sons with no mothers, no fathers, no future on the planet that was at present being bombarded from above.
“Listen closely, boys.” Angels walked through the main passageway, checking the restraints on each of the precious passengers. “The city has been destroyed. We have to take you to safety in the outer. You’ll be reunited with your families once we’ve reached safety and the invaders have been dealt with.”
It was a lie, of course, but Hunter wondered if he was the only one of the boys who had seen the waves of flak tear apart the remaining adults outside of the Complex. Anything without shielding would never have withstood that attack. And from the rocking and swaying of the vessel in the launch pipe beneath the complex, it would appear that the attack was still in progress.
There were many empty seats in this passage. Hunter wondered how many boys had been killed before they could get to the Complex for evacuation.
“Hold on tight, little soldiers. We’re about to depart.”
Phased fuel engines rocked underneath the vessel. The sound was deafening. Hunter held tightly to the metal frame before him, with memories of the carnival, the merry-go-round that his mother preferred that he ride and the faster amusements that his father had taken him on long ago.
Engines screaming, little boys screaming. The angels dissembled and they were left alone in the torrent of sound.
Hunter tried to remember his father’s face, but he couldn’t. And when he remembered his mother’s face, all he could see was the smoking hole in her chest, the redness of her bloody mouth and the two lines of tears that slid from her eyes.
He held on tighter. He did not cry.
Light stretched. Everything stretched. The vessel phased and tore from the
launch pipe underneath the complex. Lily hung languidly in her restraints. The bubble was at the center of the vessel, surrounded by massive amounts of physical and phase shielding. She sensed the others on board, felt the touch of maybe hundreds, maybe thousands of terrified minds. Boys. That’s what they were. The vessel was filled with children, but she was special. She was in the bubble at the center.
She could see it, somehow, the Complex retracting and the vessel emerging from underneath, tearing through an atmosphere filled with enemy fighters, through an orbit filled with enormous enemy worldships and siege machines, through a solar system that would soon be dead, into the black between systems. She saw it from eyes that were not her own, yet somehow were.
Just a little girl in that innate blackness.
only ever really one story
She saw
fighting
She
fighting starlight
she
you know... you do.
stillness
She knew very little, but she knew beyond a doubt that she loved chocolate milk.
“Hunter?”
the
Nine spun around, his face a mask of horror. He clutched his chest, rapidly dissembling from the EM slug. His mouth opened to form her name, but it was too late. Nine flashed from his illusion in a burst of silver.
the stillness
Zero ran to Fleur, her crumpled form leaking a steadily-growing puddle of red onto the hardpan. “Lilith... Oh no. No. Oh god. Lilith.” The weapon dropped from his hand, clattered to the ground.
She smiled, mouth moving to speak, but there was no time. No life. The slug had passed through Nine and torn through the right side of her chest. Struggle to breathe, struggle to hold on to Hunter, Hunter, not Zero. Not that person at all anymore, or ever again.
“Lilith?” he sobbed, stroked her face, so white now. He didn’t look at the fine mist of crimson on her neck. He pushed the unruly curl back behind her ear, touched her face, the life draining from her skin, the silver crawling just underneath the surface.
the stillness lost
“Let her go.” Maire stood over them, her black robe whipping in the breeze, hair untied and dancing to the song of the wind, hands still bloody. “There’s nothing we can do now.”
Hunter reached out and grabbed the weapon before Maire could stop him, raised the barrel to target, just inches from her forehead. The child didn’t flinch.