Authors: Paul Hughes
“
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—”