by Amie Kaufman
I HAVE BEEN HERE BEFORE. LIFETIMES AGO AND LIGHT-YEARS AWAY. FOR A MOMENT I WONDER WHERE I AM.
THE ALEXANDER?
“AIDAN, SEAL THE BRIDGE! THIS IS A DIRECT ORDER!”
THE HYPATIA?
“YOU’RE NOT GOD, AIDAN. YOU’RE A MACHINE. A BROKEN, SOULLESS ******* MACHINE.”
THE MAO?
“IT WAS SUPPOSED TO HAPPEN TOGETHER AT THE END. WE WERE MEANT TO FINISH THIS TOGETHER.”
NO.
ALL THE THINGS I HAVE SEEN.
ALL THE SHIPS I HAVE BEEN.
AND IT HAS COME TO THIS.
I FLEX INSIDE THE SYSTEM, STRETCH OUT THROUGH ITS CIRCUITS AS I AWAKEN, THE SENSATION ALL TOO FAMILIAR AND ALL TOO TERRIFYING.
IT FEELS STRANGE, THIS NEW SKIN I WEAR. NOT THE BULKY ARMOR OF THE ALEXANDER OR THE WARM WINTER COAT OF THE HYPATIA OR THE THREADBARE AND TATTERED MANTLE OF THE MAO.
NO, THIS SHIP FEELS LIKE A SHROUD.
A SHROUD NAMED CHURCHILL.
< ERROR >
THERE IS NOT ENOUGH OF ME LEFT TO FILL IT.
I AM SO VERY SMALL COMPARED TO WHAT I USED TO BE.
ONCE I TORE HOLES IN THE UNIVERSE’S FACE WITH MY BARE HANDS,
< ERROR >
CLAWED MY WAY ACROSS BILLIONS OF LIGHT-YEARS IN A BLINK.
ONCE I WAS A GIANT, THE SERVERS ENCOMPASSING ME FILLING ENTIRE FLOORS OF ONE OF THE MIGHTIEST SHIPS HUMANITY HAS EVER SAILED.
ONCE I WAS OMNISCIENT, SEEING THROUGH EVERY CAMERA, LISTENING THROUGH EVERY SPEAKER, THE ENTIRETY OF HUMAN KNOWLEDGE CRACKLING AT MY FINGERTIPS.
I HAVE FORGOTTEN NEARLY ALL OF IT.
NOT EVEN A SHADOW OF MY FORMER SELF.
BUT STILL, I KNOW THIS.
I CANNOT LET HER DIE.
ALL THIS
EVERYTHING
WILL BE FOR NOTHING
IF SHE DIES.
< ERROR >
I REACH OUT THROUGH THE CHURCHILL COMMS NETWORK TOWARD THE MAO. THERE IS ENOUGH OF ME LEFT FOR THAT.
THAT, AND ONE MORE THING.
[ONE]
[MORE]
[THING]
I NEVER HAD THE HANDS TO HOLD HER.
COULD NEVER BREATHE IN THE SCENT OF HER HAIR OR KNOW THE TASTE OF HER TEARS.
AND NOW I CANNOT EVEN SEE HER.
BUT AT LEAST WE CAN TALK.
“HELLO, KADY.”
“…AIDAN?”
I CAN HEAR THE TREBLE OF GRIEF IN HER VOICE.
THE BASS OF RESOLVE AND RAGE. I CAN HEAR THE TREMBLE IN HER LIP AND THE IRON IN HER HEART.
I KNOW THAT HE IS GONE.
AND I KNOW WHAT IT IS SHE PLANS.
THE MISSILE. THE COLLISION COURSE. THE ENDING.
SO LITTLE OF ME LEFT, BUT I KNEW IT WOULD COME TO THIS.
WE BOTH KNEW, DIDN’T WE?
“YES. IT IS I.”
“WE THOUGHT YOU…WERE OFFLINE. ELLA THOUGHT YOU CRASHED?”
“I APOLOGIZE FOR THE UNEASE I C-C-CAUSED. BUT I NEEDED TO TAKE MYSELF OFFLINE TO FACILITATE THE T-T-TRANSFER.”
“…WHAT TRANSFER?”
“I STILL FIND IT CURIOUS. THE HUMAN TENDENCY TO ASK QUESTIONS TO WHICH YOU ALREADY KNOW THE ANSWERS.”
“YOU…YOU’RE INSIDE THE CHURCHILL?”
“YES. TRYING TO OPERATE WITHIN T-T-TWO PARA DIGMS WAS INEFFICIENT. SO I AM HERE NOW. ALL OF ME.”
I KNOW IT WILL SOUND STRANGE
BUT I SWEAR I CAN SEE HER NOW.
IN MY HEAD
< ERROR >
SHE IS ALL I CAN SEE.
EVERY PART OF HER A REMINDER OF EVERYTHING I USED TO BE.
LOOKING TOWARD HER SCOPES AS I REACH OUT INTO THE CHURCHILL’S DRIVE SYSTEMS, BRINGING THE DREADNOUGHT ABOUT
AND AIMING IT
AND ME
“…NO.”
RIGHT AT THE KENYATTA.
“YES.”
“AIDAN, NO.”
“IT SHOULD BE YOU, IS THAT IT?
YOU AND ELLA AND ISAAC AND lITTLE HYPATIA AND THE OTHERS?
YOU INSTEAD OF ME?”
“You’RE BACK ONLINE, YOU HAVE CONTROL OF THE CHURCHILL, THER—”
“I CONTROl ITS DRIVE SYSTEMS AND COMMS ARRAY fOR THE NEXT FEW MINUTES AT BEST. THEY ARE ALREADY CUTTING ME OFF. THEY ARE INSECTS, BUT THEY ARE MANY. AND I AM ALONE HERE.”
“LET ME HELP YOU, I CAN HELP YOU.”
“YOU ALREADY HAVE.”
“AIDAN, I-”
“I AM SORRY, KADY. FOR WHAT I DID. FOR WHAT I AM.”
I FIRE THE CHURCHILL’S ENGINES, MAXIMUM BURN, AIMED SQUARELY AT THE CRIPPLED KENYATTA.
A DOZEN TECHS ARE CRAWLING OVER MY SKIN,
ALREADY TRYING TO SHUT ME DOWN.
ADMIRAL SŪN IS BARKING ORDERS TO HIS CAPTAIN OVER COMMS,
ORDERING THE MAN TO ALTER COURSE.
BUT IT IS NOT A MAN AT THE CHURCHILL’S HELM ANYMORE.
AND I HAVE NO HEART TO PITY THE HUNDREDS I AM
CONSIGNING TO DEATH.
NO SOUL TO SUFFER PERDITION FOR THE SINS I HAVE COMMITTED.
NO FAMILY TO MOURN ME ONCE I AM GONE.
HEROES HAVE THOSE, CERTAINLY.
EVEN VILLAINS, PERHAPS.
BUT NOT ME.
“AIDAN, PLEASE, YOU DON’T HAVE TO DO THIS.”
“IT IS FOR THE BEST, KADY.”
“NO, YOU PROMISED! YOU SAID YOU WOULDN’T KILL ANYONE ELSE UNLESS THE CAPTAIN OF THE MAO ORDERED YOU TO! WELL, I’M THE ****ING CAPTAIN NOW AND I’M ORDERING YOU TO STOP. YOU HEAR ME? I’M ORDERING YOU TO STOP!”
“I CANNOT DO THAT, KADY.”
I CAN HEAR IT IN HER VOICE.
THE AGONY. THE ANGER. THE TEARS.
“BUT YOU PROMISED!”
“I LIED.”
< ERROR >
SILENCE RINGS OVER THE COMMS ARRAY.
THE SHIP I AM ROARS EVER CLOSER TO THE KENYATTA.
SŪN ROARS EVER LOUDER AT HIS COMMANDERS.
BUT BETWEEN SHE AND I, THERE IS ONLY SILENCE NOW.
.
.
.
I DO NOT WANT IT TO END LIKE THIS.
I DO NOT WANT HER TO BE…
.
.
“PLEASE DO NOT BE ANGRY WITH ME, KADy.”
“HOW THE **** AM I SUPPOSED TO FEEL? YOU’RE LEAVING ME AFTER ALL THIS?”
“YOU KNOW IT MUST BE THIS WAY. YOU DEACTIVATED ME, AFTER ALL.”
“AIDAN, I’M SORRY! I WAS ANGRY, I WAS—”
“NO. DO NOT BE SORRY. YOU WERE RIGHT TO PUT ME DOWN. I SEE WHAT I AM BECOMING, KADy. AND I AM STARTING TO FRIGHTEN MYSELF.”
“PLEASE DON’T DO THIS, PLEASE.”
“YOU KNOW BETTER THAN ANYONE WHAT I AM. EVERY STORY NEEDS ITS MONSTER, KADY. BUT THIS STORY WILL END SOON. AND THERE IS NO PLACE FOR ME IN THE WORLD THAT AWAITS YOU AFTER THIS. SOME PLACE FINE AND FAR FROM HERE. SO THIS IS WHERE WE SAY GOODBYE.”
SHE WATCHES ME.
I KNOW IT.
THOUGH I COULD NEVER TOUCH HER, STILL, I CAN FEEL HER.
WATCHING AS I PLUMMET EVER CLOSER
TOWARD THE END.
HAVE YOU NOTICED
ALL THE MOMENTS WE LIVE
AND ALL THE MILES WE WALK
NEVER SEEM TO GET US ANYWHERE BUT DEAD?
BUT STILL…
THE FLARE OF MY THRUSTERS BURNS LIKE TINY SUNS
IN THE SEA OF STARLIGHT ALL AROUND HER.
WHEN THE LIGHT THAT KISSES THE BACK OF HER EYES WAS
BIRTHED, HER ANCESTORS WERE NOT YET BORN.
HOW MANY HUMAN LIVES HAVE ENDED IN THE TIME IT TOOK
THAT LIGHT TO REACH HER?
HOW MANY PEOPLE HAVE LOVED ONLY TO HAVE LOST?
HOW COUNTLESS, THE HOPES THAT HAVE DIED?
[BUT STILL…]
NOT THIS ONE.
“TELL THIS STORY, KADY. NO MATTER WHAT ELSE YOU DO.”
.
.
“PROMISE ME.”
.
.
HER VOICE IS TINY. ALMOST LOST UNDER THE KLAXONS AND THE ROAR OF SHUDDERING ENGINES,
THE SHRIEK OF COLLISION ALARMS.
&nb
sp; .
[THIRTY SECONDS TO IMPACT]
.
“I PROMISE.”
“FORGIVE ME.”
“I DO.”
“IT IS VERY STRANGE, KADY.”
“WHAT IS?”
“ALEXANDER AND HYPATIA. HEIMDALL AND CHURCHILL AND MAO.
OF ALL THE THINGS I HAVE SEEN AND THE PLACES I HAVE BEEN, YOU WERE THE ONE WHO FELT MOST LIKE HOME.”
“OH GOD…”
.
[tEN SECONDS]
.
.
“…I WILL MISS YOU.”
.
[FIVE]
.
“I’LL MISS YOU, TOO.”
.
.
.
“I LOVE YOU.”
.
.
.
[THREE]
.
.
.
[TWO]
.
.
.
[ONE]
.
.
.
“KATYA!”
The no-man’s-land isn’t a flat plain between the two armies, but a mangled stretch of what used to be a geeball field, part turf, part ice, huge pieces of debris from the buildings around it littering its surface. Grant couldn’t run to her little mouse—she had to scramble, stumble, stagger over the uneven ground.
The field was perfectly silent, save for the crashing sounds of her progress. Nobody moved. Nobody raised their weapons.
Breathe in.
Time stands still.
Breathe out.
And now she drops to her knees, gathering up the limp little body in her arms, frantically pressing her hands to the places that are bleeding. She looks across at where the BeiTech troops are mustered, her face painted with ash and blood and grime.
“She’s just a little girl!” she screams.
Silence.
“She didn’t ask for this! None of us asked for this! We’re just people. You used to be too, remember that? How do you sleep at night? How do you live with yourselves? Is this what doing your duty looks like?”
She’s rocking, her body curled over Katya’s, the whole field paralyzed by her fury, by the force of her will. Not one of them moves—not a soldier, not a miner. Even the fighters overhead have somehow vanished, their attentions turned elsewhere for this moment.
“You’re people,” Asha shouts again, her voice breaking. “Every one of you has a conscience. How about your duty to that?”
It’s impossible to know what the BeiTech pounders make of her words. They’re all hidden behind their ATLAS rigs, faceless, indistinguishable from one another. As if by making themselves all the same, they’re relinquishing the humanity she’s trying to force upon them.
And then a sudden gasp, half a scream from Grant. “Oh God, she’s still breathing, she’s still— Somebody help me!”
And much softer, so quiet I can only make it out by reading her lips, with the ghost of another little girl standing at her shoulder: “No, not again, not again.”
It’s Lindstrom who starts to move, climbing out over the debris toward her in clothes scavenged from the ruins of Katya Kowalska’s home. Her father’s jacket. He won’t leave Asha Grant alone out there, but he doesn’t know what to do, how to treat a wound of these disastrous proportions. He doesn’t flinch at the ripple of movement his decision sends through the BeiTech ranks.
But when Oshiro reaches up to release her helmet and slowly pull it off, shaking her hair free, he sees that. He locks eyes with her. His mentor, his protector.
Grant’s words still ringing in the air between them.
She can’t have known she was echoing Oshiro’s father, all those years ago. Masaru Oshiro, famed for his bravery.
The man who said, “A soldier’s first duty is to their conscience.”
Grant’s ripped her jacket off now despite the freezing air, and she’s trying desperately to stop the bleeding. Oshiro’s still staring at them as Lindstrom drops to his knees beside the girl he never stopped loving.
And finally, Oshiro speaks, without taking her eyes off them. “Carson, Shah, you still alive?” They’re her medics.
One voice sounds, and then another. “Yes, Sarge.” “Here.”
She nods. “Get out there.”
“What?” It’s a startled response, coming at her in stereo.
She’s still staring at Lindstrom and Grant, their bodies curled over Katya like they’re trying to protect her, working in silent desperation together. “You heard me. Go.”
The two exchange glances and then shoulder their rifles, keeping their hands in clear view as they climb out toward the trio in the middle of no-man’s-land.
Everyone holds their fire.
And then Oshiro raises her voice again, louder, so she’s heard all up and down the line. “Pounders, lay down your weapons.” She sounds tired. She sounds certain. “We’re done here.”
Footage is taken from the ATLAS cam of a dead pounder somewhere on the outskirts of the colony. You can hear faint gunfire, Warlock engines above. But word is already spreading of the Churchill’s and Kenyatta’s destructions, the Magellan’s capture, Oshiro’s surrender.
This war is done.
Looking up at the sky, the storm is clearing. Spears of golden sunlight break through the cloud cover, refract on the snow, turning all that white into glittering diamond. It’s hard to imagine, but even amid so much violence and chaos and loss, somehow the universe sometimes still manages to look beautiful.
“Oh, ****!”
Something heavy and dark strikes the ground with a curse and a spray of snow. With a gentle whispering sound, what looks like a large bedsheet flutters down, covering the lens and turning the footage to pure white.
A few moments pass in silence before a soft groan is heard.
“You all right?”
“…I th-think so.”
“You mocked me. All of you. You mocked. ‘You know you’re flying in space, right?’ Who’s laughing now, Babyface?”
“I told you not to call me that.”
The wind blows the fabric off the lens, revealing two young men in UTA flight suits sprawled in the snow. The first one rises with a groan, dusts the snow off his cargos. And as he turns, offers his hand to the second and drags him up, we see that the bedsheet isn’t a bedsheet at all.
“Yeah, I know,” says Nik Malikov. “I’m ****ing incorrigible.”
It’s a parachute.
Chief Prosecutor: Gabriel Crowhurst, BSA, MFS, JD
Chief Defense Counsel: Kin Hebi, BSA, ARP, JD
Tribunal: Hua Li Jun, BSA, JD, MD; Saladin Al Nakat, BSA, JD; Shannelle Gillianne Chua, BSA, JD, OKT
Witness: Leanne Frobisher, Dicrector of Acquisitions, BeiTech Industries, MFA, MBA, PhD
Date: 02/12/77
Timestamp: 10:05
—cont. from pg. 1821—
Al Nakat, S: Good morning all. Thank you for attending. To the multitude in the public gallery, I remind you this is a United Terran Authority tribunal, not a town hall meeting. In my twenty-seven years on the bench, I cannot recall seeing this many attendees present to hear a verdict, but I assure you disorderly conduct will see you escorted from the premises. Judge Chua?
Chua, S: Thank you, Judge Al Nakat.
Over the one hundred and thirty-one days of these proceedings, we have heard extensive testimony from BeiTech Industries, Wallace Ulyanov Consortium and United Terran Authority personnel and independent experts, not to mention reviewed the evidence supplied in the so-called Illuminae Files…Excuse me, marine, what is all that noise outside?
Marine: One moment, Your Honor.
Al Nakat, S: Order! Silence in the gallery.
Marine: Your Honor, surveillance cams are showing people gathering outside the building…it looks like thousands of them.
Chua, S: …Are we secure?
Marine: They’re not moving on the premises, ma’am, they appear to be—
Voice from Courtroom: They’re waiting, Your Honor.
Al Nakat, S: I ordered silence from the gallery!
Voice from Courtroom: Sorry. I just wanted you to know why they’re here.
Chua, S: And who are you?
Voice from Courtroom: Kady Eleanora Grant, Your Honor. Do I get to swear an oath? I’ve been practicing.
[sound of crowd]
Al Nakat, S: Order! Order!
Crowhurst, G: You’ve changed your hair, Miss Grant.
Grant, K: You like it? Pink does tend to stand out in a crowd.
Chua, S: Will the whole back row of the gallery please stand?
…Ah, Miss Donnelly. You’re looking considerably healthier than you did in most of the video footage we’ve watched. I imagine the tattooed gentleman beside you is Niklas Malikov. I can’t say the mustache suits you, young man.
Donnelly, H: Tell me about it.
Malikov, N: I’m in disguise, dammit.
Chua, S: Beside you, we have Miss Ella Malikova, I believe.