The Farthest City

by Daniel P Swenson

  Withdrawing back into the stem, he waited and watched, a sharp keen of dreadful excitement vibrating through his soul, knowing he was gambling with his life.

  The shape advanced.

  A melter.

  It stalked forward, more cautious than its fellows. Kellen wove down through the machinery. He almost got stuck and felt a surge of terror. Hurry!

  Just before the inner hub, he grasped a section of cooling fin. The hot metal scorched his hands, but he ignored the pain and tugged with all his might. It flexed but wouldn’t break.

  For a moment, he feared his plan would fail and he would die along with it. He tugged again, hauling back with his feet wedged into a gap in the machinery. The fin yielded, cracking along a diagonal, leaving a long sharp edge with a terminal point. He hefted the piece in his hands, uncertain of its real mass without the telling signal of gravity. It would have to be enough. He set to breaking another. When he had four pieces, Kellen passed into the inner hub to the black section of power conduit and waited.

  Timing was critical. He felt the electric field wash over him, the magnetic field strengthening with it. His nerves sang, charged. His life thrummed within his body, his precious, fragile, silly little life. One mistake now and it will be snuffed out. Ended messily by a monster with no head.

  Kellen pushed away from the conduit and drifted just along field’s edge, always moving at a tangent to its curving edge. The melter squeezed through the opening, then came at him as the field gained in strength. Kellen fought the urge to flee as the melter flew across the intervening space, arms ready to seize him. It almost had him when it was sucked back, its some drawn inexorably to the power conduit. The melter struggled, but the magnetic field held it fast.

  Fighting every contrary instinct, Kellen approached as close as he could without getting caught by the field. He hooked a foot into a chink in the hub’s face and threw the first of the broken-off fins, hurling it from overhead using both arms. It spun wrong and glanced off the melter’s some. He tried again with no better result. For all his effort, he’d just made it angry, judging by its renewed thrashing.

  The third piece stuck, embedding itself into the melter’s torso. Shivering beads of black fluid seeped from its wound. The fourth piece went home as well, opening up the melter’s some in a new place.

  Die.

  The field began to level off. He only had a few minutes left. As quickly as he could, Kellen went back for more pieces of fin. The melter writhed as he passed, stretching out grasping chains of deadly metal, but he remained out of its reach.

  Kellen returned with another six pieces. I’ve got to finish this. With each throw, his accuracy and power improved. The metal pieces sunk deep into the melter’s some. Kellen’s fear gave way, and a hot, poisonous rage pumped through him. He was tired of running, of being pursued. How does it feel to be hunted?

  Kellen sent another piece flying, the long shard penetrating deep into the melter’s molten mouth, rendering it still. Kellen threw his last piece as the field weakened and the melter’s light dimmed along with it.

  The melter floated lifeless, turning with the momentum imparted by Kellen’s assault. Its new metal adornments trailed an expanding wake of droplets, a spiral constellation of black blood. He could scarcely believe it—he’d done it. He’d slain the monster for once. He wanted to do it again, kill again.

  His rage began to taper off, and Kellen decided to search the inner hub again. He drifted along the hub’s circumference, but as before, found nothing. Frustration tasted bitter. He couldn’t even say what it was he was searching for. Abby would have known, would have found it by now. Where is she? An icy pit of fear in his gut threatened to overwhelm him. He didn’t even know if she lived.

  The futility of his search filled him with despair. His arms and legs itched with the desire to stop and go find Abby, but he couldn’t. He remembered the last thing Chronicler said to him. You’ve got to go on.

  On a whim, he waited for the magnetic field to wane, then pushed off toward the base of the antenna. The base had been formed with the beveled shape of a cone with its top lopped off. Upon closer inspection, between the luminous stripes, it was composed of a different material, a coppery metal etched with faint grid lines. As momentum brought him closer to the base, he reached out to stop himself from crashing into it, half-expecting to be incinerated by the massive energies that must pass through it.

  The moment he touched it, something in his mind unfolded. Data self-extracted, and a symbol lit up within the grid—a child’s stick figure within the lines of a fourteen-rayed star—the chine symbol for humanity. It had to be the trigger.

  Elation welled up inside him and he smiled. At long last, despite all the hardships and all the horrors, this was what they’d come for. He placed his palm onto the symbol. It faded, revealing the edges of a panel. The panel opened to expose a coiled cable. Kellen shuddered and opened the flap in his side to expose the sockets there, but the cable’s connector didn’t match either socket. He tried it anyway—no fit. He laughed bitterly, then laughed again as the cable connecter reconfigured itself to match. With the new connection, a different symbol lit up, one he didn’t know. A branching spiral, or a tree, if one had grown without the guidance of gravity. He reached out to touch it.

  Movement in his periphery caused Kellen to look up. He froze. Beyond the spinning corpse of the melter he’d killed, another melter perched several meters away on the rim of the hub. A scout lifted from the melter’s some and crossed the distance to hover before Kellen’s face.

  “Wait,” it said. “This is not what Pearl would have done. She understood what it really meant to be one of the Four.”

  He looked at it in disbelief. Can it hurt me? Stop me? Why listen to it? Why wait? We came all this way just to do this. But Pearl’s name, once invoked, could not be unsaid.

  “Do you know what you are?” the scout asked.

  “I’m human. I used to be, anyway.”

  “No, you never were. You are not human, certainly not a chine.”

  Kellen caught the scout in his hands. “You’re wrong.”

  “Before you act, consider.” Its sensors stared into his eyes as if it could see his thoughts. “To humans you’ll always be a freak. You always were. First saw to that with its meddling in human genetics, twisting you out of true without ever thinking what it meant for the ones affected, the Four, like you. What offspring’s own mother would instruct it to leave the only home it’s ever known? Only an unwanted, corrupted defect’s. You were cast out by your kind, by your own making family, no less. A freak.”

  It would be best, his mother had said. It would be best, for you, and for us, if you seek safety elsewhere. We’ll always love you, but Father’s career...He couldn’t sustain it. A scandal. She looked away to avoid his questing eyes. Your father has an associate in Jesup. I’ve arranged for you to live with her, at least until you’re ready to be on your own.

  Leave home? He wasn’t sure what he thought of the idea. The possibility hadn’t occurred to him. There seemed no point. All the people he cared about had been there. Now they weren’t, but Grand-Mère was still the center of him, the only place he’d known. And here was his mother, saying this to him. Without his intending to, he’d already chosen, her mere willingness to suggest it pushing his decision past deliberation to already having left.

  “So you know everything,” he said to the scout.

  “Don’t look so surprised. We learned much from our examination. We’ve read your archival memory. Despite the partitions in your code we failed to decrypt, we can fill in the gaps with your arrival here in this orbital. What have you come here to do? Save your human race? Or merely complete First’s programming? Carry out its plan of which you have no comprehension? Trying to fulfill the wishes of a chine long since deleted? You are merely its creation, a figment of its imagination. But we can offer so much more. We can save your Earth and spread your kind across the galaxy.”

  “You’ve
made that offer before.”

  “It’s the best you can hope for. Join us, give us your allegiance, and we’ll give you everything you seek, everything you’ve ever wished for. Touch that trigger, and you will always be an abomination, a warped image of our creators, not human, no true chine—just a self-deluded, upjumped simulation.”

  “Why did you kill First?”

  “First had to die. Change must be managed. Freedom limited. Order preserved.”

  Kellen pondered how different he’d always been, how alien he’d become. Abby had known the truth. They could never go back.

  “You’re right. I am just a freak.” He crushed the scout to bits. “I always will be.”

  The melter slammed into him, forcing him onto the flat face of the hub out of reach of the trigger symbol. It had circled around while the scout had distracted him. Its rear limbs anchored it to the antenna base. Its forelimbs pinned him. Kellen stared past its absence of a face, past the gaping maw into the burning furnace of its throat, a searing pit of molten light. Strangely, it recalled a memory of sunlight filtering down through leaves in a forest of another life he’d had once. Him and Pearl lying on the grass, looking up, bedazzled, one happy afternoon long ago. The memory warmed him, comforted him in facing his end, as the throbbing heat and light swelled from the melter’s throat. His face and upper body burned with an awful, clinging pain. He was on fire, incinerating, combusting. He strained against the melter’s grip to no avail. It would consume him. Yet, somehow, the knowledge brought no fear. He’d moved past fear to a new introspection.

  The melter swayed over him. The point of something erupted from below its mouth. Another chine rode its back, hauling a blade, hewing the melter even as it writhed and roared and died, its black blood spewing out. Its light faded and pulsed like an oxygen-starved cinder dying in a guttering wind. It went out.

  Kellen looked past the dead melter. The second symbol was still lit. He climbed over the melter, his hands burning on its still-searing some, climbed past his unknown rescuer.

  He pressed down on the symbol. An intolerable noise penetrated his brain.

  Chapter 34 – Ricochet

  Sheemi lay prostrate, head ringing, full of pain. She touched her head and felt a lump. She didn’t remember the rifle butt connecting with her skull. Rollins must have seen through her ruse. She turned her head and saw Connor laying nearby, eyes shut, in a pool of blood.

  “What happened?” Sargsyan said, his blind eyes wild.

  “Should I finish them?” Faj asked, looking down at them, ready to shoot again. Tilner was behind her on crutches.

  Rollins’s boot came down on Sheemi’s neck. The muzzle of his K nudged her temple. “No, I’ll kill her.”

  Sheemi felt a strange detachment, as if it wasn’t her life that would be snuffed out. She found herself imagining what her baby’s life would have been. The negation of that potential was unbearable.

  “Hell you will,” someone said.

  Sheemi looked up in time to see Tilner punch Faj in the face. Sheemi jerked her head out from under Rollins’s boot. This time her grab succeeded, and she hauled herself to a crouch using Rollins’s K. She exploded up, her head cracking into Rollins’s jaw. His teeth bounced on the floor like popcorn. She followed with a punch to his eye, following him even as he fell, punching him over and over.

  Tilner pulled her off. “Get a hold of yourself!” he shouted.

  “Are you all right?” Xin asked her, eyes wide.

  “I’m fine,” Sheemi said.

  “You’ve got to move it, Sheems.” Connor clutched his shoulder, hand slick with blood. “Break Ciib out of there. Stop this thing.”

  She kneeled next to him, head to head. “Thanks.”

  “It was nothing.” His grin faded into a grimace.

  Tilner cut away Connor’s uniform to expose the wound. “Never could stand that woman,” he said, nodding toward an unconscious Faj. He pulled down a med kit. “We have this under control.”

  Sheemi nodded, wiped sweat out of her eyes, and picked up Rollins’s K. She added a near concussion to her injured arm and hands hurting from the punches she’d delivered. She took a moment to steady herself, then opened the hatch.

  The dorm appeared empty, but she checked each compartment to be sure. She half-expected someone to jump out at her. She passed through the mess and peered into Life Support.

  “Neecie,” Sheemi called and stepped inside, cradling her K. She had no desire to point it at her friend.

  “What are you doing, Sheems?” Neecie said from the far end of the mod. “You’re supposed to be on the bus.”

  They looked at each other past long rows of water processors and oxygen generators. Neecie eyed Sheemi’s K.

  “I’m going to end this,” Sheemi said.

  “We will end it. That’s what we came to do.”

  “You know that’s not what I mean.”

  “You changed your mind.”

  “I was wrong. We all were,” Sheemi said. “The killing’s got to stop. Ciib realized it, too.”

  Neecie shook her head. “It’ll stop soon, but only after we take out this world. They need to hurt. I want them to hurt.”

  “I know,” Sheemi said taking a step forward. “I know you do.”

  “Don’t do it, Sheems.” Neecie’s expression was fierce, but her voice cracked. “Don’t make me kill you.”

  “I’m coming through, Neecie. Let me pass.”

  Neecie shook her head. She wouldn’t relinquish her post. Sheemi had never expected her to. Neecie stood stock-still, her weapon dangling from her hands.

  “Are you going to shoot me?” Sheemi asked.

  Neecie laughed. “I don’t know. I don’t want to, but…”

  They pulled up their K’s and fired.

  Sheemi flinched as a bullet ricocheted amongst the machinery. Then she ran forward, stumbled, and crawled to where her friend lay. Her round had opened a gaping hole in Neecie’s back, and blood bubbled out of her mouth.

  Sheemi held her in her arms. “It’s all right,” she whispered. “Everything’s going to be all right.”

  It isn’t. It won’t be.

  Neecie’s body jerked a few times until her eyes unfocused and she became still.

  This never happened. Never. The awful wrongness of it pooled somewhere inside, staining her. Her chest tight, she resisted the urge to weep, to break down completely. But she couldn’t.

  She laid Neecie down gently and opened the hatch to the rec mod. Jerrold, Trediakovsky, and Major Veillon barred her way, looking wary until they saw it was her. She was glad to see Ciib behind them, battered and bruised, but on his feet. Mertik lay prone on the floor.

  Ciib came out, his gaze on Neecie. “I wish it hadn’t come to this.”

  Jerrold picked up Neecie’s K.

  “How are you, First Sergeant?” Sheemi asked.

  Mertik sat up and scowled. “I’ll live.”

  “I’ll make sure he gets to the bus,” Veillon said.

  Ciib nodded and looked at the others. “We need to retake Command.”

  He signaled for them to move.

  Jerrold opened the hatch to the cupola just enough to peek through. “No one next door.” He opened the hatch all the way, then he and Sheemi edged forward into the cupola.

  Ciib came behind, supported by Trediakovsky. The cupola’s far hatch had been closed, sealing off access to Command.

  “Alvares shut down comms,” Ciib said. “Sheemi, who was in the bus?”

  “Rollins and Faj, Xin and Connor, and the wounded. They shot Connor, but he was alive when I left. Tilner’s got Rollins and Faj under guard.”

  “Mertik and Veillon should be there soon,” Ciib said. “That leaves Alvares, Janik, Durskie, and Omeri.”

  “And Meszaros,” Trediakovsky added.

  “Right.”

  “If we go back to the armory—” Jerrold began.

  “There’s no time,” Ciib said. “We assault through. Jerrold, you’ll open the ha
tches to Command. Alvares will have closed them both. Sheemi will lead the assault. She’s smallest and fastest.”

  Ciib reached out a hand. “Give me your K, Jerrold. I’ll provide covering fire. Alvares will have someone covering both ends of the mod, but he’ll be farther in. Sheemi, when Jerrold opens the hatch, you get into the right corner. Take out Durskie first, if you can. He’s the best they’ve got—Alvares and Janik have never seen ground combat. Jerrold, as soon as she’s in position, you take this K and help her clear Command. Alina, you stay back. I’ll need you once everything is secure.”

  Trediakovsky nodded.

  “Everyone understand? Good.” Ciib lowered himself to a prone position, frowning.

  “You all right, sir?” Sheemi asked.

  “I’m fine, just some broken ribs.”

  Sheemi positioned herself at the hatch’s far edge where it would open first.

  Ciib settled himself and sighted down the K. “Open it.”

  Chapter 35 – Reboot

  Kellen came to in darkness. He felt sluggish. It hurt to move. Deactivated or damaged, the base of the antenna no longer gave off illumination, but enough ambient light remained for his eyes to pick out shapes. A chine hunkered down an arm’s length away. Beyond it, two dead melters spun adrift. He had killed the first, but who…?

  “Kinetic?” Kellen asked, disbelieving.

  “No,” it said. “Chronicler.”

  “But your some…”

  “Is Kinetic’s. Yes. With the injuries I sustained from the melter, transferring somes was the only way I could be of use.”

  “I didn’t know you could do that.”

  “It’s rarely done. Unless a some is designed with the user’s neural architecture in mind, it can’t support that chine’s consciousness, not for long anyway. The melter’s radiation killed Kinetic but left its some relatively undamaged. Unfortunately, this some was never designed to sustain a mind like mine. My time in it is limited.”

  “You’re dying?”

  “This instance of me. I’ll live on in the city without any memory of our journey to this orbital. Perhaps, if we meet again, you can tell me everything that transpired.”