The Big Bad II

by John G. Hartness

“Blood mustache,” Alice giggles, wiping my upper lip. I put the glass down and follow her into the living room.

  “It’s kind of funny,” she says, digging into her shoulder bag. With her oversized coat and the way she has been living unshowered in her truck, she seems very much like a homeless child.

  “Would you like to take a shower?” I offer. “I can get you some towels and so—”

  But before I can even finish my sentence, a scream splits the air. And then I realize it’s my scream and my blood running down my body, and there’s a huge hunk of wood in my chest. I fall to the ground, gripping the wood as Alice stands over me.

  “Funny,” she says. “I thought vampires exploded when you staked them.”

  It’s a stake. She’s stabbed me with a stake. I try to pry it out, but I can’t. I am losing my sight. All I feel is pain, pain, pain.

  “Maybe I didn’t hit you right in the heart,” she says as she steps on my chest with a combat boot and pulls the stake out. I scream again as the blood flows freely.

  “Help me!” I cry. “Don’t!”

  “Don’t?” she asks. “You should have thought of ‘don’t’ weeks ago when you met me.”

  I fumble over my bloody shirt for my phone. Help, help, someone help. I can’t speak the words, but I cut off the recording and dial the cops. She kicks the phone from my hand. Did I even hit send? I don’t know, I just don’t know, it hurts, it hurts, it hurts so fucking much!

  “Oh, I see,” she says, leaning down over me. “I didn’t shove the stake in far enough. God, that’s a shallow wound. Guess I didn’t have enough leverage or something.” She takes the stake and positions it right over my heart, right over the wound, and hefts it high in the air.

  “Alice!” I cry. She’s going to drop it down on me from up high like some sick, twisted wrestler doing a body slam. I can’t help but laugh at that image, laughing in a rental apartment soaked in my own blood with some twisted angel looming over me.

  “I’m not... I’m not...”

  “You’re not what? A good guy? I knew that from the start,” Alice says.

  “I’m not...”

  But I’m fading away, seeing things from the past. Not exactly like my life flashing before my eyes, but scenes that I have lived over and over, all of the girls, the first one in Atlanta and the second in Nashville and the third in Washington until I had taken care of the east coast and so on and so forth through the Midwest and to the west coast, and I can’t even tell you how many there are, how many girls I’ve had for the first time and then left, how many cities I’ve been to, and above it all how I don’t want to die, please God, don’t let me die!

  I’m crying, and all I can see now is Alice. Alice and the time we spent together, how we lounged in bed and how when the moon hit her bleached-blond hair a certain way, it made her glow silver. I always thought she’d be even more beautiful in the morning, if I could just sit still, if I could just wake up beside her or one of those girls.

  “You’re pathetic,” she says, leaning down and touching my cheeks. “Vampires don’t cry.”

  “I’m not... vampire...”

  And then blue and red lights wash over me, cut into slivers on her face from the blinds, and she drops the stake and sits down in my blood. She’s given up, but I’m getting colder. I barely hear the banging on the door. My phone, my damn phone, it had actually called the cops.

  Help, I want to scream. Help, I can’t even mouth.

  “Oh, Ed,” Alice says as the door flies open, and it strikes me then that she doesn’t even know my real name, she doesn’t know my real goddamn name. The cops grab her to her feet, and there is movement and sound all around me and someone pressing on my chest, but all I can hear is her whisper:

  “You didn’t actually take my virginity. I was just pretending, too.”

  Phone Home

  E. D. Guy

  “You are a fool.”

  The man slumped forward as far as his bound arms would allow, breathing labored and slow, and struggled to spit through ruptured lips and loose teeth. He did not look up when he spoke, but only turned his head to one side so that the blood ran over his cheek instead of over his mouth. “You are all fools.”

  Commodore Harriman did not respond or refute, merely stood and waited for the rest.

  A bubbling sigh, and then, “How many times is Sol going to send idiots like you out here? How many times are they going to fail before they learn? How long did it even take you to get here? Two decades? Three? The regime you fight for doesn’t even exist anymore, it cannot exist as you left it! Those who sent you are long gone. Your task was doomed before you even began it.”

  Harriman quirked his mouth into something like a smirk, his voice quiet but strong. “You are right, but your mistake is in thinking that I didn’t know that already.” The man’s expression was difficult to read, but Harriman thought he detected puzzlement. “I do not fight for the regime that sent me, but for the regime that will be when I return. For what I will be able to help build when I bring back the spoils of this campaign.”

  A cough that might have been a laugh came from the man. “Then you are even more of a fool than I thought. What can you possibly take that doesn’t exist in Sol System already? What is here that won’t cost you a hundred times as much to carry back as it would to make there yourselves? You came here for trophies? You will take back only your own bankruptcy.”

  The smirk spread into a predatory smile and Harriman stepped closer, squatting on the balls of his feet and resting his forearms across his knees, looking the man in his eye. “I am disappointed. You of all people should know what we’re after. And you should know that we are not stupid. It is you, all of you out here, who have become fools. Fools to think that we would simply allow you to go your own way. Fools to think that the empty light years we crossed to put you here in the first place would be enough to keep us away from you.”

  Defiance glared back at him. “Sol has tried before, many times. All your glorious crusades to pull the colonies back into your shadow. It always fails. We are simply too far away for you to hold onto. This time will be no different.”

  Disdain seeped back across Harriman’s face, souring his smile. “Oh no, this time will be different. Sol has not sent out a handful of ships, has not set its sights on just this system to retake, or even two or three.” His eyes hardened, a fierce fire shining from deep within. “There are currently over thirty expeditions spreading out through the colonized worlds. Thirty moments just like this one being enacted all across settled space. And in a few years, there will be another thirty heading out, and another thirty behind that. Think for a moment about the resources needed to mount an interstellar journey, to equip it for war at its destination. Think about the planning and the logistics needed to make that successful. Now think of doing that on the scale I am talking about and you will begin to see how the current regime in Sol is, indeed, very different from those that have come before it.”

  Harriman took cold pleasure at the doubt crossing the face of the man before him. “And allow me to assure you that what I want is not your cities or your metals or your precious baubles. No, what I want is something far more valuable.”

  A pause, during which the only sound was the labored breathing of the man and the slow drip of blood into the spreading pool between his feet. Harriman’s next words came as almost a snarl. “Because you’re right. No matter how dedicated we are, no matter how many resources we expend, drift will eventually happen.” Harriman’s gaze snapped away to something far more distant and vexing. “Because we fight against not only your armies and your deviance, but also against interstellar economics. Not just the distance and the cost and the effort of crossing the stars, but the time.

  “The decades it takes to move from one system to the next, the years it takes to send a message across that gap. That is our worst enemy. Not you, not your
little experiments in society and genetics out here, but the...the discontinuity of our species. Sol is trying to correct it with volume, sending wave after wave out from the First System to keep anyone, including our own fleets, from feeling too comfortably distanced from them, but that won’t be enough. Given time...well, even the most loyal will eventually forget why they’re out here and go astray. Or Sol’s plan will evolve and it will take half a century for the message to reach us, by which point it will have evolved again. This attempt will carry much further than previous ones, and this regime at Sol will endure much longer than its predecessors, but ultimately...it is doomed to failure.”

  Harriman’s gaze settled back onto the man’s face, a hint of the earlier mirth returning. “Unless.” His grin spread again, this time colored by something darker. “Have you realized why I’m here yet? Realized what it is of yours that is truly worth the effort of building a starship and crossing the endless gulf of space for me to come here and beat it out of you? Because, you see, I know something that Sol does not. I know what you’ve been working on. And I’ve come to take it from you.”

  He stood, enjoying the look of horrified understanding that crept across the portions of the man’s face still capable of expression. Harriman nodded in satisfaction. “Good, you understand. Then you know that when I bring it back, it will change everything. Finally, we will be able to build a continuous empire of man. And I will ensure that this time, it’s done right.”

  He stepped slowly forward, eclipsing the man in his shadow. “Now, let’s begin again...”

  ***

  A while later, Harriman strode out into the hall, stripping the stained gloves from his hands and dropping them to the floor—discarded exactly where and when they ceased to be useful to him anymore. He tossed a disinterested wave over his shoulder at the two guards, genetically engineered clone behemoths with faces hidden behind helmets and cybernetics, who silently went into the dark room. Commander Markose, jittery with the nervous energy of youth, sprang from his position by the wall and hurried to match the commodore’s stride up the hall. His voice wandered from professional bark to rushed exuberance as he attempted to deliver his report.

  “Sir! Objective-block seven-one-one is complete and we are proceeding into C and Q operations on the second tier non-crits. We have captured all of the primary militia commanders, but there are still organized resistance groups holding the mountain road. I have TacOps working on a plan to—”

  Harriman didn’t pause or look back. “It’s irrelevant.”

  Markose almost didn’t hear and continued down the practiced rails of his report a little longer before fetching up in confusion. “Er, ‘irrelevant,’ sir? If I may, sir, what—”

  “They aren’t here.”

  Markose blinked, panic rising in his eyes. “But...our sources, the intelligence...”

  “Was wrong.”

  They emerged onto a broad walkway that overlooked the city.

  It had been a magnificent view at one time, with regal arches and whimsical architecture turning the high density urban landscape into a sculpted work of art. Now, in every direction, columns of thick black smoke twisted skyward to join the heavy ceiling of roiling grey that hung over the shattered and broken buildings of this once-proud metropolis.

  Harriman didn’t spare it so much as a glance, merely turned and continued up the walkway toward the rooftop landing pads. “They knew we were coming. They packed up their research and moved outward. He stayed, but the three scientists left the system almost twelve years ago, by local reckoning.” The hardened gray eyes looked back at the commander. “Their sources, it would seem, are better connected than ours.”

  Markose faltered in his steps, his arms out in a helpless gesture that took in both the scorch marks on the walls and the fires raging in the city beyond, “But, ‘irrelevant,’ sir? We’ve almost got control, we’re winning... The mission objectives—”

  Harriman halted suddenly, turning on his heel and bringing Markose up short. “The mission objectives are wrong! Control is useless if it does not last, commander. This city, this world, is irrelevant to us. Fighting to possess it is a futile act and does nothing but give our enemies more of what they need: time. No, we’re done here, pull the troops into a defensive perimeter around the landing zone and begin prepping the S-Jets for departure.”

  The commander looked as if he had been slapped, and his voice came quietly. “As you wish, sir.” He was profoundly confused. The mission objectives were all he knew, had been drummed into him over practically all of his twenty years. If they were wrong... He shook his head. “It’s just...we have such a real chance to fix what they had done here.”

  Harriman sniffed and looked out at the city for the first time, his eyes hard and glittering. “Oh, we’ll fix it all right. We didn’t pull those asteroids into orbit for nothing. After we’re done refueling and are ready to boost out system, we’ll drop them on the colony and raze the bastards back to the hell they crawled out of.” He gave a chilly smile to Markose. “Humanity will just have to start over again here.”

  ***

  The ICSV Unending boosted at two Gs, slowly creeping past the orbits of the last planets as it pointed its nose toward the next objective, a red dwarf some eighteen light years distant. From a distance, the interstellar carrier’s ten-kilometer-long frame resembled a ribbed and elongated skeleton, like that of an eel. The gaping skull of the engine section dragged behind it a long chain of trusses and scaffolding that clutched banks of fuel pods and coolant tanks, hundred-meter-wide shielded spinal disks separating each fragile cluster, crusted by tumorous growths of antennae and surveillance packages and, finally, like an afterthought at the end of the long tail, the tiny knots of the cargo and organics support modules.

  Tucked into his hibernation canister, the coffin-like module pressing close on all sides and the weight of acceleration sitting mercilessly on his chest, Harriman stared up at the small screen above his face and shivered, waiting for the injections that would steal away the next few decades of his life. His body temperature was falling steadily as the machinery chilled him in preparation for long sleep. Soon the medical AI would sedate him and begin exchanging his blood for a cocktail of chilled chemicals and antifreeze, but for now it needed him awake in order to monitor his progressing hypothermia and ensure that the process wouldn’t kill him.

  He hated this, the helpless, crushing waiting as his teeth chattered and robotic minds that didn’t give a damn about dignity or misery ticked off seconds and heartbeats, looking for a good opportunity to switch him off like just another appliance. The machine’s abstract, incomprehensible hum somehow managed to be both bland and menacingly alien at the same time. It was not a conscious thing, the spark of self-awareness having continued to elude AI designers for as long as they had pursued it, yet he could swear the damn machine enjoyed dragging out this excruciating process.

  Harriman focused on the screen and clenched his jaw, closing the AI out of his thoughts. The view was relayed from an external telescope, aimed back at the world they had left behind. He considered its steam-covered face, but felt little satisfaction at the dirty glow that lit the clouds in ragged stripes from within, dim markers of the raging infernos and scars of ruptured mantle that lay beneath. Two and a half billion had lived there.

  It would take nineteen years for his tight beamed report to reach Sol—a carefully worded and detailed account of the mission, which equally carefully made absolutely no mention of the new goal he had found. Nineteen years before they knew that he was no longer following orders, as he raced away from the ruins of this burning world instead of trying to plant the seeds of their ideal society as his mission objectives stated.

  Not that they could do anything about it.

  He looked again at the broken planet. It would be at least fifty years before a follow up mission could reach the system. By then, the planet should have cooled back
to some usable condition—he had been careful not to completely destroy the biosphere. It was an empty victory, though. This deviation had been erased, but no matter how directly Sol sent new colonists, there was nothing to prevent the same cultural drift from happening again, as it had on every other colony so far founded in the thousand and a half years that humanity had been making its slow march out into the cosmos. And that was precisely why he couldn’t trust them with his information, why he must commit treason. His loyalty to their principles actually demanded it.

  He repeated this to himself like a mantra.

  He sighed, the stench of hydrogen sulphide burning in his throat and sleep building inexorably in his leaden, trembling body as the AI decided he was cold enough and the sedatives trickled into his blood. The decades of effort ahead weighed on him— twenty-nine years to cross the trillions of empty kilometers between this system and the next tiny island of light and heat in the vast black sea. The shining glory of the Sol he had left behind, the grand regime that had finally reordered the First System and given birth to him and his mission, and which had almost certainly tarnished by now, fading through the unstoppable cycles of history and decay. By the time he reached his next destination, it would be completely unrecognizable to him, even if he could see it, which of course was impossible. Only the distorted whispers of the past reached him now, out here. The present was a fabled land, unreachable across the void of distance and time.

  No, not unreachable, he reminded himself, just not reachable yet.

  He had taken the mission willingly, with full knowledge of what he would lose, and the loss only made him more determined. The glory of might and will that Sol had been when he left would fall beneath the crush of time, but he would remember. He would bring it back again, and more. He would spread it to the stars in one unified empire of man. As it was meant to be.

  The last injection clicked home and the void swallowed his mind, as it enclosed the insignificant sliver of the Unending, and nothing but darkness and the machines breathed on the ship for the next thirty years.