Live Echoes

by Henry V. O'Neil

  You weren’t supposed to be where you are. If that were true, the chances of anyone finding her before the planet was blown to smithereens were practically nonexistent.

  The current flowed in again, the aliens remembering how they’d come to create the Sims in the first place. The tale unfolded in her mind as if she’d actually lived it.

  The shocking arrival of the human factory ship so long ago, attracted by what the home world contained, all the raw materials needed to create new equipment for the deep-space explorers. Observing the invaders as they dug into the planet’s rich veins, then searching the interlopers’ minds to learn with terror that there were more of them, that plumbing the depths of space was their calling. That they would despoil the home world before realizing that an ancient civilization lived within it.

  A superior civilization. A race that had infiltrated, subjugated, and destroyed many species whose intelligence far outstripped that of the humans.

  Studying the trespassers and then taking on their forms, boarding the ship and replacing the crew until they could seize the vessel intact. Learning its secrets, how its innards were capable of creating other ships like it, and that its laboratories could generate human life.

  Deciding then and there to oppose the invaders using their own machines, creating and arming a species much like the humans, just more brutal and more focused. A designer enemy that couldn’t regenerate itself, that fought its cousins for habitable planets far from the uninhabitable home world. The Sims.

  The Sims, who had been intended to destroy mankind and then die out—except they’d failed. Leading to the desperate decision to infiltrate the humans yet again, this time to gain the secret of the Step. The war, and the invaders’ sophisticated technology, had come too close to the home world and the ancient generations asleep inside it. They’d considered the gamble an unavoidable risk, as the only way to preserve the race.

  Tears rolled down Ayliss’s cheeks as she experienced their fear and anger, and finally their resignation, now that all was lost.

  “Rig.” The voice was low, scratchy, but Ayliss knew she should have recognized it. She looked to her right, and gasped.

  Likewise pinned under the dark rocks, Legacy had activated her helmet cameras so that Ayliss could see her. Only her upper torso was visible in the small space, but Ayliss didn’t see much of that. Her horrified eyes recoiled at the graying skin and the puckering lips of an old woman who was as young as she was.

  “Lisa? What’s wrong?”

  “Suit breach,” she wheezed, eyes slitting in pain. “It’s one of my legs. Can’t get to it. Can’t seal it.”

  Ayliss reached out with her right arm, trying to find a handhold to pull herself closer, knowing it was pointless.

  “Don’t struggle.” Legacy made a deep choking sound. “You’ll end up like me.”

  “You’re going to be fine.” Ayliss lied, and then tried to broadcast. “Any Banshee unit, anyone at all, do you read me?”

  “They’re all gone, Rig. I already tried.”

  “They can’t be! They knew we were here. They were going to pick us up.”

  “They think we’re dead. And they’re right.” More choking. “Oh, this sucks. My mother died from a suit breach.”

  “You’re not going to die. Look at me. Help is on the way. I know it is.”

  “Hey Rig, was I hallucinating, or did you feel it too?”

  “Like voices were inside your head? Brilliant voices? Millions of them?”

  “Yeah.” Legacy turned off her cameras, returning the image to the canted angles of her helmet. “What did we destroy here, Ayliss?”

  “I’m not sure.”

  She got no response.

  The voices entered her mind again. The rocks imprisoning Ayliss rumbled constantly now, punctuated by deep belches that suggested a major seismic event was occurring nearby. She wasn’t forced to wonder what they were, though.

  Where are the young ones? Why aren’t they defending us?

  The humans killed them. Or enough of them to free the workers.

  How awful. To be erased by such a low intelligence.

  Let us not die with that notion. Let us remember what we achieved.

  Ayliss’s mind floated along with the alien group consciousness. She struggled to concentrate on her own dire situation, but it was too hard to fight off the other signals. Her brain sang with revelations and wisdom and unfathomable images, remembered vistas in far-flung regions of space that no longer existed, hundreds upon hundreds of civilizations that had lived and died before humanity had ever come into existence. It was a comforting distraction, even as she sensed the carnage only a few miles away, the worms chewing through the stones and the honeycombs and their feeble inhabitants. Ayliss shut her eyes and watched a star explode, so long ago that the light had already come and gone.

  Light. The darkened sky had mated with the edges of the crevice, forming a single shroud of black, but there was an undeniable flicker there. It passed over the hole again, and the voices went silent as she shouted.

  “Here! Here! I saw your beam! Come back!”

  The light returned instantly, and then shone straight down into the small cavern. A Banshee helmet appeared, and Ayliss heard the voice of a woman she’d thought was dead.

  “Dom! Over here!” Tin called, but the effort sent her into uncontrollable coughing. Armored gloves reached through the aperture, slowly peeling back a sliver of rock to widen the fissure. “Hang in there, Rig. We’re here.”

  “I thought you were all dead.” With Cusabrina and Zuteck and Dell.

  “No. Just a little overcooked.”

  “Who—” She couldn’t bring herself to finish the question, and instead looked over at Legacy’s lifeless suit. More hands were clearing away debris, and other lights were entering the space.

  “Varick’s with us. Bullhead and Lightfoot, too. Haven’t found Legacy.”

  “She’s gone. Down here with me. Suit breach.”

  “Okay, back off.” She heard Blocker’s voice, and the hands disappeared. “Ayliss, can you send me the feed from your cameras?”

  She gave the command with a dry tongue, and a moment later a long, tapering metal claw entered the crevice. Using her view, Blocker’s machine gently shifted one enormous, cracked slab out of the way. The light beams streamed in, and she was able to see the big man working the controls inside the protective bubble. Even in her weakened state, suspicion rose up.

  “How did you find me?”

  “I had Orton put a special tracker in your suit.” A boulder ascended, clutched between the machine’s giant pincers, and another bubble’s fingers took it away.

  “I told you—my entire squad. Not just me.”

  “I figured you’d be with your squad. But the firestorm blew them half a mile away.” The bubble pressed against the hole, and she could see sweat running off his face. “I told you on Quad Seven. I will never leave you again.”

  “Sarge, we shouldn’t move any more of these.” She heard Jerticker speaking from somewhere behind Blocker. “Her left arm’s been crushed. We take off that pressure, who knows what shape the armor is in.”

  Fear entered her stomach as Ayliss looked at the smooth wall where her arm ended. Blocker exhaled, his cheeks rounding, and then tapped his headset. “Chief, you seeing all this?”

  “Yep.” Ayliss recognized the gruff tone of Chief Scalpo, the Banshee troop’s hardened physician’s assistant. “You’re almost outta time. Crimp the suit just below the armpit, and then cut the rest loose.”

  “Oh Lord.” Blocker whispered.

  “Back out, Sarge.” Jerticker offered. “Let me do it.”

  “No.” Blocker extended one set of pincers until they held Ayliss’s upper arm. “She’s my little girl. I’ll get her out.”

  “Hold on.” Varick came crawling past the bubble, her gray suit unrecognizable. Its paint had blistered straight off, and the armor was charred. She slid over Ayliss, pointing. “Put the pincers right her
e. That’s the nearest crush point.”

  “Crush point?” Ayliss tried to keep her words calm. “What’s that?”

  “What a newbie. Didn’t they teach you anything in Basic?” Varick stayed close, even as a second set of pincers moved into place near the rocks. “The crush point is like a tourniquet. You crimp a suit right there, it seals it off.”

  “Varick, you’re gonna have to move.” Blocker warned. The captain rested a gloved hand on Ayliss’s chest armor, and then wriggled away. Ayliss could see the big man again, and the cold certainty on his features scared her even more.

  “So that’s what you looked like. All those years in the war.”

  “Shut your eyes, Little Bear. We’ll have you out in a second.”

  Ayliss tongued the cameras inside the helmet so Blocker could see her forced smile.

  “It’s okay, Bear. I trust you.”

  “Sarge, we gotta hustle.” Jerticker called. “Those worms are almost on us.”

  The alien current flooded back into her mind, but this time it was a hurricane of screams and anguish. Ayliss gasped, feeling the honeycombs tearing and rocking as giant jaws and merciless claws tore into the ancient shapeshifters. Someone squeezed her upper arm hard, and then harder, and then she started screaming too.

  “So what about that crazy announcement?” Lieutenant Wolf sat on the cracked stone steps of the Ministry, next to Jander. His left boot was missing, and his bandaged foot was propped on a piece of fallen masonry. They were surrounded by weary soldiers, the less seriously wounded who were waiting for eventual pickup, and Mortas had stopped to talk. “Somebody said the war is over.”

  “I heard that broadcast with my own ears. There’s a super-powerful communications center inside.” Mortas looked out over the cratered square in front of the building. Troops from the HDF units that had been assaulting the SOA only hours before were now guarding it and sorting through the dead. Broken stone from the Ministry’s missing top floors was scattered all around, and he thought of how they resembled ancient Roman ruins because he didn’t want to think about Leoni and the others from the roof. “It was definitely my stepmother.”

  “Really?” Prevost asked, two steps down and wrapping a bandage around Greeber’s upper left arm. “The war’s actually finished?”

  “Kind of. She said Command found a planet where the Sims were being made, and that the Banshees attacked the place. In the end they had to nuke it, but right now in the war zone our people are pulling back to give the Sammies some room.”

  “What good’s that going to do? Can’t talk to them.”

  “She explained that. This gang of linguists caught a major break a while back. They finally worked through enough of the bird-speak to build a simple translator. They’re broadcasting all over the war zone, asking for a cease-fire.”

  “A major break?” Prevost tied the bandage and then looked up at Mortas. “That was you, wasn’t it? That secret mission you were on. You did talk to them.”

  “Yeah, we did. Through one of the shapeshifters.”

  Wolf snorted. “Your old girlfriend from Glory Main?”

  Jander instantly thought of Varick, and then realized Wolf was referencing the oft-told story of his having had sexual congress with the original alien. He snorted as well.

  “Hardly. I killed this one myself.”

  “And we always wondered why you aren’t married.” Prevost laughed.

  “Lieutenant Mortas,” a Tratian soldier in full combat gear called from the bottom of the stairs. “Can I speak with you?”

  Jander put a hand on Wolf’s armor, and stood with pain. Now that the battle was over, every muscle seemed to hurt. He carefully weaved his way through the rock fragments and resting Orphans. When he reached the bottom, the Tratian soldier came to attention.

  “Cut that out. War’s over. Haven’t you heard?”

  “No, sir.” The man appeared confused. “Is that true?”

  “My stepmother never makes a public statement that she can’t back up.”

  “Sir?”

  “Never mind. What is it?”

  “We’ve got a small party from the Orange, requesting to see you.”

  “What, are they all deaf? We’ve had the PSYOP drones broadcasting for hours—if they stay away from us, nobody gets hurt.”

  “There’s this kid, seems to be their leader. Says he knows you.”

  “Oh no.” The words were almost inaudible. He hadn’t been able to give a thought to Leeger during the chaotic fighting. “They carrying a body?”

  “Yes, sir.” The confused look had returned. “How did you know?”

  “Take me to them.”

  His feet hurt as he walked across the small broken rocks that seemed to be everywhere. Smoke rose over much of the rest of the city, and drone firefighters with bulging bellies could be seen dumping retardant in several places. As they went down the block, he watched a flight of medevac shuttles lift off from somewhere near the river.

  He knew they were getting close when the looming hulk of a Tratian tank came into view. A temporary barricade of rolled anti-personnel wire blocked off the street twenty yards in front of the tank, and a cluster of Tratian soldiers stood watching seven orange-colored civilians sitting next to a stretcher. Jander tried not to look at its motionless occupant.

  The boy called Sunlight stood up from the group, wearing oversized fatigues blackened with soot. One side of his orange hair appeared to have been flattened, until Mortas got close enough to see it had been singed away. The other rebels, four men and two women in ragged clothing, made no effort to stand. Like the troops he’d left on the steps of the Ministry, they looked too tired to do much of anything.

  “It’s all right. Let him through.” One of the Tratians punched a signal into a handheld, cutting the electricity in the wire, and then pulled one segment back. The orange-hued child walked through, lips pursed. He walked up to Jander, tears cleaning away the dirt on his cheeks.

  “It’s our father,” he whispered. “He’s dead.”

  Chapter 22

  “I thought we were done.” Olech spoke to Mirror as they walked across a sunny plain covered with waist-high grass. “You told me why your people avoided mine after studying us in the Step. I figured that was it.”

  “No matter how much it hurt, that was the answer you sought when you climbed into that capsule.” Mirror wore a dark, high-collared suit with the red ribbon of the Unwavering, and when Olech looked down he saw the same image. “You’ll be taking that message back with you.”

  “Back?” Hope leapt inside him. “I’m going home?”

  “Of course. You risked everything coming here, even death, so why wouldn’t you go home?”

  “What’s happened while I was gone? Jan looked so different, so . . . used up. What about the others?”

  “Time has indeed passed in your realm. The war with the Sims is over. With our help, Reena found the planet where they were being manufactured and annihilated their authors. She believes that you somehow sent her that location. In a way you did; consider it an acknowledgment of your genuine willingness to sacrifice yourself in that cause.”

  Before he could ask about individual family members, Olech smelled an odor that sent his blood surging. The sun still shone overhead, but the tall grass was no longer an endless sea. Burned away in patches hundreds of yards wide, it sent up tiny curls of smoke in numerous spots.

  “No.” Olech hissed, seeing a long, tall hill rising from the blackened grass. Much of the rise was mud, and it slowly populated with mashed and mutilated bodies that disappeared in the undergrowth. He couldn’t see the top, but he knew it by heart.

  “This is an important experience for you, Olech. For both of us.”

  “No!” he yelled. “I already went through it. So it is not both of us.”

  “You directed the defense of that hill for two days and two nights, even though you were only fifteen and a private. Older men, even some NCOs, managed to join you without offering to t
ake charge. You cobbled together a force that at one point numbered two hundred soldiers.”

  “That was only at the end. We never had more than a hundred until the Sims ran off. Couple of times, we were down to fifty.” Olech turned away from the hill. “But that’s not where we are right now, is it?”

  “You recognize the terrain.”

  “I almost died right over there.” At the base of the hill, the shell of a burned-out truck stood out from the ashen ground and the remaining grass. Bodies were strewn around it, many of them missing limbs. “This jerk of a captain finally showed up and took charge after we won. He never acknowledged what I did, but he knew. That’s why he sent me down the backside here, with a message for battalion. He didn’t want me around.”

  Memories flooded back, making him cringe. The explosion, the ground opening up, the mindboggling pain, the certainty that he was going to die, right there, alone. “Please, Mirror. Not this one.”

  A breeze greeted him from the spot where Mirror was standing, and when he looked up his twin was gone. Breath coming in short gasps, terror welling up, realizing that there hadn’t been any fear before it happened because he hadn’t known it was coming. Now, armed with that knowledge, Olech saw that it was far worse. Shutting his eyes, waiting for the sensation of becoming his younger self, the footsore boy who hadn’t eaten in days, who’d defended the hill where his platoon-mates had died. Who’d then stomped off down the hill, furious at the stupidity of the people who had such enormous control over his life.

  Remembering that very anger on the night he’d agreed to help Horace replace the government. Recognizing for the first time in many years that his true reason for helping with the Purge had been his hatred of the overblown fools in Command who’d cost him so much.

  Olech’s eyes opened in bewilderment, finding that he was standing in the same spot, but still focused on the awful truth about why he’d become the principle architect of the Purge. Lips parting while he wet them with his tongue, looking around for Mirror, wondering if for once he’d earned a reprieve.