Live Echoes

by Henry V. O'Neil

  Hearing a noise, Olech looked up the hill and saw a tall, thin boy in tattered olive drab clomping down the trail. Mud in his hair and on his face and on his clothes. One boot looked dipped in the stuff, completely brown while the other was black. Another recollection lost over the decades. How could he have forgotten the artillery barrage that tore off one boot heel and left him flat-wheeling from position to position, encouraging the men and directing their fire? How later, when things were quiet, he’d taken a brown-colored boot off of a dead boy who’d almost been his size.

  The noise he couldn’t identify turned out to be words, angry mutterings as the teenaged soldier reached the bottom of the hill.

  “Fuckin’ asshole. Captain. Kiss my ass, Captain. Lost a hundred guys up there, Sims attacked over and over and over and over and I held ’em off. Me. Private Mortas.” Eyes not seeing the ground, or the cracked engine part jammed in the dirt. “I shoulda stayed lost. I was safer on my own. I should just walk off.”

  The memory returning, the one that had been literally blasted out of his mind, of tripping over the metal and sprawling into the grass where the mine had lain all that time, hundreds of soldiers had marched or run right past it, but he’d landed almost on top of it.

  Finally understanding what Mirror had meant, about this being an important experience.

  “Mirror! No!”

  The entire world exploded, throwing dirt and grass and junk from the battle into the air. Olech was running, mouth wide but eyes narrow, afraid to see what it had looked like because the one blessing of being hit like that is you don’t see what you look like.

  The boy was on his side, curled up in a ball, arms wrapped around his stomach, not moving, too hurt to move, too scared to move. Olech threw himself down in front of him, but not before seeing the torn fatigues and the bloody meat. Grabbing Mirror’s face with his hands, only to see his own eyes wide in horror, the mouth open in a soundless scream.

  “Hurts!” Mirror shrieked. “OhmyGodithurts!”

  Pulling him in, fearful of making it worse but knowing that wasn’t possible. The eyes were an inch from his own.

  “I’m dying, Olech.” Real terror on his features. “I’m gonna die right here.”

  “No, no you’re not.” Arms around his head, hugging him fiercely. “I know it hurts, it hurts like hell, but you don’t die. I didn’t die. I lay there for hours, and it never got better, and I kept bleeding but I couldn’t let go of my guts, but they did find me. They will find you.”

  “Gonna die.”

  “No. You went home. Because of this. You’re going home.”

  Olech’s eyes burned with the overhead light, and his mouth was so dry that he couldn’t wet it with saliva. His hands came up, reaching, and pressed against the transparent cover of the Transit Tube. No Mirror, no blood, no grass, no war, no one. His head jerked painfully as he looked left and then right, seeing he was back in the capsule that had launched him on the mission to meet whoever or whatever had given mankind the Step.

  Mirror.

  It wasn’t an illusion, or a memory. His body was real, and he’d been returned to it. He found a bottle of water set into the compartment’s wall, and drank so quickly that half of it ended up on the cushions. The cushions of a luxury Transit Tube befitting the Chairman of the Emergency Senate. Olech hit the release, and scrambled out of the container.

  The capsule wasn’t moving, but all its systems were online and the air was warm. Grabbing another water bottle, he tottered on weak legs to the nearest porthole. Seeing he was right where his mission had started, very close to the blue planet where he’d been born. The place he had so longed to return to, the whole time he’d been with the entity that said time didn’t exist. The entity that said its race would shun mankind, not because of its capacity for bloodshed, but because humans could convince themselves that the violence and the theft and the cruelty and the gossip and the indifference all had a good reason.

  The arm with the water bottle hung down by his side, and he rested his forehead against the window.

  “Mirror? Can you hear me? Can you give us another chance?”

  “. . . our heroic troops suffered enormous losses in the final battle.”

  Ayliss was sure she knew who was speaking, but the volume kept cutting in and out as she rode the painkillers. She’d briefly regained consciousness inside a machine shop of some kind, with power drills and hammers sounding all around while a thousand hands dragged her from inside a crushed can and a hundred voices told each other to be careful. Fire had leapt up her left arm, and she’d passed out again.

  “The planet code-named Omega was the source of the Sim enemy. Their creators were the shapeshifting aliens encountered earlier in the war.” Ayliss grinned with her eyes shut, giddy to finally identify the speaker. Reena was giving a speech. “Because Omega is now gone, and the aliens making the Sims have been wiped out, I have ordered our troops in the war zone to fall back into a defensive posture.”

  A needle was probing for the vein in Ayliss’s right arm, and a harsh light turned her eyelids red. Hands lifted her onto a narrow table, and suddenly she couldn’t stay awake.

  “Is she going to be all right?” Reena again, this time right next to her but also far away. Ayliss fought the crushing weariness, but couldn’t manage to open her eyes.

  “She’s a fighter.” Dom. Dom on the other side. “She’s going to be fine.”

  “I’ve got the best re-gen surgeon in the Force lined up. Her new arm’s going to be exactly like the old one.”

  “Takes a long time to grow a new one.”

  “The Sims accepted the cease-fire. We’ve got time.”

  Deciding that the insane conversation was a hallucination, Ayliss stopped listening.

  “Look who’s finally awake.” Blocker leaned over her, grinning warmly. “Thought you’d sleep through the next war.”

  Her vision was blurry and her mouth was dry, but Ayliss reached up with her right arm, trying to hug him. Her left arm was caught in the blankets, and she struggled to free it until Blocker’s hand came down on her shoulder.

  “Hold on. Your arm’s gonna be inside that thing for months.” She turned to look, seeing a huge white machine with blinking lights that was practically in bed with her.

  “My arm,” she croaked. “You cut off my arm.”

  Blocker held out a covered bottle with a drinking tube, and she sucked down the water while he spoke.

  “Only way to get you out. It was crushed anyway.”

  Memories slowly returning. Cusabrina and Dellmore and Zuteck, killed by the moths. Legacy trapped with her, hearing the voices but dying from the planet’s poisonous atmosphere. Tin and Varick helping to rescue her.

  “Is it over?”

  “Omega’s nothing but an asteroid cluster now. They almost blasted the place while you and I were still down there.”

  “No, I mean the war.”

  “We’ve got a cease-fire, and a prototype of a translation device that sometimes lets us communicate with the Sims. We’ve pulled back from every contested planet in the war zone, with the promise to leave them all.”

  “The Guests won’t like that. Watch out for Zone Quest.”

  “Don’t give them another thought. Your stepmother is one thorough individual. She’s got this flunkie named Kumar, used to work with Horace Corlipso, and then switched to the Guests. He’s testified that ZQ conspired with Damon Asterlit to keep the mines on Celestia open, using Celestian citizens as slave labor. The entire ZQ board’s under arrest, and Reena’s in the process of dismantling the whole organization.”

  “Celestia? Are they still fighting there? How is Jan?”

  “Well . . . that’s a long story. But the fighting is over, and Jan’s alive.” Blocker nodded, remembering something. “And so’s your father. His capsule reappeared, right where it vanished, with him inside.”

  “How can that be?”

  “They’re blaming it on some kind of Step hiccup. The mission clock in
his capsule showed only an hour had passed, from the moment he disappeared to the instant he was picked up. On the Bounce they’re saying he time-traveled.”

  “Saying.”

  “Yeah.” He whispered in her ear, “He’s a little messed up. Thinks he communed with the entities that gave us the Step. None of that’s the official story; publicly they’re saying he’s convalescing somewhere. Luckily there’s so much big news that he’s been pretty much lost in the echoes.”

  “There’s more? How long have I been out?”

  “Three weeks. They always induce a coma after starting a regeneration.” He let that sink in. “Like I said, Reena’s one thorough lady. She recognized the rebels as the new government on Celestia. Then she made a big speech admitting she knew what was going on there pre-rebellion, and didn’t do anything about it.”

  “Why would she admit something like that?”

  “So she could resign, and take the entire Emergency Senate with her. She’s staying on until the elections. The first elections since Larkin died.”

  “You watch. The same dirty crowd will end up in charge.”

  “Oh really?” Blocker straightened up, smirking.

  “What?”

  “The Mortas name still generates a lot of loyalty. Especially for the young woman who grew up on the Bounce, worked in the Veterans Auxiliary, fought off the Sims as the governor of a colony of discharged vets, and then lost an arm winning the war.”

  “What the hell are you talking about?”

  “You’ve been nominated for Interplanetary President, and the numbers are looking very, very good.”

  “You’re joking, right? That’s a joke.”

  “It is not.”

  She looked at the machine again, tears starting to flow. “Because of this? Because I lost an arm on Omega? How many of my sisters died there? Breena got shot with her own Fasces. The moths ripped it out of her hands and killed her with it! Dell . . . they wrapped around her suit, and she had no choice but to blow herself up! And what about the rest of the squad? What about Bullhead and Lightfoot? Why haven’t you told me if they’re alive?”

  “Ayliss!”

  “What?”

  “Varick, Tin, Bullhead, and Lightfoot all made it out with us. We lost a lot of people, but more survived than didn’t.” He laid a hand on her forehead, brushing back an errant blond hair with his thumb. “And your reaction makes me very hopeful that you will be selected to take charge—instead of that same dirty crowd.”

  “I can’t take office, anyway. I’m a fugitive. And so are you.”

  “Not with ZQ getting broken up. Now that they’re out of the way, Reena’s had a chance to massage what happened on Larkin. The new story is Rittle was trying to murder you.”

  “But that’s the truth. He tried to murder us all, on Quad Seven.”

  “Yes, he did. But somebody convinced Margot Isles to amend her statement about the fight in that passageway, saying Rittle came after us and got killed in the scuffle. We’re all in the clear. You, me, Tin, and Ewing. In fact, I’ve been discharged from the Force.”

  “Discharged? Why?”

  “Reena thinks you might need someone to head up your security detail.”

  “You cut off my arm.”

  Blocker gently slid his hand behind her, pressing his cheek against hers. “The whole time I was doing that, I was wishing there was a way for us to trade places. I would have gladly done that for you. I would die for you, Little Bear.”

  “Live for me, Big Bear.”

  Chapter 23

  The sun was reaching for the horizon when the slim figure in black came up the hill. Using the new trees for cover, she alternated between short dashes and long crawls. Her dark hair was cut short, but her almond skin bore no camouflage. She was peering over a large rock near the summit when a child spoke to her.

  “You are really noisy.”

  Tin smiled evenly, her muscles sagging to the ground as she turned. A boy with orange skin and a bush of hair the same color was squatting a yard away.

  “I told them I wanted to do this at night.”

  “Wouldn’t have mattered. Lucky for you you’re not armed.”

  “You have to be Sunlight.”

  “I don’t have to be anything.”

  “I’m Tin. I work security for Jander’s sister.”

  “Heard they made her the new boss.”

  “She’s the Interplanetary President.” Tin rolled over, resting her head on her palm. “And she’s all right.”

  “She won’t stay that way. They won’t let her.” Sunlight stood, motioning her uphill. “But with somebody noisy as you guarding her, maybe she won’t be around long.”

  Tin also stood, brushing dirt off the suit. “Maybe you could teach me how you sneaked up like that.”

  “See out there?” Tin scanned the rest of the base and the surrounding plain. Though still guarded by Force troops, the Mound had been transformed. The support units were all gone, and their bunkers had been turned into dwellings. People of all ages, some orange and some speckled with bird tattoos, were working on garden plots all over the slope.

  “I’m not much of a farmer.”

  “Neither were they. The Whisper gave us the fertilizer caps they made from the Sims’ mud munitions, and now they’re teaching us how to use them.” Sunlight pointed out at the open plain, where families of feral hogs moved around in the distance. “But I meant outside the wire. You want to learn how to move, go out there.”

  “With all those ugly things? No thanks.”

  “Yeah.” Sunlight started up the hill. “They did get outta hand. But we’re working on that too.”

  Blocker and the rest of the security team secured the top of the hill just before the sun set. An armored mover came up the road soon after that, and Erica Varick stepped out in the uniform of a Banshee major. She walked up the remaining incline, but was intercepted by Dru and Felicity, members of the Holy Whisper from Roanum. They hugged and laughed, but Varick kept her eyes on Jander, standing with his back to a sprawling hilltop garden.

  “She’s quite a soldier, Jan.” Beside him, Blocker spoke without moving his lips. “And a fine-looking woman, too.”

  Dressed in tan fatigues with no adornment except some dirt, Jander only nodded. “If you like burn scars.”

  “She says you do.”

  “What else does she say?”

  “No more than that.” Blocker walked off toward the tree line, where a woman in black fatigues was crawling across the ground next to Sunlight.

  Varick came up the rise alone, a challenging tilt to her chin. “It’s good to see you, Jan.”

  “Major.”

  She shook her head. “Okay, I’ll play along. Lieutenant.”

  “I know why you’re here.”

  “I doubt that.”

  “I’m done with the Force.”

  “I once told you that when I was finished with the war I was going to find a tall mountain and never come back down.” Erica put her hands on her hips and looked at the lush vegetation behind him. “No matter how you decorate it, this little mound of yours isn’t going to cut it.”

  “A lot happened here. A lot of good people died here. The last ones were killed by Command.”

  “And now we’ve got a new president, a real Senate, and a chance to make sure things like that don’t happen again. This is no time to quit.”

  “Not happen again? The lies have already started up. They never even stopped. They said the Force deposed Asterlit on Reena’s order.”

  “What would you have wanted instead? Your entire brigade court-martialed for mutiny? More good people killed by Command?” She stepped closer, the vertical cheek scar shining. “The Orphans marched at the very front of the victory parade, and then they got disbanded. The ones who wanted to stay in uniform got reassigned, and the rest were discharged with full benefits. Except you. You became a farmer.”

  “I’m good at it.” Jander looked over his shoulder at the low wall and t
he greenery that overflowed it. “You should have seen what this place looked like when I got here.”

  “I heard. The whole galaxy heard about the Red House. You did the right thing there. And you did the right thing again when you killed Asterlit. But there’s a lot left to be done. Come with me, Jan.”

  “The Banshees don’t take guys.”

  “It’s not a Banshee assignment. We’ve got a tenuous cease-fire with the Sims that could blow up at any time. We’ve got a translation device that is far from perfect, and we can only communicate long-distance. We promised to give Sam every Hab in the war zone, but he sure as hell doesn’t trust us to leave him alone. Especially in the future, now that he knows there won’t be any more deliveries of young Sims.”

  “How did you prove that to them?”

  “The aliens were launching new Sim transports every few weeks, one at a time, with the entire complement asleep. A pre-set course took them far away, to a spot where hundreds of those ships were just sitting there in space, waiting to be awakened.”

  “We didn’t get that story on the Bounce.”

  “Too many people would have wanted us to just blast them. But we told Sam where they were, and let him go through our cordon with one ship. That’s what sealed it. They didn’t trust the footage from Omega, but seeing all those new ships, all those bodies in sleep tubes, and realizing we could have killed them all . . . that did it.”

  “So what do you need me for?”

  “The Sims are going to grow old and die out. Even with robotic defenses—and you can bet they’re working on those right now—they’ll reach a point where they couldn’t hold us off no matter what weapons they develop. Somebody’s got to hammer out a system that protects them until they’re all dead. You were invited by name.”

  “You mean our new president is ordering me.”

  “No, dumbass.” Varick’s lips curled affectionately. “Remember that gray-haired Sammy on Roanum, the one with the face scar? He’s a very big honcho with them. He refused to talk to ambassadors, scientists, linguists, even Reena herself. That clunky translation machine worked really well just one time—when he said he only trusted the two soldiers he met on Roanum. You and me.”