HUSH

by Craig Robert Saunders

  Wasn’t just us, was it?

  Sometimes it was hard to see something so big. Not Jin...Jin was easy to see. He was starkest reminder of the horror of the Aug War, more so than all the Augs in the bay. No, the hardest thing to see was the near destruction of Earth. A death toll of a global war in the billions. Countries barren, people extinguished, cities gone forever, coastlines changed. Destruction more terrible than a thousand nuclear weapons could mete out. The Holocene Extinction gone, and a new one invented. The second human extinction level event in less than a millennium.

  ‘I’m sorry you won,’ said Ulrich.

  ‘Thank you, Sergeant. I appreciate the sentiment.’

  ‘Ulrich’s fine, Jin. Is Jin okay?’

  ‘Yes. I prefer Jin. Anna would have called me ‘Big Fucker’, but I have become attached to Jin.’

  He decided right then he liked the little woman and the Big Fucker well enough, though he would never call him that.

  Pulling a trigger’s about 1% of it, he figured. When it came down to guts and blood, willingness to pull a trigger was a big deal, sure, but sense enough to know when not too shoot? He’d always found pretty damn important.

  More than that, maybe, was a reason to fight when you were pissing yourself or tired and hurt and hungry.

  Comradery, friendship, levity, caring, giving, those were the things that made a unit function and if they were going to stay on the planet, or leave to go elsewhere, or live to see any of the infinite possibilities in between, then they’d better be able to function together, today, and for however long after they were needed.

  ‘It’s a genuine honour, Jin,’ said Ulrich. He nodded, not quite a bow, but not quite a simple nod, either.

  Jin did the same.

  ‘Thank you, Ulrich Bale,’ said Jin. ‘It has been a long, long time since I have wished I could smile.’

  Ulrich nodded again, and moved toward their ship thinking that perhaps those were the saddest words he’d heard in just about as long.

  ‘Launch in three minutes. Please,’ the ship informed them in a generic, electronic voice, but one which was more than serviceable.

  Augs and drones had already boarded vessels more basic in design than the ship assigned to the humans in preparation for departure.

  ‘What happened to your hair?’ Djima Kanado asked Anna as they ascended through the rear of their ship, Blue Sun Dawning.

  ‘Don’t know,’ said Anna. ‘We didn’t keep in touch.’

  Djima laughed, and Ulrich thought he heard a private chuckle from Orde Vella, too.

  Good. All core. No way her or Kanado are limbs.

  He didn’t remember Anna from the data he’d read, but he decided he knew what he wanted to know. They were all killers, some maybe crew who’d had little or nothing on Earth worth holding to, but it didn’t matter. It was background, like where they’d been born, or the cities they’d been raised in, or language, or accent. Just colouring in. Ulrich needed only solid outlines.

  Anna, Kiyobashi, Djima Kanado, Doctor Skerry and Orde he liked, and would work fine together. He’d yet to do more than remember Ayobami and Samantha Wain’s names, and hadn’t much more than that and a swift read of their backgrounds. Ames and Alison were the only people in his team he actively disliked, but he wasn’t so full of pride to miss his own failings.

  Jin, though?

  Jin’s the one to stay close to, and the one to make sure my core stay close to.

  In any team, there was a body, and there were limbs. Everything was useful, but a body could function without limbs.

  Maybe he’d have chosen differently, but it wasn’t his team to choose. The team belonged to Hush. He had to work with the team he’d been given, didn’t he? He could piss and moan...but why? Foster resentment from the get-go? No. Always a bad idea. Work with the tools at hand, and do the best you can with what you’ve got, and he was already figuring out how to do so.

  He did wonder why only humans and a Titan were chosen for this ship. The other ships were full of Augs, but not theirs. Why? Hush must have her reasons. Maybe the energy readings. Maybe Hush’s perceived urgency. How could he guess the rationale of a ship with an intellect far more vast than any onboard? Hush’s AP granted the flagship vessel greater acumen than perhaps even all her passengers combined.

  That, too, was colouring in, though. The bold outline was clear enough. Hush was in charge. He, and they, were beholden to her, her slaves.

  Never forget that.

  As such, there was no more sense in questioning that than fighting any kind of superior.

  Plus, it’s not like I can knock out Hush or slit her throat while she’s napping, is it?

  It certainly wasn’t the worst team he’d worked with. The last time he remembered working outside the army it’d been a smaller team, and they’d been much, much worse. The time he’d spent working for Dig, everything had been worse. He’d stood against Dig, and Dig died, and Ulrich was free.

  But I still lost, didn’t I?

  He would never forget he fought for men and women like Jin, and the hundreds of Augs in the ships’ bay, but the memory of Dig, of his wife, the three men by the lake, that was always freshest. The chill air in his skull held those memories and every time the atmosphere or wind shifted they seemed to float right back into the light, never allowing Ulrich to move on from what he was, what he’d always been, what he would always be. He was a killer, and he wasn’t fighting that, either. Just what he was, like the wind or the air just did its thing.

  *

  13.

  Blue Sun Dawning

  Blue Sun Dawning (Landing Vessel/Sabot Class)

  Transit

  Lian Skerry stayed beside Anna. She didn’t know why she did so, other than perhaps a natural inclination because she’d known the woman the longest, even if only by a matter of twenty or thirty minutes. Perhaps it was because she enjoyed the small woman’s company.

  Jin was the last to embark.

  The Titan paused at the foot of the ramp, his head bowed for around a minute, and then raised his head and followed.

  Lian watched, her head turned over her shoulder, but the Titan only inclined his head.

  ‘It is best I enter last,’ he said, and gave no explanation for the pause, or for the suggestion.

  Lian ascended behind Anna and the others through what would have been the lower wale, or maybe aft, on a ship, and on, toward what would have been the head, or the stern. It didn’t resemble any sea-going vessel she’d ever known, though. Nothing like an airplane, either, or the shuttle which had brought her to Skywell Dockyard and Hush. The shuttle was the only space travel she’d experienced. That had been more rotund, the surfaces slick with ceramics or some kind of material designed to take heat, replaced with every re-entry. The craft in the Clerestory on the upper level of Hush, though, were different. The Augs’ ships had been blocky things which looked capable little in the way of speed, though Lian had no way of judging. But Blue Sun Dawning was like a discus in appearance. Earth bound ships, planes, even the shuttles, would be seen, and as such, like a sales tool, were expected to look a certain way. When they’d left Earth, Lian had no doubt these ships which served Hush had looked like that – something human imagination could manage. In the intervening years Hush must have upgraded and changed those ships. Blue Sun Dawning’s hull was perfectly smooth and unadorned. She saw no visible joints, no ports for thrusters, nothing which gave any hint, even, to which direction it travelled. Front could just as easily have been the rear, and it was only on entering that she understood the internal layout at all.

  Jin stepped through the door behind her. He was the only other metallic creation she had seen with such lustre and perfection. Perhaps Hush learned from Jin. Perhaps humans were creating beauty from metal...even though to do so the man inside Jin had been stripped of everything, enslaved. Beauty from horror.

  He was forced to duck his head almost between his shoulders to enter, and as soon as he was inside he moved to an area
to one side, clearly constructed specially for the Titan. That was why he wished to enter last. Had he been first, he would have blocked their way and made boarding awkward. Considerate on the Titan’s part, or just good sense, she couldn’t tell. She wondered if they both amounted to the same thing.

  *

  ‘Please make yourself comfortable,’ said the ship. ‘We depart in three minutes. I suggest seated, but you will not require harnesses.’

  Lian didn’t think that was an attempt at levity. Their ship was only granted artificial intelligence. Blue Sun Dawning and her like were limited, since they served only simple functions, and as a general rule AI constructs were not humorous.

  An artificial personality (or AP) like Hush could be anything it wanted. Hush was their master, these ships her...

  Slaves.

  The thought was just as distasteful as it ever was.

  The ship moved. The sensation of momentum was miniscule – about as much as a hair might move in the gentlest of distant breezes. No one took pains to harness themselves into their seats. It didn’t seem necessary. Free from Hush, and whatever clearance requirements she had, Blue Sun Dawning engaged main propulsion. Then, Lian sensed nothing at all. Some form of inertia negation, but very near perfection, and as such, she felt it somehow dishonest.

  Jin sat across from Lian, his own seat the width of three human seats, and appropriate space afforded for his length, too. She smiled, though she found the Titan unsettling, too.

  Here I am, a doctor, frightened of a human.

  ‘Facilities and sleeping quarters are situated directly above this deck. May I suggest sleep?’

  Nobody took that suggestion.

  ‘Been asleep long enough, Blue Sun Dawning,’ said Samantha Wain. A few others nodded their agreement, some rose, eyebrows raised or with small flicks of the head – gentle invitations to those whose personalities they found most agreeable.

  ‘Been asleep so long everyone I knew is dead,’ said Lian That realisation was still a hard blow. ‘You?’ Lian asked Anna.

  ‘Everyone I knew was dead before I left,’ said Anna, standing and stretching her thin arms all the way over her head with a sigh. ‘But I’m still hungry.’

  Ulrich stood and stretched, too, but his seemed pained, not languid and easy like Anna’s movements. His hair was grey, his face lined. It was the eye, though...that eye you couldn’t quite look into, and it wasn’t his missing eye that was the problem. His eye was shrewd and smart.

  Dangerous.

  ‘I don’t think I miss them. Isn’t that strange?’ said Lian, trying not to stare at the old soldier who was to lead them onto the alien planet.

  ‘I was right,’ said Anna. ‘You’re easily the most mental person I’ve ever met.’

  Jin moved his head a fraction. Maybe he found that funny. How could anyone tell?

  ‘I’m going to eat,’ said Anna. ‘Kanado? You coming, or you on a diet?’

  ‘Yes,’ said Djima, and grinned. ‘My diet always consisted of eating enough to fill this frame. I get like you, I reach up? I’m surprised your guts don’t split.’

  Steve Ames stood at the spiralling stairwell, shook his head and headed up to eat. Lian caught the slight shake of Ulrich’s head. Disapproval. Ulrich Bale didn’t like Ames.

  The old man doesn’t keep his council quite as well as he thinks.

  She didn’t say anything, just followed the others up a curving stairs.

  She wanted to eat. Turned out her body didn’t. She wasn’t the only one to bring everything up on their first try. Instead, Lian ended up showering and changing, and only managed to eat when everyone else was already finished. When she came down a few of them looked a damn sight cleaner, and better, than they had in over a century. Kanado, however, looked worse. He was pale and he was sweating and clearly pissed off. It seemed his constitution let him down, too, and Kanado was taking it as some kind of affront that his own body had rebelled against him.

  *

  Lian told them what she was, and that she was, ostensibly, crew.

  ‘I am, too,’ said Samantha Wain. ‘Science. Phytology.’

  Anna still seemed to find it funny that anyone would volunteer, but this time her lips just raised a little, and she managed to hold it in. Lian found that endearing.

  ‘Phytology?’ asked Anna.

  ‘Botany,’ Lian explained.

  ‘Whole planet’s frozen, isn’t it? Not much call for gardening.’

  Ames.

  ‘Dickhead,’ Djima mouthed, and this time Anna did laugh.

  Lian gaze kept returning to the imposing figure with one eye and that gaping wound he wore like some kind of shield didn’t laugh. Perhaps he understood duty. He’d been a soldier, hadn’t he?

  Careful of assumption, she remembered. Her mother’s daughter, as she ever was. Her father had been a surgeon, but her mother had the most scientific mind Lian had ever encountered.

  Dead, now.

  ‘You’re a doctor in...?’

  ‘I used to work with the Company,’ Lian told Wain. ‘In augmentation development.’

  The Titan didn’t look at her – or turn his head, at least – but she felt she had to explain herself.

  ‘Elective and recuperative,’ she told Jin. ‘Not forced. Not...’

  ‘It is not an issue, Doctor Skerry. Please.’

  Even so, conversation became quieter with smaller, more tentative forays. Lian thought perhaps she’d overstepped.

  It was Anna who saved her, maybe, and Anna who thought of the things the others did not.

  ‘Blue Sun Dawning?’

  ‘Yes, Anna.’

  ‘Can we see the planet? Can we see the stars?’

  ‘Yes,’ said Blue Sun Dawning, and showed them the stars.

  *

  14.

  Djima Kanado

  Blue Sun Dawning

  Samantha Wain gazed on space, mouth slightly open. Perhaps they all wore the same stunned expression, perhaps some didn’t, but Djima Kanado was smiling.

  Stars, unknown to any of them. A complex pattern none would ever discern. Infinite in scope, but not, of course. Close enough for mortals, though. No hint of the system’s sun, far behind them, but for a gentle light on the white-blue planet to the port side of the ship, growing with each second.

  Wain turned around and Steve Ames was close. Way too close.

  Djima watched. Not obtrusive, then. Just interested in what a man like Ames would do. He’d read the files. Some, like Wain, and Ayobami, perhaps, had been willing to take a chance that those they shared this ship with, their adventure, or their death, were worthy of that trust. Djima Kanado trusted no one.

  ‘Back up, please,’ said Wain.

  ‘Of course,’ said Ames. ‘Just getting a better view.’

  ‘Of what? My ass?’ At that point, her tone was still light.

  ‘Hmm,’ said Ames, and Kanado moved, just slightly, because he didn’t like Ames, didn’t like what he knew about the man, and because unlike the other scientists on board the Blue Sun Dawning, Kanado wasn’t uncomfortable when it came to humans, and their interactions, and the simple fact that violence was sometimes unavoidable.

  ‘You’re creeping on me,’ said Wain, her voice no longer friendly, if curious. ‘And you’re barking up the wrong tree.’

  ‘Been a long time,’ said Ames. ‘I don’t care what tree I bark up.’

  Djima moved a little more, a kind of fluid distance where he could see what was moving, what wasn’t. Close enough to make a difference, far enough to step back should he need to. Not rushing, not yet. Not aggressive. Not yet.

  ‘Samantha Wain?’ said Djima, and Wain nodded. Maybe some would be more than happy to deal with fuckers themselves, but most were happy to accept a little help if offered. ‘I’m going for more of that coffee...had my fill of stars. Fancy regaling me with tales of derring-do?’

  ‘What are you? Some kind of...spinning top? You here to make up the numbers?’

  Djima smiled at Ames, and
his stupid words, and wasn’t angry at all. A squat man, built like a spinning top, maybe.

  ‘Good,’ said Djima, still smiling. A man can take a few insults, and you can take being treated like a cunt all day long right on the jaw and not rock in the slightest, if you’ve a mind to.

  Djima wasn’t in that frame of mind at all.

  He shoved Ames back against the curved wall, hard, so Ames’ head was forced down by the curvature of the hull, in line with Djima’s eyes. He wasn’t tall, like Ames. Djima was far stronger than Ames and his patience and calm were near as immeasurable as the stars but he wasn’t going to put up with Ames ruining his day, or anyone else’s day.

  ‘We’re going to an alien, unknown planet. You want to get back again, you’ll be nice.’

  Ames couldn’t reply, because Djima’s hand was cutting into the taller man’s windpipe, and squeezing harder by the second.

  ‘Leave him,’ said Wain. ‘He can bark all he wants.’

  ‘Sure?’

  ‘Yes,’ she said.

  Djima let Ames go and Ames rubbed his neck, glared, but like Djima figured, the dickhead didn’t do much more than that.

  ‘Coffee sounds a fine idea,’ said Wain. ‘Might be a while before good hot coffee’s on the menu again.’

  The larger man’s eyes watered as Djima and Wain headed toward the stairs, and Cassie Kiyobashi waited for them, where she gently nudged Djima to one side.

  ‘Nice of you, but you know...maybe save it? We’re going to need all of us.’

  ‘Him? Fuck that...’

  ‘Maybe not...maybe so,’ said Kiyobashi.

  ‘You’re the policewoman?’ asked Wain, beside Djima.

  ‘Yes. Just...steer round that one, maybe. Your call,’ she said, shrugging, stepping back.

  ‘Read the reports?’ asked Djima, though it was clear enough the cop had her head on straight.