HUSH

by Craig Robert Saunders

  ‘Thank you.’

  ‘I can’t let you leave, Ulrich.’

  ‘You can’t make me stay, Dig. I’m out, and you know it. You’ll kill me or let me loose. No other way this is going to work.’

  ‘Sure. Sure. Just do me one last favour,’ said Dig. ‘On your way. No big deal. A message.’

  Ulrich took the message. What could he do?

  *

  Ulrich walked into the Steel Heart, nodded to the men on the door, who stood aside. Ulrich was fifty-three, not an Aug, but everyone knew him – Sergeant in the Aug War on the losing side, now an enforcer for Dig. Everyone knew who paid Ulrich’s bills if he got broke up.

  Ulrich got hurt, it cost Dig money to patch the cracks, and Dig didn’t like spending money.

  Ulrich’s gun was in his coat. It was West Angels, and the police weren’t an issue, because there weren’t any in the City any longer. Inside, he took out his weapon and laid it on the bar while he waited for the droid bartender to come to him.

  ‘Karl,’ he said. ‘How’s it going?’

  ‘Mr. Bale, a pleasure to see you again. May I serve you something?’

  ‘No. Just here for business, Karl. Is Raymond in back?’

  ‘Yes. Should I call him?’

  ‘No, don’t bother. I’ll figure it out. And Karl?’

  ‘Mr. Bale?’

  ‘Take a cigarette break, okay?’

  ‘I understand,’ said Karl, but Ulrich was already up, and moving and the gun wasn’t on the bar but in his right hand.

  The doormen were moving too, and more than just the big men who got paid to look good in a suit, open a door and glare at people. Outside a place like Steel Heart there were usually plenty of little gangsters to glare at. Now, though, it was quiet. Only 11p.m., and the Steel Heart wouldn’t get going ‘til one or two in the morning.

  ‘Don’t,’ said Ulrich, one hand on the bar, one down low with his finger on the trigger.

  Seven behind him, he figured. The two from the door. Three moving along the railing on the balcony above. Two more who’d sat in a booth watching and waiting, stood.

  ‘Just here to see Raymond,’ said Ulrich.

  Karl was away from the bar, moving just fine on three spindly legs and a stabiliser, perfectly sensibly, perfectly smartly. When Karl was gone, pushing through the swinging toilet door, Ulrich was as ready as he was going to be. None of this was Karl’s shit to deal with.

  Ulrich wasn’t making it to the back door, and Raymond. He wasn’t meant to, was he?

  He turned, shot, took one doorman through the side of the man’s broad jaw. The men up in the balcony shot back first. Eight pistols in a bar, the bar was fucked. Ulrich could still move, though, and moving always worked best for him.

  He’d honestly thought it’d be Raymond, and out. It wasn’t just Raymond, was it? There was no way out for men like him, or Raymond, or Dig. They were under the dirt of this world and there wasn’t a way back to the light. He knew it all along, didn’t he?

  Knowing never stopped him wanting, though.

  Ulrich wanted cover but the bar at his back was just a dead end, no way out without getting shot first.

  Move.

  He fired high, and low, and took a round through his hip, taking some bone out on the way through. He took one in his thigh, which didn’t matter as much. That wasn’t so much of a fucker as the shot to his hip. The leg hurt. The hip slowed him.

  But he could still move, and while he could he didn’t plan to stop.

  He pulled the gun round, and up, after getting turned the wrong way from the clipped hip and thigh. Seven rounds, magnetic propulsion, hypersonic with a pneumatic grunt like a nail gun. Raymond’s men – Dig’s men – only had old automatics. Ulrich’s gun was expensive. Bullets were cheaper, and autos no big deal, but lower on bullets. They did plenty of damage, but they were slower to fire, slow to reload.

  Thirteen shots replied as Ulrich bolted, limping and dragging his shot leg to the back door. One shot puffed out the arm of his coat, winter padding spilling, but it didn’t hit him, and the guys in the bar couldn’t shoot for shit. Getting his hip tagged was just luck, and luck wasn’t good or bad. It was just a thing.

  Bleeding and hurt the door slammed open to three more heavy hitters waiting the other side.

  He shot two in the chest, took a graze from a bolt-pistol along his cheek bone, and shot the last one in the throat.

  Two down back in the bar, maybe.

  He finished the three hitters at his feet with a round to the head.

  Three dead for sure out here.

  Four men at least at his back.

  He took up one of the autos from a cute dead woman at his feet, aimed the cheap gun at the door and his pistol up to the stairs where the men on the balcony would be coming.

  The door shifted and fraction and he pumped three shots through the door, and one mag round to the head of the guy peering round the stairwell. Head gone, four outside slowed, maybe hit.

  I’m slowing, too.

  Blood poured down his leg, hard and fast. He was getting weak.

  Dig knows, he thought. This is it. In or out, doesn’t matter. He’s not letting me go. And she’s dead because I didn’t want to leave her a widow.

  He moved down the hall to the back of the Steel Heart, and loosed five bullets behind him, blind, just because.

  There’d be more out the back, because Dig wasn’t going to let Ulrich walk out.

  Dig would already be on his way to the cabin. She’d be hiding. Would he find her?

  Of course he will. I was a cunt to think Dig wouldn’t know about the cabin. He probably knew right from the moment we bought it.

  No one was going to pay for a new hip, either. Ulrich could walk, and he could take the pain, but he was going on a long drive and he only had so much blood. He shouldered through the Steel Heart’s back to the small kitchen out there, between him and the alley. There was fire extinguisher, and the kitchen was mostly a sink and a micro-over – it was a bar and den, not a diner.

  Ulrich shot it when he smashed into the handle for the exit with his good hip.

  It exploded, steel and foam, not gas, because he didn’t know shit about fire extinguishers. He’d never been paid to put fires out.

  He flicked the last of the bullets in the auto blind. Wild shots into the dark, and got nothing back but the stench of alley food and piss and the screech of mangy cats.

  It was a short hike left to his car, an old-fashioned fossil like the empty gun in his left hand, which he dropped. He went right, because the guys at the door had seen him pull up.

  He went right, but looked left, because what kind of fucking idiot stood right in front of a back exit? He caught a movement, raised his gun, fired and took one as the shift took him off his already suspect balance. Bullets came back, but it was dark and he was lopsided because of his leg, and because of his hip. Leaning to the right, dragging his leg. No cars on the road, he took the next best thing - a grav-cycle.

  Tyres for traction and drive, but grav to stabilise so the thing would corner without sliding. No key, but he worked for Dig and it wasn’t the first vehicle he’d stolen. A tricked out thing, too, some wannabe bosozoku type, ‘Kuza, or just a Japanese kid with nose rings and Mech tats.

  Easy enough to wire it up even with bullets flying around him, crazy, desperate shots from the alley hitting everything out on the street except Ulrich.

  He took off, a bullet singeing him shoulder blade to shoulder blade and fucking his coat for good. Gun and back were no big deal.

  The cabin was out of the City, at the lakes.

  I5 to Castaic, on the bike? Under forty minutes at a straight run, if he was lucky and hit it hard.

  Dig was there already and Ulrich was done with optimism. His wife was dead. He knew that. Only thing left was whether he died from bleeding out before he killed Dig, because one or the other wasn’t optimism. From now on, Ulrich was just being realistic.

  *

  63. />
  Anna’s Purpose

  Catacombs of the Kind

  2962 A.D.

  ‘Oh...that’s your story? That’s why you deserve to die?’

  ‘Yes,’ said Ulrich. ‘I killed plenty...’

  ‘Bullshit,’ said Anna. ‘What a load of fucking bull.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘You don’t feel guilty about that. You feel sad, Ulrich. It’s not the same. You feel like a dickhead because you fucked up and your wife died.’

  ‘Anna...’

  ‘No. Centuries, no one told you because you’ve got one eye and you’re a hard man, right? Well, fuck that. I’m doing, you can’t do it, and I’m not here to make you feel better. You’re good enough, and get over yourself.’

  ‘Anna,’ said Ulrich, and found his fists clenched, only just managing to loosen his fingers while Citadel stepped back, but looked on, a human shaped ghost, and illusion...like Ulrich’s guilt.

  ‘Fuck you, Anna,’ said Ulrich, but he was crying in the first time for...

  Centuries.

  Anna moved toward him, though, not away, and put her arm round him.

  ‘Though you said you weren’t going to make me feel better,’ he said, crying still and for some reason he actually did feel lighter.

  ‘No,’ said Anna. ‘I said I’m not here to make you feel better. I didn’t say I wouldn’t.’

  ‘I can’t let you do this, Anna,’ he said. ‘I’ve got to. I want to.’

  Citadel moved back to stand before them once more, and shook her head.

  ‘I’m sorry, Anna, Ulrich, but neither of you can possibly defeat Hush alone. There is only one way, and to do so, you need to be together. Anna is special, aren’t you, Anna? But she can’t do it alone.’

  ‘What?’ said Ulrich. ‘Special?’

  Anna shrugged. ‘I figured out a while ago why I’m on this little trip of ours. Hush didn’t see me. She made a mistake.’

  ‘How?’

  ‘We’ve all got a story, right? You were in West Angels. I was in Low Angels, living on the streets. In the rain, you know?’

  Ulrich knew very well. Nobody lived for long on the streets. It was a slow death sentence handed down for no crime other than being poor and shit on.

  ‘My hair fell out. I got scars – mutations, cancers, keloids...only I didn’t die. My friend saved me. She killed a man and I handed myself in for it. Never killed anyone ‘til those Mech things. The Company gave me Hush as an option, like we’d known they would, because we heard they were taking people with special...talents. Mine? I’m not immune to radiation, but I’m pretty close – I should have been dead years before I got on Hush...but I wasn’t. So, that’s it, you know? Why I’m different. Then I wondered, right from the start. Why did Hush not see me? Why? What’s different about me?’

  ‘Because of how ships see,’ said Citadel, nodded in agreement.

  ‘I’m irradiated – tainted. Not human as far as Hush is concerned. I’m a ghost. No more important than an Aug.’

  ‘Wait,’ said Ulrich. ‘But Warden’s Stave knew you.’

  ‘Warden’s Stave and the Shields were different, right, Citadel? You elected to serve as protects of humans. Hush only sees humanity as material for Aug soldiers...I’m nothing to her because I’m tainted. I’m of no use, so why would she see me? I don’t matter.’

  Citadel turned to Ulrich. ‘It’s true,’ she said. ‘Because of Anna’s genetic build, she can slip onto Hush. But to do so, Hush needs to see something she wants?’

  ‘Me, right? Well, I’ve got nothing to live for. About time I did something...good.’

  ‘Yes, but more. We must give her the embryos. Not all...but enough to bait her...as she baited us. We can awaken humanity, we can save humanity...but to do so, she must leave.’

  ‘She won’t just...go. Will she? Can we actually kill her? I don’t know how we kill a ship.’

  ‘We don’t, right? Maybe we can’t. But if she were to run out of soldiers?’ Citadel would be untouchable if a new shield could be constructed...you would have embryos, and she would want them, but her chance of taking them ends now.’

  ‘Very close to it,’ said Citadel. ‘Already, she pitches in battle, her last, against Jin and...Lian.’

  ‘Lian?’

  ‘Yes. She wears a Goliath suit.’

  ‘I’d like to see that,’ said Ulrich.

  ‘This is perhaps one final assault before she would have to find new materials, and launch exploratory missions to find new resources, which even with her improvements to propulsion drives might take centuries more. During which time, Citadel will develop methods to combat and rival. Our surpass her? Our group intellect is great. She must learn to use non organics, which will take time. We already have the upper hand.’

  ‘So we...use guile now, in the hope of what, crippling her for long enough to make a difference in the future?’

  ‘Yes,’ said Citadel. ‘We lie. We pretend to give her what she wants.’

  ‘I never did have much. All the lights, all the food, all the money up above, and there we were, down in the nothing, where everyone threw the shit they didn’t want, shit we needed. Would you see that humanity does better?’

  ‘It is our goal,’ said Citadel.

  ‘Well, maybe you can do a better job than we did.’

  ‘Do what?’

  ‘Die,’ said Citadel, simply, with sadness, but with the same stoic resolve that Ulrich had always had when he’d been a killer. He thought he was done with killing then, and he wasn’t so far.

  ‘I’ll do whatever it takes,’ he said, and meant it. If killing wasn’t done with him, and least he could go out doing something he was good at, because apparently he sucked at lying to himself.

  ‘Me, too,’ said Anna. ‘No offence, Citadel, but there’s not much here for the likes of us, is there? And your food’s awful.’

  Ulrich laughed, and Citadel frowned, which make Anna laugh right along with him.

  ‘I do not understand what is funny,’ said Citadel. ‘You will both die.’

  ‘Well, fuck death if it can’t take a joke,’ said Ulrich.

  *

  64.

  Willing to Die

  Citadel Plaza

  ‘You were man in a cage. You were a slave,’ said Lian as the first of the tanks missiles streamed, smoking, toward them. ‘Why did you not just...leave? Be free?’

  ‘This is my will, and I live or die freely. Freedom is not singularity, is it?’

  Jin loosed a wide ray from both arms.

  Heavy weapons, thought Lian. No wonder men in these machines lost.

  The missiles from the tanks were turned to vapours and smoke, just puffs drifting in the snow.

  The Goliath suit enhanced her vision, so that heat and movement and noise all registered to create an artificial picture laid over her ordinary sight.

  ‘Your missiles are limited, Lian. Wait until they close.’

  ‘Missiles?’

  Citadel spoke. ‘Right controls shoulder missiles. This suit is enhanced, but Jin is correct. There are forty missiles. Originally there were only four heavy ordinances. Right twist moves wrist cannons...’

  Citadel explained and Jin’s fury destroyed hover tanks and further, those three-legged tanks. The two ships at the Aug armies backs fired on them with smaller weapons, nothing large enough to threaten the plaza, and Jin stepped in front of Lian more than a few times to take the brunt of their barrage. He loosed some kind of bolt, blue and crackling, and while it could not injure the ship, three of those bolts took out some heavier weapons, then, the Augs were on them.

  ‘Now,’ said Jin, and Lian let loose a missile from each shoulder.

  ‘Wow,’ she said, but thought, fuck.

  Take them out, Lian thought, and raised her giant arms as easily as lifting a cup, and fired with twin wrist cannons, barrels proud of her arms and whirling, spitting out bright fire.

  While it was Ulrich who’d wished for the honour to fight beside Jin, it was Lian’s t
ime.

  And she was ready to fight, even though she knew she was going to die.

  The first of the Aug soldiers stormed into the Plaze, and Titan and Goliath tore into them with a field of fire blinding to all, and bullets and laser weapons deflected from their heavy shields, while far below them Anna and Ulrich made their plans against Hush, and Citadel worked to help them all in the hope of saving humanity itself.

  Thousands of Augs remaining, flooding into the Plaza, and Lian saw it coming. The missile launched from one of the two terrifying dreadnoughts, those ships known for Phobos, the Avatar of horror itself. The missile, only visible as a heat signature to her, flew high, perhaps a kilometre.

  Lost, she thought, her miniguns burning hot. The right jammed, and the left took a hit.

  ‘Jin,’ she said. ‘This is...’

  A laser hit the missiles on her shoulder cannons, down to fifteen. Augs swarmed, missiles from the tanks hitting Jin, and near Lian, and then something turned everything red, and white, and there was no pain, no sense of death, just a pure end with no chance of resurrection.

  She would have wanted it that way.

  *

  Catacombs

  ‘Anna...’

  ‘Shut up, Ulrich. You’re a dinosaur, but a sweet one. Just...just hold my hand again?’

  Ulrich took Anna’s hand in his, and held her eye, and she his, while the Kind’s robots removed her insides and added a final, terrible augmentation deep inside her, taking away organs, stomach, and sealing and melding as one a compartment hidden in a woman who bore the pain and disgust of what she took inside, and what she would do, with nothing more than a tear in her eye and a squeeze of a stranger’s hand in hers.

  *

  Plaza

  Lian was nothing. Gone, completely done.

  Citadel, only an avatar of the Kind, a ghost herself, stood over Jin, the Titan deep inside a steaming and smoking crater from Scale Adjustments Air to Surface missile. The Plaza was destroyed. Further from the blast, centred on Titan and the Goliath, Augs hit by their own ship smoked. Within a kilometre most of the plaza smoked, or burned. Two of the five remaining ships were torn, their prows gone, jagged holes revealing blackened, dead interiors, sliced through from clerestory to empty Crypt holds at their base.