by Paul Jessup
She went on and on, berating him for hurting his brother, her words buzzing around in his thoughts but leaving no impact. He ignored her words, her reprimands, and instead focused on the fire that grew inside of him, focused on his hate.
“Now, before we get back to work on fixing this ship, I need you to get Hodei and Mari back, and then to disengage with our attacker. We’ll use what we can and hit the entanglement engine, moving far away from their ship and leaving no trail behind us for them to follow.”
Sugoi cracked his neck, his arms, his newly built bones. Fire burst inside of his chest, a red giant of a sun dancing beneath his ribs. Oh, he smiled, Oh. He would go and get them. But rescuing, that was not part of it. He had his own plans. To hell with Itsasu.
He ran over to the docking station, where he knew the other ship had connected with theirs. The ribs of the ship dashed over his head like some alien language imprinted on the world. His body still hurt, but now it was an aching burn.
He kicked open his locker, his giant form shadowing the room like a sinister creature. He pulled out his betadur and his numen suit, strapping them on, charging the hot coils of the rifle. He smiled. He could not help it, even though it hurt his mouth like a scalpel against his cheeks. He smiled.
The sucking of the tube called to him, sang to him. A siren song of flowing air, the glass suspension between the ships reflected the city lights of the moons and the glittering dust of the stars.
Hodei and Mari would both pay. They couldn’t do that to him, to Sugoi. Couldn’t leave him for dead. Couldn’t have those dolls kill him. No. He would smash them both. They had done it on purpose, cheated on him and hired some thing to come and kill him. But he would show them. He had the upper hand now.
His own brother. His girlfriend. Had the last four years meant nothing? Had the lifetime of keeping his baby brother safe meant anything? They left him for dead. Assassinated, while they ran off to fuck on some docked ship. Probably going to leave without him, leave him behind with that mummified Itsasu and that weird pregnant girl.
Not going to happen, he thought. They all die now.
26
Mari tried to move. Something was coming, blasting, burning; was it coming for her? To save her or to kill her? The webbing was too strong, steel strong, keeping her bound and wrapped up.
Stomping feet and a hollering howling sound—Sugoi’s animalistic, angry, no-longer-man voice. A caged creature’s voice, released and burning and destroying. A hungry howling, eating voice. Bursts of sound, ringing around in her head—betadur bursts, metallic clanging of things hitting the ground—and a smell of sweet fire and steel igniting and smelting.
Mari wondered if he was here to save her. That wasn’t a happy sound, it was a violent, terrible sound. She remembered threats he had made to her, always in the middle of the night, his back outlined by the harsh light of space, his features a wall of shadows. “I could kill you,” he would say, waking her from sleep, “I could kill you. Please don’t make me do it.”
She let it slide because he never laid a hand on her, and she had always thought he was bluffing. But now, with this raging anger, this howling voice, she wondered. Was he here to murder her, as he had always promised?
She held her breath, quick, quiet, in her lungs, trying to keep it hidden beneath her ribs. Heart goes thump, thump, arms struggle. Too hard. Not enough freedom.
His shadow bent out—she saw it, like a hundred arms, limbs twisted, a mountain of man, craggy and ancient. She saw him walk into the room, his numen suit glowing a strange mixture of gold and blue, a hundred doll parts around his body like war trophies. In his hand a glowing betadur, the chambers hot and ready to spark.
His face was twisted, molten rock, bursting forth, his eyes hatred volcanoes. He pointed the gun right at her. Her eyes closed, she whimpered. “Please,” she pleaded, “please, no.”
He stormed forward, pointing the rifle at her, waving it at her like an expression of himself, an extension of his anger. “You hurt. Why? Why hurt me? Huh?”
“Sugoi,” she said, her eyes still closed, her voice trembling, trying to stay calm, cool. “I don’t know what I did to hurt you. I’m so sorry, okay? But I didn’t do it on purpose. I need you to help me get down. Before they kill me here.”
She heard the betadur blast, a harrowing Tesla coil sound, saw crackling of lightning and then felt the steel webbing melt from around her. For a second, she thought she was going to die, that the bolt would blast through her heart, ripping it to shreds, and then Itsasu would have to revive her. Somehow.
Instead, her body hit the floor. Her lungs expanded, no longer caught tight by the webbing. She felt the steel floor of the ship beneath her hands, and just about kissed the ground. She looked up at Sugoi, saw his face in torment and torture, his eyes flaring, his lips twitching.
“I free. See? Not bad guy. Not bad. Why? Why you leave? For dead? Why Hodei touch you?”
She stood up, hugged him, brought his giant body close to hers. She felt him beneath the numen suit, his skin distant and packed beneath the layers of fibers and metal. She held him close, even though he tried to pull away. “I don’t know why. Okay? He was trying to comfort Ekhi. It has nothing to do with us.”
He pushed her away, teeth clenched together like iron bars across his face. “Yes. It does. He touch. I hurt. I love you. So, you go. Go.”
She turned and ran, back the way she had come. She stumbled and swerved, her feet still filled with tiny prickles, her body trying to lose the stumbling numbness. Her numen suit clanged as she walked. She had originally come over to stop the invasion on the ship, but now knew that Sugoi would probably end up destroying them all. She had to go back to Itsasu, warn her of this.
Mari only hoped that the two ships were still connected somehow, that she had enough time to go back and stop Sugoi from killing Hodei. She only hoped Hodei had stayed on that ship, had not tried to do something stupid and heroic that would get them all killed.
27
Hodei lay flat as the patuek entered under his fingernails, through his tear ducts, his ears, mouth and nose, slicing under his skin like tiny razors, peeling back his mind and storing themselves beneath his blood. He howled and punched the metal floors, the sound ringing around him like a metallic giant walking.
They cut up his memories, cut into his mental architecture, burned holes into his thought patterns. He was to be the host for their escape, a last sanctuary of their minds before the disease destroyed them.
The doll leaned up, looked at him, smiling. “I’ll accompany you onto the ship. Help you slide the bodies on board.”
Hodei bit the inside of his cheek, his teeth grating against the flesh. “Itsasu will notice. Will see us come in.”
“I’ve already notified your ship’s AI of our plans and needs. It will keep Itsasu in the dark. It seems to think she would not understand our situation. Don’t worry, it has us covered.”
Hodei thought back to the first time he had met the heart of the ship, back when he joined Itsasu’s crew and took a tour of the egia. He did not like the strange mind, its bellowing voice, its bizarre wisdom culled from centuries of intelligence algorithms evolving and learning and storing information into complex data matrices. The very existence of the heart of the ship gave him an odd feeling, like the ship was haunted by some dead god peering into their lives.
Hodei stood up painfully, glancing at the two tubes. “You want me to drag those onto our ship? In a way no one will notice?”
The doll nodded proudly. “Correct,” it said.
Hodei leaned against a wall, propping up his aching spine. His body felt new and barely healed, as if he had grown in a vat and then been released into the wild. Each limb ached from the thalna’s reconstruction and the invasion of the patuek.
“Why do you need me? Need us? You can travel the void of space on your own until you find a way of stopping this, can’t you? Reversing it somehow?”
The doll’s black button eyes shimmered unn
aturally, tiny cameras nested inside them, taking everything in, recording it and storing the information for later. “There is something on your ship. You will see. Just do this for us and you will be paid very well.”
Hodei shrugged. He wasn’t looking forward to lugging the two tubes through the ships. If only there were a way to turn the artificial gravity off while he did it. But people would notice that, would get suspicious. And if that happened, these invaders could turn his insides into a pulp within minutes and then find a new host.
The door slammed open behind him, an abrupt movement that knocked him to the floor. He sprawled, his back vulnerable once again. The shadow of the body in the doorway was a giant, staring down at him. A craggy old thing, earthy smelling and full of rage.
His brother. Sugoi.
Sugoi held the betadur, his eyes filled with murder, his teeth rigid in his mouth, keeping his tongue inside. He leapt forward, weapon in the air as the doll stared on in terror. “I kill!” Sugoi screamed. “I kill. Brother baby no more. No more. I kill.”
The weapon was slung forward and pointed at Hodei’s eyes. He watched as his brother’s finger tickled the trigger; the coils lit up, the segments bursting with culminations of powerful energy. Abruptly the hand flew back, screaming, shaking, the weapon flopping to the ground and scattering across the floor. The giant was in pain, his hair smoking as if it were on fire, his eyes bulging out of his head, his knees on the ground, his fists pounding against his cheeks, his nails digging beneath the skin.
Hodei scrambled back, his spine against the glowing blue cylinders. They were cold against his back, freezing to the touch, almost burning his skin. He watched his brother flail about for a few minutes more, sparks running along Sugoi’s body, his face twisting and fingers yanking the skin away from the muscle. The screams ate into Hodei’s mind. Sugoi had come to kill him, yet he still felt pity and fear for his brother.
Eventually, the screams stopped and the body slumped over with a xylophone sound. Hodei leaned forward, unsure if it was safe to move. He kicked the body with the tip of his toes. Sugoi made no response.
The doll looked up at him. “Now is the time to go. His life readings show that he’s still alive, just not in his body.”
Hodei sighed, not wanting to go through with this, but seeing no other way out. He reached behind and grabbed the cold cylinder. The thing practically weighed nothing at all. He slung it over his back and proceeded to walk out the door, tiptoeing over his brother’s body. He would come back for Iuski next and only hoped that his brother would not be awake before then. He stopped in the doorway for a moment, looking over her beautiful body again.
She saw him look at her, saw the way his eyes moved over her body. It brought back more memories. The first time she made love, it was in a low orbit cruiser above some lost and ruinous planet. The first boy she had kissed, not even ten years old, in an alleyway behind her house.
Hodei shoved these thoughts beneath his own complex thoughts, hiding them beneath his own intricate memories. As he did so, her brother’s thoughts bubbled up. Don’t push us down, don’t push us away. Doing so kills our patuek, kills that memory. Do that and you will exterminate us, wipe us out completely.
Hodei smiled. That might not be a bad thing.
It would wipe her out, too, the brother thought, and I know you love her. Or, at least, you think you do. I’m thinking that’s not something that’s on your agenda, killing the girl you’re infatuated with.
Hodei cursed and moved out of the doorway and into the skeleton of the hall, the ceiling above him lined with flickering songs and the eyes of tiny mechanical creatures. The doll crouched on the lightweight canister, hitching a ride as Hodei walked.
“So, who was that? Who just tried to kill us? Your brother?”
Hodei grunted. “Don’t want to talk about it. Let’s keep going.”
The doll climbed up the canister, the blue light from inside tainting the doll’s patchwork skin. “You know, if he kills her before we get back, she’s going to need a body. Your body, probably.”
Hodei said nothing. He just kept walking, lugging the canister over his shoulder, trying not to think, not to succumb to the echoing thoughts and memories of brother and sister that raced around in his mind, crawling beneath his memories, tainting and overwriting him.
28
“He won’t be able to kill his brother.”
The words danced out of the mouth of a newly built doll, standing with a melty wax face in a long, winding corridor. The eyes were still half-finished globes, oozing and blinking with red and orange LEDs. The teeth were yellow and cloudy, and beneath the skin Mari saw the flickering scales of gold and orange fish swimming, creating Itsasu’s new doll from their electronic excretions.
Mari’s butterfly twitched about in her steel skull, doing a fevered dance that was close to mania. It reflected her own disbelief, and her own inner turmoil. “Why not?” Mari asked, exasperated.
“Because I snipped his nerves and attached a small black beetle to the knotted, combined ends of them. This birao is enriched with his brother’s genetic code. If it senses that he will try to hurt the person with that DNA, it attacks his nervous system, immobilizing him. Brutal, but much easier than the alternative the ship’s heart suggested.”
Mari’s stomach burned and twisted. She resisted the urge to vomit, held it inside of her, thrusting the feeling down into the background of her thoughts. “That’s—that’s inhumane. How could you do that to him? What right have you to do that to him?”
The doll’s half-made lids blinked, almost closing over the melting, goopy eyes. The shutters of the lids looked like camera irises from years gone by. “He was dead. The invaders had blown his head into a mess upon the floor. I did not want to revive him. Rather, I would have stored his patuek in a database, and then maybe used his skills in an android of some sort. Something I could easily control and keep in check. But the ship’s heart wouldn’t have it.”
A pause. Mari held in a wave of emotion that threatened to take over her body. Nausea erupted into violence and hatred like a volcano of sickness inside her. “You would take him away from me?”
“It doesn’t matter, either way. He’s alive now. I have no idea why the ship’s heart insisted on it. But he is alive now. If you’ll excuse me, I need to finish this doll and start repairs on the ship. Hodei has a lot of work to do when he gets back, as does his brother.”
The doll walked away, its mechanical feet leaving a slurry of nanoparticles across the floor, a disgusting wet sludge of silver and metal. “And you have a lot of work to do as well. We’re going to use the entanglement engine, once we have everyone back on board. It seems the threat has been minimized. We’ll close off the tube they used to invade and then burst out of here in a ray of light. I need you to calculate a solar path of least resistance.”
Mari nodded. The anger was gone, the violence, the nausea. When her mind entered navigator mode it was all work. A role that she had spent her life perfecting. “I’ll have it to you within a few minutes. What is our destination?”
“The Aatxe Port. If rumor is correct, a shop of relics there has the last piece I need. Then we can all go our separate ways and leave space to those who wish to travel it. Won’t it be nice? To have this finally done, no longer a nomad amongst the stars?”
Mari sighed and walked back toward the navigation chambers. “Okay, I’ll get right on it.”
She did not want this to end, did not want to go to some planet and settle down. Sugoi, she knew, would probably take off the moment this trip was done. And where would that leave her? Sure, Itsasu paid well, but if the voyage was over, then she would be rich and lonesome. And she couldn’t have that. She needed him nearby. She counted on his giant presence, his oversized hands, his earthy smell. Counted on it to always be there with her. If his presence became a void, then her loneliness would swallow her whole.
29
Sugoi rolled over. His whole body stung and smelled of burnt
skin and rubber. His limbs were hot and sore, his mind numbly searching for thoughts through the pain. He had dreamt for a moment there, dreamt of flying around a large planet that fired missiles at him, burning holes into his skin. When he awoke he was alone in the room. Even those weird canisters that his brother had were gone.
He sat up, looking around, trying to see if there was any sign of life. “Lo?” he called out. “Lo? Anyone?”
No answer. He slid upright, and then realized with a panic that he was on a foreign ship and was hunting Hodei, and that when he had tried to kill Hodei, he had felt pain. The memory of pain stung at him, making him taste the poison of its recollections.
He stood and moved toward the direction from which he had come, remembering the ship in a vague blur of running. Hodei go this way, he thought. Must track. Must kill. Venge, venge, venge.
He pushed through the walls, his numen suit like a parasite wrapped tightly around his body, almost suffocating his pores. He tried to remember the way he had come, the way back to the ship, tracking Hodei. Killing Hodei was the main thought on his mind. His brother had stepped too far. He must be corrected.
He heard a whispering sound from behind, like a knife cutting through fabric. He turned and saw a small humanoid elephant, probably a servant, genetically altered and built for space travel. It had purple skin that made Sugoi think of the first time he had punched his brother, the color of the bruise that had risen against the brown flesh. It made him smile.
“What you want, little thing? Eh?”
The elephant creature smiled, pulled up its trunk to reveal tiny human lips surrounded by tusks. It spoke, whispering quietly, just loudly enough for Sugoi to hear. “Shazarttta tatta tat haratta,” it said, its voice like a rapid-fire machine gun. “Shazarttta tatta tat haratta.”
The words were a sequence, Sugoi realized, a pattern. His mind tried to unravel the pattern, tried peeling apart its complex structure. In revenge, the word pattern folded in on itself, covering up his memories, unlocking parts of his mind with violent, jigsaw fingers. New words sprang up, removing old words from his mental landscape, replacing the symmetry of his slow thoughts with new symbols, new language, his own mind invaded by an alien tongue forcing itself into his thoughts, raping his consciousness. His old memories were replaced with communal memories in this new language, memories on a distant planet with four moons and a bright orange star that shouted out all shadows and covered the horizon in an orange light.