by Paul Hughes
He stepped back from the edge of the Vegas Tunnel, which stretch vertically as far as he could see in both directions. Gate Control was little more than a ridge around the tunnel’s interior, a massive metal construct built over the course of centuries by the slave populations of entire systems. Hank leaned back against the safety cage that kept him within the confines of Control and prevented him from falling thousands of miles to his death at the center of the planet. Mother would not be pleased at all if her only surviving human fell to his death.
Hank retrieved an ancient pack of Marlboros from the front pocket of his denim shirt. He took great pleasure in removing the cellophane from the pack and tossing it over the side of the Control cage. It floated lazily down into the blackness of the tunnel. How long would it take for the wrapper to finally hit bottom? How many millions of wrappers would it join on the bottom of the Vegas Tunnel?
A shiny golden Zippo ignited his delicious sin, and Hank inhaled deeply, never fearing for life. Mother would see to it that the cigarettes, one of the few luxuries that he had requested for his tour in Vegas, would never spin any free radicals out of place to damage tissue and spur cancer growth. Mother looked after Hank quite well.
He looked out across the void of the tunnel. Sometimes he imagined that he could see the other side, the faint flicker of his cigarette reflected on the mirrored wall. Hank had never been one for imagination. It was not his place in Mother’s plan to imagine.
He took one last draw from the cigarette and tossed the butt over the side. He wondered for a moment if the cellophane wrapper had even landed yet.
Incoming vessel.
Hank’s jaw dropped and he frowned reflexively and he spun around to the simple control panel on the wall of his makeshift living quarters. Incoming vessel? There hadn’t been an incoming vessel in decades. The control panel flashed with the display of a standard Agent corvette cutting through the atmosphere.
Incoming vessel.
“Identify.” Hank blinked at the croaking sound of his own voice. How long had it been since he had spoken out loud?
Agent Whistler. Agent Nine.
“Anyone else?”
One human passenger.
“Identify.”
The Catalyst of the Sixth Extinction.
“Fleur.”
“We’re in the tube.”
The Agents’ corvette slid into the silver passage to the interior, a great reflective phallus cleaving the retracting miles-thick doors of the Vegas Gate. Centuries of accumulated debris from the surface fell away before them along the sporadically-illuminated drop, creating a dun-colored light show as the corvette’s thrusters shifted prevailing weather patterns in the vertical hole in the planet.
Nine stood at the porthole, looking out into nothing but polished silver drop. Fleur was lost in her thoughts, sitting in the vacuum chair with her arms looped around her knees, which were drawn up to her chest. Whistler observed her from the shadows he dragged around him wherever he went... Was she shivering? It wasn’t cold in the vessel, or at least he didn’t think it was too cold for the organic.
“Something wrong, poppet?”
Fleur’s head snapped around and her gaze traveled up and down the form projected before her. “What does it matter now? We’re here, aren’t we?”
Nine sat back down, looked from Whistler to Fleur. “Mother will not be pleased, but she is forgiving. She is a creature of—”
“Divine Mercy and Wisdom. Don’t. Just don’t. We know why I’m here.”
They fell.
Hank stood on the edge, looking up for any sign of the approaching vessel. He could not yet see it, couldn’t even really hear it, but there was something... He could sense a change in the pipe. A resonance. Something different in the natural resonating frequency of the metal tube that had been his kingdom for centuries. He lit another smoke, inhaled, exhaled, tapped ash off the edge of the hole in the world and waited.
He watched as the docking cradle, dormant for decades, silently whirred into life and slid out into the blank center of the pipeline, deftly catching the vessel that fell suddenly and without warning into its waiting embrace. Hank took another draw from the butt between his lips, then tossed it disdainfully out over the edge, watching the still-burning ember arc out into nothing as the vessel in the cradle drew closer. The cage opened in front of him as the dock engaged. All was accomplished in near-silence, the only sound the hiss and crackle of the cooling phase drives at the aft of the corvette. Hank cleared his throat, coughed loudly, the noise echoing out and back and forth along the pipeline. How long had it been since he had spoken? It felt as if his throat were covered in a thick layer of dust from the disuse of his vocal cords.
The docking port of the corvette opened with a liquid slurp as the phased vessel re-integrated into a solid. Exterior lock, interior lock parted, reminding Hank so much of female genitalia that he smirked under his luxurious handlebar moustache. The interior of the vessel proved to be just as dark and mysterious as the unintended metaphor.
Two black shadows emerged from the short passageway into the ship, hoods drawn over their features. Hank flinched for a moment in uncertainty, hand moving in a flash to his side, where a shiver gun fashioned to look like an ancient revolver hung from a leather holster. Faster than his human form could ever manage, one of the black-hooded forms flew forward, knocking Hank asunder and painfully disabling him with one tap of a hidden energy weapon. Silvery threads of weapon silk spun around Hank’s torso, pinning his arms to his sides as he fell with a meaty thud to the metal floor.
Whistler threw the hood back from his face and bent down to Hank’s level, where he produced a slender black device and thrust it into Hank’s neck. The old cowboy gasped with the sudden and sharp pain, and struggled under his silken snare. The black tube in Whistler’s hand beeped, and the weapon silk disintegrated. He stood, outstretched a hand, helped Hank to his feet.
“Whistler, you fucking prick.” Hank rubbed the reddened spot on his neck where a faint line of blood was running.
“Just following procedure, my dear pretty waste of flesh.” Whistler’s grin illuminated the dock. “Wouldn’t want an imposter, would we?”
“Who the hell would want to impersonate me? They’ve all been out-system for centuries.”
“Well, we didn’t know that, did we? We just got back from picking up the poppet from her hiding place. When the master’s away, the Hank is at play, I trust?”
“Bored as shit, if you really want to know. She hasn’t talked to me in years.”
For the first time, Whistler’s gaze faltered. “No contact?”
Hank looked side to side, as if it really mattered. Mother was within earshot in the entire system, and this close to her center, there was nothing he could do to hide this conversation from her. “She’s just been quiet lately. Ten, fifteen years maybe.”
Nine pulled the hood back from his face. “We’ll have to go see.”
Whistler nodded, walked back to the docked corvette. He walked up into the vessel, pulling Fleur from her solitude out onto the metal surface of gate control. Hank looked her lithe form up and down, reflexively licked his bottom lip.
“She’s grown.”
Nine walked closer to Hank, frown on his face. Hank tore his gaze from Fleur and looked safely at the floor.
“We’ll need to drop. We need to take the catalyst down to Mother.”
“Machine?”
Zero?
“They’re at the Gate. In the tube. With Mother.”
There is no way you could know that.
A chuckle drowned by the viscous gelatin of the Machine atmosphere. “I know.”
Which one now?
“Eight... Or Nine. I can’ tell. They’re so close.”
And what do you think Mother will tell them?
Zero shook his head, sending waves gently splashing away from his submerged head.
She’ll tell them the same thing she told you before the launch. No hope, no to
morrow. No Sixth Resurrection. The probes picked up nothing from the Outer. We haven’t found anything out here... There is nothing left to find.
“They must have left something... Somewhere. They couldn’t have come from the empty between the systems.”
Whatever they left behind, it’s gone now. Mother saw to that, I would imagine.
“We have to find a way... We have to get back.”
Zero, shut the fuck up.
Fleur held limply on to the edge of the drop vessel as it plummeted to the bottom of the vast silver tube. The wind blew her hair up, where it whipped back and forth, the frenzied brunette fronds of a hurricane palm. Snarls of dark hair, defying gravity, lashing at her mouth and eyes. She let go of the railing, absently pulled several trapped strands from her mouth, where it had made a feeble attempt at strangling her.
Nine placed his large hand on the small of her back. “Hold on.”
She smiled at his concern, but the corners of the smile dropped a bit in realization. “You’ve never seen her, have you? This is your first visit.”
Nine looked off into the distance, the hypnotizing blur of silver and fire and speed.
“I’m sorry. I didn’t know. Sometime I forget that you’re not—”
“—him?” Nine did not look at Fleur as he said it, but his hand retreated from her back. Fleur held the railing again with both hands.
Whistler stood at the center of the drop vessel with Hank, who had the most ridiculous goggles covering his eyes. His hat, secured to his neck with an ancient leather cord, whipped around his head much as Fleur’s hair created a halo of dun around hers. Hank clenched a cigarette between his teeth, the ashes flying straight up as the structural integrity of the tip destabilized, sending a glowing crimson shower of miniscule firespots into the heavens upon heavens above. As the vessel slowed, less ashes were torn away from the cigarette tip, which eventually regained the standard physics of smoking, and lazily grew a beard of gray ash.
“Center Earth. Thanks for flyin’ Air Hank, you lucky bastards.”
Whistler daintily motioned with his hand and one edge of the drop vessel folded upon itself and descended to the polished metal floor as a ramp.
“Care to join us, Hank? Mere might enjoy your company after all these years.”
Hank took a contemplative draw on his smoke, flicked it away, where it spun out into the shadows of the bottom of the Vegas pipe. “Sure, what the hell.”
For a moment, Fleur just stood by the railing, looking at everything and nothing, her small hands latched firmly to the metal. Whistler and Hank sauntered down the ramp out onto the uncertain black of the tunnel floor. Nine placed his hand over Fleur’s, gently lifted her fingers from around the railing.
“It’ll be all right. I’m here.”
“You don’t know her. You don’t know what she has planned.”
Nine’s eyes dug into Fleur’s mind.
I’m here. Nothing will happen.
“Come on, you two! We have an meeting with Mum!” Whistler was entirely too cheerful as he beckoned to Nine and Fleur, who walked slowly down the ramp from the drop vessel. Whistler turned back to Hank, looped his arm through the old cowboy’s as they walked. Hank shot Whistler a deadly glare, but shook his head and said nothing.
They walked down the canted passageway to Center Earth. Mother was near.
It is near.
“What is it?”
I do not know.
Zero frowned in the drowned bowl, shook his head in disbelief. There wasn’t supposed to be anything out here. There couldn’t be anything out here in the Outer. Mother’s little jihad should have seen to that. If the vessels approaching them were some cut-off wing of one of Mother’s Extinction fleets, there would be no hope of survival.
Machine filled the bowl with an exterior display so that Zero could see what was happening. They were still traveling at Light X, but whatever was chasing them was traveling at a far greater speed. Zero knew that there could not be anything chasing them at faster than Light X speed, but still, there it was. There they were: great black shapes blocking out the nothing between the suns of the void.
We’re dropping from Light X.
And so they did: the dizzying whirlpool of space lashed forward and backward as they reintegrated into a solid form. The bowl became a solid, smooth sphere and Zero dropped from his swimming position in the center of his prison, unceremoniously slid on his ass around the “bottom” of the bowl until he regained his balance and stood up.
“Machine?”
Don’t ask. I don’t know. We’re being scraped.
Zero knew that “scraped” was Machine’s colloquialism for being scanned, which in the case of biological silverthought vessels required a small scraping of genetic material from the vessel’s hull. Machine shuddered as it was enveloped by the darkness of the unknown pursuer, and umbilicals began cutting away segments of its surface. Zero lurched on the concave (or was it convex?) floor of the bowl, struggling to maintain his foothold on the slick non-metal.
“They have to be part of the Extinction fleet. There’s no one else out here.”
Machine stopped shivering, fell completely still. Silent.
“Ma—”
Zero’s inquisition was cut short by a startling burst of white light and hideous shriek as the bowl was filled with the sparks and fire of an incision torch. A great circular segment of the bowl was sheared loose and slid down to the bottom of the chamber, its edges still red-hot. Zero simply stood with jaw agape as two human creatures removed black goggles and surveyed the interior of the bowl. One trained a vicious black tube that could only be a projectile weapon on Zero, motioned for him to exit. It spoke in a language that he could not begin to understand, then reached out in a language that Zero could not help but understand.
[get out of there. come with us.]
silverthought.
“What are they saying? What the fuck are they saying?”
“Who cares? Light ’em up.”
Zero’s heart slammed in his chest as it was filled with memories of a past that he had unsuccessfully tried to bury. Visions of a sunset, a city, and screaming masses, lambs ready for slaughter, only they were screaming in a language that didn’t exist in any of the libraries, on a planet that wasn’t in the Registry, but hell, Mother said kill them so kill them, right? Women and children, hands raised helplessly before them in surrender, screaming and weeping and pleading in an unknown tongue.
“Trigger it. We’ll iron out the paperwork later.”
Zero’s eyes rolled back as he fell to the floor of the bowl, overcome with a realization that he was not yet ready to acknowledge. The two men peering down from the circular cut in the chamber began to climb down to pull him out. Zero was lost in dream.
It was like a dream, Fleur decided, as they came to the end of the tunnel to Center Earth. The plush carpeting had begun several hundred feet back, and they now walked on shag the color of neon green. The walls appeared to be covered in wooden paneling instead of the sterile silver expanse of the Vegas pipe.
At the end of the tunnel, there was a simple wooden door with a brass knocker and a peephole in the upper center panel. Fleur took in her surroundings with utter disbelief. It did not look at all like the living quarters of the Divine Merciful and Wise Mother of the Sixth Extinction that she remembered.
Whistler strode confidently up to the door and swung the brass knocker down several times. The tap-tap-tapping was more annoying than effective, and they were met with silence from the other side of the door. Whistler nervously smiled, inhaled, knocked again.
“Mother? We’re home, and we’ve brought your poppet.”
There was a faint sound of tiny footsteps from behind the door, followed by an odd metallic scraping sound that drew closer. The metal plate covering the far side of the peephole swung out of place, allowing a glint of light to show through for a moment, before the plate was dropped back into place. Clicking and ratcheting and twisting sounds of v
arious locks, deadbolts, then the metallic scraping sound again and the door swung lazily inward, revealing nothing but another dark passage, an ancient folding metal step-stool, and a little girl of approximately five years of age.
She smiled and took Whistler’s hand, leading him into the dark hallway beyond the door. He turned and shot Nine a look of silent concern as he walked into the inner sanctum of Center Earth. Hank chuckled a little under his breath, took off his hat and wiped his forehead with a battered red handkerchief before following Whistler in. Nine gently grabbed Fleur’s forearm as she walked by him, and she stopped. Nine leaned in close to the side of her head.
“What it is? What’s wrong?” His whispers were louder than he had anticipated, and Fleur reached up, pressed the tip of her new index finger against his mouth.
“She’s dying.” Fleur withdrew her finger and softly pulled Nine after her as they walked through the doorway into the center of the planet.
It was a feeling of falling, definitely, but Zero knew that his limp body was actually being pulled up the side of the bowl by hands that were human if not actually human. He was powerless to resist, yet could not tell if it was his own body’s defense mechanisms that had paralyzed him, or if an unknown weapon had been used against him by the two miners who had found him. And that’s what they really were, right? Two miners who had found a treasure buried at the center of a biological fluid vessel, like the milk chocolate center of a sugar-coated confection. He was the prize.
Up, up, up and then down, slammed to the floor and dragged up an incline, a smooth circular ramp of melted liquid silver, senses still not responding, but the sensation of warmth underneath his legs and lower back unmistakable as the vestiges of a mortal wound to Machine that had been carved in to the bowl.