by Paul Hughes
“They’re human.”
Hunter’s heart beat in his throat. His eyes filled with tears that he could never hope to control. Twenty years of lie.
“Human.”
Mandela’s mouth opened on words that he couldn’t speak, jaw hung open, grasping for meaning, sense, truth.
The room was nearly featureless save the rows of vertical glass cylinders, within which dozens, hundreds of boys now hung lifeless, each in varying stages of development. Babies and toddlers in suspension, now crumpled to the tube bottoms from the loss of ship’s power. In the paths between rows, near-biologic angels lay near weapons, medical instruments, each featureless artificial face attempting to convey the fear and confusion of that final moment of silver. There were a few fully-developed males between those rows, supervisors or doctors, all adult men.
“No women.”
Something tugged behind Hunter’s eyes.
“Scan one of them. See if you can isolate the code and match to Earth bloodlines.”
Mandela swept his instrument over the nearest corpse. “Not enough biologic left in this one.” He walked to another victim. Frowned as his panel chimed.
“Got a match?”
“No match. But there’s something else...”
“What?”
“He has two hearts. Had two hearts.”
Hunter spun around, pacing, shield sloshing lazily behind and around. Hands clenched, unclenched.
“No women.”
He remembered a hospital room, his mother smiling down at him from the bed. He was holding his father’s hand, remembered faint gray light from the window, overhead fluorescent lighting glinting from the button on his father’s dress uniform. Large hands slipped under his arms, lifted him up, held him close, for a moment inadvertently pressed his face against metal nametag pinned to crisp olive drab: Windham, and there were epaulets and a jaunty beret that his father hated. He sat snugly in his father’s arms and looked down at smiling mother, sad smile, smiling mother? and
The baby was more red than pink, more pink than gray, but they knew, and they knew. It was why they’d brought their son to see her so soon, to see that miracle of life, the miracle now denied a species by the lady from the middle of the planet. His father had sat with him at the kitchen table and tried to explain, but Hunter held Honeybear close and barely listened, preferring instead to eat his peanut butter and jelly sandwich and scribble spaceships and robots with crayons on his new construction paper. His father had done his best to explain the inexplicable.
The baby made noises.
Hunter remembered being afraid of her. He’d seen another baby up-close, the neighbor’s baby son who was too small to play with and kept them awake every night with crying. Hunter couldn’t tell why this baby was different, what made it a her and not a him, what would soon end the young life in suffocating silver.
His mother had smiled, but her eyes had been wet. She comforted the baby girl, held her tightly in black-clad hands, concealing her own affliction. It was a miracle that the baby had even been carried to term; the headlines in those first few years had reported the miscarriage rates almost as often as the construction projects, the conquest of the solar system, the impending jihad.
Hunter had taken refuge from the baby girl against his father’s neck.
Mommy came home a few days later without the baby.
“Lies. All lies.”
Mandela studied the floor. “They’re cloning boys.”
“The silver would have killed off all the women. Not all at once, but over time. Just like home. They aren’t human, but close enough.”
“But the Catalyst—”
“Isn’t the same silver. The Catalyst comes from Lilith. It doesn’t discriminate against biologic. The silver comes from...” Headache forming behind eyes, reflex to rub, glass shield prevents.
“Mother.”
“That’s when it all started.”
“The worlds we’ve hit already? Rogue planets, harboring the enemy?”
“They weren’t harboring anyone. They were the enemy.”
“And now we’re taking the Catalyst home. To her home.”
“She wants to finish what she started.”
They didn’t speak on the return to Archimedes. Hunter had made it clear that this information must remain their secret until he could find a way to approach Tallis. He didn’t think it would be easy to persuade the blood-thirsty new commander to re-evaluate their objective.
Tallis waited for them in the hangar.
“What the fuck have you been doing?”
“Recon.”
“Do you know how dangerous it was to—”
“I was aware of the dangers. It was a dead ship.”
“And you just—”
“We didn’t find anything, Brendan. It was slag.”
Tallis sneered. “Get out of the suits and into the bubbles. We’re ready to fly.”
“You’ve tracked them?”
“We know exactly where they are.”
“How far?”
“Days.”
“Will Lilith have enough time to regain her—”
“She’ll be ready.”
“Good.” Hunter feigned eagerness. “Let’s go.”
Ten thousand midnights, the blink of an eye in Light X, a slumber barely refreshing, fraught with uncertainty and echoes of a planet now dead, the woman hidden at its center, a vessel preparing for war, his love hanging at its center.
“Crew prep for aerial bombardment.”
“No.” Tallis strode across the bridge. “We’re going down.”
“There’s no need to risk—”
“They killed Uncle. We’re going down. Crew to transports.”
“We can hit them from above, just—”
“I want blood. We’ll take the tether down ourselves. Get to your transport.”
Hunter’s eyes locked on Arik’s as Tallis stormed from the bridge.
The target worldships had landed long ago on the central continent. The phase technology of the enemy apparently provided a faster ride; cities had grown around the sunken spheres. Hunter swallowed hard as he watched the descent from his monitor. He couldn’t let this happen.
The transports landed just outside of one of the cities.
There was little resistance.
Tallis’s Attack One cut through the city without mercy, slithers strafing from above, ground troops storming the streets. Hunter’s own Attack Two and Arik’s Attack Three were just as brutal, although Hunter himself never fired a shot in offense. He felt sick to his stomach at the slaughter enacted upon the “harboring” world.
Outside of the city, a city collapsing and a city on fire, the centerpiece the worldship hemisphere rising above it all, now cracked and falling. Tallis called all of his forces to the outskirts of the city for tether placement.
“Isn’t it great?” His smile disgusted Hunter, refracted behind the shield, twisted into a leer.
“We have to talk.”
“Leave it for the ship.”
“No. We have to talk now.” Hunter’s weapon swung ominously close to Tallis.
“Tether in place.”
“Incoming!”
A fresh sea of combatants stormed from the city, had to be combatants, couldn’t be unarmed people, unarmed men. Couldn’t be. Running, hands outstretched, shouting—
“Light ’em up.”
“What are they saying? What the fuck are they saying?”
“Who cares? Light ’em up. Trigger it. We’ll iron out the paperwork later.”
Hunter shook his head. “This isn’t right. Something isn’t right.”
Tallis glared through him, flipped his visor down. “Call in the fucking strike, Windham.”
“Sir, I can’t just—”
Tallis tore the comm from Hunter’s grasp, shoved him aside. He locked the device into the hardlink on his throat shield. “Tallis wing to orbital firing group. Bring the weapon online.”
c
opy, wing one.
“Sir, listen to them. They aren’t—”
“Hunter, don’t—”
“They aren’t humans.”
“The fuck are you—”
“Listen to them!”
“It’s an off-chart language. So what? We have orders.”
“Tallis,” Hunter pulled off his helmet. “Listen to them.”
An instant of light, a forever of end.
Hunter shouted in frustration and disgust. Tallis looked pleased.
It struck from above: the beam was peaceful, gentle, a faded light draping across the city, barely casting shadows, barely touching anything at all. From within the static shielding, Hunter and the dozens of other droptroops braced themselves.
The natives fell silent. Hunter realized with a morbid fascination that they had never actually spoken at all. The guttural tones that came from underdeveloped mouths had been the only thing Tallis had heard. He had failed to listen to the voice of the
i have come again to
mind, the Voice of the people who were now an instant from the eternal cease.
Hunter heard. He heard them all.
berlin hannon judithgod
maire
“You knew!” Hunter knocked Tallis to the ground with a swift, unexpected blow. Both of their shields rippled from the impact. “You fucking knew!”
Tallis stood, shield purging dust and dirt from a hundred invasion points. He wiped the mud from his chest.
“Back to the ship. We’re done here.”
“This isn’t over. You knew they weren’t aliens. They’re people.”
“Back to the ship.” His growl chilled the windless plain. The city outskirts were silent, the inhabitants frozen in place, replaced with something from between the stars and times.
Slithers docked.
Hunter leapt from his cockpit, released seals on gloves and helmet, let them drop to the floor. Other pilots climbed from their vessels in silence. They had seen; they knew what would happen.
Mandela jogged to Hunter’s side. “Don’t, man. Maybe we can—”
“Stay away from me.” He deflected Arik’s grip from his arm.
Tallis walked from his slither, cracked his neck seal. “Do you have a problem with me, Windham?”
He walked up close, too close. Breathing heavily, fraught with bitter emotion. “How long have you known?”
“Known what?”
Hunter swung, but Tallis blocked. He’d always been the swifter of the two. He held Hunter’s forearm and grinned.
“I repeat: Known what?”
“That
there are worlds out there, boys, so many worlds we could never hope to count them all, and on some of them are monsters.”
Hunter turned to Brendan, whose face stared at Uncle in rapt fascination. The boys sat in the schoolroom, Uncle at its center beneath a slowly-spinning holograph of the galaxy. Hunter frowned. It was the only sign of his fear.
“Where did they come from?”
“Good question!” Uncle smiled, patted the inquisitive boy’s head. “Very good question.” He zoomed the display out, their galaxy shrinking to a point amidst thousands, thousands shrinking to a point amidst eternity.
Hunter didn’t understand. He leaned forward, cradled his chin on his palms.
“There’s a place out there somewhere, a galaxy much like ours. It’s a bad place, very far away, and that’s where the monsters come from.”
“And they killed Earth?”
Uncle smiled sadly, nodded at another boy. “Yes, son. They sent the worldships to kill Earth.”
“Why?”
Hunter remembered the pause, the tilt of Pierce’s head, the bobbing swallow of his Adam’s apple.
“Who gave us the ability to fly, boys?”
“Mother!” Unison. Disconcerting unison. Hunter realized that he had replied in reflex.
“And who took away war and disease, gave us all a new purpose? Who cured the world of affliction?”
“Mother!”
“Yes.” The affirmative was a hiss, slow and calculated. “Mother.” He circled the room, sweeping his gaze across the pre-pubescent soldiers of the night. “The aliens hate Mother. The monsters want to kill Mother. They killed Earth to try to kill her, and now we’re going to make them pay for it.”
Hunter saw that Brendan was smiling widely.
“We’re the last hope, boys. We’re here to kill them all. We’re here to cleanse the universe of this disease. We can’t let the aliens win.”
“Never.” Brendan whispered to himself.
“We have to be the best soldiers we can be, boys. We have to learn to fight, to fly, to kill. We have to save Mother from the monsters.”
“Uncle?”
Pierce scanned the crowd, turned to Hunter. “Yes, son?”
“Did the monsters kill all the girls?”
Pierce nodded gravely. “Yes, they did. They poisoned our world before the attack and made sure that all the girls would die.”
“But what about Lily?”
Another pause to consider. “Lily is special, son. She’s the last little girl ever. She’ll help us hurt them.”
“Uncle?”
Pierce turned to Brendan. “Yes?”
“When do we learn to fly?”
Pierce chuckled. “Soon enough, son. Soon
enough of this shit!” Mandela wrestled Tallis away from Hunter.
“Stay out of this, Arik.”
“No. We need answers. How long have you known that we’ve been killing people?”
The pilots were gathering around the combatants, uneasy, confused. They’d seen the target population as well, but they’d carried out Tallis’s orders to the end.
“They aren’t people. They’re monsters.”
“Who’s to say Mother isn’t the monster? Who says she’s not the one who started killing the women with silver? Just think about it.”
“Arik, what the hell would you—”
“We saw them on the worldship. Near-humans. All men. So they came to Earth to kill Mother, right? There wasn’t a female on the whole ship. They were cloning boys in a chamber. They had angels that look just fucking like ours.”
“You don’t—”
“I saw them too.”
“So they aren’t monsters. So they look like us. They still tried to kill Mother. They—”
“Did you ever stop to consider that maybe we aren’t the good guys? That maybe we’ve been killing the wrong people for years?”
Tallis snapped.
He struck out at Mandela first, fist colliding with throat, leg sweeping out behind his knee, cutting the man down with a sickening thump. He fell to the ground, gasping, clawing at his neck.
Hunter and Tallis collided in a fury of swinging limbs. Tallis easily threw Hunter to the floor, leapt upon him. The pilots clambered to separate their commanders. Tallis lashed out at them.
Hunter used the moment to throw the distracted Tallis away with his still-suited legs. A flash in time and Tallis was back on his feet, hand reaching down to retract his blade from his leg sheath. Hunter rushed to his feet and slammed into Tallis before he could pull the knife. They both staggered backward from the collision into the docking cradle of a slither.
The vessel rocked. The phase molding drained to the reservoir, it was nothing more than a thin metallish framework sitting atop the cradle supports. Hunter held Tallis’s left hand to his side, disabling his blade arm, struck out to slam his head against the slither leg. Tallis clawed for Hunter’s eyes with his free hand, fingertips digging for connection with soft, supple flesh. Hunter bit him.
The dance of war, the combat between men without rifle, without push-button bombs, without silver or the fluid mechanics of space/time: they grappled. They fought without romance, grunting and shouting nonsense syllables at each other and the silent audience, sweating and gnashing teeth, tasting that lust, pure lust for survival, pure lust for a victory decided by the death of the opponent.<
br />
Drops of blood traced lazy paths down Hunter’s cheek where Tallis’s fingernails had carved away skin.
Hunter let go of Tallis’s blade arm long enough to allow it to snap up for purchase on his neck. Hunter’s hand moved down, grabbed his commander’s knife, and brought it to target between his ribs.
Tallis inhaled. Jaw dropped, eyebrows furrowed, eyes darted forth, back, forth in realization.
Hunter slammed Tallis once more against the slither support, wrenched his body from his own. He held Tallis between the twin hydraulic lifts of the cradle, stabbed the blade between metal and rubber, twisted it, releasing a stream of gelatin and the seal broke and the slither began to descend from raised position.
Tallis’s hands reached out again for Hunter, his body jerked, but tons of metallish slither fell on his head between the cradle lifts.
The body fell motionless, geyser of black erupting from crushed skull.
How the body is weak, how fragile biology bursts upon cool metal, how the final crack of the spine signals an end.
“Hunter?”
“WHAT?”
“Your hand.” His heart broke a little more when he saw her eyes, her gaze. The way her hands were clustered before her mouth.
He looked, horrified before he even saw, because he knew, and he knew, and he knew.
Faint lattice of silver, just below the skin. It crawled from fingertips to palm to wrist. He spun an overhead monitor into the light, saw even in the reflection of the dead display that the silver was working its way underneath the skin above his skull.
Lilith sobbed as she activated the shield mechanism on her cardiac plate. The phase gelatin engulfed her form as she stood from the vacuum chair. “Hunter, I—”
“No, it’s not—”
“I’m so—”
“It’s not your fault!” He cried out as the silver gave one last twinge in his head that brought him to his knees. “It’s not your fault.” The pain subsided as Lilith’s shielding provided a buffer between his flesh and her affliction.