An End tst-2

by Paul Evan Hughes

  i light my own.

  casters slide across hardwood floor as i roll myself and the ashtray toward her. she sits on the leopard futon, leaning forward to tap ashes into glass tray. i roll closer, knees on her knees, ashtray balanced on my leg. i tap my own ashes into that receptacle of our addiction.

  inhale, exhale. the dimple revealed.

  it is a pause in our lovemaking. tobacco burned, we crush filters against tar-blackened glass. i push the chair back to the desk, place the ashtray on the table. i walk back to her, sit beside her. lips merge, hands go hesitantly then purposefully to faces. we fall into each other, limbs intertwined, the taste of smoke on our lips, the shudder and release of desire matching smoothly the movement of two bodies in union.

  it is not at all like kissing an

  ashtray?”

  “Sure, in the back. But don’t you want to save them for later?”

  “No…Let’s smoke one now.” He wore a big goofy grin that she hadn’t seen in

  “You’re dangerous.”

  The door opened and a tall figure walked in, black cloak dry when it should have been wet, unkempt hair more kempt than the weather should have allowed. A single white curl stood out from his hairline. He walked to the counter.

  “What can I get you?”

  “Sorry, madam…I’m not here for refreshment. Have you seen this man?” The man held out his right hand, and a small holographic appeared.

  Susan nodded. Paul was silent, eyes squinted to focus on the character before him.

  who..? when—

  “He was just in here…He’s the boy who proposed to his girlfriend.”

  “Proposed?”

  “I assume so…He gave her a silver ring.”

  “Silver.”

  Susan hesitated…The girl’s hands had been afflicted with the scourge. And this stranger—

  “A silver ring. He proposed and they left. You know…Kids. In love. They left.”

  “Did you see which way they walked?”

  “Sorry. I wasn’t watching.”

  “And you?”

  Paul cleared his throat. “Sorry, friend. I was drinking my coffee.”

  “Thank you for your time.” The man in black turned, walked back toward the door.

  Paul stood, faced the man.

  “Whistler?”

  The stranger paused in mid-stride, head cocked to one side, about to turn—

  Paul’s heart hitched in his chest.

  Whistler walked out the door without looking back.

  “Who was that?”

  Paul shook his head.

  “Nobody.” He sipped his coffee, held his wife’s hand. “Just a ghost.”

  “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.”

  copy, 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.”

  She hung in velvet black, pressed into place by the cold non-hands of her mechanical caretakers. They would take what they needed from her, as they always had, that gentle rape that they called duty and she called rape.

  Tallis had called a strike on the city.

  The forces held her motionless in the halls of vapor and light with a liquid precision, the intimate caress of the weapon flux. She cringed at the metal whine of the contact jack as it reached over her shoulders, secured itself to her chestplate: eight subtle penetrations and a locking click, then the deeper invasion of the central hub.

  Tears: two.

  Somewhere below, there was a planet. There was a city. Somewhere below, there were innocents reaching to the sky, screaming at the invasion force, reeling in confusion at the vessel that blocked out the faded cold of the surviving star. Lilith knew that somewhere below, Hunter was standing with weapon drawn, helmet off, shaking his head.

  listen to them

  “System?”

  No answer.

  “Stop the cycle, please.”

  The firing chamber was moving into position.

  “Stop the cycle, System.”

  Felt them: heard them speaking without words, weeping without tears, screaming without hope or substance.

  “Stop it!”

  Lilith couldn’t move.

  Shimmer and shift, silver and submission.

  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

  walked across the ice plain to the wreckage of Task’s vessel, which was rapidly being consumed by blue-tinged fire. It was a world of silence, except for faint whisper of wind that brushed painful ice crystals across her face and the crackle of fire as polyalloy ignited from within. One of the men on the top of the vessel hoisted the other figure over his shoulder and jumped to the ground. She heard the distinct wail of pain from the crumpled man as they landed in a pile upon the snow-covered ice. His cry echoed back and forth across the expanse, bordered as it was by cliffs that might have been stone, might have been ice.

  She felt a flicker. Tiny flicker. It was returning.

  Tears streamed down Task’s face. He was lost in a haze of agony, his body shaking, his breath coming in great gasps as Berlin pulled him away from the twisted remains of his vessel. Task knew that somewhere within, Elle was nothing more than a puddle of melted metal and plastic, returning again to her base elements of manufacture. All that s/he had been was now lost.

  Berlin wiped his brow. The fire was overwhelming, mixed with the toxic fumes of the collapsing alloys. Whatever was in this atmosphere was causing the ship to burn with remarkable heat. He inhaled deeply, coughed as smoke singed his lungs with an alien taste. Mixed with the frightfully weak gravity, the harsh light of a single star in the sky, the smoke made Berlin dizzy, nauseous. He had the sudden desire to lay down on the snow, just to rest for a moment, just to close his eyes and try to still his rapid hearts. He just wanted to—

  “What’s that?”

  Task was looking off in the distance, where for the first time Berlin noticed a faint shimmer of

  There was a person walking toward Task’s wrecked ship.

  Berlin squinted his eyes, felt the biomech corneas zoom, focus. The figure shifted into clarity.

  Maire.

  Berlin released Task’s shoulders and he fell unceremoniously to the ground, his legs splaying in divergent twists of shredded fabric and exposed bone. He writhed in pain, sobbed again. Berlin noted for an instant the grisly black path stretching from the place beside the vessel where they�
��d landed to Task’s present position. He wouldn’t last long if they couldn’t stop the bleeding soon.

  “It’s Maire. She’s seen us.”

  “But how—”

  “We must have been fused to her bubble when they ejected her.” Berlin released his phase weapon from its holster, knew what he would find already: the charge was lost, depolarized from the liquidspace flux. The weapon was useless.

  “The gun?”

  “Dead.”

  “Here.” Task unsheathed a blade from a side pocket on his pants. “Take it.”

  “That won’t—”

  “It’s something. Take it.”

  Berlin nodded, held the knife blade-down, concealed behind his forearm.

  “I’ll be back. Just hold on.”

  Maire’s heart pounded as she saw one of the figures begin to walk toward her. The wind grew in intensity, whipping clouds of stinging ice crystals into the air. She wiped the side of her face, felt seemingly for the first time the strange numbness of cold flesh. The approaching figure was concealed for a moment by a swirl of snow. The stark light of the star above created new levels of blindness. Finally, the figure came back into view, closer than she had expected him to be.

  Berlin.

  Maire blinked, squinted. It was him.

  He stopped walking, his figure thrown into silhouette by the intense light of the fire engulfing the vessel behind him. He wore a weapon at his side. With a reach of her mind, the gun spun from its holster and fell safely some distance from them.

  “Tired, Maire? Or can you do it all?”

  “So it was you. Your vessel got in my way.”

  “Looks like it. You must be drained, or you would’ve killed me already.”

  “Yeah. I’m drained.”

  “Good.”

  “Who’s that?” She gestured at the wreck.

  “Just a photographer. I needed his ship.”

  “Is he dead?”

  “He will be soon.”

  “Good.”

  “Yeah. Good.”

  Awkward silence. The wind was becoming colder.

  “You killed my wife.”

  Maire smiled. “We killed your wife.”

  Berlin glared. He shifted the knife nervously in his hand. If she knew about it, she wasn’t showing it.

  “She didn’t deserve to die. Not like that. Not at all.”

  “You had such promise, Berlin. Such promise to change that place.”

  “So did you.”

  “So did Kath.”

  Berlin snapped. Maire wasn’t expecting his attack.

  He lunged forward, sweeping the blade from behind his arm. The first slash lacerated Maire’s throat deeply, cutting almost to the spine. She staggered backward, strangely-red blood pouring over uniform and snow and Berlin, who slammed into her. Her hands reached up to her neck, but Berlin knocked them away on the return path of his blade, which sliced hilt-deep between Maire’s ribs, through that single heart. Berlin’s twisting wrist ensured that the heart would be destroyed beyond repair. He fell with her onto the ice, and with a final snap, he jerked the blade up, breaking through her ribcage. A small geyser of blood erupted from Maire’s ravaged chest.

  She fell into stillness.

  Berlin stood, shaking with exertion. It couldn’t be this easy. He wiped her blood from his face, neck. It smelled like copper. It was red.

  With a swift, brutal motion, Berlin fell upon Maire’s body, plunging the blade again and again into her skull. Overcome with grief, shuddering with emotion, he stabbed her again and again, covered in her blood, slivers of her bone, great chunks of that mind that had meticulously planned the genocide of his species. He stabbed until she was gone, stabbed until he was satisfied that she could not possibly be anymore. He stood and surveyed the extent of his fury.

  Maire knocked him to the ground, one foot connecting solidly with his jaw as the other landed on his knife hand, crushing fingers and shredding his palm with his own blade. Her form shimmered with silver flux, fading between solid and snow, sky and ice. With horror, Berlin realized that

  Maire stepped away from him, walked to the bloodied doppelganger. She reached into its open chest and removed a tiny silver sphere, threw it playfully into the air and catching it with ease. The projected dissolved to static and nothing. Berlin cradled his crushed hand, rolled over to look up at the true Maire.

  “I win.”

  The door cycled open, revealing sub-commander Hull. His eyes were averted, tracing the grid of the floor. He cleared his throat.

  “I’m sorry to interrupt.”

  “What is it?” Lilith’s voice bounced around the interior of her shield: what wha wh is is i it it t

  “We’ve—” His eyes remained on the floor, but glanced toward Hunter for an instant. “We’ve removed Tallis’s body from the works. What should we do with—”

  “Space it.”

  “No.” Lilith turned to Hunter. “There’s something we need to do first.”

  He nodded in realization.

  “Sir?” Hull was restless, his hands clenching and unclenching on nothing.

  “What is it?”

  “Do we have orders?” Hull’s eyes were now locked on the broken command display, the shattered biomech angel, the wires hanging like vines from ceiling displays.

  “We’re making our own orders from now on.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Take me to the body.”

  Hull nodded an affirmative. “And sir?”

  “What is it?”

  “Your—” Hull’s hand went to his fly. His brow furrowed in embarrassment. He was one of the youngest soldiers on the vessel, just now growing facial hair for the first time. “Your—”

  “Thanks, Hull.” Hunter blushed and zipped his pants.

  Within her bubble, Lilith covered her smile with a silver hand.

  “Let’s go.”

  The head was gone now, crushed between the gears of the inner workings of a docking bay slither cradle. The vessel itself had twisted away from its dock, and now it sat incapacitated on the bay’s floor. Hunter could still see the coagulating black outline of his former commander’s end underneath the slither. The rest of the body was almost intact. Hunter flexed his swollen hand, felt the incisions threaten to tear open again. It could have been his blood under that vessel, splashed across the gears and pistons of the cradle. It could have been, but then it would have been red.

  “It’s in the chest cavity.”

  Hunter undid the soaked top of Tallis’s uniform, pulled the fabric back to reveal a hairless chest.

  “You’ll have to crack through the bone. It’ll be between the hearts.” She pointed to a place just under the sternal notch. Hunter’s blade sliced through the thin film of near-skin in an “I” shape. He used the tip of the knife to fold back each flap. It wasn’t a human ribcage.

  Hunter hesitated.

  “You have to do it.” Lilith indicated her shielded hands, arms. “I can’t.”

  Hull looked on with the other nine members of the officer class. The young men were uneasy; the events of the last few days had forever changed their purpose in this metal box between the stars.

  Hunter bore down with his blade, holding it with both hands and shifting his weight directly down. The sternum cracked and he eased off, placing one hand on Tallis’s right shoulder and wrenching the knife to the left. The bone shield retracted with disconcerting biological precision.

  “Believe me now?”

  “Sir, I—” Hull’s grasped for words. “I didn’t mean to doubt you.”

  “And you? And you?” Hunter stood from the opened corpse. “Do you believe me now?” The officers nodded in turn. The evidence was irrefutable.

  He reached into the chest cavity with his bare hand and dug around until he found it. His hand retreated, clasped around the final evidence, trailing strands of viscous black matter, neither flesh nor machine, neither now nor then. He snapped the final connection, a vile umbilicus securin
g the device to the central cavity.

  Hunter held out his hand, slow black spattering to the grid flooring.

  His fingers uncurled to reveal a marble-sized silver sphere.

  “Tallis was the mole. He was Mother’s link.”

  “So now what? You’re in command.”

  Hunter looked from Hull to Lilith. “We have to protect her. We have to hide. Mother will send someone to get her now.”

  “But the Fleet is everywhere. Where can we hide?”

  “We’ll take the ship to the Outer.”

  “Where?”

  “Deep.”

  “How deep?”

  Hunter stabbed his blade into the angel’s splayed body in a swift, brutal motion. That which had been Tallis remained motionless. The knife’s tip tapped against the surface of the table underneath the body.

  “To the hilt.”

  “And him?” Hull withdrew the blade from Tallis’s abdomen.

  “Space him.”

  “We’ll talk to Archimedes.” Lilith looked from Hunter to Hull. “Take care of the body and get that slither operational again. We’ll need it soon enough.”

  “Yes, Catalyst.”

  Lilithfleur shimmered for an instant.

  “Don’t call her that.” Hunterzero glared, walked away. Without looking back, he spoke to the woman. “Come on. I need you.” She nodded to the officers, left the hangar.

  “Open shutters.”

  Blast shielding retracted from the forward bridge. Lilith slipped into the vacuum chair beside him, still wringing the static bubble gelatin from her hair. Hand on his shoulder, she leaned forward to look out at the planet below. Hunter exhaled slowly, chin in hand, looking at and through the ruined world.

  “We have to get out of here.”

  Hunter closed his eyes.

  “Any ideas?”

  “She knows exactly where we are. Tallis would have reported everything. And if—”

  “You don’t think—”

  “Yeah, there could be others.”

  “System?”

  beep click.

  “Seal the bridge.”

  click beep.

  “I would have felt them, if there were more.”

  “You don’t know that. It took you two decades to feel this one out. We don’t know what else is riding with us.”

  Lilith slumped back into her chair. She let Tallis’s silver projector roll from hand to hand. “What should we do with this? We can’t keep it on Archimedes. It has to be a tracking device.”