She can wait.
How far back does the mind go? How far back does this story stretch? I barely remember the Earth. What still remains in my memory are broken images: a talking teddy bear, a gravel parking lot, the weapon jutting from the ocean, firing the white balls of phase that would begin the war. I remember a fence, a little girl, the static of the dead television. Daddy leaving. Mommy’s gloves. My baby sister, and the tears late at night.
I remember the smell of the smoke rising from my mother’s broken chest as she lay on the ground, dying.
They lied to us. They said we’d be reunited with our families once Archimedes was out of harm’s way. I knew that they were all dead, and I knew that Uncle and the angels were lying. Maybe that’s why I did what I did.
I think my heart has stopped beating.
Is there love between stars and times? Can the lost soldiers ever know that most poignant of emotions? Can something develop between two people brought together by loss and war that transcends explanation, safety, reality?
I can feel her blood through my shirt.
The child laughs at me. The temptation…I can taste it. I want to kill her, will kill her. Not yet, though.
I can’t kill her yet. I don’t want to leave. Images flood this confusion: a hand, her eyes, subtle smile and the shudder of her release. Forbidden love, forbidden coupling. I killed Tallis for what he did to her. I would have killed Uncle if I had known in time. His heart gave out. In this moment, I feel my own, each beat distinct. I feel the blood coursing through my veins, flushing my face, reaching every last extent of my body. I feel the gun warming to my touch.
This is the final moment. I know everything, I see everything.
dream that your someday child never knows of the rain
I can smell her hair, tainted as it is by sand and blood, sweat and dust. I can smell her hair.
How did it come to this?
Gary’s wreckage to the south, Hannon’s final gambit spilling fire and black smoke into the afternoon sky…What is this place? Can it be home? Did God die for these bleak plains, this impossibility of continuation? Did Lilith die so that I could kill her Mother and be left alone here?
This is the final moment. The ultimate truth. Senses are heightened, flashes of memory dance before my eyes, replacing the child with past, this desert with the cold of space, this corpse with warmth and touch and life.
I know it all now.
We tore the ship apart after I killed Tallis.
The angels tried to keep us from the bridge. They’d seen what happened in the hangar. They’d known all along that Tallis was a special little present that Maire sent along with Arch to keep watch over us, to take over once Uncle had died. They’d known it was coming, could see it in Uncle’s eyes for months before the final heart attack. His great crop of kinked black hair turned from salt-and-pepper to pure white, his rich chocolate skin turned sickly gray, eyes once brilliant white yellowed with age and exhaustion. I don’t blame him. I now know that he was an unwilling participant in this slaughter, just as my father and Uncle Jean were long before I was born.
Did my father see this world before he died?
I can feel that final collapse. I felt it then…But in this moment, he is with me.
Is it the silver? Is that the link between our past and present and whatever lies beyond? It crawls just beneath my skin, jabbing behind left eye, right. It is alive, so much more alive than the little girl, so much more alive than I am in this pause.
Brendan’s blood was still on my hands when we went to the bridge. The angels tried to stop us, but we fell upon them with blades and fists, slashing throats, knocking them down, gouging biomech eyes from silent, confused sockets. I felt nothing. They felt nothing. We emptied the ship of Mother’s spawn. We smashed things. I paralyzed Arch with stripped circuits, broken boards. Lobotomy.
At last, we were alone. Just men in the middle of nowhere.
And woman.
I remember being alone with her for the first time.
We thought it was a drill, but it wasn’t. Must have been fifteen or sixteen at the time, just starting our outside flight training. Brendan’s Attack One was running formations in what we thought was an empty system. Turned out to be inhabited. We were told they were the aliens; I know now that they were probably just an advance team from Hannon’s systemship. Arch went into evasive, left the slithers outside. I was on Catalyst guard shift with Arik. He abandoned his post; I don’t know where he went. But when Arch started shaking, I almost panicked. We’d never been bombarded from close-range before. EM slugs. We lost phase containment on the lower decks, and the system glitched. The Catalyst chamber opened.
She was in there, alone. Crouched on the floor, so scared. I went to her.
I don’t know if she’d ever been held by another human.
It wasn’t until after the attack was over that we realized that my shielding had never activated. I’d been in the chamber without phase, but nothing had happened.
We kept it a secret. Our little secret.
I owe it to decades of planning. When my father was in the service of Mother, she changed him. This child…She knows that I’m the son of Joseph Windham. She knows, she knew, but she still let me get on that ship. Maybe she had plans for me. In the end, she decided to kill me, replace me with an angel named Nine. She never suspected that Hannon would find my Machine in the outer. She never suspected that I would kill her.
This silver is starting to
Maybe she wanted this. Maybe she knew.
She is weak. I can feel her. Digging, clawing, struggling against this, even as she knows that it must be done.
She fades, lashes out. Final struggle against this
Maire is ancient. She is older than this world, older than home Earth and Hannon and the system she tried to kill. She is older than her Judith. She comes from the night between times, the void between stars. She waited for forevers to find a suitable host. She found it in Maire. The
silver
speaks to me without lips, without voice or tongue or breath.
She is.
life like fire
And now I begin to understand. Laughter like pleas for mercy resonate. Purpose. Will be completed. I heard it in the wind and saw it in the sky; I thought it was the end.
Please, give me strength.
I’ve seen God. Judith. Touched her. Held her hand as she died. I wept for her. I don’t know if there are others. I can only pray that there is something beyond this dust, this plain, this dead weight of my love bleeding out into the hardpan. I can only pray that in these moments, it will guide me, give me the strength to do what I must do, to end this war, to kill this child, to find that stillness between
There was music in her voice.
Is this all there is? Please give me solace and strength. Please direct finger to action, pressure against metal, brace for the shock of
We’d trade glances during briefings. As we got farther into the Outer, closer to target, Uncle allowed her into the briefings. She remembered that attack, the way I held her and didn’t dissolve from contact with the catalyst. She remembered a moment of adolescent compassion. All I did was hold a frightened girl, but she knew. You know. You do. She remembered the fence, the afternoon walks where I held my mother’s hand, gloved hand concealing the affliction that killed our species, afternoon walks where I waved to the only little girl left, pretty little girl inasmuch as I could recognize pretty: colorless colorful eyes, curls, unruly. Sad girl behind walls, faceless angel watching over her. She remembered my grocery trips long after we’d left the planet and groceries and the galaxy of home.
I think Tallis knew all along. I think he was jealous.
We found time to be alone, little moments stolen from my menial tasks and her recoveries. We grew into adults in that metal box flying into war. I never wore a shield. I thought the resistance would last forever.
This crawling proves me wrong. This ripple of flesh, this tickli
ng beneath scalp and wrist and thigh. These shaking hands
will find your back; the kingdom i’d unravel in our
So tired. I’m so tired.
Rebecca found us.
We’d crossed paths with other destroyers before, pauses on target, angels gathering to discuss the mission, probably using the boosted signal strength of two vessels to talk to home and Mother. We’d wait it out, just wait without orders until they were done. We’d meet the other crews, trade stories of combat and victories against our faceless enemy, confident that we were doing the right thing, spreading our jihad across timespace.
I’d heard of the Rebecca long before they caught us.
Rogue vessel. Canberra Compound. We heard that something had gone wrong; they’d left target, gone off-course and scope. There were a few ships that just did that. Just disappeared. I assume some of them were destroyed in combat. Everyone assumed the Rebecca had been lost.
and this heart for
It was a hushed conversation, without Tallis, without most of my officers. They never took to other crews, never liked waiting in nonspace for course alterations. They never liked anyone.
I tried to be friendly to most people.
I don’t remember which crew first told me of Canberra Rebecca’s reemergence. I remember the captain was trying very hard to grow a beard. I remember he spoke of a targeted world, arriving in-system to find the planet cracked in half, moons hanging perilously close to contact. He said there was a beacon, transmitting faintly, whispering into the night: Rebecca was here. That was it. That was their sign.
He’d found angels spaced into that system. They’d killed their angels.
What if Lilith had been on the Rebecca? Would there be anything left of this at all? They killed worlds, killed systems with the very basic weapons provided, without benefit of Catalyst. The slug generators we’d left outside of the Earth system, drawing fire from the suns, channeling it into phase and directing it on target from decades away…I don’t know why she didn’t change the access codes. I don’t know why she let that crew use weapons of night against innocent worlds, other Fleet vessels, eventually themselves. It was a game to her; she loved watching us struggle. We were puppets.
They caught up to us in those three days.
I don’t regret killing my angels, even though we probably would have survived with their help.
The Rebecca must have been listening all along. Must have intercepted Mother’s kill order. I don’t think they really cared about me or about maintaining the Catalyst integrity in a controlled environment. I think they wanted to kill everyone, just to spite Mother. If the painter and the ghost hadn’t gotten there in time, I wouldn’t be here today. It wouldn’t have mattered. Thousands of years of planning would have been lost because of a metal box of bloodthirsty Australians.
How much of Gary was Australia? Phase rudder, starboard side, deck three lavatory? Was his cockpit made of Kansas, his airlocks of Belgium, his voice the wind that scraped Africa?
I didn’t know him long, but he swore a lot.
I don’t want to be awake.
The Rebecca rammed Arch at full speed. Role reversal, sexual politics, the dance of metal sex, pheromones of phase dripping off into the night, sweat and cum of non-life struggle, fingernails scratching, no screams in that silence but fire, fire. And blood.
Too close for slithers. We flew across alone, armed, army of boys, not men, not boys, guarding our female against invasion. They met us halfway, conflicting invasions, hand-to-hand. Astronauts?
I saw so many of my men smeared to pulp between the grinding warships, caught between the tons, never knowing life, just this. Just this night.
The heart breaks because of
There was no reason for it, no reason for their fury without purpose or thought. They wanted to kill us, and they did, many. We killed many of them in return.
I watched Arik die. He was my best friend. He was cutting into the Rebecca hull, trying to board. He made the hole. Got that done. His troops poured in after him, flash of fire, spatter of red, limbs. Limbs everywhere. They were waiting on the inside.
We went in after them.
So tired.
Disease to disease, contagion to contagion. We are the plague. We are the
Could I have lived a normal life?
All this I have known: combat and bloodlust, training for decades for a final conflict that has now emerged as a child, a gun, a desert plain. I’ve known the love of the final woman, the brotherhood of the lost soldiers. I’ve touched God. I’ve killed millions, with my own hand, with her own heart, with blind and reckless abandon for a tainted purpose. I’ve known. Silver. And more. I’ve known the stillness, will find it again soon. There will be silence on this expanse, silence interrupted by wind, by scream, by despair of solitude.
Could I have lived as another, as the painter did in the time before Maire, as my father did before the war, as my mother, spectacled, carrying books and given letters, as the author, the author and coffee and marbles, blue, two, hidden in pocket, hidden away from, away from vain struggle? I’ve heard the stories, faded stories of a planet long gone, final, final wreckage smoking to the south, blackened pile of the interior made exterior, made into Guerra.
She stole more than futures.
Could I have known a night under rain, warm breath and soft bed, watching the sleep, watching the
don’t
This gun becomes heavy.
No sound, but they lied. No sound as Arch’s phase rudder was torn apart, as Rebecca’s belly split. No sound in those pulses of light, explosions of metal and men. I remember watching, stretching to feel her, reaching to sense that touch, to know that she was safe. And this heart, for
I felt her touch.
We stormed the Rebecca interior, phase and light and fire. We killed. They came apart. Struggle for center, scrambling down hallways, cutting, cutting. We killed. Gutted Rebecca from the inside, as I knew they would do to Arch. I left my troops to continue their evisceration.
Swarms of men outside, sparks and radio screams, bits of metal stippling shield, razoring to center flesh.
Arch: hangar open, spilling slithers into the night, unmanned, grotesque miscarriage of technology.
I could feel her running, gasping. Hull was near, Hull was there where I should have been. She carried a weapon and used it as the boarding party made its way to the Catalyst chamber. Hull died, she didn’t, some of them did. Some of them.
She struck out but they were shielded, hands and snares, grabbing, binding, stealing.
I jumped like flying, free-falling, between light and void, shield bubbling from heat and cold, slugs and fire. Embraced Arch. Felt them near.
All of these words approximate. There are no words for this, for Us, for
I feign strength and we
The painter walks through the streets; he’s had a fight with his mistress. She wants a ring. He doesn’t want to give it to her. He looks into the sky, sees stars, falling. Fighting starlight. It was his calling; she whispered to his blood. He went to the caves.
The authors walks through the streets; he’s lost his lover. He wanted to give her a ring. She couldn’t accept it. He looks into the sky, sees stars, falling. Fighting starlight. It was his calling; she whispered to his blood. He went to the coffeehouse.
I’ve never tasted coffee, but I remember its scent.
I don’t know how else to be.
my lips remember
Daddy had a guitar. Why would a soldier have a guitar, strumming late at night, Mommy silent, sitting, smiling? They thought I was asleep. I don’t remember the words, but it was her song. Tears.
I miss
Killed them as they tried to escape through the hole they cut in Arch, as they carried the bound and gelled Catalyst out. She struggled, but there were many. I killed them, severed her restraints. She embraced me. It was all falling apart, Arch dead, Rebecca dead, most of our crew torn to pieces between the vessels, but she embraced
me. I was so afraid that I’d lost her.
They must have sent a signal from the Rebecca. Maybe it was automatic. Black turned to white, stars folded and stretched to lines, stretched toward
The phase slugs arrived in-system, shot from guns we’d placed decades before. Rebecca became shards. Radio chatter: screaming, screaming and dying. My men caught in between. The initial shot hit Rebecca directly, sent what remained of Arch spinning away.
I remember grabbing Lilith’s hand and jumping from the hole, pushing off as hard as I could, hoping that the momentum would be enough to reach one of the jettisoned slithers.
It was.
We got in as quickly as we could, laden with gallons of gel shielding, freezing from exposure. I slammed the cockpit hatch home as the second and third slugs arrived, again hitting Rebecca, some of Arch, so many soldiers. So many dead.
I don’t know if anyone else got away, but I didn’t see any other active slithers. I think we were the only survivors.
We flew.
I hated to hear her cry, but I was crying, too. Strong commander of the Extinction Fleet vessel Archimedes, Hunter Windham. Crying at the loss of the only home I’d known for twenty years, the only family I’d had. I’d killed Tallis with my bare hands, watched my best friend die in a cloud of blood vapor, seen my Mother mouth “I love you” even as I could see the pavement through the hole in her chest, but only then did I cry. Alone in the night with Lilith, tears floating lazily before my face, batting them aside so I could see the slither monitor, plot a course, escape the system of phase slugs and debris.
System showed four more vessels arriving in-system soon. Wolves to the scent of blood drawn. Three destroyers and something else…Something huge.
Mother would want evidence that I was dead. Mother would want Lilith intact. Another vessel would take her and use her. I couldn’t let that happen.
She spun me around, took off my helmet, hands going to my hair, wiping sweat from my forehead, cheeks. Her lips moved on nothing. No words. In that moment, no words. I felt the silver stirring, but I didn’t care. Subtle pain behind eyes. Her touch was worth the risk.
Tangle of lips, tongues. Noses fencing. I knew my stubble scratched her face. Skin sweat-slick, tear tracks.
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