Manifest Destiny

by Allen Ivers

Locklear lifted his gaze -- anything but stare more at that hungry ground -- and there she was. The dusty old shuttle sat on the landing pad like she’d never left, framed against the oncoming storm.

  An old faithful, never one to give up. The old reliable truck with the family dog and a thousand good memories. Great thanks to the benevolence on high.

  Another earthquake rolled under their feet, but it was like Jazmin expected it. She braced for it, throwing her weight under Locklear and catching him.

  Jericho spun on his heels, looking back at the troubled pair. He opened his mouth to speak.

  Locklear could swear he heard it whistle past his helmet. A stone dart slammed into Jericho’s visor, skipping off his ear and punching clean out the back of his suit. Chunks of plexiglass caved in, before being hurled outward by the equalizing pressure. Jericho twisted aside, flailing as he collapsed to the ground.

  He wasn’t dead. The writhing of his body told that story. They had mere seconds before that would change.

  “Get him inside!” Locklear screamed, shoving Jazmin forward to their prostrate friend. He spun one knee, flicking out what remained of his tattered wrist-shield: scratched, cracked, and snapped in half. He scanned for the threat, the oncoming horde of stone men or some greater horror.

  But there was nothing but the silent colony behind them.

  Locklear looked back, as Jazmin and the good Doctor did what they could to drag Jericho the last fifty yards to the safety of the shuttle.

  He didn’t see it, but he felt strong hands grasp the front of his suit. He blindly swiped with the shield. It was like striking a wall, as the torn up edges of the plastic bit into the stone-infested arm of Amelia Dane.

  She wasn’t as corrupted as the others. Her glittering eyes were still her own ashen-gray, but thin crystal sheathes covered them like second lids. Her exposed skin cracked and dry. Her thin lips torn, with a split dragging down from one corner straight to her jawline. Without the crisp red of fresh blood, the dried tissue and muscle fiber looked like spoiled meat.

  She wasn’t one more thrall, one more mindless drone. No. The Beast had made a breakthrough. She was something new.

  She glanced down at the shield embedded in her wrist. Careful study, adept, as the eyes tracked each detail of the wound and threat.

  And wasted no time wrenching it free, sending shield and owner sailing a dozen yards through the air, end over end. Locklear saw the stars wheel by like tiny darts whipping past before a ruddy blur, over and over again, too many times to count.

  She seemed on top of him before he even landed, feet pressed into his chest. Pinned, he looked up at Amelia’s stocky stance. She was not coiled like a spring, rather rigid and solid, her arm poised high pausing only to take aim.

  Chunks of her shoulder and head crumbled off, with spurts of dust and tatters of flesh landing on his helmet. Jazmin stood at the shuttle, cracking off the last shots from Jericho’s gun. Amelia turned toward the more pressing threat, wrenching a stone bolt from her own side before hurling it toward Jazmin and the shuttle.

  It was a difficult pistol shot, well over thirty yards. With a handful of tries left in her magazine, she had buried two out of three into Amelia, rending a chunk of stone and skull from the back of Amelia’s head.

  Hurling something accurately the same distance with ability to cause any kind of harm would’ve required the starting left fielder for the Dodgers on a good summer day.

  Amelia’s spear throw buried into Jazmin’s gun arm, staking her to the hull of the shuttle like a poster to a wall. Kill shot or not, this was a trivial deletion of an annoyance. Amelia might as well have stabbed her for all the stress that feat caused her.

  Jazmin dropped her gun to the pavement of the runway, overwhelmed by her pain. All the same, as her weapon was empty. Even more so, it was obvious that Jazmin hung from that spear, her toes kicking at the air for some kind of purchase, anything to take the weight off.

  Locklear could feel his suit compressing under the weight of Amelia, squeezing his midsection and robbing him of breath. Holding him down against the Martian ground, paralyzing him.

  Her mouth had not moved since she appeared. Her brow had not wavered. No squint to her eyes. It had no desire to communicate an intention, no pride to indulge in victory. Just swift execution.

  For all he knew, his lifeless form would serve in that horde just as well as Amelia’s living body had. There was no purpose to engage him in, no point it had to make. There were no speeches or taunts, nothing to be gained from them.

  He was the gain, the trophy, the tool. And he was still in possession of it. She could fix that problem.

  Amelia raised her arm over his head. She didn’t wind up. No, this was more like an industrial press. She was just going to squish his melon right there.

  Jericho was injured, maybe dead. Jazmin was at its mercy. Raines was helpless.

  Do something.

  The bullet wound in Amelia’s head, a grotesque vivisectomy of the transmutation. Like a geode cracked open, bone replaced with slick stone, withered grey matter within.

  Amelia was dead. She died quiet, unceremonious, no pomp or circumstance. Like they all had. Powerless to the point of laughable. Whatever friendship, bond, or union he had with her died in the dark, in the belly of the Beast.

  She still wore the gear she had that day, weathered and broken by whatever personal hell it drove her through. Her belt and clothes fused with her stony carapace. Her gear…

  Three flashbangs dangled from her chest rig. She had insisted. But did her senses even work anymore? His certainly did.

  This was going to hurt.

  Locklear reached up with his good hand, pulling free a pin. The spoon kicked free with a delightful happy note. And he counted.

  One Mississippi. Her head turned back to him, eyes wide and dead. Dark. Like a doll.

  Two Mississippi. She noticed his hand. She could see. Think. Plan. Predict.

  Three Mississippi. She covered her eyes. Now.

  Locklear pulled his shield arm back and swung it hard, edge lodging deep into the back of Amelia’s neck. He could almost feel the strings cut.

  He had experienced flash bangs in training, at Gateway, during Basic and a handful during his admittedly limited career. They emitted a deafening sound and a light ten times brighter than the Sun. They could blind a person right through their own eyelids.

  The concussion at this distance was enough to knock the wind out of him, forcing an uncomfortable wretch as the contents of his stomach took the punch. Her rig caught fire for a single moment, before the flare died out in the lack of oxygen.

  Amelia slumped against him, pain wracked her frame. Her eyebrows twitched and her lips quivered and for just a flash, Locklear thought he could hear the gravelly whisper of the ashen valkyrie before she collapsed at his side.

  A single precious, agonizing breath left him. Maybe she’d cracked his ribs, or broken his back. It was a helluva flight he’d taken just moments before. His fall from the tower, notwithstanding. They were safe, for the moment. Just long enough to strap in for the longest flight of his life.

  Time to go home.

  Chapter 19

  Murcielago

  It took about as much effort as unscrewing a bottle cap. Piotr and his merry band hadn’t physically blocked the airflow through the HVAC system. They had simply cut the power to the oxygen recycler in the aft of the ship.

  But he still had the track lighting, emergency systems, and power doors. More than enough current he could flow into the little life-giving box.

  A short hand over hand ride to the first hatch and Leo was dripping with sweat, beads of fluid balling up at his hairline in uncomfortable bunches – couldn’t trickle down the face without gravity.

  The thin air wasn’t doing him any favors either. His muscles ached and tightened, like they were saturating with resin, a hardening concrete, and he had to crack them free of the mold with every overhand motion.

  And it was gettin
g harder every time, fingers tingling and shoulders burning. He was going to suffocate nice and slowly, get dizzy and whimsical, before a pulmonary embolism ripped its way through his brain like a wrecking ball through gray matter.

  You can do this. Just focus. No more distractions.

  Leo shook his head and pushed on, floating along the spine, tapping his fingers against the walls for minor course corrections. The air system’s aft junction would be just ahead, near the true center of the ship -- the heart of the Murcielago’s circulatory system. One chamber for each half.

  A single junction could fill the entire ship, but the redundancy reduced stress on the system and increased efficiency. Leo just had to make his own defibrillator.

  While the prefab structures were connected by long permanent docking collars that spun off the spine like quills from a porcupine, the permanent ship-side systems had their own rooms, although calling them rooms was a tad charitable.

  The compartments housed computer systems and hard lines and met the most basic standard of the term convenient. Comfortable exited that vocabulary over a century ago with the first shuttle launches.

  Leo popped the seal on the overhead hatch and swung himself upward like he was climbing into his grandparents’ attic back in Rochester. Had the same musty smell too, just without the half inch of dust.

  The room generated a great deal of heat as well, which had to be regularly cooled to prevent damage -- the active thermal control systems would run liquid ammonia past the electrical grid and carry the heat out to thermal panels on the hull where it would be safely dissipated.

  This active cooling kept the room at a brisk four degrees Celsius. Without power creating the heat, the temperature had dropped even further.

  He wasn’t sure, but Leo swore his lips had frozen together. That fine layer of grime and spittle had cured into glue and silenced him.

  First he had to find the power junction, then route new power to it and give it a cycle to start kicking out fresh air. The cramped space was barely meant for a human to crawl into, but Leo had always been a bit of a worm when it came to reaching into tight spaces.

  On his belly, he squirmed and twisted, unable to brace himself against anything. While he would normally need to anchor himself, he was just going to have to deal with the zero gravity the hard way or else risk freezing some valuable part of himself to a cold ammonia pipe.

  There it was, right by his kidney. The case was made with all the elegance one would expect of a mechanical engineer -- it was a six-sided box with an insulated power line running in one side, and out the other. Now to nab power from the other systems, run cable to that box and try not to short it out. If he did, the short high of oxygen deprivation would give way to painful spasms and -- hopefully -- flicking his switch before the pain could really set in.

  And then what? You fix a broken junction box, they’ll just break something else. You’ll be a little hamster in a wheel, cranking away at whatever problems they lay at your feet.

  These people were his friends. They just didn’t understand what happened. He could explain it to them, walk them through it step by step. They’d have to challenge their preconceptions, but these were smart people. And they knew things were heightened to unusual degrees. They’d hear him out.

  They’re trapped in the black, scared of the cold, the hunger, and you. Rational and careful thought has long since passed as a viable option.

  It would be easy. Instead of cycling power from the secondary systems, he could cycle it from the forward recycler. He would deny them the air they stole from him. At the very least, they’d have to come to the table.

  It was a simple matter, but hardly swift. The oxygen in the aft section was thinning, and this work had to be done with careful precision.

  He could feel the migraine setting in, pushing on his temples and behind his eyes. The cold and the quiet was a small comfort, allowing him to focus on the task at hand.

  He had several wires hot with electrons in his hands. So much as swipe it against the conductive hull, cross any two leads, and his entire plan would fail. He might’ve been worried about brushing them against himself, coursing enough electric current through his abdomen to stop his heart, but he’d run that experiment once already to little effect. If that notion didn’t disturb him so much, he might consider that superpower a blessing.

  Leo held his breath as he connected the final wire. For a long moment of abject silence, it seemed like nothing happened.

  There was no hum, no blinking green light, no shaking off of sleepy inertia to grind back into consciousness. That little box just stared at him.

  Had he done something wrong? Had they cut the power line before he could get to it?

  But with each deepening breath, he felt a little better. The air was indeed cycling again. That fresh, cool, musty, swampy air had returned to breathe him into well-being, a warm blanket of security.

  Now to ensure that security.

  Leo wormed his way out of the cavity and back into the spine of the ship. The haunting sterile hallway stared back at him, terminating at the midsection bulkhead.

  No movement or light, no sign of activity. Maybe they had yet to discover the fault, that their section was now the one without air. And that while they might sabotage any number of systems, the only one capable of fixing them was locked in the trunk.

  It was just a matter of time now. There were too many of them to ambush, and he couldn’t trust them to deal peacefully.

  Instead, he slipped down a nearby prefab. Even the little bit of gravity was a welcome comfort, a diaphanous layer of normalcy draped over his appallingly strange situation from the last however-many hours.

  He thought he might sleep, but was somehow not tired. A nap was a downright nauseating thought. He had to be alert. When they found out, Piotr and Gamble and Romanov and Mathers….

  Gamble was the real problem. Militant, aggressive, and certain of her gifts. Romanov and Mathers were traumatized and easily led, even before all this.

  Piotr knew Leo too well to be a definitive threat, he was emotionally invested in Leo. He would not project real harm; to the contrary, he might shield Leo from it. It was Gamble, and her cold medical efficiency, that was the real threat.

  Leo’s radio crackled with fresh static. Someone was transmitting but hadn’t picked their words yet. He stared at the small radio box sewed to his shoulder, waiting for their first offer.

  “Leo?” Piotr croaked through the noise, his little voice cracking from stress and misuse. He had either not spoken for some time or had recently finished straining his throat in a screaming match.

  Leo could feel the young man’s fear, like Piotr’s throat was under a steel-toed workman’s boot. Like he was gearing up to plead for his life.

  Don’t respond. Let him drive this negotiation.

  “Leo, I have to… I have to know it’s still you in there.”

  Who else would it be?

  “What did you send out, Leo?” Piotr blubbered, each word stuck to the end of the next, “I have to know what message you sent. Gateway, Luna, nobody can crack whatever fucking code you used. They want to know what you sent.”

  Oh, this was rich. If he knew about the air problem at all, he was somehow more concerned with the outgoing mailbox. Triage was never his strong suit.

  “Leo, fuckin’ say something. Are you even alive back there?”

  Let him twist. The further you can bend him, the more spectacularly he’ll break.

  A long silence before his next words, “You’re called the Rung, aren’t you?”

  What?

  “That’s what Mathers just called you. The Rung. It’s the little name you use for yourself. You sent a little SOS to your friends, didn’t you, you piece of shit?”

  Piotr had found what remained of his spine, and bolted some titanium to it. That subtle shake in the timbre of his voice still cracked through, but it was more a fury bubbling under a boiling lid, sizzling and snapping against open flame.<
br />
  “Well, I got a little message of my own. If your little sponge buddies ever show, they’re goin’ to find you in many tiny pieces. You hear me, you little jellyfish motherfucker? You let Leo go right now, and there doesn’t have to be anything that follows. You push this, and I will make damn sure that every single one of your little nerves is fried the fuck out before you die. That’s the only offer you’re going to get today. Think it the fuck over.”

  And the static fell silent.

  They weren’t worried about the air. They were worried about backup, additional horrors from the dark side of distant planets, the monsters under their beds creeping out in the depths of foggy nights. And this little man thinks he can shout down ancient gods and endless swarms?

  Piotr will be inspirational to his colleagues, as he chokes on his own blood and bile. They will feel such inspiration to serve.

  But Piotr was a good man. A silly, perverted, reckless, good man. He’d always been a mildly inappropriate friend, swapping jokes in the midnight hours. He’d been support in the dreary nights and an almost welcome discomfort in the mornings to follow.

  We shall see how that reputation holds up, because it appears now he is hammering ploughshares into swords.

  The Rung. Is that what Piotr said?

  You’re concerned with whatever fanciful language he uses to justify his violence?

  What about his own violence? Leo had already killed two people. He had smashed in Kieran’s head and left him to freeze in the vacuum. He had bisected Rook with a door frame, crushing his pelvis in a hydraulic vice.

  Was Leo really going to continue to call that self-defense, that degree of cruelty? That brutality against those that would retreat?

  His father had been shot in the back.

  It was you or them. They were a threat to you. They were going to trap you and murder you, leave you to twist in the most painful of punishments. Inhumane.

  But could Leo know that for sure? Could he really be so certain of their intentions? Their fear? And from his place of uncertainty, he had acted with absolute precision.