“Pull up the schematics,” I told Dip. “Find the medical bay. Get me near it.”
“This could be dangerous,” Dip warned. “I don’t think the ship has much integrity now.”
“Are you warning me against this?” I asked.
Dip didn’t answer and just steered my craft toward the wreckage of the ship. We came to a docking port, which had enough emergency power to engage and make connection with my small airlock. I entered the craft. I considered having my guns at the ready, but there was no point.
I emerged into a hallway. Dim lighting revealed bodies lying about. Soldiers. Staff. Sylvia must have orchestrated quite a surprise attack, a thorough killing of everyone here before they could react.
“Head forward and take the second right,” Dip told me. “What happens, though, when you find her?”
I knew the answer to that. Nothing. I would see the dead body of the only person who had ever meant anything to me, and then I’d be back to what I always was: an empty husk. No tears. No sadness. Just emptiness. And I don’t think Anthony or Sylvia would be correct on what I’d do next. I wouldn’t go back to my old self, and I couldn’t pretend that revenge would mean anything. I’d just be done. I’d be over. The abyss would envelop me completely.
“Diane wouldn’t want you to give up,” Dip told me as I strolled through the hallway. I was in no hurry.
“What we want means nothing,” I answered.
“You’re almost there,” Dip said. “You should see it soon.”
I walked into the medical bay. But I was wrong about how I’d react when I saw her. It was not nothing. It was the most I had ever felt in my entire life. The emotions hit in a wave of force that I couldn’t take. I fell to my knees, and tears streamed down my face. I let out a number of deep sobs as all control left me.
“It’s okay,” Diane said, putting her arm around me and helping me back to my feet. “We have to go.”
I wiped the tears from my face. I looked again at Diane to confirm that it was her and that this wasn’t a bout of insanity. There she was in a patient’s gown, giving me a very weak smile that barely peeked out of all the death and destruction around her. I could hear the hull of the ship creaking and failing. I had ignored it before, but now I felt the time pressure to get out of there. “Follow me.”
I led the way back to the airlock. Diane was limping a bit, but she kept pace. Her small smile faded away, though, as we stepped over bodies along our path. “There could be other survivors,” she offered without much conviction.
I just shook my head. There was no time.
We entered our small ship, and I disengaged it from the airlock. Get us away, I told Dip.
“Jump engine still charging,” Dip informed me.
Just get us away.
The small red craft’s engine engaged, and we sped away from the wreckage as fast as it could go, just in time to see the Vanguard break in two, sending debris everywhere. I took the driver’s seat, and Diane sat next to me. I put a hand on her shoulder without thinking, maybe just to continue to confirm she was there. She looked back at me with what seemed like a supportive expression, but everything now was creased with death and loss. Neither of us said anything for what seemed like a full minute. She spoke first.
“The ship got swarmed with troops — I’m not sure who they were. They were killing everyone. I thought they were locating people by heat signatures, so I hid in a heating vent. I think that’s why they didn’t find me. I just sat there while they —” She began to tear up but reasserted control. “What happened, Rico?”
I took a deep breath. I told her everything. The secret plot I had with Anthony. How Mountain Fall was a wild goose chase to help us find the Fathom. That I’d killed the Fathom, thinking I had broadcast it to the universe and ended it all. Who Sylvia really was and how she’d killed Redden and the rest of the Alliance leadership. That Anthony had taken over the new Alliance, and now the two of them were basically unopposed.
There was another long silence as I gave Diane time to process everything. “So that’s why the secrecy,” Diane finally said. “You figured I wouldn’t go along with putting all those lives at risk — getting millions murdered on Calipa — for a ruse. For a nonexistent weapons cache.” She looked away from me and out the viewscreen. “You tortured an innocent man for information you knew you didn’t even need.”
“For this to work,” I said, “they couldn’t suspect anything. And when I do something, I commit fully. So I acted exactly as I would have if I’d thought Mountain Fall was real and everything depended on us finding it. It was a desperate measure, but it did seem like the only possible way to end this. And I ... was the right person to pull this off. And it ... it worked. Against all odds. And I set up the broadcast myself specifically so I could go over Anthony’s head, because of course I knew not to trust him. I figured I’d expose the whole thing and let everyone know it was over. But I didn’t ... I didn’t suspect Sylvia enough — I really had no idea. And now once again I gave it everything and accomplished nothing but to make Anthony more powerful. I tried to be something new — I tried to be a hero — and it was for absolutely nothing.”
She looked at me again. She had seen more of the monster I was, but she had seen something else, too. “It’s not for nothing.” She leaned over and kissed me on the cheek. I thought about how I had broken down upon seeing her. It all seemed over for me. The darkness was complete. But then there was that glimmer of light again, that answer to a prayer I dared not even ask, the fulfillment of hope too foolish to have.
But then an awful thought struck me: This was wrong. It made no sense. This was a woman who thought nothing of herself, yet somehow she hid herself and did nothing as everyone around her was slaughtered. Was she a part of this?
No, that made even less sense than her inaction. I could see on her face how shaken she was by what she had witnessed. Still, despite the fact that she couldn’t have done anything, it was against her character to do nothing but save herself. The Diane I knew would have pointlessly died while at least trying to help others. She didn’t think enough of her own life to cling to it while others lost theirs.
Then the other things fell into place. I had seen how shaken she had been in the other recent conflicts we’d been in. I thought it was the distaste at needing to kill again, but it was like she was scared of death like I’d never seen her. Why was she suddenly so worried about her own life? Oh.
“You’re pregnant,” I said. It was a declaration, but she took it as a question, glancing warily at me before slowly nodding. “Is it ...” This was one of those somewhat indelicate questions, but Diane took my pause as an opportunity to answer.
“There are not exactly multiple possibilities,” she said.
“Were you going to tell me this?”
“Eventually. It just seemed like a distraction right now.”
“That it is,” I admitted. She was now studying my face again, I guess looking for my emotion on this issue ... something I didn’t really have. I had never put much thought into what reproducing might mean for me. “What makes me ... me is partly in my genetics. That means the child may have some of my — let’s just say mental uniqueness.”
She simply nodded again.
I thought a bit about what this meant. This was really going to take her out of commission for a while as this progressed. “The simplest solution to this is —”
“Don’t even complete that thought,” Diane interrupted. “I want to be done killing my way out of problems. And now ...” The facade broke, tears streaming from her eyes. And there we were, floating through space: the empty, murderous monster and the crying, pregnant woman.
Nearly empty.
“Hug her,” Dip urged.
It was awkward with me in the driver’s seat and her in the passenger seat, but I leaned over and put my arm around her. She put her head on my shoulder and continued to sob. As far as I understood it, a hug communicated something. It was like I was telling h
er I was there for her. And I was, as little as that was worth.
She continued to cry as we drifted into space, the destruction of the Vanguard now a dot behind us. Soon the crying stopped, and she just rested quietly against me. After a minute more, I broke the silence. “We need to decide what we’re going to do next.”
Diane sat back up. “We do. What’s left, though? Burke has basically won. The Old Alliance is going to be in shambles. And what? He can now make copies of himself in the Messengers? Is there even a way to stop him?”
I thought about that for a few seconds. “Yes.”
Diane stared at me. “You know a way to stop him?”
“I’ve never really tried to take on Anthony directly before,” I said. “But I might be the only one who knows enough about him to do so.”
“You have a plan?”
I took a deep breath, running through the ideas in my head. “The beginnings of one. And not a great one. This will be ... difficult, to say the least. Anthony has to assume I’ll come after him and must be prepared for that. Sylvia certainly will be prepared for it, and I don’t want to underestimate her. But there is a course of action to take.”
“And what will that involve?” Diane asked.
“Nothing pleasant.” I looked Diane over. She wasn’t showing just yet. “You don’t need to be a part of this. Neither do I, really, for that matter. What do I care about saving the universe? What has that gotten me so far?”
Diane took my hand and squeezed it. “It’s kept you facing forward; the only place the light might be.”
She smiled at me, and once again, for a moment, that was all that mattered. Into my head popped the foolish notion of just forgetting everything and running off with her, but the truth was that that wouldn’t lead to anything good. I’m a psychopath. I’m a weapon. I can’t settle down. I have to be used.
“I can do this alone,” I told her.
“But you don’t have to be alone.”
I settled back in my chair and looked at the stars and the empty places between them. Dip, make the call.
“I’m still unclear whether I’m supposed to be a figment of your imagination or something else,” he said.
Whatever you are, you have a computer interface. So just make the call.
“All right.” After a few seconds he said, “Connecting you.”
“I just saw the news,” Morrigan said on the other end of the call. “The Fathom say they killed Redden and destroyed his command ship. It looks like our investment in the Old Alliance is not working out.”
“It’s time for me to come back to Nystrom,” I said.
Morrigan laughed. “You think after all this you can just come back and work for us again?”
“No.” I took another deep breath. In a way, my father was winning once again. “You are going to work for me.”
Acknowledgements
I’d like to thank Cindy Kehler for editing. I’d also like to thank the beta readers Charlie Hodges, Sruly Peikes, Rick Joyce, Eva Hallock, Emerson Paradee, Josh Austin, Matt Upton, Nick Hlavacek, Jamie Lakes, Jim Kee, Gene Kendall, and Stephen Sutherland.
Also, thank you to Allison Barrows and Romas Kukalis (http://www.midsizemedia.com) for the awesome cover.
And a special thanks to everyone who pestered me about a sequel to Superego. I wasn’t sure I ever planned to have one, and now I’m quite glad I did.
And a very special thanks to my wife, Sarah, who has done more for my writing than can be properly expressed in a few simple sentences. And thank you to God, who has given me more blessings than I can count.
About Frank J. Fleming
Frank J. Fleming is a novelist and senior writer for the satire site The Babylon Bee. He’s also written satire books (Punch Your Inner Hippie: Cut Your Hair, Get a Job, and Make America Awesome Again) and columns for The New York Post, USA Today, and The Washington Times. Frank is a Carnegie Mellon University graduate and works as an electrical and software engineer when he's not writing. He lives in Austin with his wife and four kids and is a really cool dude.
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