Authors: Paul Hughes
Decades?
“It doesn’t hurt.”
“Liar.”
“Liar.” His voice was mocking. His impersonation made her smile: lips parted in that liquid way. His eyes moved from hers to her lips, back to eyes. Not a signal, but a signal.
“Lily Lily.”
“Hunter Hunter.”
Breathing became as one.
They kissed and laughed in the vacuum chair, spinning lazily on its mount, revealing in turn the cracked systems display, the projector that emitted static and coordinates that no one wanted to acknowledge, the dead form of an angel, chest an angry confusion of wires, stripped of parts, featureless face surveying the action with dull, dusty eyes.
It would all end soon, but for now, they kissed.
Screaming, but not his own, not his, not its. Screaming from without, and it was warmer, and then a jolt that cracked, and it was warmer, warmest, painfully hot. Sudden, violent, an end to the scream: things broke as they hit the world.
The near was the worst.
Berlin
pulled himself from the vacuum chair. His wound had freshened; fluid over tacky, still black, still staining.
Task moaned. The nose of the vessel was crumpled into snow.
snow?
Elle had been impaled. Tickings of interior biomechanics: its hands flexed on nothing. It tried to speak, but there was no chest, no throat.
Out of the chair, Berlin braced himself between wall and ceiling. Gravity, but it felt like floating. He maneuvered hand-over hand to Task’s cockpit bubble. There was blood.
The air burned.
“What—”
“Don’t try to talk.”
“Elle—”
“It’s dead.”
The pilot’s face collapsed into an emotion. “Let me—”
“You don’t want to see it. How badly are you hurt?”
“Legs are broken.”
“Okay.”
The cant of the vessel would make the extraction difficult. Berlin stood precariously on the ceiling of the cockpit, Task locked into the chair above him.
“Get ready.”
“For what?”
Berlin
palmed the release mechanism and Task fell into his arms in a ball of misshapen limbs and his own screams. Berlin caught the smaller man, lowered him to the floor as quickly and gently as possible. The tears streaming down Task’s face indicated nothing of speed or tenderness.
“We’re upside down.”
“No shit.”
“Are you sure Elle isn’t—”
“I’m sure.”
As if to prove the point, sparks ignited on the shattered chestplate of the near. There was fire.
“God damn—”
“This will hurt.” Berlin hefted Task over his shoulder, the pilot biting his lower lip and trying to muffle the agonized wail between the thin flesh of his cheeks. He struggled over ceiling-mounted displays to the chamber exit.
“Will the belly port work if we’re upside down?”
“It should.”
“Well, we’re on fire. It’d better.”
They abandoned the vessel and the artificial co-pilot to flames.
The siege machines opened fire, and the planet below was raped of atmosphere.
Just a tiny vessel, just a sliver of silver and black. The children were terrified, or as terrified as they could be given that they could not understand what was happening. Lily felt them, far away, yet the closest minds she could touch. There were other consciousnesses buried in the vessel, but she knew that they wouldn’t wake up until it was safe and they were far away from the enemy fleet.
Fighters scrambled from the worldships, but too late. The escape ship phased and it became
cold, the coldest, if she could still feel, and she knew she could, although she didn’t know where she was or how she had gotten there. The containment sphere had solidified into metal and she had been launched from Hannon’s globe.
collision with..?
Snow.
She sat up. The sky was blue. When had she last—
Black smoke from across the ice plain. A vessel embedded into white. A figure on top, hunched over, pulling at something... Two figures. Fire spread.
Maire looked at her own personal space. A Maire-shaped imprint sat within a larger melted circle. She stood.
The fire and the vessel and the fire within the vessel weren’t far away. She walked.
She paused, tried to find that
[something]
within, but it was gone for now. Hiding the silver in the host body had been an accomplishment of great beauty. Unfortunately, she was tapped for now. She couldn’t kill.
She walked.
It fell into the tube. Heaven was below. Stranger had been talking.
“You’re Hannon, aren’t you?” Zero asked.
Stranger said nothing.
The vessel slowed in the pipeline. There was a great hiss as it cracked in half, shielding realigned. The cockpit chamber ceiling lifted from the walls and slid back, revealing the now-vertical nacelles, the tube stretching forever above them.
how long?
The landing platform approached.
“Are you?”
“I’m not going to—”
“Jesus Christ—”
Stranger/Hannon’s face went blank. “Who?” Innocent. Unwashed.
“Show me.”
“Show you what?”
“Your chest.”
Hannon nodded, undid the clasps on the front of his uniform. Pulled the sides back. Turned to Zero.
you took the blue out of the sky
my whole life changed when you said goodbye
The cardiac shield was firmly in place, although strands of silver pulsated at its edge. The puckered maroon of an incision snaked into under out of the metal plate. Shiver and slither of phase shielding. Hannon covered himself.
“So now you know.”
“You found a way to contain it.”
“In some.”
“In men.”
“In some men.”
“It spread to all of the worlds through the halo?”
“It spread to most of the worlds. Maire’s Extinction Fleet took care of the rest.”
Not a blush spread on Zero’s cheeks. Somewhere below, the humming of landing struts and the jolt of contact. Crackle of phase release.
“You called this place Heaven.”
“Yes... It is.”
“Who’s here?”
Hannon smoothed the front of his uniform.
“It’s her. Judith.”
Cold eyes look at nothing. “It
was
Judith.”
He found that he always opened his eyes before she did. Tip of nose to tip of nose, gentle motion of an Eskimo kiss. Liquid sound of her smile. Dimple revealed.
His flesh didn’t change.
He brushed Lilith’s hair back from her cheek. Lips bridged distance. He stood from the chair, pulling on his pants. Buckling his belt. Pulling on shirt.
She
made no move to dress.
The vacuum chair rotated from his exit. As it spun beyond her visual range, she sat up, arms crossed on the top. She watched him tuck in his shirt. The chair completed its rotation and he sat to lace his boots.
“So professional.” Sarcastic. Grin.
“I have to look my best for the troops.”
“Right.” She straightened his collar. There was
music?
in her mind.
She held his hand, looking over every inch for any sign of
The bridge door alarm beeped.
“Fuck.” Lilith crawled out of the chair. Hunter sat back and watched as she pulled on clothing. Her hair was a mess. He shook his head and smiled.
“En—”
“No.”
Lilith turned to him with a look of confusion.
“Your shield, sweetness.”
She blushed. She blushed easily. Eyes closed, inhale, hand taps chestplate. Her form was enveloped with sloshing glass. She ran her fingers through her hair. “Enter.”
an eternity between
Walking into a moment... He was.
He shut the door. The wind was trapped outside. A newspaper fluttered and a hand went to it, held it to the tabletop. Nirvana. He smiled, remembered how
she
actually had smelled like Teen Spirit. Decades of absence... That memory had been buried half a century before, during the first war, in nights of futonsnuggle and Cowboy Killers. Pain supplanted by reality. Impossibility erased by
He walked to the counter. She was already sliding his cup toward him. Black, no cream, no sugar, just black. He leaned over and windburned lips brushed the dimpled cheek.
It wasn’t a literary crowd, but they were trying. A quick survey of the customers revealed books and newspapers, cigarettes and cloves, coffee and cappuccino. Anachronism in the world of the new future.
Sip.
It really wasn’t as bad as the kids thought. He’d tasted worse mud.
“How’s your day been?”
He shrugged. Pale blue-green eyes squinted, tried to dig behind his own. “You know.”
“I thought you might enjoy that.” She tilted her head toward the back of the shop.
“What?”
“The book. That girl has your book.”
The young woman was much too entranced with her beau to notice the middle-aged couple staring at her. He noted with some concern the black glove on the table, the silver ring now gracing silver hand, and he knew, he just knew.
There was a copy of “The Stillness Between” on the table.
The young couple held hands... There were still tears in the girl’s eyes.
She leaned in close from across the counter and whispered. “He just proposed to her.”