Explorations: War

by Richard Fox

  The pilot’s voice cracked in his comm. “I’m getting crazy readings from the rubble. I think they have an explosive device.”

  Spinning around, he saw the transport hovering above the alien ship, its landing gear extended, ready to land for him. Jack shouted, “No, no, pull out.”

  “Opening keel airlock, turning off grav plating moonside,” someone said, and Jack saw Basu and Song turn off their magni-boots and leap up into the keel.

  The ship was coming toward him. Moving as fast as he could, the frozen body locked in a death grip, he felt the ground rumble. Turning off his magni-boots, he leapt toward the forward landing strut, and turned on every magni point on his suit and boots midair. He and the kid collided with the landing gear, and Jack said, “I’m on, get us out of here.”

  His comm crackled. “No, you’re not. You’re on the landing gear!”

  But the pilot had already flipped on the anti-grav in the ship and in the plating, and the ship was spiraling upward.

  Jack saw the rubble from the terrace erupt. Flipping off his magnis, grabbing hold of the edge of the landing gear storage space, he pulled himself and the kid up one-handed. “Lock us in here,” Jack said, pressing himself against the ceiling, praying there would be room. The landing strut retracted, pushing against his chest and stealing his breath. His launcher was pressed against his lower back. He felt rubble pound against the vessel and the underside of the strut, and just before the door to the space slid closed, he saw four shapes crawling from the remnants of the second terrace. From the distance, the vaguely hominid aliens had the geometrical edges and gleam of skin-plated “insects.”

  “Ah … Sol,” he whispered, releasing a long breath. Their sun had not betrayed them.

  The hatch sealed and his helmet’s comm crackled. “Sarge?”

  “I’m alive,” he replied. The ship shuddered as though it had been hit.

  “Pressurizing,” said someone, and his suit’s helmet monitor erupted in lights as air was pumped into the cramped space.

  He turned to the child, or the corpse, and cursed himself. The face mask still dangling from the kid’s neck was too large for a seal; his skin was radiating cold. He’d probably died long before his parents had from suffocation, freezing, or a combination of both.

  The ship shook again, but over the comm someone said, “The cavalry has arrived!” and there were hoots on every channel.

  “Look at them go!” someone called out, and Jack closed his eyes for a moment and just breathed.

  A light went on in his helmet, telling him it was safe to open the seal. He let the visor slip back, and cursed himself. It was stupid of him to pick up the kid’s body, but he couldn’t leave Isaac on that cold rock, and he guessed he couldn’t leave someone else’s kid, either. He knew how illogical that was.

  The corpse’s eyelashes fluttered in the air currents in the small space. Jack blinked and the corpse’s eyes opened wide.

  “Sorry,” said the boy.

  Jack banged his head on the ceiling.

  The boy blinked at him. “It took me a while to warm up and restart this body. You called?”

  For a moment, Jack stared in confusion, and then he remembered saying Sol’s name.

  Sol swallowed. “I’m not sure how much I can help, Jack. I’m getting dim, it’s hard for me to talk to the other stars, or flare, or even feel the tug in the waves of your enemies, but I can try.”

  “It’s all right,” said Jack. “I don’t need anything.” He heard more cheering over his comm.

  Sol looked at the landing strut pinning Jack to the ceiling, and one of his eyebrows went up.

  “They’ll let me out in a bit,” he said. It was a good thing sometimes these things had to be accessed during space flight to check the magni-coils and grav grips, or he’d be squished and they wouldn’t have been able to pressurize the chamber. He heard thumps overhead. His helmet comm crackled and someone said, “You okay in there, Jack? We sustained some damage and you might have to wait a while.”

  “Yeah, yeah, I’m fine,” Jack responded.

  “Why did you call me, then?” said Sol.

  Jack had “called” because Sol had saved them. They were going to dock with Habitat One, where Kathleen and Isaac were safe, and then the four operational habitats would turn toward Oort, and blast off to friendlier stars. Hundreds of thousands of lives had been saved, and Sol was lost, and in that moment, Jack had felt it, the vast chasm of grief and anger and despair he always felt when he lost a brother-in-arms.

  All that was way too heavy. “I missed your sparkling conversation.”

  “Oh,” said Sol, and he took a long breath. “I’m not feeling very sparkling at the moment.”

  “That’s okay.” He stared at the boy … alien … sun. “Can you stay?”

  Sol blinked rapidly, looked down at his hands, and flexed them. “Yes … this body is self-sustaining.” His lips parted for a moment in an expression Jack had seen on Isaac’s face on Christmas morning, and then they formed a mulish line. More coolly, he said, “How long were you thinking?” His voice was that of a child, but his inflection was old.

  “Until the body isn’t self-sustaining anymore, I guess.” Jack replied. The zephies had turned to ash … the sun didn’t have to, not yet.

  Sol’s eyes went wide, and then that hard line returned to his lips. Jack knew that he was talking to a billion-year-old being—or a little bit of one—but it was like watching Isaac’s expression when he realized that although yes, his parents had shelled out for the new holo he wanted, he could only watch it if he took a bath first. Staring at a point at his feet, Sol said, “I would like that—times move so slowly in these bodies of yours. The body was very dead, but there are shadows of this body’s memories. Those people were his family, they were from Earth—”

  Explained the poor disaster preparedness, Jack thought.

  “—I’d be an orphan, a burden, and after what I did to your people …” He shook his head. “There is no reason for you to take me in.”

  Jack sighed. If Jack were Kip, he might launch into a long story about humans touching zephies, or even just about friendly fire. But he never liked long discussions, especially when the answer was blazingly obvious.

  “You’re over-thinking it,” Jack said. Sol had a tendency to do that. A lot like a doctor, really.

  Sol looked at him through narrowed eyes.

  The comm in his helmet crackled. “We’re going to go ahead and lift the plating instead of trying to drag you out. Don’t need your plasma rifle backfiring if we use too much force.”

  “Much obliged,” said Jack.

  He heard thumping above his head.

  The ceiling cracked open, spilling light into the dark space. Reaching out, Jack ruffled the hair of the star that had set people on fire, driven them mad, and saved them, too.

  The plating lifted completely away and the maintenance workers gasped when they saw Sol blinking. “You have a survivor!”

  Jack wasn’t sure yet, and held his breath.

  One of the guys threw out a hand to Sol. “Hey, kiddo, it will be all right.”

  Sol stared at it.

  “Come on,” Jack said gruffly. “You’re our sun.”

  A woman in a medic uniform put down a hand, too. Everyone went deathly quiet, until Sol put up his hands and let himself be lifted into human light.

  C. Gockel Biography

  If you enjoyed this story, check out C. Gockel’s free novella, Carl Sagan’s Hunt for Intelligent Life in the Universe, or pick up Archangel Down, the first novel in her Archangel Project trilogy.

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  The Hand of Empyrean

  By Scott Moon

  ONE

  Empyrean’s angel of death had doubts. Obedience took more of her soul each day, a fact she knew better than the length of her blade or how many times she had killed. All action served Empyrean. The god of sun gods could not be resisted, nor understood, nor reasoned wit
h.

  Many lifetimes ago, she brought destruction upon her people because Empyrean presented a devil’s bargain.

  A few may live, Pyr. If you wish to choose, you must kill and kill and kill until galaxies fear your execution of my will.

  Pyr slaughtered the enemies of her new master for a thousand years, hating near immortality even as she craved it. For a time, she had been a battle god, but as Empyrean’s influence expanded, she became a shadow of the end times.

  Pyr was death served in the darkness behind her master’s horde of Astral warriors. She was the assassin no one had ever seen.

  She doubted the god of sun gods would grant her true immortality. Damnation stalked her with skill she had to admire. Dreams brought visions of her people, but she no longer awoke in tears.

  Empyrean did not command her to mourn, so she did not.

  Pyr’s people were a kind of human, very similar to those who had invoked the wrath of her master. They were bipedal, carbon-based life forms dependent on oxygen and water and emotion.

  If she ever encountered a native of her long dead homeworld, that man or woman would have skin the color of a white star and hair blue as an Earth sky. Eyes like diamonds, lips the color of dried blood, and a physical form full of grace and purpose would be a reflection of her physical existence.

  But she would never go home again. Her people did not love her, or know her, or search for her in the vast eternal night of space.

  Her ship, Astral’s Revenge, drifted toward the planet anchor that tethered her displacement drive. She worked the controls of the ship, attending to details she knew better than her own name. Routine was never routine, she knew, but traveling great distances was familiar and comforting to her dead soul.

  Today, like hundreds and thousands before, she would kill a mortal.

  The FCF Impregnable held station at the outer rim of Urian’s orbit, displacement shields invisible and weapon turrets tucked tightly against the three kilometer fuselage. Pyr had studied the millennia of effort put into building the stolen vessel. Forged at a cellular level, the strength of the superstructure had allowed a god to escape a devil long before these strange humans co-opted the galaxy defender for their own use.

  Or for the use of the United Earth Federation president, to be precise.

  Only damnation could follow disobedience of Empyrean’s decree. No ship, not even a mobile fortress such as the FCF Impregnable (once known as Andromeda's Sanctuary) could delay the inevitable.

  Today, the inevitable was Pyr.

  She took inventory of the ways the ancient ship could block her mission. Humans, once they riddled out the fabrication plant, had added weapons they were most comfortable with: missile launchers, kinetic weapons, and two types of energy cannons — laser and plasma. The last of these was a hybrid, she thought, although she didn’t care.

  This time there would be no fleet battle dashing through the void against impossible odds.

  She did fear the humans’ creative use of displacement drives as weapons. Opening and closing displacement fields was dangerous on levels few mortals could understand, but was a good way to cut anything — even a star — in half. Using displacement fields as armor was less original, but well executed. Pyr wondered if the scientists of the FCF developed the theorems and calculations on their own, or had stolen it from the Impregnable.

  They were a dangerous young race, deadly as void death. The FCF’s conversion of stolen technology to the reckless endangerment of subspace dark matter might have made her smile in grudging respect, if she had not stopped smiling the last time she’d seen her own people.

  She made a slow tour around the monstrous fortress ship, noting defenses and security procedures. Humans and their mortal allies had added a great deal of external lighting and painted the name of the ship on each side of the bow. Interesting but unhelpful.

  There was no way inside without an invitation.

  Irritated, but not surprised, she steered her ship toward the planet anchoring the wormhole in this sector. Urian was crammed with cities and technology, continents glowing with population centers.

  The key to success could only be found on the planet. Not even Pyr could board the Impregnable without the ship’s consent. There were no secret shuttle bays or faulty security measures. No guard could be bribed and Pyr’s most clever disguise would fail.

  But like all mortals, the Guardian of the Ship was a creature of emotion.

  Love would not conquer all. Love would open the gates of hell and Pyr would stride through to do her bloody work.

  “Hades, do you have the target profile I requested?” she asked the AI of her ship.

  “It has been in your queue for some time,” the ship said in a rather bored male voice.

  By “some time,” she knew the computer meant a few seconds. Non-living entities with silicon processors for brains were funny that way.

  “Thank you, Hades,” she said.

  The computer did not respond.

  “Hades?”

  An exaggerated sigh sounded through the speaker in her ear piece. “Is it necessary to entertain you with needless pleasantries?”

  Pyr checked her navigation way points to the planet and waited.

  “Fine,” Hades said. “You’re welcome, Pyr. What else can I do for you, Pyr? I am just a computer and you are the light of Empyrean Itself, Pyr. Or should I say the shadow?”

  She smiled. Installing the sarcasm routine had been touch and go, but worth the grief. “That will be all, computer.”

  “You wound me,” Hades said.

  Dramatic music swelled like a galactic orchestra from the computer. “Is it time for our heroic last charge? Dying with honor and all that?”

  Pyr stopped what she was doing. For a hundred years this was all she had thought about. Dying would end her journey. She feared afterlife, if there was such a state of existence. The problem was she also feared life...if that was what she had now.

  “No, Hades. We will find the child of the ship guardian and make sure he hears her screams,” Pyr said.

  “Very good, Pyr. So business as usual then,” Hades said.

  “I hate you, Hades,” she said, steering the small ship into the planet’s atmosphere.

  “That is illogical.”

  The surface was about half agricultural and half industrial. She’d seen similar cities on similar worlds. Population centers were stacked hundreds of levels above the surface. Most people would never see a fraction of the world they lived on.

  It rained a lot on this world and except for the top levels of their cities, it was dark most of the time without artificial lighting. She would walk through neon-lit streets and disappear in contrasting shadows at will.

  “Mark the apartment of my target and send it to my retinal heads-up display,” she said.

  “You’re welcome,” Hades said as the information was delivered.

  “Top level,” she said. “That’s a nice change.”

  “Her father controls access to the most powerful and impenetrable ship in this galaxy,” Hades said. “I don’t think the elevation of the primitive architecture will help her screams reach the FCF Impregnable.”

  “That’s your job, Hades,” Pyr said as she landed the ship on a smuggler’s rooftop landing pad.

  ***

  Pyr muted her communication link to Hades. The ship would either be there or it wouldn't when she was done. For an emotionless machine, it could be unpredictable. She assumed her master sometimes called it home or sent it elsewhere while she hunted the surface of strange planets.

  The hallway was noisy with celebration. Each time a door opened, music and lights spilled into the main concourse.

  Apartment buildings of this type didn’t have hallways or stairs, they had expressways and gravitational lifts. Gold or platinum plated the railings and real silk tapestries hung from high ceilings.

  Pyr was not in disguise, per se, but merely understood the art of not attracting attention.

  A m
an and woman fell out of a door and ran to the fronds surrounding a decorative fountain. Silent and still as a statue, Pyr watched them coupling with complete abandon. She wondered if they realized everyone on the next level could see them in the lavish atrium.

  It didn’t matter. Science had enhanced each of their bodies to the point it would almost be a waste if they did not writhe together like primitives.

  Pyr moved through this level and ascended several more. Step by careful step she approached her goal, the topmost penthouse of this planet’s richest city.

  A guard met her in the access stairwell. She stabbed titanium needles through his throat armor and lowered him to the floor. Small-diameter, high-pressure gouts of blood arched into the air where he lie akimbo, narrowly missing her. Stepping aside, she marveled at the sight — not a new sight, but rare. Clipping the brain stem did not require such a mess. Am I distracted? Careless? Cruel?

  Time seemed to slow as droplets splattered at the bottom of the red arch.

  No, she thought. His armor is adding the extra pressure — a lifesaving tool gone wrong.

  She waited, then opened the door and looked into the top level walkway — glass on all four sides and monitored with cameras.

  When it was time, she walked with such purpose that the security controller sent a team to confront her at the end of the glass tube rather than open the floor and drop her a half mile to her death.

  She killed the soldiers quickly, not bothering to draw the spike dagger. Their armor was tougher and thicker. The heads, however, did not function well when turned backward on their necks.

  More guards came.

  She killed them with their own weapons.

  She hurled them to their deaths.

  She located the central security camera and erased evidence of her passage.

  All that remained was to scale the outside of her target's room and slip in one of her private windows, which were always open, according to Hades’ last information bundle.

  Contacting the ship with a touch of her ear, she called to Hades and waited.