Memory's Blade

by Spencer Ellsworth

  Smart. Crosses get a data dump that teaches us how to make basic weapons, including crossbows, and the danger of shards on this planet-cracker means they would, of course, resort to simpler weapons. Thuzerian groans and shouts come through my comm as they each meet a sharpened steel rod. Another one sinks into my arm. That one actually hurts, finds some flesh, unlike my leg, which is mostly synthskin and steel rods.

  I turn and fire shards, damning caution, hit two nearby Resistance soldiers who are halfway through reloading their improvised crossbows. Blood soaks the inside of my suit. I’m colder. The suit should seal itself around the puncture, but it won’t be perfect; I’ll lose atmos the longer I stay out here.

  Not that I was planning on going back.

  That makes me think of Jaqi, and I wonder if she’ll make it back.

  I can’t think of her now. I’ll think of her when I’m sure I’ll die. Not now.

  I run until I reach the front of the planet-cracker. There’s a Thuzerian there, holding off two sword-wielding Resistance fighters. One reaches for a pocket crossbow, locked to his leg. I leap across the distance, run him through, switch my stance, and both me and the Thuzerian soldier stab the other soldier, then toss his body off the surface into space.

  “There’s only a basic guidance system,” I say, as I drop to my knees. My knees magnetize automatically to the surface.

  “They’ve wounded me,” the Thuzerian’s voice hisses in the intercom, and I recognize Alsethus. “My lungs.” Her voice garbles.

  “Stay with me,” I say. “I need—aw hell.” The guidance system is protected up here. I can hotwire it, but I would have to get underneath it.

  Down there, under the shield, with the big, planet-cracking shard.

  “Tether me,” I say. It’ll be too hot down there for my boots to keep purchase. She nods, and attaches the tether to herself.

  “I promise you can give me your rites when I get back up here,” I say.

  She raises a hand in a universal sign of approval.

  I’m guessing that her lungs are filling with blood, or the equivalent for her species. Another one dead.

  And me still not dead yet.

  She turns to face the Resistance troops, wielding two swords and shields between her four arms, and I go out and around the nose of the planet-cracker. There is little to the front of it—a half circle, wide and hot even through my suit, this close to the shard.

  I swing out from under it, and immediately my spacesuit protests, temperature alarms ringing as we get within vicinity of the planet-cracking shard.

  An enormous, glaring red lump of unthunium, the size of a small shuttle, stares back at me like a Shir’s eye. Could mistake it for a very angry meteor if you met it on the spaceways.

  This is a major Imperial planet-cracker. Despite the name, it’s really made to kill an adult Shir.

  Being so close to it, my suit is overheating. The suit is already broken down from the projectiles that have pierced it, and it’s typically meant to keep a person warm, not cool them off. Not to mention the radiation shielding is only meant for standard radiation encountered in space. Crosses have a heavy tolerance to most radiation. We can handle amounts that would poison other sentients. But no one should be this close to this much unthunium.

  Which is to say, suddenly I’m hot.

  It’s all right, though, because I find the guidance system. Right above me, tucked into the crook between the shard and the half circle nose. I scramble up, my suit beeping alarms in my ear, and pull a couple of wires, disconnect the brain of the planet-cracker. The thrusters will stop, but they are only for course corrections anyway; it’s still on target. I need to reconnect the thrusters, redirect us. I could have done it above, with the keypad, but it’s coded, so here I just use the information I got on a data dump about standard Imperial engineering—thank you, vats, glad it wasn’t all Sentience: Don’t Worry About It—

  It’s hot. Getting hard to see out of my suit’s visor with all the condensation. The system should take care of the condensation. It’s failing, having lost some regulation circuitry to the projectile weapons. And frying me. My own body is overheating. My rapid breathing strains the oxygen supplies in this suit. My stomach is doing flips from the radiation. My testicles swell to twice their size, aching where the Kurgul queen stabbed them.

  There. Rewired. And that should give a basic retrieval sequence to the brain.

  Just for good measure, I pull everything that has anything to do with the sense-field as well, which means, if our dreadnought can get a clear shot, they can blow this thing before it gets in range of the Thuzerians—well, other than the ones currently dying here.

  Sure enough, the planet-cracker starts to slowly turn, exposing me to the light of the Thuzerian planet, that beautiful green marble, as I return to the Resistance. Turns and—

  Aw hell, no, the sequence is trying to self-correct. Some subroutine I didn’t anticipate. I yank the wires again—at this point, at least the momentum is pushing it away from the planet, if not back toward the Resistance fleet—and I climb back out along my tether.

  And I’m cold. Instantly cold. The sweat that soaked me a moment ago freezes on my skin. Yep, those environmental controls in this suit worked a little too hard. Now they’re shutting down. How long until the atmos is all gone? Minutes? Seconds? Freezing to death in my suit, killed by my own sweat.

  That’s not a good death.

  I clamber over the nose of the planet-cracker’s shield.

  Alsethus is still upright, her boots magnet-locked, bubbles of rapidly freezing blood flowing from holes in her suit. The soldier who killed her bends over the pad, trying to reprogram the planet-cracker.

  The Resistance soldier looks up just in time to get my sword through their guts—and then I kick them away. I look down the planet-cracker to see more Resistance troops coming toward me.

  I wonder how long I have. My limbs are shaking, they’re so cold from the lack of air, the rad poisoning, the exhaustion.

  I think of Jaqi’s hand on my shoulder.

  I think of Alesthus’s words. Life is a gift. Each moment is given us by God, in His mercy.

  “Araskar, this is it,” a voice says in my ear, as I lunge and parry with my soulsword. “Our ships are out of range. We can blow the planet-cracker now without damaging the planet.”

  Ah. I see what they’re saying.

  I slash through the tether.

  I step away from my Resistance opponents—and kick off the edge of the planet-cracker, into the emptiness of space. Kick hard. The kind of velocity that will carry me halfway across the solar system before I die.

  For one glorious moment it’s all beautiful. I spin backward and catch a glimpse of the Thuzerian planet, the distant blue circle, and then a glimpse of the massive, red, pulsing planet-cracking shard, the shard-fire flying past me, as I fly backward, among more debris, more bodies, more cold, the cold stealing into my suit and sucking out the air, freezing the sweat on my skin and the breath in my lungs—

  The Thuzerian dreadnought fires on the planet-cracker. A dozen bright shards spin across space, and connect with their larger brother.

  They keep shooting, and the shard gets bigger, a bright red burst in the darkness, until it starts to lose stability.

  And then I flip over, and the planet below fills my view for half a second, and again, I go tumbling into the darkness—

  Saint Jaqi gives me a broad, beatific smile. She climbs from the painting and reaches out.

  So this is death.

  -7-

  Jaqi

  OKAY, JAQI, THINK LIKE you’re a human who thought it was a swell idea to put an ecosphere, and a big fancy city, on a moon made of nothing.

  This is a moon made of nothing. Where do we put the guns? And the bandages?

  I think real hard about that for at least ten Imperial minutes.

  And can’t think of a thing. Some spaceways scab I am!

  This is a job for a book bug. I en’t got the
imagination.

  I wait until I hear John Starfire walk the other way, continuing down the street in the direction I came from. Hopefully he en’t figured out which way I came by the dust I disturbed. There was plenty of dust to disturb, but the funny grav at least means it’ll settle in strange patterns.

  He was probably right about looking for a more industrial district, but I en’t following him.

  I keep going through the fine, crystal-looking buildings, taking back ways and forcing myself through the compartments full of the dead, when I can stand it. The dust and the stink are awful. I rifle through cupboards, and under all the beds what don’t have skeletons on them.

  No weapons. No bandages.

  These folk were near Suits themselves. Lots of ports for cybernetic implants, lots of leftover implants that fell out of the dead folk. One house has tanks full of calcified goo on the walls, like some kind of vat for treating a disease or injury. But all these folks are gone. I reckon their Bible didn’t say as much against mixing man and machine as the one Kalia carries around, from what I know of Bibles.

  I take back to the streets and head toward the node-relay towers. There’ll be a launch there. Where there’s valuable ship bits, there’s weapons to defend them.

  And hey, as I get closer, as I move through the grid of streets, under this crazing sense-field dome, I feel something familiar.

  There’s a node.

  Can’t explain how I know, but it’s the same way I’ve always known—I can just sense them nodes like I put them there.

  Is that what I came through? Would have to be, but it don’t feel like a standard node. For one thing, I never met no one could survive a naked trip through pure space, but not only did I survive, so did John Starfire.

  I keep on walking, to some huge reverse-cells. Giant, pod-looking things, stretching near up to the lights in the sky. Oldest reverse-cells I ever seen. Antiques! The kind that used five times the space and not even a capacity colony of algae to make oxygen. Bill’s reverse-cell was huge, but it would have had over a million cloned microalgal components. These old things used genuine living algae. Whole giant colonies.

  Or they did. The algae’s all died and leaked out the bottom, a black slime coating the street around the tall metal cells.

  So how’s this place still got air? They sitting on a catch like Shadow Sun Seven was? Maybe the Jorians rigged up the node to keep on bringing air from the planet below? Maybe that’s why it feels funny.

  “Miss.”

  I nearly jump out of the whole evil dome.

  It’s a Suit!

  Leastways, I reckon it has to be. It clings to a spur of crystal tower, like a spider, up above me. And it scuttles down, springs through the low gravity to land on the ground, missing a bit of grace.

  They got Suits here?

  It shuffles along funny—it’s got one mechanical leg I reckon is its original, long and spindly but built like a human’s. The other leg, though, is rough-welded and cobbled together, with a big central joint and segments like a spider’s. Wire sprouts out of its belly and twists down its legs. A dozen different appendages sprout from the ring around its head. Looks like it’s been trying to fix itself for several centuries.

  Reminds me a bit of my father, since it’s got a metal face with more wires hanging off like a beard. Given the beard, I decide this one’s a “he.” His blue mechanical eyes cast a funny look at me. He lets out a long, creaking noise, like his internal fans are all about ready to break.

  “Miss, eh—” The thing is wearing a smile, like his face done stuck that way. And other than the recognizable words, everything else he’s saying is gunk. “Eh sik tah sah veez.”

  “Uh, salutes. You a . . .” Wait a moment. This Suit broken? “I been to see the Engineer. I know your people. You can speak to me.”

  “Miss, eh—” It whirrs and hums, in a way no Suit does.

  Despite the sketchy augmentation job he’s done on himself, to keep working, I don’t see any organic components. Is this an automaton? A real live automaton? All machine?

  In the stories, them full automatons were dangerous. Couldn’t be trusted and tried to overthrow their masters.

  “You a Suit? What is you?”

  “Eh sik tah sah veez.”

  “I can’t understand a burning thing you’re saying.”

  The thing whirrs even louder, like it’s processing what I’ve said, all the circuits on the inside firing and playing together.

  “I’m wondering whether or not there’s any decent weapons around here? And any decent bandages? Got a fella on my tail who’s a lot of trouble.” Or, depending on how you act as automaton, I might have to shoot you.

  More whirring and processing. And then he says, in a passible imitation of a spaceways accent, “I seek to serve you.”

  So it’s learned how to talk like me. Okay, well, in the stories automatons might be trouble, but so far I got no evidence this thing wants to kill me any more than John Starfire, and as much as little Jaqi heard stories about killer automatons, grown-up Jaqi has stood toe to toe with a lot of killers, and they en’t all that impressive anymore. “You got any weapons?”

  “Our weapons stores have not been replenished in . . .” He take a moment to process. “Eight hundred years by Earth reckoning.”

  “Oh. But you have them? You have guns?”

  “Records tell me that our stores have all lost containment and exploded.”

  “Aiya.” That right there’s the problem with shards in the long term. “Exploded.”

  “The atmosphere in that area of the lunar colony is compromised. I can aid you with a suit if you are cleared to inspect the damage. Please present clearance.”

  “So there’s space suits I can use to look through them guns?”

  He stops again and whirs for a long time. I feel like I’m watching a wheel spin over and over again as he thinks. “The space suits have been compromised. We have no space suits that are marked as preserved for noncorrosion.” His improvised legs rattle.

  “Aiya,” I say. That right there is also a problem with thousand-year-old space suits.

  “Please explain the nature of your inquiry,” it says.

  “Something stuck?” I en’t never dealt with a full automaton. Some bluebloods have them, but most Imperial types don’t trust ’em—too close to Suits. “You understand me, ai?”

  “Ai. Aiya. Please explain the nature of these words.”

  “Oh, them’s just what you say when you need to give spice to your words.”

  The automaton whirrs again, and says, “We shall remember. You require medical attention.”

  I look down, at the blood staining my leg from John Starfire’s last cut. “Let me guess. Your medical bits is compromised by age.”

  “Our medical supplies are vacuum-sealed, and still able to work on organic matter.”

  Ah, that’s good news. “Lead the way. Don’t suppose you have any fresh food?”

  Stop and whir. “All food supplies have been compromised by age or vacuum.”

  It strikes me that this might be another one of old Starfire’s traps, but at this point I’m in such pain that I don’t care. I can’t get him back unless I get all patched.

  “What killed all these folk, uh . . .” I reckon I need a name for this fella. “Whirr?”

  “All sentient life in Luna City has ceased. Signs indicate a virus. This unit has not been given a designation for the virus.”

  Like I thought. So it was a virus done it. “How long it been since the virus hit?”

  “By Earth reckoning, nine hundred fifty-eight years, eleven months and five days have elapsed.”

  “Earth reckoning? That like Imperial reckoning?”

  “Aiya? We do not understand the reference.”

  Forget it.

  The automaton leads me to a tower that stretches way up into the stars overhead, and presses a few buttons so that a compartment opens on the side. It withdraws a few vacuum-sealed packs, and breaks th
em open, revealing bandages and a cream that smells mighty funny, despite having been sealed.

  I don’t care. I take the funny cream and smear it into the gashes John Starfire left in me, and begin wrapping the bandages all around my severed muscles, and groan as the pain comes back new—and with it, more memory-pain, the feeling as though all my life’s been turned to shards, bouncing around and exploding in my head.

  His memories subside, like a beating that’s finally ended. They’re trouble to even sort through. I try to let them go through me slowly. It en’t easy.

  A ship in the Dark Zone.

  An agricultural world.

  A sword in my hand—

  It’s hard to sort this business, with my own memory unreliable. At some point he found out about the planet at the center of the Dark Zone, but he found out the truth of what the Shir are as well, and that memory en’t coming forward to be useful. His memories feel like trying to keep hold of an angry tomcat.

  The cream works a bit like a gel-pack, but a lot slower—I can feel myself starting to knit, but not at the rate synthskin would do it.

  “Okay,” I say. “How long since there been people here for you to talk to?”

  “No living sentient has been here in eight hundred years, Earth reckoning.”

  “Was that last group human?”

  “The last group came from the node connected to Earth.”

  It is a node bringing air here. “And that’s really Earth?” The blue planet has changed its position in the sky, but you can still see it at the edge of the city skyline.

  “That is Earth, homeworld of the human race.”

  “Well, throw me out the airlock.” That’s where me—at least a part of me—comes from. Earth what was lost, and here I found it. “There still folk down there?”

  “We have not intercepted a communication from Earth in two hundred years. The relay remains open.”

  Hm. Wonder if it’s another heap of skeletons down there. Or maybe a paradise, kind of place out of a story? Maybe just a heap of sentients sitting around a fire clubbing each other on the head? That virus would have taken its toll down there too. “Any folk alive down there?”