Long Fall

by Chris J. Randolph

  Their pursuer kept pace.

  "Why does this jackass care so much?"

  Felix might have shrugged, but Jack wasn't sure whether he imagined that or not.

  They all-out sprinted, and the blue glowing organs began to throb. Jack and Felix were now traveling faster than the speed of sound, but the dark fighter behind shadowed their every move. It clearly had thrust and more thrust to spare.

  Jack glanced to the right and could see several of the New Union Valkyries approaching in attack formation, wings repositioned so they looked like an angry swarm of asterisks.

  They would definitely fire on him.

  There were only bad options.

  Felix picked one, and Jack had to begrudgingly agree.

  They launched off toward the Union forces. When Felix made choices like this, Jack found himself wishing his friend had grown a few weapons at some point. Just to have them.

  In the distance, Jack felt streams of bullets coming in from the Unies like a sharp pain, and he and Felix snapped a roll to the side. Fire flashed harmlessly by.

  Felix spun again, charged his drives, and blasted off in a new direction. Straight up, spinning and darting about through eddies in the atmosphere, up and through one of the few clusters of clouds which drifted across the sky. Bullets chased him and missed.

  Fresh sounds joined the cacophony, pulses of hot plasma. Yuon Kwon cannons opened fire on the Valkyries, some of which burst into a rain of daggers and slag.

  Felix had been right: the Yuon Kwons' urge to protect him overrode their interest in his deformity.

  In the upper atmosphere, Felix and Jack sought the jetstream and ducked inside. Their combined tension eased a little there, and the small craft began scanning the distance for possible places to hide.

  Relaxing was a crucial mistake.

  Thumping machinegun fire raced up from below, a heavy weapon as strong as a tank cannon. Felix and Jack reacted with plenty of time, but something was different. These rounds tracked.

  One missed. Another also missed, but was closer. The third struck and punched a whole in Felix's port side, and the glowing drive organ shattered like a dropped crystal figurine.

  Oikeyan plasma sought out the Union jet and it turned to defend itself while Felix tumbled out of the sky.

  The pain was severe, and Felix as usual showed no aptitude for controlling it. He wailed in agony and thrashed in the air. Falling. Spinning. Tossing end over end.

  Jack stepped in, siphoning the pain away and dealing with it himself, which left Felix free to fly. The flyer in turn stopped the spin, balanced on just one drive, and slowed the fall. They were still sinking, teetering shakily and off kilter, but not free falling.

  They drifted down toward the tops of the trees, moving much too quickly. The branches slapped at Felix's hull, and he began to bounce along them. Then he lost control like tripping over one loose stone, and the next, and the next. He flipped over, crashed through the trees, and dug into the ground.

  Soil launched up into the air and rained down all around them.

  Jack came free of the cradle and slipped back into his own skin, while Felix let out a low moan like a forlorn humpback.

  The segmented canopy rattled, and finally slid a half-meter open.

  "Oh buddy, this ain't good," Jack said. He grabbed his medical case and assault rifle, then climbed out through the opening. He thought he'd prepared himself but was still taken back at the damage.

  Felix's right wing had a ragged hole in it, inside which Jack could see the alien creature's internal anatomy. There were hollow pulsing tubes, a web of thin bones like lattice-work, and blood vessels everywhere pumping thick green fluid. The blood was coagulating; that was a good sign, at least.

  Jack pulled out lengths of a fabric that was coarse and dense like canvas. It was of Oikeyan origin, used to bandage their wounded Yuon Kwon, and Jack assumed it was made of some kind of plant fiber, but he honestly didn't know.

  It didn't take him long to disinfect and patch the opening but healing would take time, and Jack didn't have an abundance of that particular asset. He might be able to buy some if they had a bit of shelter, something to hide under for a little while.

  Shelter would require supplies, so he gave Felix a reassuring pat and headed off into the near wood. As he went, he was glad (probably for the first time in his life) to hear the fight heating up. The harder the two armies bashed against each other, the less likely they were to come looking for him and his wounded ship.

  Chapter 08

  Sword of the East

  Early autumn in northern Russia was much like the dead of winter anywhere else. The sky was an uneven slate, the ground below it powdered in white.

  The cool night air cut like a cleaver, but Amira Saladin reveled in it. She'd spent most of her formative years on Mars, trapped like a hamster in habitrails the size of office parks, but here she was free to step outside anytime she liked... even if it might mean losing her posterior to frostbite.

  It was past three in the morning, and the city was aglow with bioluminescent light in primary colors. This was Amiasha, a living city who'd crashed to cold Russian soil after the Battle of Arkangel. It was a living creature of such fantastical scale that Amira might not have believed her own eyes if she hadn't already stayed aboard the even more callosal starship Legacy.

  Amiasha's body consisted of a pair of four-kilometer discs which were separated like a clam being pried open, with the city itself inside, formed of a material that was softer and fleshier than the creature's hard outer shell.

  A central stalk dominated the interior, connecting floor to glowing ceiling, while five thinner columns formed a one-kilometer circle around it. These contained comstars, stable fusion furnaces about as large as the industrial air-conditioning units Amira used to fix back on Mars. They provided life, light, and heat to the city creature, and from there to its many million inhabitants.

  The first time she witnessed one of those fusion reactions with her own eyes, it changed her life. Her introduction to Legacy had been startling enough, but there was something entirely different about standing in a room with a small star crackling right in front of her, held in a cage that absorbed more than 99% of its heat and light.

  She'd very suddenly found herself awestruck, dumbfounded, and right at the crossroads of a new technological revolution... one which she was uniquely equipped to explore.

  That was when she decided to leave Legacy and come to the strange colony, this experiment out in the frigid reaches of the north, where human and alien refugees had come together out of necessity. The combatants withdrew after the battle and marched on to other battlegrounds, but millions and millions of cold and starving survivors found protection against the brutal winter in the crashed and wounded alien city. Together, they somehow thrived.

  It shocked Amira to think how quickly the alien ship and the so-called Arkangel Compact had settled, grown, and begun to emerge as a world power together. Of course, that power required organization on the human side, which naturally led to bureaucracy.

  Amira tried to stay above it all, more literally this morning than usual: she stood on a balcony high up on Amiasha's core stalk, and the city spread out below her. It looked almost like something growing in a petri dish, but she knew this particular culture was a unique hybrid. A miraculous hybrid.

  Boots clacked on the floor behind her.

  "Miss Saladin."

  Amira turned and pressed her back against the safety rail. "Alderman Eriksson," she said with a nod.

  Sigrid Eriksson stood in the doorway a few meters away. Older, grey haired, dressed about as simply as everyone else these days in slacks, a long-sleeved shirt, and work boots. It was little wonder she'd been elected to council, though; she exuded a stately aura even in plain work clothes.

  "You're probably wondering why I summoned you."

  With a smile, Amira said, "It's never any good news at this hour."

  "It never is," Sigrid agreed. "L
egacy," she said and let the word hang in the night air.

  The Fleet hadn't had any contact with the Arkangel Compact in more than a year. They'd grown quiet up there in their high tower, looking down on the Earth while supposedly protecting everyone from above. Amira took that sort of silence as an ill omen: only bad things could come from that mixture of extreme power and total isolation.

  Sigrid finally said, "They've requested our assistance in an operation."

  That was certainly new. "Combat op?" Amira asked.

  "Likely. Fighting has begun out west. Union and alien, over something buried in Mexico."

  That didn't make any sense. "I don't follow," Amira said. "Did a Fleet vessel crash or something?"

  Sigrid shook her head. "No, it's something old. Something the Eireki left."

  Amira knew the rest. The Fleet never shared anything having to do with ancient tech. They hoarded it for themselves, building a stockpile for their coming war.

  "So," Amira said, "they want us to go in and retrieve it for them."

  "Not precisely. They're fine with letting the two pitbulls scrap over an old bone, at least for now. They're more interested in a suspicious ship they detected trying to escape the area. It went down in the forest, and seems to have gone unnoticed. They've asked for you to personally protect the ship, get it operational, and get it clear of the combat zone."

  Amira's tone came out more indignant than she intended. "Why don't they fucking go in themselves?"

  "Wouldn't say. What's new?"

  But Amira knew why. Her armors were superior. Her fighters were battle hardened. When she fought, she won. The Fleet wasn't willing to gamble on its own lack of experience.

  She looked out over the city at the millions of lights still roving even in the middle of the night. She admired the elegance, the order of it, and she did so with an artist's eye. This whole city was her project, and it was too important to leave unattended without a damned good reason.

  She sighed. "Did they offer us anything in return?"

  Sigrid made an expression that was somehow a wince and a wry smile at the same time. "Just a warning. The situation may become dangerous if we don't intervene."

  Amira thought through her roster. She had ninety-six green troops and a dozen squad leaders out in the field right at that moment, and another forty-two elite veterans ready and waiting for a call to action. For this operation, the team should be small and quiet. Five to ten veteran troopers and one transport could probably slip in and out silently while the two armies focused fire on one another.

  Her Mk-6 armors were brand new, and she felt a deep urge to test them; there simply was no trial but a trial by fire, as far as she was concerned. But she knew this model would succeed. Her armors would excel.

  She shook her head. "I'm probably an idiot," Amira said, "but I'll do it."

  Sigrid flashed a particularly sly smile. "You don't have to... We don't owe Donovan shit. But to be perfectly on the level, I thought you would." She stepped to the railing and looked out over her city. There was a dangerous look in her eyes. "Time's coming," she said. "We'll have to choose a side once and for all."

  Amira didn't savor either of the options. The New Union was becoming something very strange and frightening, thanks in large part to an upstart religion spreading across North America like the Spanish flu. If the rumors she'd heard were true, its dogma didn't allow for any alien life on the planet. They considered cleansing the Earth to be their divine duty... It was God's will.

  With the Western Oikeya, her problem was exactly the opposite. They wouldn't rest until the human enemy, the Nefrem, were totally eradicated.

  A third option occurred to her. "Elkellian," Amira said.

  Elkellian was a young Alarhya who'd fought in the Battle of Arkangel, and had risen through the ranks among the Eastern Oikeya afterward. Its species, called Alarhya, were pale white creatures shaped something like tadpoles, and they acted as pilots among the Oikeya because of their (nearly) unique ability to bond with the living ships. This particular Alarhya could be incredibly reasonable sometimes.

  Sigrid gave Amira a wink. "You should run for a junior seat on the council," she said.

  Amira chuckled and said, "Right."

  "I'm serious."

  When Amira looked again, she noticed a steely look in Sigrid's eyes. The woman most definitely wasn't making a joke.

  "We need your voice. Experience. Vision."

  Amira raised an eyebrow. "I'm too young by half. No one would take me seriously. And there are dozens of better candidates in the city who would actually get votes."

  Sigrid frowned. In a voice rich with disappointment, she said, "You really don't know how they talk about you out there." She motioned languidly toward the city.

  Amira didn't know that they talked about her at all. There were people out there, but she didn't know them or talk to them. It was all too much for her after living among a small population for all of her adult life. She worked in her shop, marched the perimeter, and lived among her troops. That was enough.

  Small was solvable. Small, she could control. The city was anything but small.

  Sigrid crossed her arms. The pose reminded Amira of a disapproving parent. "You mean something to these people," she said, tilting her head forward. "You and your soldiers fought for us, and then you stayed to safeguard us. You kept the enemy from our gates, and no one's forgotten."

  Amira heard the unsaid part of Sigrid's statement: She'd stayed, when Legacy and the Fleet hadn't.

  "Between you and me... formal talks have already begun with the African Oikeya, and if this is to go any farther, you should be in the room."

  Amira wasn't sure how to interpret that. It sounded suspiciously like Sigrid wanted to flash her sword at these talks. Amira wasn't particularly keen on being a prop in someone else's bullshit posturing.

  She pushed herself away from the railing and looked to the nearby lift. "Well then... if you'll pardon me, Alderman, I have a team to assemble. Mexico awaits."

  "Indeed," Sigrid said. She offered Amira her hand.

  Amira took the cold hand and shook it, then walked away. As she went, she started to wonder just what sort of hornet's nest she was about to stick her face into.

  Chapter 09

  Termination Shock

  The Beagle hurtled through the solar system's far reaches. The ship was a Maguro class shuttle, shaped rather like a squared-off shuttlecock, with a short body trailed at the aft by feather-like spines. The forward section was bisected by a ring of amber glass, behind which sat her bridge.

  The bridge was particularly small as far as such things went. Captain Marco Esquivel preferred to think of it as cozy, but he'd always been one to look on the bright side of life. His most recent silver linings were an assignment to Fleet Remote Maintenance (a perfectly adequate job if ever there was one), and the ensuing promotion to commander of a very cool little interplanetary shuttle.

  Sure, the Earth was toast and all the remaining survivors were at each other's throats, but Marco had it pretty good... relatively speaking. He was out there in the mysterious dark, away from all the earthly problems, the screaming, shooting, and madness.

  With that thought reclining peacefully in mind, he settled into his command chair and admired the piece of furniture for a moment. It was a sleek and dignified thing with swooping curves and the squishiest padding he could ever recall having sat in.

  "Gentlemen, let's all take a moment to reflect on just how good we have it," Marco said.

  "All both of us?" Nils Jansen asked. His native tongue was sarcasm.

  "All both of you," Marco replied emphatically.

  Jansen was trying to undermine his authority again. If Marco didn't know the man's middle name to be Alvis (of all ridiculous damned things), he might suspect it was Judas instead.

  Marco shook it off and peered out the front viewport. The glass was some kind of resin produced by Legacy, a gold-colored material with a faint hexagonal imprint from
the manner of its excretion. It gave Marco the impression that, despite the ship's canine name, he was actually sitting inside of an unusually corpulent house-fly.

  But at least it was his corpulent house-fly.

  The stars outside the viewport sat maddeningly still. Marco didn't feel like he was traveling all that fast, even though the shuttle was hurtling through the cosmos at some percentage (of a percentage) of the speed of light... or uber wikiwiki fast by his own rough and linguistically tortured estimation.

  He sighed. "At what velocity do the stars start to streak like in sci-fi movies?"

  "Warp two, maybe three," Jansen said. The man was so pathologically unhelpful that Marco wondered if he came from a long line of DMV workers.

  Marco shooed that thought from his head as well, and tried to steer his crew back on track. "Faster than light? Would that do it?"

  Larry Hopkins, who'd been silent as the dead for the past several hours, suddenly let out a strange and high-pitched growl. He sounded like a girl scout who'd just discovered that her best friend had stolen her cookie territory, and the sound was all the more surprising coming out of a man who looked like a young and particularly dumpy manatee.

  Hop finally said, "You can't travel faster than light, you frigging morons. It's physically impossible. I mean, did you pay for your diplomas? The closer you get to it, the more energy you need to accelerate... until it reaches infinity. Infinity. You do know what infinity is, right?"

  Jansen was giggling insidiously.

  "And even if you somehow got close to the speed of light, the stars would never look like streaks of light. Never ever. They'd disappear and all you'd see is a faint glow ahead of you... and there'd be X-rays, so goodbye, testes."

  Marco avidly inspected his cuticles.

  "Idiots," Hop grumbled in sotto voce. He chased the epithet with a noisy sip from his coffee cup.

  Once upon a time, Marco and Jansen had taken turns intentionally pissing Hopkins off. It started when they were first stationed together aboard the Copernicus Observatory in Earth orbit, but the game ascended to all new heights when the satellite became their prison. They'd watched the world below burn and had nothing but childish antics to leaven the mood while they patiently waited to die.