Long Fall

by Chris J. Randolph

  "Jack is the only victim. I'm going to level with you... This ship is capable of communing with other minds. Something more than this patch cable I've got plugged into my head. And right up until Hernandez came near her, we never knew any of our kind could connect."

  Kai heard truth in Donovan's voice, and anger rose up inside of him. The long nostril slits on his face flared involuntarily. His pupils widened. All remained perfectly hidden behind his mask. "She violated him," he said.

  Donovan was silent.

  Kai had learned of this concept from the Alarhya, who regarded the act with utmost hatred. In their Swarming and through their bond with Yuon Kwon, it was possible for one mind to invade another. The victim's experience couldn't be adequately described, but the effects were clear: they were left broken, altered. It opened wounds across every part of their spirit.

  There was only thing in the universe that Kai had foolishly allowed himself to believe in, and it might be broken. Darkness swiftly shrouded his path to redemption.

  He struck out with force and the clear wall in front of him rippled. The waves travelled around the room and back again, while Kai hoped the ship could feel pain.

  "You're more than acquainted then," Donovan said. His face displayed a subtle hint of smugness. Confirmation. He was more cunning than Kai had given him credit for.

  Kai weighed his options and found the most benefit in honesty. Here, it might forge an important alliance. "Jack Hernandez and I are more than acquainted," he admitted. "This human is valuable. I will help him however I can."

  Donovan lowered himself to the floor and said, "Then I'd like to extend an offer in good faith." He removed Kai's gauntlet from inside his coat and presented it.

  The fact that Kai couldn't detect its carrier signal at even this short distance was a testament to the ship's impressive technology.

  "I would be most appreciative," he replied, and offered a curt bow.

  "Good. You can collect it when you arrive."

  Kai canted his head to the side in confusion, while the wall shifted from transparent back to translucent white. Then the ceiling above him opened and the vessel's cursed gravity snatched him from the ground, flinging him off through its many tunnels. Any attempt at struggle was pointless. The ship manipulated him like a child's toy, and he was powerless to offer even the slightest resistance.

  He'd never encountered a force that could so utterly defeat him, and he sincerely hoped never to do so again.

  The vessel made at least a half-hearted attempt at comforting its passengers. The smooth tunnel walls remained lit alongside him as he moved, and the illusion of floating in place might just have worked if Kai didn't possess other, less easily fooled senses.

  Having an emotionally unstable creature of unimaginable power throw him around at several hundred kilometers per hour was not his ideal method of transportation. He had in his time faced the gaping maw of a living planet that existed only to consume, yet this filled him with a terror he struggled to contain.

  And then it was done.

  The vessel set him down gently on the floor of a brightly lit and sterile facility. It was not unlike the prison block, but the human uniforms were different here, looser and less aggressive. Kai had never seen an intact human hospital before.

  Donovan stood more than an arm's length away, still holding Kai's gauntlet in his hand.

  Kai said, "Your vessel creates many effective illusions."

  "Legacy does," Donovan said. "She has many talents."

  Light in the room pulsed so subtly that it would be undetectable to humans, and Kai began to understand Donovan and the vessel's relationship better. It was one of emotional dependence.

  He gave his best imitation of human manners. He lifted a hand, motioned for the object but didn't reach out. Donovan gave a nodding affirmation, and Kai slowly extended his arm and took the device.

  He yearned to have his mission-comp back, but he dared not show it. He precisely controlled his movements, affecting a casual air as he latched it around his wrist and felt the tingle of it connecting to his nervous system. The cracked and scuffed screen lit up and masses of words streamed by in a multi-colored mess.

  The lively and angelic voice of his companion appeared in his head. "Initializing... still initializing... oh goodness... I'm getting so old... Ah, there we are! Greetings, Sinit Kai! You will be surprised to learn that most of my systems are functioning mostly correctly."

  Kai touched the screen with his opposite hand, and communicated using a gestural language. "Consider me mostly surprised, small friend," he said. "How have they treated you?"

  "With dignity!" his companion replied joyously. "They made some attempts to penetrate my intelligence, but this human faction is not adept. I revealed only what you designated, Sinit."

  "Good," Kai said. "Run diagnostics and system optimizations on my muscle framework, then sleep. Rest until I need you again."

  "Immediately, Sinit. May I say... it is so good to have you back."

  "And you," Kai replied, and he meant it. The device's presence filled his spirit with warmth, the way seeing his multitude of nephews and nieces once had. That single instant of joy was more than he deserved.

  Donovan had studied Kai avidly during the brief exchange, paying special attention to the hand used for communication. The human would learn nothing, though. The language was encrypted using a randomized series of keys fed directly to Kai by the device, making it effectively uncrackable. Kai took his privacy very seriously.

  A fully telepathic connection like those used by Donovan and the Oikeyans might have been preferable, but the Somari had followed a different path. They'd built these mundane machines as slaves, and the idea of sharing spirits with them was met alternately with revulsion and derision. To his kind, a thinking machine was just a tool, an idiot savant that existed to serve.

  Kai no longer held that belief.

  He looked up and regarded Donovan. "You should show me to Mr. Hernandez now," he said, and Donovan immediately ushered him through a wide door.

  Chapter 20

  Rites

  A clear portal in the wall parted like an eyelid and Kai walked through. The room's walls glowed softly as everywhere aboard the monster vessel, but in a shade closer here to the nearby sun than in Kai's cell. It seemed a natural step in comforting a human.

  Jack Hernandez was sitting on the floor with his back against the wall. His knees were raised, his head was down, his heart-rate was elevated, and breaths came spasmodically. He was terrified. Kai had left humans in this state before. In fact, Kai had left Jack in this state before.

  The door closed behind him and he waited silently.

  After some minutes, Jack lifted his head a few degrees and looked up with eyes still partially obscured beneath his brow. He was gaunt, pale, and shaking. He'd lost ten or more kilos since Kai had last seen him, and some kind of bandaging covered both forearms.

  Jack said, "Fuck." His eyes burrowed back into his knees.

  Kai leaned against the wall, slid down to his posterior and imitated Jack's pose loosely. "If it's any consolation," he said, "I'm a prisoner, too."

  For a long time, neither of them said anything. Jack cried, Kai waited, and minutes passed.

  "You..." Jack sputtered. Tears dripped from his upper lip. "You're literally the last thing I wanted to see, you know."

  "I understand," Kai replied. "Unfortunately, I'm all you have."

  A shadow of a smile touched Jack's lips then flitted away.

  "This thing that happened..." Kai said gently.

  "I don't want to talk about it."

  "That's okay. Is there anything you do want to talk about?"

  Jack mumbled something unintelligible.

  "Alright, then perhaps I'll speak a little and you can listen."

  Kai took Jack's silence as an affirmation. He began to calculate the available emotional levers and their varying potential yields, but stopped himself. He quieted the calculating part of hi
s mind.

  "That day," he said, "after I enabled the human weapon, I was prepared to die."

  Silence.

  "I fully believed in your cause, but not as much in your abilities. I began the countdown, sat still and waited to be undone."

  "Why?"

  Kai said, "Because I hate myself."

  Those words rested heavily in the room.

  Kai went on, "And that was the last time I doubted you."

  Jack let out a dark chuckle.

  Kai spoke in Mirresh, the Oikeyan common language he'd once taught Jack. "My pledge to you remains unbroken, Jack Hernandez. I persist only because I believe I may be of use to you. Now more than ever..."

  Jack looked up. His eyes were dim and red. "Back there in the rain, you called yourself a weapon of my will." His Mirresh had improved considerably in the intervening years.

  "I did."

  "And..." Jack said, glancing at his wrist, "If I should wish to turn that weapon on myself?"

  Anguish erupted in Kai's chest but he showed nothing. "I would do your bidding. I don't take my oath lightly."

  Jack seemed to stare into some imagined distance.

  "But I would join you not soon after."

  "Fuck you," Jack said in English.

  Kai added, "Either by my own hand or the wrath of this vessel. It matters little which."

  Jack nodded with understanding. His face showed cynicism. "Because you would be a tool with no use?"

  "Because the last thing I believe in would be dead and gone."

  Under any other circumstances, Kai wouldn't have put that kind of weight on someone in this condition. Anyone else would break. But if there was one thing Kai had learned about Jack during their strange relationship, it was that this peculiar human grew stronger under the weight of responsibility.

  "You've saved lives," Jack said. "Thousands. The stories made their way around the world."

  Despite his own pain, Jack was still trying to comfort him. It amazed Kai to no end.

  Then Jack said, "You don't need me to save your soul anymore."

  Kai shook his head. "My spirit is unsuited to this task, Jack. I've brought about the destruction of billions, but only a paltry few thousand were saved through my stumbling efforts."

  Something sparked inside of Jack. Color came back to his face if only minutely.

  Kai said, "I've seen you move mountains with your fingertip. Oikeya and human are learning to live together because of you. Just imagine what you could accomplish with my arm."

  "You have an amazing talent for blowing smoke up someone's ass," Jack said. It was dark humor, but it humor none-the-less.

  "I'm not lying to you. I was a Sinit. Infiltrator. I spent my life learning to manipulate and conceal for the purpose of destroying threats before they could materialize. I still don't understand why the Archon chose me for this fool's errand of his."

  "What do you mean?"

  Kai said, "My previous body was critically damaged while capturing live specimens of The Adversary shortly after the invasion began. I was to be transferred to a new Sinit body and returned to infiltration duty, but I woke up in this strange construct instead."

  Jack wiped his nose with a bandaged arm. "So what's wrong with your body?"

  "Nothing at all. It's faster, stronger, more resilient. Even more so than even our Khaled mass combat variants. I've never seen its like before nor even heard rumor that such a thing existed, and I suspect it's a unique product of the Archon's creativity and desperation, but there's no way to know... not anymore."

  "Yeah, I get it," Jack said as his forehead sunk back down to his knees. "Just imagine what I could do with you, right? Gimme a super-weapon and I'll save the world. Can I tell you something?"

  Kai widened his eyes, ducked his head. "You may."

  "What happened to me was..." Jack's voice started loud, but the wind that drove it disappeared in a quiver and a shake. "Just... Fuck what happened to me," he growled through tears.

  Kai waited. His patience was infinite.

  "The only options left are to die or face it again, Kai... And I'm going to die someday anyway."

  "As I said, I will do as you wish if asked, Jack... but I have faith you won't ask. Do you know why?"

  Jack shook his head.

  "Because I've experienced horrors that no living being should ever be subjected to... spent the last months picked apart piece by piece while I could do nothing but watch... and I'm here. And you're stronger than I am, Jack."

  Jack blinked.

  Kai said, "I haven't broken yet. And neither should you."

  Jack dropped silent while he processed that. They sat together for a long while, just breathing and being.

  Finally, Jack wiped the tears from his nose and looked up. "Kai?" he said.

  "Yes."

  "I think... I'd like to see your face. Your real face."

  Kai thought on it, then slowly reached back and removed his mask. The air felt strange on his bare skin, still so fresh and raw after being regenerated. He blinked his two sets of eyelids independently.

  With a genuine smile, Jack said, "You look like my friend's pet tortoise."

  A genuine smile was a good place to start.

  ***

  What remained of Daniel Grey lay in a bed of wires, cables, hoses, bits and bytes of machinery. His arms and legs were gone. His eyes were gone. His mouth was a distant memory, replaced by a synthesizer whose use he hadn't mastered yet. The voice that came out of it was garbled and metallic.

  He could only feel pain, as if his entire body had been ground down with belt-sanders, and all he heard was the glug of mechanical pumps and the hum of computer fans.

  Footsteps approached. Two people. The clack of boots and thud of soft shoes. "Right this way," one said to the other.

  The soft shoes entered the room and Daniel could hear their owner gasp.

  "Lieutenant Grey, you have a visitor. This is Father Kindregan. He was asked to come see you."

  "I told you," the synthesizer voice croaked, "I don't need him."

  "It's not your call," the booted soldier said simply, then he closed the door and marched off.

  "I don't want to force anything on anyone," Father Kindregan said. "Why don't we just talk for a bit, Lieutenant? Would that be alright?"

  "Nothing to talk about," Daniel said. For once, the synthesizer's flat tones were perfectly appropriate.

  "They tell me you may not survive this uh... procedure. Your anger is very natural, Daniel. Even anger at the Lord. Do you know why our Heavenly Father tests us?"

  "To help uzzzz... Help us. Find. Our. Faith."

  "Yes, that's right. Second Revelation tells us that the Lord calls down fire and water on us that we may be tempered. We forge ourselves in His crucible that our faith may become unbreakable. We are not chosen by the Heavenly Father but rather tested time and time again. Throughout this testing, He waits for us to choose ourselves."

  Chosen people had meant something very different before the Fall, but Second Revelation changed that. Now they were all chosen, driven onward by faith not only in the Lord but also in themselves. It was every believer's duty to prove themselves worthy of the salvation He'd invested in them.

  "Appreciate the thought, Fath... Er... but I've read. I know why I'm here... and I'm. Not. Annnng-ry."

  "Oh?"

  "And I'm NOT going to die."

  Father Kindregan was quiet for an awkwardly long time. "I see you've already found your faith. I'll leave you in peace then, child. Be well."

  The door opened and the priest's soft shoes padded into the distance.

  Finally left alone, Daniel Grey tried to grit teeth his teeth against the pain, but no longer had a mouth. Instead, he waited in defiance. He waited for this tiresome trial to be over, and for the next to begin. He waited for a chance to show the Lord Almighty just how fucking worthy he'd become.

  Chapter 21

  Cracking Safe

  While his two companions paced, Nils J
ansen sat cross-legged on The Beagle's floor with his attention fixed firmly on his phone. Its display was projected onto his eyes using Eireki technology, and though he originally distrusted the machine's ability to read commands directly from his nervous system, that was no longer an issue.

  Fleet regulations allowed personnel to change a small and very specific set of options on their phones, and like most regulations, Jansen had blatantly ignored the lot of them. He replaced the operating system with an unlocked version that gave him access to all of its inner workings, and then went about covertly installing a number of tools that the brass certainly wouldn't appreciate. His phone had packet sniffers, network scanners, password crackers... Lots of fun toys, for girls and boys.

  He'd also switched the drab background color to a looping animation that he watched whenever he was bored or stressed out. It was a crudely drawn cartoon of Larry Hopkins being repeatedly slapped in the face with a big fish, who looked positively scandalized at his own involvement in the affair.

  Jansen hadn't always been interested in computer security, but he'd spent six months trapped in a shoe-box with only two things to occupy his time: a pile of dry technical manuals, and a project that required considerable technical expertise. He shielded himself against the slings and arrows of outrageous boredom with books that were only mildly less dull.

  After being miraculously rescued, he was sure he'd never want to see another manual as long as he lived, but the truth was far stranger. The books had become a source of comfort (rather like the asinine radio show he'd broadcast during the ordeal), and he soon realized they were the only thing left that could still hold his attention... well, that and psychologically abusing Larry Hopkins.

  Jansen's heavily modded phone was presently trying and failing to brute force its way past the armory's combination lock. He'd already spent the past several hours looking for more elegant ways to override its security, but ultimately came up empty handed and frustrated. His only remaining option was to sit and wait while the phone spat billions of passwords at the door.

  He felt rotten right down to the pit of his stomach because of one unanswered question. They couldn't know if the outpost had killed its target or not, and Jansen absolutely refused to face another unknown alien menace with a pointed stick. A gun would make him feel a lot better.