Long Fall

by Chris J. Randolph

  He lost focus, and gravity once again assailed him. Down and down, into the thick air that felt like water against his void-born hull. Down into the smothering chaos of density.

  There could be no recovery any longer. He was too wounded and disoriented to right himself, and so he fell into the waiting Earth, rushing as best he could to protect the thousand Eireki inside. He triggered his emergency systems and all throughout him, the Eireki were wrapped in protective cocoons of white ceramic then spat out to drift like leaves in the wind.

  The air grew hot like a blowtorch while Marcus tried to angle himself sideways, keeping his stronger side toward the ground in order to protect the nearly severed secondary hull. He tightened his lenses and shot gravity wells out above him, now too weak to overcome the planet's own draw, but at least they slowed his descent.

  He and Legacy struck the thicker air like a rubber ball hitting a gong. The tone resonated in the ship's body, nearly shaking him to pieces, but he remained intact. Pierced, bleeding, broken and falling. Yet in one piece.

  The rising wind rushed by like an endless stream of cotton sheets, and more than anything, he wanted to just give in. Close his eyes and let the world slam into him.

  But even if Legacy wouldn't, he still had to fight. It wasn't his time yet.

  He tilted in mid-air, allowing the blade-like shape of his body to cut the wind and change direction. He flexed and aimed himself northward, toward the soft snow, the somber cold, and the only ones left who might protect him.

  Patches of flatland and rolling hills flew by underneath, and the sound grew unimaginably loud, not just a sibilant hush but now a shredding roar. His body rumbled along currents in the late autumn air, leaving a ghostly trail of steam through the falling snow.

  He pulled back, screaming, and bashed into the ground. Several billion tonnes struck down, dug into the soil, and splashed a hot wave of debris more than ten kilometers into the distance.

  The tectonic plate beneath him rumbled, shifted, and quaked... and Marcus allowed himself to sleep.

  Chapter 37

  Vigil

  The black queen was slain.

  He'd driven his fist into her heart before the darkness came, but now he found himself out in the open air, plummeting further and further down without end. He marveled at how high up he'd been, and as he fell down through a warm and velvety shadow, he wondered just how much further he had to fall.

  Light flickered in his eyes. Winds whistled all around, batting him about just as they had that one time he fell out of the skies over China. Where the fuck am I?

  He flipped end over end, alternating pale sky and white Earth. There wasn't time to right himself, nor even to reach back and look for a ripcord.

  The ground hit Jack like an express train.

  But the shock of the impact passed and he was surprised to find himself in little pain. His arms and legs wriggled, buried deep in a snow drift and partially into the hard-packed soiled beneath it. He flexed and dirt crunched out of his way.

  He dug himself free and stood gingerly while packed clumps of snow slid off him and dropped away. The sky looked even more dire from the ground, as sick and ghastly as a coma patient. Mist and kicked-up frost swirled across the landscape, whipped about by merciless winds, with a mammoth shadow the size of a mountain looming somewhere out beyond.

  "I should be freezing," Jack whispered to himself. He felt the cold, but didn't find it unpleasant. A moment later, he discovered a hooded poncho on his shoulders, tattered and barely proof against the cutting winds.

  He didn't question the garment's mysterious appearance. He simply clutched it tightly and set out, marching through knee-high powder, pace after long pace.

  He made quick work of the distance, never feeling even a hint of tiredness, soreness, or hunger as he went. He'd been in conditions like this before but they'd all been harrowing, even with experienced corpsmen as guides. Back then, it'd been a struggle just to make it another thirty meters without collapsing, but now he'd covered more than a klick without the slightest strain.

  Eventually, he penetrated the clawing winds and sulking mists, and found the alien city called Amiasha waiting on the other side. Jack hadn't seen his good friend in seven months, and the time hadn't treated the Yuon Kwon well at all. The city's outer skin looked sallow and soft, and vapid colors seemed to float about everywhere.

  Jack came to one of the wide ramps, each larger than a regulation football field, and was surprised to find it completely empty of traffic. He assumed the storm had something to do with it, but some of the hardier Oikeyans would usually venture out even in the harshest conditions. Jack hadn't met the storm that would slow a rhino down.

  He hurried up the ramp to a similarly vacant street and continued on into the warehouse district. The air was warmer there and moist, always breathing softly on a slow rhythm like a sleeping dog. But the tempo was slower than normal, depressed. Jack might have worried if he knew more about alien medicine.

  The story was the same everywhere he went, full of shuttered doors and clear skylanes. He didn't bother to knocking, at least partly out of fear that no one would answer. He was terrified that the city he helped create might already be dead.

  Down one block and then the next, Jack marched in toward Amiasha's central stalk, a fat pillar over a kilometer high connecting the streets to the city's far ceiling. That was where Jack had first communed with the creature, and if all else failed, it was the one place he was sure to find answers.

  When the gargantuan structure had come to completely dominate the sky in front of him, Jack finally discovered some signs of life. Human and Oikeyan stood mingled together in a wide circle, some with bio-lanterns and others with burning candles, while the Sey Chen levitated bright balls of amber light between their hands. There were likely a few hundred standing there without moving, and no words passed among them.

  Jack reached the edge of the crowd and slipped in. His curiosity had the better of him, and he just had to know what commanded such reverence. As he gently nudged past a rhino, his understanding of the group changed.

  This might not be reverence, but fear. They'd come to watch over Amiasha's still unhealed wound, where the omnibody infection had once festered. But why carry candles for that? What was the purpose?

  Jack hunched down beside a jackrabbit who held a small and ornately designed lantern, and he gently tapped her shoulder. In reasonably fluent Mirresh, he whispered below his breath, "Pardon, but why do we watch?"

  The jackrabbit responded in the Kitsu whisper, too quiet for humans to hear. "To mourn and to pray," she said.

  The fact that Jack had heard her clearly didn't immediately grab him. He had other things to deal with. "I apologize for my slowness, but... for what?"

  "We pray for ourselves," she said lightly, "and we mourn Charlie Hernandez."

  Jack stumbled.

  The name had struck him like a gavel, and sent him lurching several steps out onto the new flesh. His hands darted out and caught him, and as they contacted the floor, he could feel Amiasha's sadness, weakness, and fear. He knew that Amiasha could feel him, too.

  Jack looked down at those hands and he could feel his heart flare to life. But not thumping. It burned constantly like a blowtorch, crackling and spitting out sparks. His fingers were long, slender, composed of oddly squared off edges. Rather than skin, there was a beautiful ceramic pattern laid-out like stained glass.

  What am I? he thought.

  "You're back," Amiasha said through their connection. "That's all that matters right now, Jack Hernandez."

  "I've come back," Jack mumbled.

  His erratic behavior had attracted attention among the mourners. "What did he say?" someone asked in a hoarse voice.

  The jackrabbit peered at him with her big black eyes. "What are you doing there? Step away from that place. It is not for you."

  "I'm so sorry," Jack said, not sure whether he was speaking to the jackrabbit or someone else. He tried to stand but clu
msily slipped, fell back instead.

  A human voice shouted, "Who are you?"

  He felt some phantom impulse inside himself twitch, and his poncho split into strips and raced away. He had no idea where it went. A second later, he felt a peculiar feeling on his face almost like centipedes walking away from his lips, forehead, nose, and toward his hairline. His soft skin touched the warm breeze, and somehow he'd never realized it was covered to begin with.

  "Charlie Hernandez?"

  A gasp shot through the crowd. Jack stood up, dumfounded by what was happening, and then a memory splashed over him. This was exactly what Donovan had planned, and here it was unfolding completely outside the man's influence. Jack wondered just how often the fleet commander's plots managed such a feat.

  And before he knew it, he felt himself swept along... but without Donovan there, he realized it was in his own hands. It could unfold how he saw fit.

  Jack calmed himself and climbed to his feet, severing the weak connection to Amiasha as he rose. His voice caught in his throat, but he forced it out. "I was Charlie Hernandez," he said in a reinvigorated voice, which carried out across the crowd like a cave echo.

  "How?" hushed voices asked. "Impossible!" others breathily gasped.

  If this was going to work, he had to own it. They had to own it, too. "I was taken from this city while protecting you, and the ancient Eireki heard your calls. They remade me in their flesh, and sent me back to you."

  As he looked across the crowd, he could see all of their ancestor races through the lens of his scattered memory. These were the species which the Eireki had guarded and fostered in their sanctuary, and the sight of their progeny filled him with a warmth and love he struggled to fully comprehend.

  If his recollection of theology was good (and it certainly wasn't), it was probably time for a miracle. Jack strode out into the center of the sore and again touched his hands to the raw flesh. He felt the connection with Amiasha twinkle back into existence, and he absorbed the Yuon Kwon's pain into himself. He sublimated it, turned it to dust and watched it flutter away in the psychic winds.

  Next, he gently channeled energy through the connection, filling the wounded the creature with warmth. The color of the flesh became richer while the surface almost instantly became firm. The healing was still incomplete, but he'd guided it back on track at least.

  Jack stood and looked out across the onlookers again. Eyes in every shade of the rainbow watched him intently, confused and amazed at what they were seeing.

  "Charlie?" a sweet voice said.

  Jack flinched. "Charlie Hernandez is dead," he said, the words like bitter medicine on his tongue. He looked out to the candles, the glittering orbs of living lightning, the ornate lanterns, but he refused to look for her face. "I'm Vigil," he said, "and I've come back to protect you."

  When the last word was free of his lips, the caterpillars crawled back across his face and sealed into a mask, while the hooded poncho slid back out to cover him. Then he leapt up to the nearest rooftop and rushed away.

  That was enough lying and posturing for one day. Rumour and legend would take care of the rest.

  Chapter 38

  Recombinant

  Marcus Donovan came to consciousness gradually, about as reluctant as a teenager on a winter schoolday. He struggled to open his eyes with muscles that were swollen and torn, past rippling sheets of dried blood.

  He hurt all over, and it occurred to him that something had really fucked him up.

  When he managed to partially open his left eye, he saw a glowing field of yellow that was almost impossible to focus on.

  I'm on the bridge, he thought. I've been beaten to a pulp, and I'm on the bridge.

  Legacy apologized to him profusely, in a voice so solitary and clear that Marcus almost didn't recognize it. The rest of the chorus had died away, leaving only the one trembling voice behind.

  Not much time left, she told him. Won't survive the night.

  "I know," Marcus mumbled, and he silently wondered how long that'd been true. He simply hadn't been willing to admit it before. "You and I are a mess. What else can we do?"

  One thing, she said. Just one more thing.

  With a rush, the link suddenly ignited and Marcus' consciousness launched out across the ship. His mind's eye sped across the remaining structural arm and into the factory complex, finally focusing on some object that seemed utterly foreign. It had to be nearly five kilometers long, held at the center of the factory's empty core like the drive shaft of a turbine.

  "What is it?" Marcus asked.

  Life, she told him. Something new.

  He peeked into other bands of light and saw through the thing's amorphous shell. Inside lay a living body, long and swordlike, with a hundred thousand branching veins like creeping ivy. The shape was similar to Legacy's primary hull, and Marcus couldn't help being reminded of the first clear shot he ever got of her. Had it been anymore clear than this back on the Copernicus Observatory? Any less mysterious?

  "Why didn't I see it before?"

  She said, Blinded your eyes with illusions.

  "Bitch," Marcus whispered. He didn't mean it, and he hated that he said it.

  She didn't care.

  Incomplete, she said. Fetus.

  The hollow-drive flickered in his perception. "It needs your heart," he said.

  Yes.

  But she was holding something back. He asked, "What else?"

  She held her silence, and Marcus looked back in on the gestating starship... the unborn Yuon Shien that was slowly taking shape. Would she be able to transfer the drive herself, or did he need a crew to get it over. He imagined such things had never been an issue before, since the Eireki could produce new drives for the young creatures. Legacy had the only survivor.

  "I'll send out a distress signal. They can carry out the operation with MASPECs and tugs."

  The time, she worried.

  "It's the fastest we can manage."

  It will have to do.

  Marcus looked to where the smaller starship's bridge would be, and saw a bundle of nerves whose presence he didn't recall in Legacy's anatomy.

  "What else does it need?" he asked wearily.

  You.

  "I don't..."

  Something new, she repeated. Eireki and... Yuon Shien. She said the name of her own kind in a sputtering way, like the fuzzy remembrance of something long forgotten from childhood.

  Combination. Marcus suddenly recognized two patterns which were distorted mirror reflections of one another: the Nefrem charged through history forever pure, devouring other life-forms, re-engineering them to strip away all but their most valuable essence, and then enslaving the resulting soulless flesh. The Eireki were their equal and opposite, preserving all life while gently nudging it to evolve toward its best possible form, before finally combining with it as equals.

  The Nefrem took what was great from others and wielded it like a weapon. The Eireki bid others to become great and joined with them.

  Marcus sent commands out to the survivors in the field, whom he'd earlier scattered when he thought catastrophic impact was imminent. He outlined how to transplant the hollow-drive, and asked them to guard the child as best they could. He didn't know how long it would take to complete the process.

  When the message was out, he sent his affirmation to Legacy despite a pit of terror howling just beneath his navel. She was somewhat less disturbed, perhaps because of the long years she'd spent learning calm, or maybe because she knew she was about to die either way.

  He felt himself float free of the bridge's synaptic bath then out through Legacy's empty tunnels. He watched himself from outside using Legacy's senses, and his body was so ripped up and bent that he could hardly recognize himself.

  It was an out-of-body experience, he realized with a mental smirk, and it gave him an odd feeling of detachment. Of distance. Marcus could see clearly what he was about to give up, how small and fragile it was, how limited in space and time.

/>   He'd already watched his humanity slip away from him day by day, and had witnessed the connections to those around him wither and finally break. The final remaining step seemed a comparatively short one, but it still defied him like an impossibly wide and desolate canyon.

  Marcus saw himself blast out of the last transit tube and into the smoke and debris-strewn air of the factory. Cables and ruined buildings hung from ceiling to floor, mangled and rent into ragged pieces. It all reminded Marcus of an airplane cabin after a crash, but on a wholly titanic scale.

  He approached the amniotic sack at the center of the chamber and a small shaft opened in its surface. Waves of tentative feelings washed over him, welcomed him, beckoned him. As he drifted inside, Legacy's senses could no longer see clearly and he finally lost track of himself.

  "Legacy," he said quietly into the darkness.

  Yes, she replied softly.

  "Is this like dying?"

  I don't know, she said. I've never died before.

  He felt soft walls surround him, throbbing and thumping with warmth and life. Compassionate flesh eased his tortured form, tingled and tickled at the edges of his perception, and yet he was still afraid.

  It's alright to be afraid, she said to him. It's always alright to be afraid.

  And he could swear someone else had told him that once.

  Just as long as you remember... that I love you, and that it will always be alright.

  Chapter 39

  Recoil

  Pegasus came in low through the driving blizzard with its awkward shape splashing a rooster-tail behind it. One of the forward crew repeated into his microphone, "Arkangel Compact, this is Pegasus. Please respond. Arkangel Compact..."

  Amira Saladin had run fresh out of patience. She'd watched Legacy burn down through the sky, feeling her own heart drop with the same horrible and undefeatable weight. She was returning to a world filled with madness, and had no damn idea what was going on in her own backyard.