Long Fall

by Chris J. Randolph

  "Head for the northern ramp," she said, and the pilots brought the ugly ship around to the new heading. Pegasus flew blind through pouring snow using sensors alone, until it burst suddenly into Amiasha's faded light.

  The Yuon Kwon wasn't well, but Amira couldn't tell if he'd been hurt by Legacy's crash landing or something else. The streets below were all quiet, and everyone was safely battened down under emergency protocols. At least that last part was as Amira would've hoped.

  As Pegasus zoomed out above the quiet city, Amira said, "Take us to the cortex. I'll be outside getting some air."

  Tom gave her a nod and she walked purposefully to the rear of the bridge. There she ducked into an access tunnel, then stepped into a tube which automatically brought her to the top of the ship.

  The observation deck was open to the air and had a guard-rail, modeled on some yachts Amira had seen in videos. The wind whipped violently and tossed her ponytail about, and she quickly flipped her goggles on to cure the squinting.

  The air smelled a bit off. A little sour, a little acrid. She could tell that Amiasha had been fighting an infection, but could only wonder at what it was. The absolute radio silence may have been a symptom, but if it was, it didn't being her any closer to an answer.

  When they neared the thick central stalk, she caught sight of another clue: an open lesion in the street's otherwise pristine chitin, surrounded by members of a dozen species.

  Tom's voice crackled over her radio. "Should we take a detour, chief?"

  "No," Amira replied. "I need to speak with Amiasha."

  "Aye, aye."

  Pegasus arrived at the central stalk and linked up to a docking platform built like a gasket. Then Amira jumped six meters down to the gangplank and landed firmly, no hop.

  During their slow trek across the jungle, she'd continued to upgrade herself in bits and pieces and it amazed her how quickly she'd gotten used to the changes. But all her work had basically dragged her own body closer to being a MASPEC suit, and that was something she had plenty of practice with.

  Amira jogged from there into the wide entry tunnel, and followed the circuitous path to the throne room. There was never any security inside, so it didn't surprise her to find it empty; Amiasha provided his own defenses, and they were more powerful and vigilant than anything his residents could possibly muster.

  But when she entered the chamber, she stopped dead in her tracks. At the center of the circular room that shimmered like pearl, beyond the ring of structures shaped like solar cells, some unknown creature sat within Amiasha's cradle.

  Amira snapped the lancer pistol from her hip and aimed it at the creature. "Who the hell are you?!" she shouted.

  The cradle released the creature with a gasp, and steam wafted up from where the two had touched. The thing stood slowly and turned to face Amira, and she couldn't begin to guess what it was.

  It looked like an unknown variety of Yuon Kwon in human shape, with skin covered in shiny panels that folded much like her newest dragonscale designs. The surface reminded her of old fashioned firesuits still in use on Mars, but colored dark blue and off-white, with a single hand in bold red.

  It walked across the floor as if it hadn't a care in the world.

  "Stop there!"

  It stopped.

  Amira bared her teeth. "I told you to identify yourself."

  Something twitched on either side of its sharp cheekbones, and the face armor retracted. Jack Hernandez's face was inside with an expression full of caution.

  "Jack? How is it always you?"

  He shrugged. "Pretty sure I was conceived in the wrong place at the wrong time. Just never shook the habit."

  "But what..."

  Before she could finish the sentence, Jack did something so strange that the rest of her words scattered away. He brought his hands to his chest and tugged, and the artificial flesh folded away to reveal a hollow-drive.

  "The fuck?"

  He released it and his chest closed, becoming seamless and complete again. "The drive is symbiotic. We're fused together."

  She initially thought it was some kind of armor like her MASPECs, but Jack's little show left her dumbstruck. It should've been clear, though. His body was oddly elongated, accentuated in ways that would be anatomically impossible for a human; waist too slim, hip bones too pronounced, and shoulders broad and arched like a longbow. He was human-like, but most definitely not human.

  There came a flicker of cyan light behind his eyes. "You're a bit different yourself," he said, and a crooked smirk graced his lips.

  "Field repairs," she said flatly.

  "You do what ya gotta do. Hey," he said, "do you know what brought Legacy down?"

  "No idea," she replied. "I was hoping you'd know."

  He shook his head. "I'm a mess. This process was... insane. I couldn't describe it. Like the weirdest dreams I've ever had, and then I woke up in the snow. I didn't even realize Legacy was on the ground until I linked with Amiasha."

  Amira was getting a stress headache. She touched her headset and triggered a dose of anti-inflammatories. "How about the wound... know anything about that?" she asked.

  "Terrorist attack. Eireki omnibodies reprogrammed to eat everything in sight."

  "Shit," Amira said. She'd imagined a weapon like that once, but realized such a thing would be too indiscriminate, too vile, and too effective. "What stopped it? This should all be gone."

  "Charlie..." he said, and shook his head with a dour expression on his face. "And Donovan," he added.

  "Charlie, is he..."

  "Gone," Jack said without a voice, then nodded his head somberly. He looked to the side, maybe trying to find himself again, and then back to Amira with grave determination in his eyes. "We've got other problems," he said. "The Union is about to get ahold of something back in Mexico."

  "Fuck that place," Amira groaned. Her pleasure cruise to the Yucatan hadn't been quite as pleasurable as she planned.

  Jack said, "That thing I found down there could be turned into a bio-weapon with a little ingenuity... and judging by the New Union's recent work, they've got that in spades."

  "So I'm headed back to Mexico?" Amira asked. She tried to keep the annoyance from her voice, but doubted she'd been successful.

  "I just need a ride," he said. "Airdrop me and I'll do the job."

  "I just drove out of the devil's barking jaws, and you think you can simply drop in and blow something up? Maybe stop for a cup of coffee, shoot the shit with the locals while you're at it?"

  "Yeah," Jack said.

  Amira had always known him to be willful but not delusional, and it dawned on her what sort of power he must be wielding. With a hollow-drive at his core, energy would be virtually limitless. His only practical concern would be wattage. Just how much energy could he transfer at once using that thing? She tried to do the math, but the scale confounded her.

  Overcome with curiosity, she stepped forward and began to examine him. She craned in to look at his new skin, flicked on her headset and zoomed. She rapped on his pectoral mass with a knuckle. "Ever seen a human cannonball at the circus?" she asked.

  "Never been to the circus, thank Christ," he said. "Uh... Why do you ask?"

  It was a silly idea, but her quick readings showed it should be possible. "We could shoot you," she said. "You know, out." She made a gun with her finger, pointed into the distance and said, "Ba-tooom!"

  "Really?" he said.

  She looked to the ceiling. "Amiasha has orbital artillery up top. You're what... a hundred-ten kilos?"

  "No idea," he said.

  "Small payload. You go up, make a big arc around the planet, and bam!"

  "You're awfully full of sound effects today," he said.

  "Yeah, I feel it helps get the explodey, shooty, zoom-around-the-world aspects of the concept across. I'd hate to undersell them."

  "You could shoot me," Jack said with the mock-enthusiasm of a detergent commercial. "And I survive this somehow, right?"

 
Amira bobbed her head up and down excitedly. "If I carried the two correctly, then yeah. You're made of tough shit. You'll only be going a couple kilometers a second."

  "I feel like I missed something... did I agree to this already?"

  "You will," she said confidently. "It's exactly the stupid thing you'd do."

  "When I say things like that, it's complimentary," Jack replied. "When you say them... not so much."

  She nodded and smiled mischievously. "Shall we get going?"

  Jack nodded with a sigh, and his mask crawled back into place.

  They turned together and jogged out of the cortex, then leapt to the top of Pegasus. Amira relayed their destination over comms, and the ship spiraled up around the central stalk until it came to a domed structure that hung from the ceiling like water-damaged tile. Pegasus docked at a thin metal slip in front of the main entrance, then Amira and Jack hopped down and headed inside.

  They came to the loading bay quickly, where a series of large tubes stood in a line in front of them. Their surfaces were lightly cracked in matching patterns; Amira knew the cracks to be soft tolerances, spaces that compressed to absorb shock when the cannons fired, not unlike the natural sutures of a human skull.

  She waved toward the nearest tube and a compartment opened in its side. "Step inside," she said ghoulishly.

  Jack dipped his head and climbed in.

  She peaked inside and saw he was all snug and secure inside the chamber. "I'll see you in a bit," she said. Then she closed the door and patted the boney shell.

  Amiasha burped loudly and Jack was away, flung into the edge between air and space. She hoped he knew how to land on the other side... seemed like perhaps a key piece of information they should have covered.

  Then she headed back to Pegasus to prepare.

  Chapter 40

  Trajectory

  Pressure turned into incredible heat, then it popped. Everything rushed up and out and through, into the cold air, beyond it and into the silent darkness on the edge of the stars. There was peace momentarily in the company of the Moon, who hung in endless shadows like a gleaming sickle.

  Jack spun slowly and felt the sun's warmth trace a circle around his body, while the richly blue planet beneath him spun as well. The land raced by like a desktop globe suspended just beyond his reach, covered in a vast and gentle sea speckled with islands and shimmering waves.

  Then the globe began to swell. The Earth grew closer and closer, becoming ever larger and more detailed as he approached.

  Jack's hollow-drive kicked to life and gravity bent around his skin. He twisted in mid-air, placed his feet out in front of him and braced for impact.

  He crashed across a kilometer of dense jungle, tearing through trees and mounds of dirt before scraping a deep gash out of the landscape. When he finally screeched to a stop, stones and soil rained down all around him, bouncing harmlessly off his dense shell. He pushed himself free of the crater and smoothly melted into a sprint, jetting out across now familiar territory.

  It seemed that anything was possible. The feeling of absolute freedom was astonishing, and he made his progress with the simple joy of a child skipping through a playground.

  But it didn't take much effort to find his way into combat, a small fact which once again hardened his heart. Flying Yuon Kwon tangled with strange human jets that folded and reconfigured into new shapes, while the ground below was a roaring conflagration. Rhinos and jackrabbits clashed against tanks and ten-meter-high men made of metal, both sides backed by long batteries of coughing artillery.

  He moved so quickly that neither New Union nor Oikeya paid him any mind. He was a transitory blur that shot passed and disappeared into the jungle, while their more immediate threats pressed ever onward.

  The fighting intensified as Jack neared the site, and the vegetation faded away leaving only live combatants, discarded corpses, and cracked patches of the brutally beaten ground. He slowed out of necessity, jumping up and over combat in great arcs, and spinning away from the occasional cracking rifle or thumping cannon.

  He felt untouchable.

  A heavy shell rocked Jack's chest, splashing molten metal across his tiled skin. He tumbled end over end along the ground and barreled through an entrenched group of rhinos.

  "Pardon me," he said in the alien language. Then he hopped to his feet and took off circling the battlefield.

  Jack's vision transformed as he ran, becoming familiar but strange like something out of a half-remembered dream. Everything grew brighter while the color seemed to sap away, leaving a dull and bluish reality with unusually crisp separation. The distance between objects became accentuated, and he thought he could somehow feel their motion.

  The cold blue became sharp and vibrant at the mouths of guns, while dimmer shades twinkled under every stomping foot. He immediately understood that the hollow-drive could perceive energy, could taste it across the air.

  He caught sight of his enemy. It was a two-story machine running deftly across the backfield, shaped like a man made of airplane parts. Its right arm was a cannon barrel filled with magnificent light.

  The jetman's head tracked Jack and it raised its arm. It fired a series of blasts with mechanical precision, and they left glowing tracers across his vision.

  He dashed out sideways to get clear, but the shells followed along, then slammed into him one after another. Pain crackled along his muscles and bones as he sailed backward from the impact.

  He hit the ground, looked down at his chest, and saw a hole punctured through the armor which revealed torn meat made of glittering fibers. The edges wriggled and squirmed, stretching out to reconnect and rebuild.

  This enemy was familiar. The jetman had shot him down while he was trying to make his escape with Felix.

  Jack dragged himself back with the undamaged arm, flipped up and vaulted over the small rise, landing safely in cover behind it. He could already feel strength and structure coming back to the damaged shoulder, but it was thinner and more threadbare. It would be seconds yet before he neared full strength again.

  He peeked up over the mound and saw the jetman approaching, bundles of hulking muscles glowing like the inside of a kiln. It raised its cannon again and fired, and Jack ducked down just in time to keep his head in one piece.

  His shoulder flashed with readiness.

  Jack hopped to his knees, charged his red hand and brought it down into the dirt mound, causing it to explode upward in a cloud of clay and granite.

  He burst forward through the cloud, seeing his target as a glowing skeleton of naked energy. It plodded forward into the rain of ejecta and Jack pounced.

  He struck it unaware. His fingers clung to the edge of an armor plate, and the monstrous machine spun hard to buck him off. His body swung out from the surface like a rock climber in an earthquake, but he held tight. In another second, he brought his feet up and wrapped his legs around the arm, then he gripped at it with his knees, grabbed another plate and began to pull.

  The armor came free with a groan, metal sheets stretching and tearing apart to reveal the brightly glowing muscles within. Jack thrust his hand inside, tightened his fingers, and ripped out its core.

  The broken arm flopped to the ground, while the rest of the machine's body spasmed in a remarkably lifelike way.

  Jack dropped and caught hold of the jetman's waist, where he again tugged apart the armor and struck at the soft internal components. When he pulled the insides outside this time, the entire contraption fell lifeless and simply stopped.

  Standing atop the fallen giant, Jack somehow ignored the battle still surging all around him and looked over his prey. He could see a human silhouette inside its torso, and he watched as the last of its life force vanished. The entire machine went dark and cold at once.

  The man and his machine had been tied together as one. The realization caused Jack's eyes to blaze with fury and sadness, even while something quiet and confused inside him began to sing.

  There wasn't time to
ruminate. He had important work to do, or so many more would die.

  He rushed out across the battlefield, making a beeline for the swollen and cracked hill where he'd first discovered the Eireki Golden Seed.

  Chapter 41

  Four Lions

  Daniel Grey was Orion.

  Its metallic arms were his arms. Its pumps were his heart, its sensors were his eyes and ears, and its fusion furnace burned to give him life.

  Daniel Grey was Orion, and he blasted out above the blazing jungle. Powered legs launched him up into the air, and rockets on his sides and back flashed to life, growling as they pushed him higher still. Alien filth filled the air all around him, and he unleashed the blinding light of his particle cannon in their directions as he passed.

  Ceramic birds shattered against the canvas of the sky, their glassy remains shimmering as they fell to the inferno below.

  Bright outlines marked out the various combatants in the center of his vision, while graphs and charts oscillated at the edges, tracking his vital stats. So far, all was green and good. He was performing around 80% of peak, and nothing out there had posed much of a challenge yet.

  "Orion Prime reporting. All systems nominal," he said. "Proceeding to objective site."

  "Roger, Orion Prime. You are cleared to engage the anomaly. Protect the structure's integrity at all costs."

  "Understood," he said, and charged across the open field. Alien forces turned and ran at his approach, and he casually cut down whatever remained in range. The rest of his forces quickly moved to secure the area, and he angled in toward the cracked mound.

  He dropped down to a trot on mechanical legs whose strength seemed endless. The deformed landscape loomed up ahead of him, and he glanced all about looking for his target. Motion near the base of the hill caught his attention, then disappeared into one of the many darkened cavities.

  Daniel charged forward and a shape flashed out of the shadows, striking him viciously. He skidded back on his feet, leaned forward and came to a quick stop.

  A humanoid figure redrawn with the swooping lines of a jungle cat stood in front of him. Its skin was a mesh of blown glass, and its eyes burned the color of tropical waters.