Long Fall

by Chris J. Randolph

  The smaller factory hull remained connected by a single thin bridge that was bent at an awkward angle. She was a weak and dying animal.

  The rest of the Legacy Fleet had set down in a wide circle to guard their wounded flagship, a few hundred of them arrayed like flocks of birds hunting for worms in the snow. They were mostly small gunships shaped like living torpedoes, except for a single large cruiser with a more triangular layout.

  "That's Faulkland's ship," Amira said. "The Phoenix."

  "Not much of a match for the Nefrem behemoth," Jack said glumly while measuring it with his eyes. He figured the prince's so-called Splinter Legion would be the size of a standard Nefrem invasion force, outnumbering this fleet ten to one.

  But the prince was making desperate moves, and such behavior was utterly foreign to Nefrem-kind so far as Jack understood them. They only ever pressed forward, a crushing wave of cloned minds tuned to absolute precision, never tiring, faltering, or accepting defeat.

  Jack felt a dangerous and fascinating possibility that this rebellious prince could represent something wholly new. Perhaps a thing that could be reasoned with... bargained with.

  But Jack doubted a Nefrem mind could ever stray that far, and the prince had already proven himself brutal and pitiless. His words and actions were in accord, the products of a warped mind with no regard for the sanctity of life.

  Jack looked at Amira, who stood beside him in remarkably good health. Her upgrades could apparently take one hell of a licking.

  "We can't fight them," Jack said to her.

  Amira nodded. "I know... but what other choice do we have?"

  "Coalition," Jack offered. "If we all attack at once, maybe we can surprise them. The New Union, Oikeyans, Arkang..."

  "No."

  Silence.

  Amira's eyes were locked on the city Yuon Kwon. "The Unies hate us some way I can't comprehend," she said. "They tried to murder all of us in our sleep... and if I hated anything that much, I know what my next move would be."

  Jack simply couldn't believe it. The idea was preposterous. How could good men and women ally themselves with a slavering beast that ate worlds? How could their hatred run that deep?

  "We have to try," he said. "Otherwise, the Garden's lost." Something about that sounded strange in his mouth, and he wasn't sure why.

  As Pegasus flew under Amiasha's dome, Sal turned and walked away saying, "You can't always fix things with a bandage and a fucking kiss on the cheek, Jack."

  Amira left him to stand there alone, watching the alien city rush by in shades of peach and blue, with swarms of living traffic filling the air all around. This place had once been a beacon of light for him, and the sight of it still filled his eyes with hope.

  He lived in the shadows back then and communed with Amiasha in secret, helping the mighty Yuon Kwon foster the precious colony inside, but mostly just watching it all happen from the sidelines, desperate to see his gambit pay out.

  It wasn't long before Amira Saladin began to transform the colony into a full-fledged civilization, and when that day finally arrived, Jack immediately grew restless. He was filled deep inside with worry that others out there needed help; people were suffering and dying alone, and he wasn't doing a damned thing about it.

  He became so depressed, so unbearable that Lisa finally begged him to go...

  Pegasus set down on the grass outside Amiasha's pavilion opposite one of the Fleet's shuttle. Jack scanned the area and saw a group of mixed species, and both Kai and Alex Faulkland were there. The sight of them filled him with dread, and he couldn't quite pinpoint why. The hollow-drive inside of him simultaneously stoked itself to a fury, which he wrestled back to calm.

  His feet remained planted on the bridge, and he simply stood there chewing on everything that had gone so very wrong lately.

  ***

  Amira jogged down Pegasus' port access ramp, fiddling with her left wrist as she went. She'd built nerve transducers into her arms, giving her precision enough to make microscopic adjustments even while on the move.

  With a flourish, she finished patching the short that had made Fenris' gravity cannon so expensive to use, then she looked up at the open field and the peculiar alien mosque on the other side.

  The council were huddled near the building's entrance, where they were having a heated debate with Alex Faulkland. A humanoid creature in an unfamiliar grey and blue uniform stood back and to his side.

  The group stopped squabbling completely and turned as Amira neared, and she felt like she suddenly had a dozen extra kilos on her shoulders. She despised being under that kind of scrutiny; for most of her life, it'd been impossible to find that many people standing around without something to do.

  Damn, she missed that planet.

  She marched up and poked the admiral's chest. "What the hell is your starship doing on my front lawn, Faulkland?"

  The aging astronaut glared at her, his face becoming all crow's feet and no eyes. "Dying," he said. "There was a terrorist attack, and it nearly cut her in two. She doesn't have long, Sal."

  Amira winced but it didn't blunt her attack. "What was the point of your fucking isolation if you couldn't even keep enemies out of your own chicken-shit fleet?"

  Faulkland took a strained breath and said, "We screwed up, Saladin, but this isn't the time. You know that."

  And she did. She felt petty and childish, but Donovan and his fleet always had that effect on her. She forced herself back on track. "So," she said, "the Nefrem battle fleet."

  Faulkland nodded. "Punched through our automated defenses and wiped out our first response. Took a big bite out of the Moon in the process. By the time they got here, the rest of our ships were on the ground guarding Legacy. The bastards caught us flat footed."

  The old man looked the way he did after a long night of losing at cards.

  Sympathy flickered in Amira's heart. "It wouldn't have mattered," she said. "I got a pretty good look at their capabilities, and we weren't prepared for this. Even when things were working."

  The power she faced had been above and beyond all her expectations. Advances came so quickly to her technology that she'd gotten ahead of herself and thought she'd joined the big leagues, but it was all just delusion. She'd fooled herself into believing she could stand against her own natural predator, and the reckoning had been painful.

  From the look on Faulkland's face, Amira's supposition didn't make a difference. He'd have rather died in the first wave.

  "What happened over there?" he asked.

  "We failed," she said. After a few seconds, she realized she was being tight lipped out of spite. "We maybe could've beaten the special units, but then this monster stormed the scene and swatted us all like rowdy children."

  "Just glad you made it back in one piece," Faulkland said with an unclear amount of sincerity.

  Amira felt weak. "I'm only alive because it wanted me to deliver a message." She briefly considered her audience: an admiral on the edge of breaking, an aggressive councilwoman, and a diverse group of aliens who'd grown accustomed to living on the edge of terror.

  It couldn't be much worse.

  She said, "He claims to have rebelled against Nemesis, and he's here seeking asylum. Maybe integration. And he made it clear the offer only extends to humans."

  Panic erupted among the council members, and Amira only wondered why it took them this long. They'd all been well and truly fucked for some time; the Nefrem's conditions didn't change the severity all that much.

  "I don't know what we can do," Amira said. It was a foreign phrase in her mouth, backed by a similarly foreign feeling in her stomach. "Jack seems to think we could convince everyone to join together." She felt like an idiot for even saying it.

  Faulkland's reaction was odd. His eyes flared with surprise, while fury rumbled along his upper lip. Then he calmed himself and said, "We'll reach out, but it's a pipe-dream. Noble, but nothing more."

  Amira nodded. She could always tell when Faulkland was bluffin
g; she only wished she knew what about.

  Sigrid Erikkson wore her usual cold expression. She was calculating things, and Amira had suspicions about what those calculations were. The woman wasn't a xenophobe, but there was something disturbingly mercenary at her core.

  Councilman Orokoa, a thoughtful Rozom with a very proud horn on his snout, said, "If we can't fight, then we must run."

  "We don't have anywhere to go," Faulkland said.

  "We could regroup on Mars," Amira said. "Fortify and plan a second return."

  Faulkland shook his head at the mention of Mars. He looked her in the eyes and said, "I'm sorry."

  Amira managed to put her sadness aside. Living in a hostile frontier, everyone understood that death was always lurking around the next corner. Things happened, and you got used to losing people.

  "Then there's nowhere," she said. "We stay and fight. We find a way to win."

  Orokoa exhaled loudly through his dorsal hole. He said, "We tire of fighting, Amira Saladin."

  "Then where the fuck do we go?"

  Orokoa pointed to the sky. "We have wandered before," he said, "and we could wander again."

  Quiet dropped over the group like a curtain. It was the sort of quiet produced by people who wanted desperately to argue, but had no good answers left.

  Her father had once told her that when there were no more good answers, it was time to accept the bad ones. Amira said, "We begin preparations immediately. Aldermen, get all the housing on lock-down, militia armed and mobilized throughout the city, and all fighter wings prepped. We need to be off world in less than eighteen hours. Faulkland, tell Donovan his Fleet is on vanguard duty, at least until we're off the ground. We can make longer term plans once we have some distance."

  Faulkland obviously had reservations, but he didn't share them. Instead, his eyes burned like welding torches as he curtly said, "Understood."

  Amira gave everyone a nod and they broke, but Faulkland's iron grip caught her arm before she could leave. She rounded on him, ready to unleash a likely lethal punch, but the look in his eyes disarmed her. It was humility.

  "What?" she asked.

  "There's a situation aboard Legacy, and we need your help."

  "I can't save your ship," she said coldly, "and I have more important things to do than watching her die."

  "It's not that... I can't discuss it here, but... No matter how you feel about him, you owe him at least this much."

  Faulkland didn't have to say who. Donovan needed her for some reason, and the fact he'd ceded control to his second in command pointed in the direction of debilitating injury. She'd wished that on him and more in the past, but the admiral was right: her hate wasn't strong enough to bowl over her sense of loyalty.

  She steadied herself and said, "I'll meet you in Legacy's port hangar in ten minutes."

  "The factory," Faulkland said, and Amira nodded.

  They shook hands, and it was the first time Amira had ever seen Faulkland look relieved. They headed for their respective ships, and that was the moment she noticed Faulkland's bodyguard had disappeared. Under other circumstances, she was sure that fact would've disturbed her more.

  Chapter 45

  In Blessed Ignorance

  Jack stood atop Pegasus on Amira's insane observation deck, and he wondered what kind of mental sickness inspired a person to put an outdoor deck on a spaceship. That brought back memories of sitting by the fire with Jess, flipping through her psychology textbooks while accusing one another of having various disorders. When the memory passed, he felt pain just as fresh as the day he finally accepted that she was gone.

  As he zoned out watching the multitude of Yuon Kwon rush about like bees in a hive, he felt an unusual tingle along his shoulder. He turned and saw a ghost standing on the other end of the deck, a glowing apparition made of muscles that twisted about each other like pumpkin vines.

  Jack said, "That camouflage of yours is pretty effective when you're standing still."

  The image on Kai's uniform melted away, revealing the alien interrogator in all his fascist regalia. He said nothing, but stood with strength pent up inside him.

  "What's going on, Kai?"

  The interrogator relaxed. "I had to make sure it was you," he said.

  Jack smiled. "Yeah, I haven't even seen myself in a mirror yet. I must look pretty weird."

  Kai walked forward cautiously, watching Jack with rapt attention the whole way. He stopped several paces off and said, "Then you don't remember at all."

  The whispering voice inside of Jack said, "Forget."

  An impression flashed in his mind's eye then was gone. "Forget," the voice commanded more harshly.

  Jack saw a hallway blocked by some obstacle, a glowing phantom clothed in mud. He'd felt anger so acrid and undilute that it pushed all other considerations aside. Another flash revealed another hall, this one stained by the other lumps of mud who exploded so easily at his touch.

  All to kill the demon bitch.

  The memories belonged to a nightmare that had tormented him in the moments before waking up in the snow outside Amiasha, revealed in his body's queer new vision. And once he had hold of them, the details began to coagulate; they formed clumps that chained together, becoming more and more complete.

  "Rage," the voice inside of Jack seethed, and under his breath he said, "Hush."

  "Jack," Kai said uneasily, "do you remember?"

  And he did. Through a fog that tried to keep him away, he could see and feel it all. He hadn't lost control... he awoke full of hate and cast control aside, begging instead at the altar of a dark fire that hungered for death. Given strength beyond all reason, he'd marched across a waking dream to stab at her heart.

  Jack looked Kai in the eye and said, "I'm sorry... I don't remember."

  Disappointment slackened the alien interrogator's body. "Why do you lie to me, Jack?"

  He looked down at his red hand. He flexed the too long fingers, at once marveling at and terrified by the thing he'd become. He looked back to Kai and said, "Because the lie has to start somewhere. If they knew... if anyone ever suspected I had this power and was capable of..." His voice trailed off.

  Kai said nothing.

  Jack looked in the tortured creature's eyes and said, "I would never have a chance to atone."

  Kai ducked his head in understanding. After a long pause, he said, "I can't pretend to understand what you've been through. All I know is that I've finally discovered the force that could cause your light to flicker... and its existence fills me with fear."

  Memories cut through Jack's mind, Eireki recollections transmitted from the dying and passed down from one mind to the next. Each recipient had solemnly sworn to never forget.

  These memories revealed to Jack what it was like to be destroyed inside by Nemesis' psychic scream, and it was much the same as he suffered at the hands of Legacy. The realization filled him with a purely animal hatred that caused Hush to giggle with lustful glee.

  And with that, Jack knew he could never rest until he saw the Nefrem stopped.

  Chapter 46

  Midwife

  Amira stepped out onto Pegasus' deck, and found Jack standing beside Faulkland's bodyguard. There was an odd likeness between the two that suddenly struck her, colored in similar patterns, bodies of roughly the same height and build. It was too much to be a coincidence, so she assumed that Donovan's team had already been reverse engineering Jack's Eireki technology.

  She said, "We're leaving."

  "We're fine up here," Jack replied. "Go ahead and get under way."

  "No, no... I mean we're abandoning the planet."

  "There isn't any other choice," Jack said with chilly resignation. "What can we do to help?"

  She looked at the two superhumans standing on her deck, and couldn't figure out a use for them. It was a testament to either the efficiency of her procedures, or a gaping deficit in her imagination. She didn't have time to decide which. "I'm not sure," she said.

  The
instant that last word was out of her mouth, an idea occurred to her. It always seemed to go that way, making her look clumsy and scatterbrained. "Wait," she said. "You should link up with Amiasha and contact the Eastern Oikeya. Ask them to come with us."

  The bodyguard asked, "Who has primacy among the Eastern Oikeya now?"

  Amira had never heard a man speak quite like that, and she couldn't imagine why he'd want to. "Elkellian," she said.

  The bodyguard looked to Jack. "Elkellian has a warm spirit. He may be receptive to reason."

  "How do you..." She stopped herself mid-sentence. "I don't want to know. I've already got enough junk data rattling around in my head. Jack, just get it done."

  She didn't need to say another word. The two jumped off the ship and disappeared into the streets.

  Amira tapped her comlink. "Tom, let's get going."

  Pegasus began to hum seconds later, and the ship lifted up into a moist and whipping wind. Amira gripped the guard rail and started doing math in her head as the ship blasted off toward Amiasha's border.

  She had a single cruiser and maybe two hundred gunships out there; Donovan abandoned the nimble fighters due to personnel shortages. There were another few thousand combat ready Yuon Kwon, her own ship (which had seen better days), and a flying city that moved ponderously slow at low altitudes. Amiasha would need forty-five minutes to reach space, and they were sitting ducks until then.

  On the other side, she only counted question marks. The New Union had no large vessels, and their anti-orbital weapons weren't sophisticated enough to hit targets around the world. On the other hand, they had small fighters in numbers she couldn't guess; the Unies had proven to be masters of concealment.

  Of the Nefrem, she'd seen only one ship but she had no doubt it was enough. It was smaller than Legacy, but this creature was young and in its prime. It was a purebred weapon, and she couldn't even put rough numbers to the kind of power driving the thing. Who could guess how many or what type of support it had?

  It left her feeling like she'd just logged into a multiplayer game missing half her team, against opponents armed with hacks. It took everything she had not to throw her controller at the wall and ragequit.