Long Fall

by Chris J. Randolph

  Tom Greer looked out through Pegasus' two-story windows, and the chaos outside damn near confounded him. He'd only seen its like once before, when his head hit concrete after a particularly strong and drunk man sucker punched him in the jaw.

  But the chief's team were holding their own. Samuels was steady on the helm, and both turrets made quick work of anything that came in their arcs. The ship was making a difference, and that was about the most they could hope for.

  Then Tom saw something through the window that really surprised him: someone making a bigger difference than he was. The starship Phoenix, deep blue and large as an aircraft carrier, snapped a barrel roll and looped up into the air, then swooped back down.

  Its cohesive light weapons raked the surface of a Nefrem battlecruiser, and the target's flesh bubbled and scorched at the attack.

  "Samuels," Tom said, "form up on Phoenix the best you can. Zadian, get the main cannon prepped." He almost told them to keep smaller targets off the other ship, but it didn't look like Faulkland needed any help. Even the Nefrem's unified line couldn't figure out what to do with the command cruiser's surprisingly acrobatic maneuvering.

  His orders got cut short a moment later. "Could use a hand here, Tom." It was Amira on the comm channel.

  "What can I do, chief?"

  "Legacy didn't manage to get the bay doors open before she... stopped. And I don't think we can take the resulting deluge. I need you to make an incision in the factory."

  "How big?"

  "Big as you can manage."

  Tom watched the Phoenix dance out across the sky then plummet again, scarring the same battlecruiser with its beams of red light. Faulkland definitely didn't need his help, but the chief did. "We'll be there soon," he said, and they were on their way.

  ***

  Hurry, Amira thought. She was suited up in the recently printed Fenris 1.1, and pacing out on Donovan's snub nose in all her gold and bronze glory. A kilometer beyond, Legacy's brightly colored tugs filed into Donovan's nostril-like launch bays a little too slowly, but she understood why; some of their pilots were the original miners who first found Legacy on Donovan's mission, and now they were about to watch her passing. It was a procession.

  Amira stamped her foot a few times on Donovan's shiny new hull. "Are you awake yet?" she shouted.

  She immediately saw stirrings of something throughout his power grid, but she wasn't sure if it was a creature waking or a machine booting. Small strobes of energy flashed like scattered lightning in cloud cover, and where they struck, they brought those components to life and lasting light.

  There was a rumble like an avalanche, followed by a whoop like a tired whale.

  Amira tapped out Shave and a Haircut with her heel, and amplified her voice through the suit. "I need you to wake up now, Donovan."

  A deep and deafening voice echoed throughout the factory. "I..." it said.

  "Have to go," she finished testily.

  "I..." it rumbled slowly

  Amira looked all around the factory complex using Fenris' scanners and saw the jutting buildings beginning to lose their shape. They sagged as they turned into a viscous fluid, like gelatin left out on the counter. When they finally melted in the next minute, Amira was going to find out what it felt like to be washed away in a million tonnes of sewage.

  Unless Tom got there in time...

  And when her savior didn't come, she made the only choice left. She dashed across the hull, found an access iris and jumped inside.

  ***

  Pegasus rocked back and forth under enemy fire, and knuckles were white all over the bridge. Tom held onto his guard-rail and watched the skin-colored enemies outside spin around his ship in pulsing rings. Their guns bit chunks out of charged armor and hull, and they could not be deterred. Whenever a lucky shot took one down, another shifted formations to patch the gap and they continued without interruption.

  "Dive, damn it!" he cried.

  Samuels pressed on his yoke causing the ship's nose to dip, then they raced down out of the sky with the Nefrem horde nipping at them like a school of piranha. The ship's turrets did whatever they could to keep the enemy off their back while the forward guns cleared a path ahead, down into the raging snow and toward the thirteen-kilometer corpse on the other side.

  Tom asked, "Powerplant output?"

  "96%," Zadian replied.

  Tom growled, "Open fire!"

  He'd never seen the riven beam used before, and had no idea what to expect... except perhaps dying in a horrible explosion. Some of Sal's experiments resulted in truly, breathtakingly horrible explosions.

  Instead, he saw something queer and terrifying whose implications he didn't fully understand. Air seemed to twist and clench around the tuning-fork-like components on the starboard side of the ship, while the metal pulsed a sickly shade of green. Then with a sound like a mountain tearing in half, the riven beam fired.

  Gravity ripped a neat seam in the air, with a sea of blindingly bright and vibrant colors swirling inside. And as quickly as it struck, it was gone. Only shrapnel, blood, and a deafening thundercrack remained in its path.

  ***

  Waking alighted on Marcus Donovan like rain falling on a pond. A dull, throbbing hurt came to him first while fevered dreams were still retreating. It was like waking up in a hospital bed.

  But he felt strong. Energy coursed through him, a raging river whose source was somewhere deep inside. It churned and thrashed, and unleashed a torrent of light and vitality.

  Marcus Donovan was awake. His senses flared to life and he scanned his surroundings, finding himself in a mostly empty container only a little larger than himself. Docking rings gripped him confidently but they were made redundant by his own innate abilities, so with a rocking motion, he shook them off and stood free in the dense gravity well.

  In the walls beyond, he could feel the presence of an omnibody swarm. The microbes were simple creatures, but their network created a gestalt mind that was possessed of endless service and joy. Their sweet voices sang out as they digested their host, just pleased to be doing their duty once again.

  But that was a problem. The structure above Marcus' head was several times his own weight, and despite his strength, he felt as if the doctor had hastily stapled him back together to take an early lunch. The sutures wouldn't stand an onslaught like this.

  Anger rang out through his body, but no weapons systems responded. More anger followed and it culminated in a deep, rumbling growl that shook the already decaying walls.

  With no small amount of surprise, Marcus discovered he had a voice. His entire shell seemed to vibrate, producing a sound that was all too human.

  "I..." he said.

  "Have to go," a small voice replied.

  The sound that had come out of him was garbled and strange, as clear as he might expect after a particularly tragic visit to the dentist's office.

  "I..." he managed to say again.

  And he watched as the minuscule creature on his hull ran off and jumped into one of his irises, which opened on its own like an autonomic process. He felt only a twitch that happened completely without his intervention.

  The feeling he experienced once she was inside of him was... peculiar. He wasn't sure if it was strangely sexual or all too much like having a spider climb in his ear, and he tried not to think about either one.

  When the first few tonnes of predigested biomass splashed down on his armor, something else approached from outside. He felt hints of it even before his hollow-drive warned him, singing songs of immense power and gravitational disturbance. As old as the drive was, it had never felt anything of the sort before.

  Then the ceiling above parted, spilling piles of snow and bright white light into the room.

  "That's our cue, Donovan!" the tiny voice inside of him shouted.

  He flexed his drives and they hummed in response. He touched his hollow-drive and it projected a gravitational field, which Donovan redirected using lenses distributed throughout his
body. He quickly established a stable well and spun it around, feeling its weight and balance while the point of density circled him.

  Then he charged upward. He wedged himself into the opening and pressed hard against the sides, feeling them turn gelatinous and slough away at his touch. Still, there was solid structure within and it resisted him.

  "Hold on," his titanic voice rumbled, and he forced more power into his drives. They worked rhythmically, oscillating at a high rate and propelling him against the surrounding air.

  His rumble became an animalistic howl as he pressed against the wall of decaying bone and skin. His voice was so loud that he felt it reverberate back, and that gave him an idea.

  He cried out as hard as he could, and his shell vibrated violently against the dying flesh that kept him trapped. He wailed on and on, and the vicious might of his voice smashed at the walls, shattered them, brought them down.

  And he was free.

  He lifted up from Legacy's factory while snow and wind buffeted him. The cold struck him, and he felt his strength being sapped by every gust.

  Then pain shot through his hollow-drive, and he tumbled out of the sky.

  Chapter 49

  Spirit Diver

  Jack stared out over the edge of Amiasha, down through the raging blizzard and further to the great source of light and power so far below. It was too small to be Legacy but it had a similar shape, and the energy inside of it pulsed with the same color and rhythm.

  Shared memories came back to him, of Legacy's secrets, her hopes and her dreams, and Jack realized he must be looking at Marcus Donovan, now a hybrid of human and Yuon Shien. It was a concept that existed nowhere else in Jack's large and messy recollection, and the sight of it left him agape in wonder.

  But even from his high vantage point, he could tell the new creature was in trouble. Donovan's hollow-drive called out to Jack's, and it was screaming in agony.

  "Save it," Hush hissed angrily inside him.

  That was new.

  Jack stilled his heart and looked around the city. In what possible way could he save an ailing starship? He somehow doubted his first-aid training and even a miraculously large bandage would help.

  "Overloading," Hush whispered. "Needs help."

  The flaming wreckage of something unrecognizable came rolling out of the air. Jack advanced, leapt, and struck the molten heap, blasting it back out away from the city.

  He took a look around when he landed, and as far as his eye could see, there wasn't a single spare battery in the vicinity. He couldn't just pop down to the corner store and buy something to plug into the broken toy foundering down in the dirt.

  Hush said, "Us." It sounded slightly annoyed, and Jack felt another onrush of doubt about his ability to ever get used to any of this.

  He took another look around and saw the makeshift militia doing a fine job. They were arrayed around the perimeter eagerly opening fire on anything that came nearby, and they'd been completely successful in keeping Amiasha's streets clear of invaders.

  Then something broke their streak.

  A bright star made an incision in their line, so swollen with power that it brought absolute destruction on its wings. Whatever came within the invader's sphere was instantly rent to pieces.

  Jack was transfixed, and he quickly realized it was similarly transfixed on him. If he was going to do Hush's bidding and plug himself into Donovan, he couldn't very well bring an angry Nefrem prince along for the ride.

  "Fight," Hush said, and for once the two were in accord.

  Jack dashed forward, and he and his opponent approached one another at several hundred kilometers an hour.

  The Nefrem prince sailed high through the air, then began to fire his biorifle as he angled downward. Living bullets screamed out, existing only to hunt after Jack in this one instant before they die. Jack's hollow-drive responded, forming rivulets of gravitic force along the surface of his skin that made him impossibly slick.

  He pressed down into Amiasha's chitinous shell and launched himself upward, twisting to evade the incoming rounds. As he neared, the star resolved into a gleaming man, a knight in silver armor as bright as the summer sun.

  The knight pulled back its gauntlet and struck, but Jack was prepared. He slackened himself and twisted away, at the same time driving his fist upward through its face.

  The silver knight tumbled backward through the air while Jack rebounded down to the ground. He landed like a hawk on a fence, and watched his foe for any signs of weakness as it righted itself, but there were none.

  "Pride," Hush said, and the next moment proved it right.

  The knight descended to the ground, set down, and took the same pose as he had back in Mexico, down on one knee like a peasant before his king. His armored ribs waved open like the spines of a sea anemone, and the prince stepped out trailed by a cloud of heavy mist.

  It stood a hundred meters off at the end of a broad road, nude and obnoxiously perfect, mismatched to the scene like a renaissance sculpture against the backdrop of a trashy '50s sci-fi novel. Explosions flashed in the distance, and the resulting gusts of wind arrived seconds later to toss the Nefrem prince's hair as he walked.

  Jack held his ground.

  The prince stared him in the eyes with pupils full of ember light, and Jack felt a strange tingle. There was an itch at the center of his forehead like a hot pin slowly piercing his skin. Then it abruptly stopped.

  "You intrigue me, wildling Eireki. You stand before me a strange imitation, a facsimile of monsters whose tales were recounted to me in the crib. Mother assured us their kind were gone from the universe, and yet here you stand... holding their sword... with one of their infernal hearts burning in your chest."

  Jack watched power strobe across the Nefrem prince's body, so bright it should have left marks on his eyes. "And you knew we were here," he said.

  The Nefrem prince smiled, and before Jack knew what was happening, he'd been hit.

  The harsh impact launched him through the air only to crash through a building at the end. He blasted through one wall, the next, and one more before finally stopping in an alley, and he wasn't fully on his feet when he saw the prince's silhouette appear at the other end.

  Jack had to move the fight, lead the Nefrem prince out before any more damage could come to Amiasha. If the city went down in flames because of their battle, the whole effort would be for nothing.

  Jack sprang up and rushed in the opposite direction. Behind him, he heard footsteps like the soft flipping of book pages, leading up along the walls and then overhead.

  There was a loud crack and the two buildings broke apart, their rubble pouring down to fill the space between them. Jack jumped up from wall to wall and cleared the cave-in, while the Nefrem prince rocketed into his side.

  Jack thought he'd been prepared, but he wasn't. The prince slammed him, grappling with legs while punching him again and again. He tried to build a fort around his face with his arms, but the prince batted them away and continued the assault.

  The Nefrem prince's strength was as the strength of mountains, both unfathomable and absolute. The rapid-fire impacts shook Jack's head and chest, rattling his hollow-drive and threatening to tear his muscle fibers apart.

  The drive's sense of self-preservation kicked in, and it burst forth with fresh energy, dilating as wide as possible to allow more through. At the sudden onrush, Hush greedily whispered, "Power."

  It wasn't power enough. Jack flexed and struggled against the prince's hold, but those perfect limbs might as well have been made of diamond. He needed something beyond strength, but his rapidly pummeled head was having some difficulty chaining two thoughts together in sequence.

  As the prince drove him down into the ground and continued the beating, Jack at least thought he recognized a piece of good news: his enemy wasn't trying to kill him. If that'd been the goal, the prince could have accomplished it long seconds ago.

  Once that thought managed to gain traction against the viole
nt rhythm of the attack, Jack settled in and took his punishment. The scene had changed, but some parts of his life remained achingly the same.

  With a final stroke, the Nefrem prince released his grip and stood, took a breath, and then presented his hand to Jack.

  Jack didn't move. He couldn't. Nerves twitched beneath his skin, but never with enough strength to reach the surface. He tried to suck wind, but apparently didn't have lungs anymore.

  "I am not like Mother," the Nefrem prince said to him. He must have realized Jack either couldn't or wouldn't take his hand, and he placed it back by his side. "I have come to your world seeking kinship, not conquest. I wish to reconnect with you, my lost cousins."

  And Jack stared in amazement at this baffling being whose like existed nowhere in his recollection. The Nefrem were a horde of soldiers who lived to devour. There were no kings or princes; there was only Nemesis' perverse order, crashing like the hungry ocean up an ever shrinking beach.

  "What are you?" Jack asked.

  The prince looked dour. "That which has never come before... much like yourself, I would imagine."

  Jack's muscles vibrated a verdant tone, one of health and restoration, and he tested things out carefully. Arms and legs seemed to be in working order. His face might not have fared so well.

  The prince saw Jack's small movements and once again offered his left hand. It looked golden and bright even in Amiasha's blue-hued light.

  Jack took it, and with a slight hint of hesitation, he brought his other hand to the prince's shoulder to complete the circuit. Fire immediately burned along his bones, then raced out through his nerve endings and ignited inside the Nefrem prince.

  The link came on and Jack was shot down a long tunnel. He struck the prince's mind like a pool of oil, and found himself bathed in a waking phosphorescent light. The presence he felt surrounding him was crystalline and jagged, with sharp edges that welcomed the unwary.