Eternity's End

by Jeffrey Carver

  Legroeder practiced flicking lights on and off, revealing and unrevealing. (Perhaps,) he said thoughtfully, (it would be useful to share some history.) He found himself going back in time, his subconscious spinning an image, which sprang to life on his stage like a holo projection.

  A ship under attack...

  *

  It was the Ciudad de los Angeles, caught in a surprise attack by the raider, pummeled by Flux distortion and wails from the pirates' amplifiers. A torpedo exploded, threateningly close.

  And then, with a subconscious edit, the image cut to:

  The bridge—officers shouting, captain trying to raise the pirates on the ship-to-ship fluxwave (this image a little blurry, but Legroeder hadn't been there; he'd been in the net at the time; this was a reconstruction).

  Cut to:

  The rigger-net, where terror and bewilderment raged like a forest fire. They were under assault and their captain was wavering. Should they fight? Flee? Lightning flared in the Flux, indistinguishable from the fire of weapons.

  Then word came through from the bridge:

  Let the raider ship grapple them... the battle was over...

  *

  (Your ship?) murmured a faintly metallic voice.

  (Yes. "Ciudad de los Angeles," she was called. "City of the Angels.")

  (Bad... )

  *

  Bad enough, but it wasn't over...

  His imagination supplied the images he hadn't witnessed personally—the battle raging, a nightmare uncorked—terror in the corridors, commandos overrunning the ship, killing in reaction to the slightest resistance, seizing passengers and crew without mercy, without concern for age, mothers and children alike...

  Cut to:

  A small boy, Bobby Mahoney, hauled screaming from his cabin, terrified and kicking; finally shot with a stunner and dragged off to the hold of the pirate ship...

  Cut to:

  Riggers stumbling out of the rigger-stations to face armed commandos, then herded off to similar holds...

  And later taken back to the raider fortress, and forced into service as riggers aboard pirate ships that would go out and start the same thing all over again...

  *

  The final image quivered on the stage, until Legroeder breathed it away with a sigh. It was a terrible burden, and yet a relief to let it out. He had tried so long not to think of it.

  On the facing stage, Rigger Freem'n Deutsch was mulling over what he had seen. (Very disturbing,) he said, with an inflection of uncertainty. (Would you mind if I—?)

  His voice faded into silence. The lights came up on his stage.

  *

  For several heartbeats, nothing.

  And then, in the spotlight glow, a lumbering freighter—and coming alongside it, a raider. There was no contest, once the firing began—except, unaccountably, on the bridge of the freighter, where the captain lost his head and screamed to his men to resist...

  Like Legroeder's image, this one had the hazy outlines of reconstructed memory. Deutsch was just coming out of the net when the fighting on the bridge began. It didn't last long, just enough time for shouts of outrage and several bright flashes of laser fire, and then...

  Searing pain, followed by numbness...

  Deutsch fell, aware of his legs no longer holding him up.

  Blackness...

  *

  He came to, twice. Once, for an instant, to the corridors bumping past at a dizzying sickening angle; something felt very wrong, but he didn't know what, it was a mind-wrenching blur. Then blackness again.

  The next time was in a narrow infirmary cot, with ghostly sensations and nothing else where his legs used to be. And in his head, the buzzings of his new augments, testing the connections to the auxiliary equipment being integrated to his body...

  *

  Legroeder was stunned. (They saved you? The ones who took me would have left you there to die.)

  (These would have, too, except my crewmate José... )

  (Rigger-mate?)

  (Yes, he carried me like a sack; told them I was the best rigger in the fleet; they couldn't lose me. He risked his life, insisting.)

  Legroeder marveled at the courage. Would he have done that? (Where's José now?) He felt a sudden chill. (He wasn't... on the bridge here...?)

  Deutsch's thoughts darkened, the lights lowering on the stage. (He died, his first flight out with the raider fleet. I think he wanted to, by then. He was sorry he'd saved me; sorry any of us lived to be put to this kind of work.)

  I'm sorry too, Legroeder tried to whisper.

  (It was bound to end one way or another. Those who live by the sword... )

  *

  The raider ship Flechette, coursing through scarlet-glowing clouds of the Flux, joining battle. Nose flickering, lightning flashing, booming sounds reverberating through the Flux. On her bridge, a cyborg captain bent on leading them into conquest.

  And in Deutsch's head, a tiny jangling, an implant or an instinct telling him something was not right. When the captain ordered them in for the kill, the jangling got more insistent, as though he should do something to stop this. For an instant, he imagined a Priority One command message trying to get through; but within seconds, it was lost in the chaos and confusion...

  Cut to:

  Blinding flare of a flux-torpedo, and the wrenching upheaval of the Flux shearing the net. Smoke and ruin on the bridge. People screaming; the captain glaring, eyes blazing, against the back wall—dead. Crewmen crumpled from the radiation burst.

  Deutsch, staggering from the fluxfield chamber, where fate and the chamber shielding had protected him from the burst. He surveyed the devastation in horror and disbelief... and finally numbness as his implants shut down the worst of the awareness so that he could function. But they could not shut out the sight of his fellow riggers, smoking in their stations...

  Cut to:

  Darkness.

  *

  Legroeder felt his own darkness welling around him, felt himself mourning Deutsch's friends. What a strange feeling.

  From across the gulf of darkness: (We were both forced into service. Your story could have been mine. We have both suffered great loss.)

  (Yes. And you thought you were dead—and then hoped you were free. And now you wonder... )

  Deutsch stared across at him from his stage. Questioning with his eyes the scenario that Legroeder proposed: returning to the very heart of darkness, the pirate outpost.

  Legroeder thought he sensed a flicker of something—some inkling of hope, or maybe destiny, that even Deutsch didn't recognize.

  (You can show us the way in, and the way out. And how to find the information we need.)

  Deutsch's image shook its head. He didn't have to say: Why should I? If he helped the Narseil and got caught, he could be hung, or tortured, or mindwiped...

  Legroeder searched for that flicker of hope again; perhaps he had only imagined it.

  But the connection with Deutsch had become compelling. He wanted to keep the momentum alive. (There are other things I can show you,) he whispered...

  *

  A more neutral memory: crewing a ship called Lady Brillig, with three riggers named Janofer, Gev, and Skan. A happy crew, for a time. But though all three of the men were smitten with Janofer, only Skan found the way into her heart, and even that didn't last. It seemed almost inevitable that the chemistry could not hold, and in the end it didn't.

  Later, much later, he saw Gev Carlyle again; but this time Legroeder was flying under duress for the raiders, and Gev Carlyle was the prey.

  (And was your friend captured?) Deutsch asked.

  Legroeder remembered the terrible risk he had taken, to fake unexpected turbulence in the Flux. (I found a way to free him.)

  The next image was of the stinging rebuke he and his fellow riggers received—and yet, they persuaded their captain that it was bad luck that had caused them to lose their quarry. Now, recalling the moment, Legroeder wondered why he'd never found the courage to sav
e others the same way he'd saved his friend.

  Deutsch seemed to recognize the feeling, and for a few moments, there was a subdued silence in the connection. (It was brave of you,) Deutsch said finally, and the images that followed seemed to reflect his confusion over how to respond. It was a series of fragmentary images, glimpses of raider society in a bewildering order, all suffused with an emotion that Legroeder had trouble recognizing. Was it regret? Or Deutsch's own guilt for the degree to which he'd allowed himself to be absorbed into the raider culture? Flickering through the images were glimpses of that jangling alarm that Deutsch had heard at the start of the battle with H'zzarrelik, and then lost in the confusion.

  Legroeder tried, in frustration, to follow.

  But rather than clarify, Deutsch changed to images from his more distant past, from times before his capture by the raiders. Learning to fly as a youth, in the balloon fleets of Varinorum Secundus. Later, as a rigger, flying a race down the Grand Canyon Nebula, a strange formation that extended deep through the layers of the Flux. Legroeder sensed echoes of the exhilaration of the race, still alive in Deutsch's memory. It was enough to make him think that perhaps now was the time to raise another subject...

  *

  A mighty and storied ship, soon to be lost in the streams of the Flux, Impris gleamed against space, and cut through the mists of the Flux like a speedwhale of Cornice III. Her passengers enjoyed a view that few but riggers usually saw. As she passed by the Great Barrier Nebula, the sight caused even the most jaded of star travelers to draw a sharp breath.

  Dissolve to:

  The same ship, somehow untarnished by the years, slipping out of the mists like a ghost on a fog-shrouded moor—wailing for help, and drawing the innocent to their doom.

  Cut to:

  A raider ship closing in on would-be rescuers...

  Cut to:

  Loss. Darkness. And through the darkness a man, Legroeder, searching the skies with a tireless gaze, searching for answers, searching for the lost Impris...

  (I know of this ship,) murmured the other rigger.

  Startled, Legroeder cast his gaze to the other stage. (You do? Can you tell me more?)

  (I know of it. I have not seen it myself.) Deutsch hesitated. (There is knowledge of it at the outpost.)

  Legroeder suppressed a rush of excitement from Deutsch's words. (Do you think there might be a way to—)

  (No, no... ) Deutsch shook off the question, and before Legroeder could rephrase it, Deutsch was speaking again, illuminating his stage, sidestepping the question of Impris and offering new memories, new stories...

  *

  They went back and forth for a time, but eventually Legroeder found his focus slipping, and questions he wanted to ask were vanishing from his thoughts before he could raise them.

  (We must stop,) he said, and slowly withdrew his thoughts from the glowing interior of the crystal. He rubbed his eyes, bringing them back into focus in the real-time and real-space of Deutsch's cabin.

  Deutsch's mirror eyes glinted as Legroeder carefully replaced the crystal in its case. Legroeder couldn't tell if Deutsch was watching him or staring still into his own ruby-colored crystal. "This has been... interesting," Legroeder said. "But I must be going. It will be a difficult day tomorrow." He hesitated. "Thank you."

  Deutsch remained motionless, as though he had not heard. But as Legroeder was turning to leave, the Kyber's voice rumbled, "You're welcome."

  Legroeder made his way back out into the corridor, and then to his own cabin. He was stunned to realize, as he fell into his bunk, that three hours had passed in the company of the Kyber rigger. And he was aware, drifting off, that he was by no means finished with this experience. This was going to be a night filled with dreams.

  Many dreams...

  Chapter 19

  Into the Heart of Darkness

  Freem'n Deutsch remained lost in the world of the gazing crystal for a long time after the other rigger left. His good-bye to Legroeder was generated by a general services augment, which took over the niceties of social interaction when his real thoughts were busy elsewhere.

  And busy they were: pondering the visions Legroeder had shown him, and his own memories that Legroeder's had awakened.

  He was stunned to realize how completely he had shielded himself from memories of his own life—memories of a time when he, too, had been an innocent rigger, reveling in the freedom and exhilaration of the net. Memories of the time before he was taken by storm, legs burned off, life transformed to the darkness of captivity and forced labor. His story was remarkably similar to recollections Legroeder had shared, and the remembrance had primed his thoughts for the emergence of far darker visions...

  Right now his augment-matrix was struggling to control those visions, to keep them from erupting and destroying his mental equilibrium. It wasn't quite working; the visions were too powerful to keep out; having begun, they were now an unstoppable force, wracking his mind and body with nausea and revulsion.

  It was one thing to have endured an attack as victim; but the other kind of darkness came from living through the maelstrom as an attacker, loosing the great waves of fury that sent the quarry reeling in terror...

  *

  DOOM DOOM DOOM...

  The drumming would reverberate in his sleep as long as he lived, even when his protection circuits were supposed to suppress it. And rising from the drumming was the growing din of other sounds... the screams, the crackle of weapons... gunshots echoing in the canyons of his mind...

  And the smoldering crimson glow of fire, illumining all of his memories...

  Deutsch shuddered, struggling to make it stop. Why weren't the protection circuits working? Something was wrong, something gone squirrelly, something not keeping the damn memories under control.

  Almost as though the augments wanted him to remember...

  *

  Before the trade to Ivan, rigging under the flag of Carlotta, it had been even worse than under Te'Gunderlach. No, damn it, stop. He didn't want to relive...

  The attack on the Melanie Frey.

  They'd savaged the ship like an animal with newrabies, tearing at its own body and its enemy alike, no awareness of boundary between self and other. DeMort was the most bloodthirsty of all the captains he'd served under, and his own riggers had no more certainty of safety from his fury than did his victims. It made them fight harder—out of fear, to deflect the madness outward—at someone else, anyone else.

  The Melanie Frey's crew had resisted. Stupid, maybe, but the raiders had come upon them so suddenly that they probably had no time to think. They had fought instinctively, not realizing the futility. The battle destroyed the ship, costing the pirates a prize vessel, plus three quarters of its crew and passengers. Captain DeMort, infuriated by the resistance, sent a berserker impulse through the command-link into the implants of the boarding crew. For a full hour, the commandos ransacking the ship had gone mad...

  And into the net, to give his riggers a taste for blood, DeMort had fed a live image of the fighting.

  Not fighting: carnage.

  Of all the horrors, the one that most pierced Freem'n Deutsch's heart was the sight of a young boy set upon by a maddened commando. The boy fought heroically, for the moment or two that he lived, after clawing with his hands at the face of the armored pirate.

  That commando, and a dozen others, never emerged from their berserker state and instead had to be ordered into stasis. Whether they were mindwiped upon their return to base, or simply terminated like useless equipment, Deutsch never knew.

  None of the riggers were capable of flight for some time afterward. The pirate ship drifted away from its prey, sickened and helpless, like an animal that had swallowed poison.

  It was Captain DeMort's last voyage in command of a raider ship. But it was not Deutsch's last as rigger of a raider...

  *

  Under Te'Gunderlach of Outpost Ivan, it was also brutal, to be sure, but Te'Gunderlach maintained at least a veneer of ra
tionality behind his tactics. Still, it was no surprise when Te'Gunderlach's aggressiveness, in the end, put the ship into a trap from which there was no escape...

  *

  P1 alarm, P1 alarm...

  Deutsch's heart pounded as he relived the memories. He tried to slow it, but his augments resisted his efforts. Why did he keep thinking about a P1 intervention? What was going on here—an autonomic system failure? No, there was a response from his central monitor: // High heartrate necessary to assist in coping and processing... we are reanalyzing your memories of a Priority One code... //

  Deutsch remembered the jangle of an alarm during the fight with the Narseil, and a momentary conviction of wrongness about what Te'Gunderlach was doing. He recalled now an inner maelstrom that had passed too quickly before—voices calling out to him, from or through the augments. He couldn't tell what they were trying to say; but then, the net had taken some bad jolts during the fight. Had his augments suffered damage, scrambling the P1 message?

  // All circuits are intact; however, there may have been loss of data... //

  Loss of data... echoes of voices... and the oddest resonance between those voices and his sharing just now with Legroeder...

  He shivered with uncertainty. Where could such a message have come from? The echoes were strangely powerful. And alongside them was the image of what Legroeder had done— something that he, Deutsch, had never found the courage, or the opportunity, to do. Legroeder had risked his life to save a victim from capture.

  Risked the wrath of a raider captain.

  And now this preposterous plan of the Narseil.

  Through the ringing dissonance of the memories, Deutsch found himself asking the question: Would he ever find it in himself to risk his life that way? Would he?

  * * *

  Legroeder blinked awake from a dream about Bobby Mahoney... and about the bosses of Outpost Ivan. Strange. He had never laid eyes on Bobby Mahoney in the flesh—and of course, he had never met the bosses of Outpost Ivan. Yet the images—one a reconstruction by his own mind, and the other someone else's memory—were replaying in his mind now with the clarity of real life. The gazing-crystal joining with Deutsch had left a more powerful impression than he would have guessed. Feeling unsettled, Legroeder had a cursory breakfast in the galley before reporting to the bridge.