“To what?” Sharon demanded.
The planet-eater thrashed around as it forced its way out of the atmosphere of Salubrious IV and tried to swim toward The Vastness. The planet-eater’s uncountable limbs lashed out, trying to pull everything in their path into the one enormous maw at its center. One of those huge barbed tentacles swiped within a few feet of the Spicy Meatball . . . which dodged, and nearly ran into another flotilla of Joykiller-class attack ships.
“Hall and Oates!” Sharon cursed.
“You are everything!” Jara cried out.
“Keep it down, you two,” Kango growled. “It’s hard enough trying to make evasive maneuvers between pretty much everything deadly without also having to listen to a lot of religious mumbo jumbo.”
“Oh, as if you have it all figured out,” Sharon said. “Your only religion is exhibitionism. I swear, the next time we have a plan that relies on a diversion—a contained, sensible diversion—that can be my job.”
“Sure!” Kango spun the ship on its axis to scoot past a planet-eater tentacle, then veered sharply to the left to avoid a spread of Obliteron missiles. “Because you’re such a genius at strategy, and that’s how we ended up with a stupid ultimate weapon on board!”
“I’ll have you know I am quite intelligent,” Horace protested. “And there are mere minutes before my devastation wave is launched from the galactic core. Once it begins, it will sweep the entire galaxy in no time at all!”
“Hey, I did my best,” Sharon said to Kango. “It’s not as if it was my idea to—” She stopped, because Jara was staring at her. “What?”
“You’re doing it again,” Jara said. “You’re acting as though each of you is The Vastness to the other. I wish I knew how you do that. I’m going to die soon too, and even with The Vastness close at hand, I’ll die alone and for no real reason. You are everything!”
“Listen, Jara,” Sharon said, ignoring her nausea as Kango did a series of barrel rolls to avoid explosions that came close enough to rattle her teeth. “Listen. The Vastness is only everything because it’s incredibly limited. It can’t even see all the things it’s not. It’s like a giant stupid ignorant blob of . . . wait. Wait a minute!”
“What?” Kango said. “Did you think of something super super clever?”
“Maybe,” Sharon said, praying to Hall and Oates that she was right. She ran over and pulled the stolen synchrotrix out of the strongbox, then started wiring it into Horace’s core as fast as she could. “Remember what you told me was special about this device?”
“The fact that it’s worth a lot of chits?” Kango pulled the Spicy Meatball’s nose up so fast, Sharon nearly did a backflip while keeping one hand on Horace. “It’s got a nice color scheme? It has the ability to neutralize . . . oh. Oh!”
“You are everything!” Jara said.
The planet-eater had finally gotten past all of the attack ships that had tried vainly to slow it down. Now it had reached The Vastness, opening the vast gnashing maw at the heart of its starfish-like body to try and devour the mega-planetoid. The planet-eater embraced The Vastness with its many limbs.
Sharon gripped Jara’s shoulders so hard, her knuckles were white. “Tell The Vastness we’ve got the ultimate weapon, right here on our ship. We can help The Vastness to become completely unstoppable. And The Vastness really will be everything, in an even better way than before.”
Jara looked like she was about to cry. “You want me to lie to The Vastness.”
“No,” Sharon said. “Yes. Sort of. Not really. It’s the only way.”
“I’m just moments away from a glorious consummation,” Horace said. “It’s at times like this that I feel like composing a sonnet.”
“Jara,” Sharon hissed, “now!”
“I’m trying,” Jara said, shutting her eyes and concentrating. “The Vastness doesn’t really listen. It just talks. I’m sending the message as hard as I can.”
“Now! Please!”
The Vastness reached out with a beam of energy, trying to seize the Spicy Meatball. Sharon rushed to the rear airlock with Horace, cobbled together with the synchrotrix. She tossed them out, and The Vastness’s energy field captured them, pulling them through one of The Vastness’s slavering eyemouths inside its guts.
They were inside The Vastness’s own atmosphere, close enough to hear its eyemouths shouting through their countless razor-sharp teeth. “I am everything! Now I have this ultimate weapon, my power will be absolute. I will be all things, and every living being will shout my praises. I am—”
Sharon watched through the airlock as The Vastness vanished from space.
In the space where The Vastness had been, a bright purple-and-green fissure was opened up. The crack in spacetime was huge enough to let Sharon see through it as The Vastness was drawn toward the supermassive black hole at the core of the galaxy.
“You are everything,” Jara said, sorrowfully, standing next to Sharon.
And then The Vastness was no longer visible—but in its place, there was a huge distortion enveloping the black hole at the core of the galaxy.
“The biggest Embarrassment the galaxy has ever seen,” Kango breathed from the flight deck.
And then the purple-and-green fissure closed, leaving a badly injured planet-eater, several thousand confused Joykiller-class starships, and the Spicy Meatball.
“We did it,” Kango said, seeming semi-permeable with astonishment.
“The Vastness followed Horace’s program and ended up at the galactic core,” Sharon said. “And then it Embarrassed itself.”
“I just killed my god.” Jara looked as though she was too shocked even for tears.
“Look at it this way,” Sharon said. “You told the truth. Mostly. The Vastness is everywhere and everything now, in a way. And it always will be with you. And it can never be defeated. You can worship The Vastness forever.”
“I don’t know.” Jara tried saying, “You are everything,” but it wasn’t the same when it came in response to nothing.
“Well, meanwhile,” Kango said. “We lost the synchrotrix that we were counting on to pay our bills. And we lost the super-weapon, too. So, we’re even more broke than we were before. Unless we can convince Mandre Lewis that we just saved the galaxy.”
“We’ll figure something out,” Sharon said, then turned back toward Jara. “But what are you going to do? There’s a huge fleet of ships out there, full of your fellow acolytes, and they desperately need some direction. Plus, this star system is rich in resources and technology, and it just had all its planetary defenses wrecked. You could go back to Salubrious, with all your people, and become a Countess for real.”
“Maybe,” Jara said. “Or maybe I could go with you guys? I feel like I have a lot to learn from you two. And I’m not sure I’m ready to explain what happened to the other acolytes.”
“Sure. How do you feel about helping to open a restaurant? Do you know how to make a tableclot?” Kango threw the Spicy Meatball headlong into an escape course before anybody could try to blame them for all the property damage. Behind them, the ruins of Salubrious IV sparkled with the dying light of countless fires as the tributary ships of The Vastness began, hesitantly and confusedly, to make planetfall.
Palm Strike’s Last Case
1.
Palm Strike’s costume has never been comfortable, but lately it’s pinching his shoulders and chafing in the groin area. Sweat pools in the boots. The Tensilon-reinforced helmet gives him a blinding headache after two hours, and the chestplate is slightly too loose, which causes it to move around and rub the skin off his stomach and collarbone.
The thing that keeps Palm Strike running past water tower after water tower along the cracked rooftops of Argus City, the thing that keeps him breaking heads after taking three bullets that night, is the knowledge that there are still innocents out there whose lives haven’t yet been ruined.
Kids who still have hope and joy, the way Palm Strike’s own son did before Dark Shard got him. Wh
en the bruised ribs and punctured lung start to slow him down and the forty-pound costume has him dancing in chains, he pictures his son. Rene. It never fails—he feels a weight in his stomach, like a chunk of concrete studded with rocks, and it fills him with rage, which he turns into purpose.
Argus City is full of disintegrating Frank Lloyd Wright knock-offs and people who have nothing to lose but someone else’s innocence. This was a great city, once, just like America was a great country and Earth was a great planet.
Palm Strike catches a trio of Shardlings selling dreamflies in Grand Park, under the bronze statue of a war hero piloting a drone. The drone casts deep shadows, and that’s where they hunker in a three-point parabolic formation. They’re well trained, maybe even ex-Special Forces, and decently armed, including one customized 1911 with a tight-bore barrel. Dark Shard must be getting desperate.
Once they’re down, Palm Strike feeds them their own drugs, baggie by baggie.
“You know my rule,” he growls. The process is not unlike making foie gras. One of these men is so terrified, he blurts out the location of Dark Shard’s secret lair, the Pleasuresplinter.
Ambulance called. These men will be fine. Eventually. Palm Strike’s already far away before the sirens come. Losing himself in the filthy obstacle course of broken walls and shattered vestibules in the old financial district. Leaping over prone bodies. He doglegs into the old French Quarter. All of the bistros are shuttered, but a few subterranean bars give off a tallowy glare, along with the sound of blues musicians who refuse to quit for the night. Cleansing acrid smoke pours around his feet.
Turns out Dark Shard’s Pleasuresplinter is hidden right under City Hall. But service tunnels from the river go all the way, almost. Catacombs, filthy and crawling with vermin. Palm Strike’s boots get soaked, both inside and out. Men and women stand guard at intervals, but none of them sees Palm Strike coming. Palm Strike’s main superpower is the stupidity of his enemies. He sets charges as he goes, something to be a beacon for first responders, firefighters and EMTs. And police. But don’t trust the police, never trust the police.
Palm Strike crashes through the dense mahogany door just as all the charges he set in the tunnels go off. Smoke billows up out of the fractured street behind him. The door explodes inwards, into a beautiful marble space—a mausoleum—with a recessed floor like a sauna, and a dozen little dark alcoves and nooks. Red drapes. Gray-suited men sporting expensive guns and obvious body armor with the trademark broken-glass masks.
In one of those nooks, just on the far side of the room, he spots the children: all in their teens, some of them barely pubescent. Their faces wide open, like they are in the middle of something that will never leave them, no matter what else they see or do.
Everyone over eighteen is shooting at Palm Strike. Lung definitely collapsed. Healing mojo has crapped out.
First priority: get the children out. Second priority: bring this den of foulness down on these men’s heads. Third priority: find Dark Shard.
Children first, though.
One of the bullets goes right through Palm Strike’s thigh, in spite of the ablative fibers. Femoral artery? No time to check. This place probably smells like candy floss and cheap perfume most of the time, but now it’s laced with vomit, blood and sewage. Clear a path to the exit for the children. Drive the armed men into cover, in the far alcoves. Be a constantly moving whirl of anger, all weapon and no target. Unleash the throwing-claws and smart-javelins. Find one brave child, who can be a leader, who will guide the rest to safety. That one, with the upturned nose and dark eyes, who looks like Rene only with lighter, straighter hair. “Get them out,” Palm Strike says, and the kid understands. Throwing claws have taken out most of the ordnance. Children run past Palm Strike, stumbling but not stopping, into the tunnel.
Palm Strike blacks out. Just for an instant. He snaps awake to see the boy he’d appointed leader in the hands of one of the top Shardlings—you can tell from the mask’s shatter pattern. Stupid. Busting in here, with no plan. Dumb crazy old fool. The kid squirms in the man’s grasp, but his little face is calm. Palm Strike has one throwing-claw left. He hears the first responders in the tunnels behind him, and they’ve found the children who got away.
Palm Strike’s throwing-claw hits the pinstripe-suited thug in the neck, and slashes at him on its way to find a weapon to disable. An angry insect, made of Tensilon, stainless steel, and certain proprietary polymers, scuttles down the man’s neck. The man pulls the trigger—just as the throwing claw’s razor talons slice the gun in two. The recoil takes half the man’s hand, and then the boy is running for the exit. Palm Strike wants to stay and force-feed this man every drug he can find here. But he’s lost a lot of blood and can’t breathe, and the shouts are getting close.
Palm Strike barely makes it out of there before the place swarms with uniforms.
The Strike-copter is where he left it, concealed between the decaying awnings of the Grand Opera House. He manages to set the autopilot before passing out again. Healing mojo works for crap nowadays. After only three years of this, he’s played out. He regains and loses consciousness as his limp body weaves over the barbed silhouette of downtown, and then the squat brick tops of abandoned factories. At last, the Strike-copter carries him up the river, to a secluded mansion near Mercy Bay.
Josiah, his personal assistant, releases him from the copter’s harness, with practiced care. Josiah’s young, too young, with curly red hair and a wide face that looks constantly startled. As usual, he wears an apron over a suit and skinny tie. “You really did it this time,” Josiah says, prepping the gurney to roll Palm Strike through the hidden doorway in one of the granite blocks of the mansion’s outer walls. Josiah removes the headpiece, but before he can attach the oxygen mask, Palm Strike says: “The children.”
“They got out okay,” Josiah responds. “Ten of them. You did good. Now rest.”
Some time later, a day maybe, Palm Strike wakes with tubes in his arms and screens beeping ostentatiously around him. The healing mojo has finally kicked in. He still feels like hell but he’s not dying any more. He sits up, slowly. Josiah tries to keep him bedridden, but they both know it’s a lost cause.
“You’ve received a letter,” Josiah says as Palm Strike scans newsfeeds on his tablet. “An actual piece of paper. On stationery.”
Palm Strike—now he’s Luc Deveaux, because he’s out of costume—shrugs, which makes his ribs flare with agony. But then Josiah hands him the letter, already opened, and the Space Administration logo sends a shiver through Luc before he even sees the words.
“Congratulations. You have been selected to join the next colonization wave . . .”
2.
The Space Agency interview process is the last vivid memory Luc has of Rene. And he remembers it two different ways.
First version: They were happy, a family, in this together. His son leaned his head against Luc’s shoulder in the waiting room, with its framed Naïve-art posters of happy colonists unsnapping helmets under a wild new sun. Rene joked about his main qualification being his ability to invent a brand new style of dance for a higher-gravity world, and even demonstrated high-gravity dancing for the other families in the waiting room, to general applause. Rene aced the interviews, they both did, and Luc was so proud of his son, as he gave clever answers, dressed up in a little suit like a baby banker.
In that version of the memory, Rene turned to Luc in the waiting room and said, “I know our main selling point is you, your geo-engineering experience. But they’ll need young people who are up for literally whatever, any challenge, to make this planet livable. And that’ll be me. You’ll see, Dad.”
So. Damn. Proud.
The other version of the memory only comes to Luc when he’s half asleep, or when he’s had a few single malts and is sick of lying to himself. In that other version, Rene was being a smartmouth the whole time—in the waiting room, in the interviews, the whole time—and Luc had to chew his tongue bloody to keep from te
lling his son to put a sock in it. They both knew that Luc was the one with the land-reclamation skills the colony would need, and all Rene had to do was shut his trap and let them think he’d make himself useful and not be too much of a smart-ass. That’s all.
Luc can just about remember the stiffening in his neck and chest every time Rene acted out or failed to follow the script in those interviews. Rene had to get cute, doing his high-gravity dance and annoying all the other families. It’s a close cousin to the anger that keeps him laying into Dark Shard’s thugs every night, if he wants to be honest with himself, which he mostly doesn’t. Except after a few single malts, or when he’s half asleep.
Both versions of the memory are true, Luc guesses. If he really wanted a second opinion, he could ask Josiah if he was too hard on Rene when his son was alive, but he never does.
He has too many other regrets crowding that one out, anyway. Like, why didn’t he pick Rene up from school himself that day? And keep better tabs, in general? Or, why didn’t he get Rene off this doomed planet before it was too late to save him?
3.
Now Luc grips the letter in both hands, wondering whose idea of a joke this is.
“You have to go,” Josiah says. Luc is already crumpling the letter into a ball, aiming for the recycling. “You have to go. Sir. If you stay, you’ll die.”
“My work here is not done.” Luc realizes he’s slept through most of the day. Almost time to suit up. “Dark Shard still needs to pay. For Rene. And all the rest.”
Luc can’t find his headpiece. A jet-black scowling half-mask, with a shock-absorbing duroplex helmet built in, it usually isn’t hard to spot in the midst of civilized bedroom furnishings and nice linens. But it’s gone. Now he remembers—Josiah took it from him when he was strapped to the gurney.
“How do you think you’ll best honor Rene’s memory?” Josiah is touching Luc’s arm. “By throwing your life away here? Or by following Rene’s dream and going to another planet, where you could really make a difference? You’ve destroyed Dark Shard’s lair. Which will weaken him a little, but also drive him further underground.”
Six Months, Three Days, Five Others Page 37
