The Hidden War

by Michael Armstrong

  Krim smiled. “Holy holy holy!”

  The fighter attacked.

  Krim pushed away from the orange blob in front of him, reached with his data hand toward a rack of weapons floating at the bottom of the field, and threw a flaming javelin at the asteroid. The javelin, a plasma torpedo, sundered the asteroid into thousands of quivering orange blobs. The blobs fell down toward the Kirkpatrick, and the harpy turned to Krim, swiveled her tentacles, and grabbed and snatched at the orange rocks. Krim turned his hands, and the image of the rocks flowing down to the Kirkpatrick turned as the harpy followed the rocks down. She flicked her fingertips, and blots of silver light shot out through the rocks to the battle cruiser. The orange blobs tumbled down toward her, leaving Krim in their wake. He squeezed his hands, catching up with the swarm, then losing them again.

  More speed, he thought, I need more speed.

  “Prepare to blow nukes,” Krim said.

  A flickering red switch appeared before him, a yellow box outlining it—a pull-down switch, like a breaker.

  “Confirm control override,” Sam said.

  “Affirmative. I’m going to blow the nukes, Sam.”

  Sam burped, thought. “Use of nukes may disable return capability.” He displayed an image of the fighter trapped in gray ice, disabled. He burped again. “You might not be able to go back to Ur space, friend.” Sam displayed another image of the fighter, the angel, banging against a flickering pink wall.

  “Crap,” Krim said. He thought of the Jack, of its warm warrens, its great chambers, of the paths through his home world worn into his feet. He thought of Corso, safe in Ur on the fighter carrier, back in the command tower, watching him, he hoped, monitoring. No way back to Ur, to escape? The Kirkpatrick advanced, only Krim and the fighter between her and his home.

  “We’ll do it anyway.” He thrust his hand into the image, ready to pull down the flashing red switch. The pink edge of Ur shimmered again, and a slender thread extended from the carrier to him: communication, a secure comm-link to the fighter base.

  “Holy Moloch, this is Green Eyes,” Corso said. “Do you copy?”

  Krim moved his image hand to the silver thread, pulled it to him. Corso. “Green Eyes, this is Holy Moloch.” Corso’s voice soothed him, calmed him. Corso would bring him through this, would see the Kirkpatrick destroyed and bring him home. Krim saw the thread quiver, knew Sam had begun uploading his battle log to the Screaming Angel. At least they had bought some time.

  “We got your final message. Sam-link indicates you are now going to blow the Big One. Confirm.”

  “Affirmative,” Krim said.

  “Uh, just a second, Holy Moloch.” The silver line flickered as Sam finished the upload, and a half minute later the voice came back on. “Okay, Holy Moloch. This raises an interesting possibility.” Corso’s voice cracked a bit, the way a voice cracked if it had a cold. “Uh, very interesting. If you blow the Big One, there is a strong possibility that it will open up a gap into Never Never Land big enough for Papa to enter. Do you copy?”

  He saw before him an image of the crystal globe fading below the pink horizon and vanishing, joining the smaller globe of the fighter carrier. A gap large enough for the Jack to enter Ur space? Krim smiled. That would save it, if they could survive there. “Copy, Green Eyes.” Into Ur! If the whole planetoid, the whole world could escape . . . Sam projected another image, that of the globe fading, one lone angel whirling away and away into the arms of the harpy. Abandoned!

  “Sam says blowing the Big One will close the gap from this end. Do you copy?”

  “Copy, Holy Moloch.” Corso paused, and in that pause Krim saw where the crack in the voice had come from. “That goes with our calculations—at least in this sector. Krim—Holy Moloch, you’ll save us but you can’t come with us, and we can’t come pick you up unless you make it to safe space.”

  Krim swallowed, the possibility of the loss not quite comprehensible. “Will it take the Big Bitch, too?” He projected an image of the harpy beast following the crystal globe over the pink horizon. Would blowing the nukes drag the Kirkpatrick into Ur space?

  “Negative, Holy Moloch. We don’t want her—she’s up to you.”

  “Okay—okay, Green Eyes.” Krim swallowed and bit his lip. “I’ll make my run. Give my regards to Jack.”

  “Copy, Holy Moloch, holy moly groove master, king of Beats.” Corso paused. “See . . . see you on the other side,” his lover whispered.

  Krim heard it in Corso’s voice, then caught the edge Corso tried to hide—caught the lie. If he could make it to a clean sector of space, Krim knew Corso wanted to say. But he wasn’t going to make it, not to somewhere safe, not away from the harpy. Not back to Ur, to home.

  He bit his lip again, grabbed out and yanked down the red switch before fear could stop him. The nukes rolled away behind the fighter and exploded, their blast waves kicking him forward at almost a thousandth the speed of light. The artificial reality flickered, and his perspective leapt forward, catching up with the tumbling orange boulders, down to the whirling tentacles of the harpy. A horrible weight pressed against him for just a moment, before the body waldo could adjust to the acceleration.

  “Holy holy holy holy,” Krim screamed, recalling the lines of St. Alan’s sacred poem. “Mother of Moloch, holy holy holy holy.”

  The image of the Kirkpatrick loomed larger and larger in his field of vision. Krim stared at the image, rubbed thumb and fingertip together, and a series of concentric circles whirled around the harpy. He moved his eyes, the circles wavering, then one by one the rings centered on the Kirkpatrick, each one glowing solid as they met the previous ring. When all the rings glowed solid, another pull-down switch appeared, and Krim reached up and yanked it.

  A blast of silver, a swirling bolt of energy—the last of his plasma torpedoes—fell down on the Kirkpatrick. The pink horizon grew brighter, washed over and around Krim’s field of view, all but an open circle centered on the battle cruiser. The pink glow flowed over the crystal globe, through it. A silver thread reached out to him.

  “Green Eyes to Holy Moloch,” Corso said. “The Jack’s going in. Affirmative. We’re pulling it in.”

  “Roger, Green Eyes. See you—see you around the corner.” One last lie, one last bit of hope.

  The silver thread fell away, and the pink glow wrapped around the crystal globe. The Jack drifted away from him, the glow of Ur space extending a slim tendril to Krim.

  He squeezed his fists, and bolts of blue energy fell down to the Kirkpatrick harpy, ripping at the tentacles of the image, wrapping the beast in a blue static embrace. The pink glow yanked the Jack into its clasp, pulled it through a wall so that the crystal globe shrank from a circle at its full diameter, then smaller and smaller until it was no more than a dot. And then the dot vanished.

  A tendril of pink hugged him, pulling him toward where the Jack had passed into Ur space. The Kirkpatrick glowed a neon blue as bolts of the plasma field wrapped around the battle cruiser. The harpy waved its tentacles, writhing in the blue field. Its tentacles contracted, folded, and Krim smiled.

  Then one long tentacle reached out through the field, became the field. It swatted away small orange rocks, swaying around and around in a spiral, the tentacle lengthening and lengthening, reaching toward Krim. Fingers grew out of the tip of the tentacle, flared out, and the hand, the tip of the tentacle, filled his field of view, grabbed him, yanked him toward it.

  Lights and icons, images of the fighter’s systems, appeared before the image of the tentacle. Letters and words ran across the field, numbers changing and changing. “Weapons systems, down,” Sam said. “Attitude controls, down. Shields, down. Monitors going. They’ve got us, babe. Slipping from the boundary.”

  Around the edges of the tentacle, through its fingers, Krim saw the pink tendril shred away, saw it vanish back into the dot of the Jack slipping into Ur space, saw the last bit of stochastic improbability separate from real space, from the mundane world even of his simula
ted reality. Ur space vanished and left him behind.

  “Holy Moloch . . .” Corso said.

  “No . . .” Krim whispered, and then she was gone.

  “Comm-link, down,” Sam said, the hiss of Ur shutting off.

  The tentacle squeezed, and Krim felt himself pulled in, pulled toward the opening maw of the harpy. The ugly face of the Kirkpatrick smiled at him, its great ivory teeth spreading, its mouth widening, the tentacle reaching toward the mouth. . . .

  Krim’s hands twitched, his fingers snapping and clicking as he shut down the fighter’s systems. More icons appeared against the image of the mouth opening wide to receive him.

  “Blowing Ur drive,” he said to Sam.

  “Destruct sequence on.” An icon flickered, and the useless drive rolled away from the fighter and exploded.

  “Blowing tug drive.” Another icon.

  “Destruct sequence on,” Sam said. “Ur drive, gone. Tug drive, gone.” The icons blipped off.

  “Sam—” Krim swallowed, hard. “Sam, wipe Sentient Animated Mode crystals. I’m sorry, Sam.”

  “Destruct sequence begun.” Sam whirred, and projected an icon of a gray-bearded man with heavy black glasses, a sly grin on his face. “Good-bye, friend.”

  “Good-bye, Sam,” he whispered.

  The face vanished, and the words SENTIENT ANIMATED MODE DESTROYED flickered across his field of view. He touched more fingers together, and more icons went, more lights flicked on, then off. His field of view grew darker, blacker, and then blazed intensely white. He stared into dull gray.

  For the first time in the battle, Krim felt the sweat of his skin against the sensors of his body waldo. He heard nothing other than the beat of his heart, the sound like surf against the rocky shore of his breathing. Distantly he heard a dull, thrumming sound, footsteps against a steel deck. Something hummed to his right, then clanked. He blinked, then shut his eyes as someone unsealed and raised his helmet and took off his eyephones, his goggles. Krim stared up at the mirrored visors of two Ameruss troopers in padded flat-black battlesuits, stared into the open barrels of their plasma rifles.

  Into captivity.

  PART I: IN

  Chapter 1

  A lighter shade of darkness crept into his cell. Light! Dark! Krim rolled off the thin foam pad of his bed, off the metal slab, and moved toward the light, crawling to it on callused knees and rough knuckles, a moth hungering for the flame. Light! Holy light! The disused corneas of his eyes fed on the brightening darkness, tasting it, wondering to themselves, Hmm, we seem to remember such a thing long ago, what is this? Light. He watched—watched! saw! looked!—as the darkness went from indigo to violet to ruby. Two forms took shape in the dull light, two armored and helmeted, unidentifiable forms with gleaming eyes, black sexless silhouettes against the ruddy light.

  “Krim, no first name, no middle name, five six two dash eight nine dash five oh oh six dash eight nine?” one of the guards said, shooting the words out in one breath.

  “Yeah?” He stared at the soft red light beaming from behind them. The door was open! The guards stood in the hallway. They had opened the door!

  “Come with us.”

  “What?” Can my sentence be up already? he thought. Krim reached for the wall by the cell door, tapped the calendar set into the steel: fifteen years, six months, fourteen days, two hours, six minutes, ten seconds and counting, the red numerals said—almost half his sentence completed. “Are you releasing me?”

  “Come with us,” a guard repeated.

  Krim crawled toward the guards, stopping at the door. He glanced back at the cell, seeing it for the second time since his imprisonment fifteen years ago. The metal slab that was his cot. A hole in the floor for a toilet. A small sink. The slot where his food tray was shoved in. The hatches next to the door where the guards shaved his head and face and trimmed his nails every other week. He ducked under the doorway and stood up.

  The guards caught him as his knees buckled, then hauled him up straight. Krim shook them off, concentrated on standing, letting his legs feel the weight, adjusting his balance.

  “I can walk,” he said. Hadn’t he exercised every day, keeping his legs strong by pressing them against the ceiling, keeping himself fit? “I’m just not good at balancing.”

  “Okay,” one guard said. “This way.” He steered Krim down the hall, to an even brighter light. The material of his armor shimmered and changed colors as he walked from dark to light, so that he seemed to almost disappear into the walls. The other guard slipped a glove off and placed her bare palm against a plate on the wall. A door slid open, and the guards pushed him into the lift.

  “Here,” the guard on his left said, “put these on.” He handed Krim a pair of eyeglasses, lenses silvered like the visors of the guards’ helmets.

  “What?”

  “Shades,” he said. “It’s probably been a while since you’ve seen daylight.”

  Daylight. Daylight. Out. He was getting out. He was getting out. Krim slipped the sunglasses onto his nose and over his ears, the hard plastic frames flattening the stubble of his hair against his skull.

  “Am I free?”

  The guard chuckled, and the lift rose up into the light.

  Krim walked naked into the brilliance, only the glasses shielding him. Sunlight! He slowed, letting the sun warm his body, his dark skin eating the rays blazing down from an almost cloudless blue sky. Sky! Sun! He looked up into the blazing orb, watched a goshawk circle lazily overhead, watched tufts of clouds float in the breeze. Sky, sun, bird! Out!

  His steps felt more confident, but the guards paced him on either side, ready to catch him if he fell. He did not fall, would not let himself fall. They walked out of the lift building and across a long courtyard, high, gray granite walls surrounding him on three sides, a tall building blocking the way on the fourth. Lightly muscled, firm, his body didn’t look too bad, he thought. His toenails were ragged and broken, his knees callused from crawling on them, his knuckles similarly tough. He stared down at the jet black wisps of his pubic hair—lightly silvered with gray—and at the dusky black folds of his penis and scrotum, and felt a stirring he hadn’t let himself feel in years.

  Free? he thought. Am I free?

  They stopped at the building opposite the lift station. The guard on his left took off a glove, put a hand against a panel, and another door slid open. None of this looked familiar to him; he’d been brought in a different way years before. They escorted Krim inside, down a hall and into a room labeled REHABILITATION. A woman in a sleek white jumpsuit and matching hood got up from the desk, smiled at the guards, and motioned at a box that looked like half a sarcophagus.

  “Put him in there,” the woman in white said. She glanced at his nakedness, then turned away.

  “Uh, what the hell’s that?” Krim asked. He stopped, and the guards tensed, tightening their grip on him. One of them took off the sunglasses.

  “You do want to be released, don’t you?” the white woman asked, not looking directly at him. With the shades off, Krim noticed that her hood fit snugly around her ears, seeming to plunge into her ear canals. “We must do a medical evaluation before you can be released.”

  “That’s, uh, some sort of autophysician then?” Krim asked.

  “Yes,” she said. “Yes, that’s what it is. Please.” She waved again at the sarcophagus.

  The guards walked Krim over to the open box, and helped Krim get inside it. He lay down, and as he settled in, some sort of soft foam rose up to cushion him. The foam oozed around him, holding him in and embracing him. Krim stirred, and the foam tightened.

  “What’s this? What’s this?” he asked.

  The woman guard looked at him, shook her head, then handed a thin tablet to the white woman. “You’ll have to sign for him.”

  “Of course.” She placed her hand on the tablet, a red light flickered for an instant, and the guard took the slate back.

  “Good luck, Krim,” she said.

  Krim nodded,
the foam tightening around his neck as he bobbed his chin. It oozed around his body like warm mud, some viscous fluid flowing along his skin. “Uh, this feels strange—” he said.

  “Shhh,” the white woman said. “Don’t fight the hide. Let it work itself into you.”

  “Hide? What the hell? Hey—hey!”

  The white woman touched a button, and a clear shell slid over the sarcophagus, shutting Krim off from the room. He stared up at the hooded woman as the white foam rose over his face. It oozed around his chin, his ears, then up to his eyes, his lips and nose and forehead, then became more viscous, dripping into his mouth and into his eyes, gagging him, blinding him—smothering him. Warmer now, the fluid gurgled around him, filling the sarcophagus, and Krim found he could move within it. He pounded on the lid of the box, tried to push back the white mud from his eyes, tried to scrape the mud from the clear lid, but all he could see was white: white in his eyes, white in the box, white shadows moving outside.

  Krim gasped for breath, and the fluid squirmed into his chest, filling his lungs. He gagged again, spat the fluid out, but it pushed itself down into his body, as if it had a life of its own. He spat once more, vomiting, but the fluid worked its way again and again into his lungs and stomach.

  “Relax,” said the woman’s voice through the thick ether of the fluid. Her voice boomed in the sarcophagus, as if Krim floated in a womb and the woman were his mother. “Let it take you. Breathe deeply; relax.”

  He quit fighting then, not because he had lost the will to fight, but because he found he did not need to fight. He could breathe through the fluid; somehow it sustained him, gave him air. As he took deep, then shallow breaths, the fluid oozed farther into his lungs. As he swallowed more, the fluid drove farther, into his stomach, into his intestines. He could feel its warmth moving through him the way a warm cup of tea on a cold morning would spread through him. The fluid had the texture of runny oatmeal, but tasted . . . like chicken, Krim thought, recalling the free-ranging birds they’d slaughtered for feasts on the Jack. Like chicken.