Hawk_Hand of the Machine

by Van Allen Plexico

  “And you seek to emulate him,” the Inquisitor declared, facing Hawk and jabbing an accusatory finger at him. “The prosecution rests.”

  “This is a joke,” Hawk exclaimed, fiery emotions rising within him. “Even if my… predecessor… in this role did somehow commit an act of betrayal—and the evidence of that seems pretty thin to me—that doesn’t mean that I have—or that I would!”

  “Silence!” The Inquisitor glared at Hawk, then turned back to the jury. “The evidence is clear,” he stated formally. “There can be only one sentence for both of them.”

  “Hold on,” Falcon growled, speaking at last. “When do we get to present the defense’s side of the argument?”

  “There is no defense’s side of the argument,” the judge stated flatly. “The jury will render its verdict now.”

  Hawk sighed. He glanced over at Falcon. The big man’s good eye widened a tad. He was looking down on the proceedings from the vantage point of five feet off the ground, where he was held immobile by gravitic waves, the same as Hawk.

  “Interesting justice system you people have,” Falcon grumbled. Then, “Wait—you took genetic samples from us before. Any results back from those?”

  The judge looked to the Inquisitor.

  The Inquisitor gave a slight shrug. “That was a formality, for the most part.”

  “But you do have the original genetic records of the Hands stored somewhere, for comparison?” Falcon pressed.

  “We do. But even so—”

  The judge nodded once. “Let’s continue to play this by the book,” he intoned. “Show us the results of the genetic matching.”

  An apparently lower-ranking Inquisitor in a dark green robe emerged from the shadows and handed a small crystal to the Grand Inquisitor. He in turn inserted it into a niche in the wall. The holographic display activated again, showing two swirling patterns of lines and dots of many colors and shapes.

  “These are the baseline genetic codes—the original codes for Falcon and Hawk, from before the Shattering. We have preserved them through the centuries along with our holiest artifacts.”

  He gestured and another pair of patterns appeared, off to one side.

  “These are the codes of the two impostors we have captured here. As you can see when we move the two sets together, they will not match at all.”

  He gestured again and the two sets moved together.

  They matched perfectly.

  The room was dead-silent for perhaps three seconds. Then all hell broke loose.

  Most of the Inquisitors were pointing at Hawk and shouting, but everyone was speaking at once, so no one could be heard. From what Hawk could make it out, they were basically reacting as if the devil himself had been brought aboard.

  “Excuse me, people,” Falcon boomed—and his shout got their attention. They all stopped again and stared up at him. “Thank you. Now, as you may have noticed, it wasn’t just Hawk that was a match. So was I.” He grimaced. “As I’ve been telling you numbskulls from the beginning.” He forced a smile back on his rugged countenance. “So—since nobody’s ever accused me of being anything other than a loyal and hard-working Hand of the Machine—will you please get me down from here?”

  The Inquisitor looked to the judge, who looked back at him, then at the jury. No one seemed to have an objection at this point. An assistant deactivated the gravitic field and Falcon popped free of the wall, dropping the short distance to land with a heavy clang on the metal floor.

  “Excellent,” Falcon said, straightening up. “Now then.” He turned to look up at Hawk for a moment, where he was still pinned to the wall. Then he turned back to the crowd of robed and hooded figures filling much of the rest of the circular chamber. He smiled an even broader smile at them.

  “Remember how I told you that you should all hope I couldn’t get down from your wall there? Because, if I got free, I would kill every last one of you?”

  He blinked his red-glowing mechanical eye twice. A tiny whirring sound came from within the metal part of his skull.

  “Well—I’m free.”

  A gunmetal-gray pistol dropped from a hidden compartment in his mechanical arm and slid smoothly into his hand. He raised it casually.

  The Inquisitor and the jurors all gawked at him.

  As Hawk looked on in astonishment, he opened fire.

  2: FALCON

  “Those Inquisition guys sure did make some funny noises when we blasted them and trashed their ship, didn’t they?”

  Hawk simply stared back at the big man who was lounging on the far side of the central cabin. They were back aboard Hawk’s ship, having thoroughly demolished the vessel that had held them captive.

  “What?” Falcon said at last, the silence from his counterpart growing long and uncomfortable. “You didn’t like how I handled that?”

  Hawk frowned. He looked around the cabin briefly before settling his gaze back upon the big cyborg.

  “You certainly handled it in a…definitive fashion,” he said at last.

  “I sure did,” Falcon replied with a grin. Then, seeing that Hawk wasn’t smiling, he exhaled slowly and crossed his arms. “I suppose you were perfectly fine with having those goons execute you, then?” he pressed. “Because, if you didn’t notice, they were pretty much going to kill you. And they were going to let me go, there at the end.” He snorted, rubbing at his human eye with one rough hand. “Let me go—hah—they were going to do my bidding! They would’ve practically worshipped me, as the first genuine Hand they’ve probably encountered in centuries.” He returned Hawk’s level gaze then. “Well, the first genuine one they didn’t want to put to death, anyway.”

  Hawk didn’t reply. He merely sat back in the curved seat—a seat that had been engineered, centuries earlier, to perfectly fit his body—and brooded. Neither man spoke for some time, while the ship’s intelligence kept them on course.

  “Wait a minute,” Falcon said, after what felt like half an hour had passed in silence. “You’re not upset about me gunning down a bunch of murderous fanatics. You’re thinking that maybe they were right.”

  Hawk’s eyes flared as they locked on Falcon. “What?”

  “You’re wondering if that first Hawk really was guilty of what they accused him of,” the big man replied, sitting up a bit as he spoke. “And if that means you deserve to be punished for it.”

  Hawk started to retort, then bit his tongue and kept quiet.

  “Yeah—that’s it, alright,” Falcon said, nodding to himself. “I’m not always the quickest on the uptake in these kinds of matters, but I usually figure it out right in the end.” He rubbed his chin. “You’re beating yourself up over something you didn’t even do—over something you’re not entirely convinced your predecessor did, for that matter.”

  Hawk stood and moved across the cabin to where it connected to the cockpit. He started to go through, then hesitated and stood there for a moment.

  “I’m somewhat responsible, though—right?” he asked, staring out the forward viewport at the stars streaming by. “I mean—he was me, and I’m him—isn’t that so?”

  “Of course not,” Falcon said. “You are your own individual. Now, if your awakening process had gone as it was supposed to, then there might have been an argument to make that you are just a continuation of him. But it didn’t. You don’t have any of the first Hawk’s memories. So you have no connection to anything he might have done. Not at all—not on a personal level.” He shrugged. “So if the first Hawk made some bad choices, it doesn’t mean you will. You are your own man.”

  Hawk appeared to be considering this. For Falcon’s part, he considered that alone a major victory. All he had ever really understood in life—in his very long life—was how to tear things apart; how to find their tiniest points of weakness and rip them to pieces. The idea of actually trying to help someone—trying to build them back up, and put them back together—that was pretty much unknown territory for him. If what he was saying was having a real and positive effe
ct on Hawk, then maybe he himself was capable of more than just destruction. And that made him feel very good, for the first time in a very long time.

  Whether Hawk would respond positively or negatively to Falcon’s persuasive monologue, however, would never be known. For at that moment, the ship’s voice cried out, its mechanical voice almost frantic: “Enemy approaching!”

  Falcon’s face expressed astonishment and outrage. “What—is it those Inquisition idiots again? Did they track us?”

  Hawk moved quickly into the cockpit area and climbed into the main seat. “What enemy?” he demanded.

  Falcon leaned in through the door and together they gazed out through the forward viewport at what lay just ahead of them. The ship’s intelligence brought up a holographic close-up in front of them.

  The shimmering, dark hull; the bright streaks along the surface; the long, narrow, seemingly organic shape… There was no mistaking what they were seeing.

  “The Adversary!” cried Hawk.

  “Hyperdrive!” Falcon shouted to the ship. “Jump now!”

  “Jump engine not available,” the ship replied, strain evident even in its modulated tones. “A field projected by the enemy is suppressing the drive. We have no access to the Above or to subspace.”

  “How did they find us?” Hawk wondered aloud.

  “Save the technical questions for later,” Falcon barked. “Their suppression field might have a limited range, so—”

  “Yeah,” Hawk said, nodding. He gripped the flight controls and accelerated away from the enemy as rapidly as the sublight engines would allow.

  “Ship, jump the instant we’re free of the field!”

  “I had already assumed those to be your standing orders,” the ship answered him.

  Huge, intense, blazing bursts of plasma shot past the forward viewport.

  “I don’t think your ship can take more than one hit from those before we’re good and vaporized,” Falcon told his fellow Hand.

  “No kidding.”

  Hawk continued to jink the ship back and forth, even as he kept pushing the engines to the max, striving to increase the distance between them and the Adversary.

  “Any lessening of the suppression effect?” he called out.

  “Negative. Effect is constant at all distances thus far.”

  Hawk cursed.

  Falcon considered the options that presented themselves, then leaned slightly over Hawk’s shoulder, saying, “Turn us around. Go straight at them.”

  Hawk glanced backward, regarding his new companion with an expression that conveyed both a sense of disbelief and the notion that he might have to drop Falcon off at the nearest lunatic asylum, should they survive beyond the next few seconds.

  “We’re not going to do any good out here,” the cyborg Hand pointed out. “If they’re going to vaporize us, what difference does it make which way we’re going at the time? And if they’re going to drag us on board their ship, better that we do it on our terms, right?”

  Hawk blinked, processing what the man was saying. Then, with a slight shrug, he curved them about and aimed directly towards the Adversary ship.

  Predictably, Hawk’s ship wailed in dismay.

  “Quiet down or I’ll have to mute you,” Hawk told the artificial intelligence, and with an almost sullen and fatalistic resignation, it piped down.

  “If they want us as prisoners—which might be the case, if they still remember this ship’s design, and if they realize who we probably are—then they won’t obliterate us.”

  “That’s a lot of ‘ifs,’” Hawk said.

  Falcon merely shrugged.

  Hawk’s piloting skills clearly had been implanted successfully in his mind before his premature awakening. He managed to dodge the few blasts that came their way. In truth, however, it was clear to both men in the cockpit that the Adversary apparently wanted to capture them alive; otherwise, a broad barrage of fire would have taken them out quickly.

  Falcon left the piloting to Hawk for a few seconds and moved to the main cabin, where he chose one particular panel along the gray wall. He touched it and waited a moment but nothing happened.

  “Ship!” he called testily. “Open this thing now!”

  “You are not authorized to—”

  “NOW!” he roared.

  The panel slid open.

  Falcon reached in, gave the entirety of the thus-revealed armory a cursory glance, then reached in and began removing weapons with both hands. Some items fit precisely into niches in his cyborg arms and legs and torso; others he strapped on or stored in his belt pouches. Then he returned to the cockpit.

  The enemy ship, which the tactical display revealed to be nearly a quarter-mile long, filled the forward viewport. Falcon whispered the remainder of his strategy into Hawk’s ear and the dark-haired man didn’t flinch; he merely nodded in agreement, having for the most part already guessed what Falcon was about. He was now hunched over the controls, his muscles taut, eyes focused with absolute intensity upon the tactical display as it fed him velocities, angles, and heading information. He aimed them precisely on a collision course with the bizarre vessel, twisting and curving the entire way.

  When mere meters lay between their silver hull and the bizarre streaked surface of the enemy, Hawk spun them about and fired the thrusters at full power. The ship vibrated savagely, and then with a clang it stopped moving altogether.

  Hawk sat back, exhaling slowly, prying his fingers stiffly free of the flight control sticks one by one.

  “No time to relax,” Falcon stated, already moving into the main cabin. “Come on.”

  Hawk joined him in the larger space, wondering exactly how they were going to proceed.

  “Ship,” Falcon said then, “do I need to lay this out for you, step by step, or—?”

  “No,” the ship answered. “I understand. I do not like it, but I understand.”

  Hawk, realizing that he was therefore the only one present who did not understand, waited to see what was about to happen. He did not have to wait long. A square segment of the floor just in front of him lit up a bright orange, then white. Then, mere seconds later, it faded back to its customary dull gray. Then it slid aside, retracting into the hull.

  Falcon grinned. Hawk moved up alongside him and peered down.

  A hole had been cut through the strange hull material of the enemy ship, and now a gray tube extended two feet down through it.

  He looked back up at Falcon, somewhat puzzled.

  “After you,” the cyborg said with a half-grin.

  Hawk’s eyes widened.

  “This was your plan? Going inside there?”

  Falcon said nothing, but his humorless smile widened microscopically.

  “Okay,” Hawk said then. “But—why?”

  Falcon patted the array of munitions now attached to his massive body. The grin widened all the way out.

  “If we can’t blow ’em up from outside,” he said, “we’ll blow ’em up from inside.”

  Then, before Hawk could object further, the big cyborg stepped over the edge and dropped into the enemy ship.

  Cursing vividly, Hawk leapt after him.

  3: HAWK

  Hawk’s ship disengaged from the hull of the enemy vessel and tumbled away like a piece of discarded flotsam for several seconds. Then its thrusters activated and it cruised smoothly into open space, even as blossoms of flame erupted from various spots along the other ship’s hull.

  Hawk took over and manipulated the controls with a mastery born of RNA injections his body had been given prior to his awakening. He spun them about so that the black ship filled the forward viewport.

  “Nice work,” he told Falcon, as they watched the big vessel spouting fireballs from a dozen places. It canted about, the nose moving downward and the tail end swinging slowly forward. “Their stabilizers are gone, at least. Looks like navigational controls, too.”

  “Let’s not get ahead of ourselves,” the cyborg cautioned. “We don’t know what it ta
kes to completely kill one of those things. In fact—”

  Before Falcon could complete his sentence, the warning he was attempting to give came true. The fires died down, the ship moved back so that its nose pointed directly at them, and blasts of energy weapons fire sprayed out.

  “Evasive,” shouted Falcon, even as Hawk danced his little ship up and down, side to side. The blasts missed connecting with them by the scantest of distances, and Hawk could have sworn he actually felt the intense heat, even through the void of space, as the deadly plasma bolts zipped past.

  “Do we have hyperdrive back?” the big man demanded.

  “Negative,” the ship responded. “It returned for a moment, some seconds ago, but—”

  “Why didn’t you tell us?” Hawk shouted, continuing to dance the ship amidst the barrage of fire.

  “Before I could, it was suppressed again,” the ship stated. “They have a device that—”

  “I was sure I blew that part up,” Falcon muttered. “I was sure that was it.”

  “Doesn’t matter now,” Hawk shot back, his eyes locked on the tactical display and his hands gripping the flight controls. “I’m open to any new ideas!”

  Falcon growled deep in his throat but didn’t say anything. The ship, for once, remained quiet.

  A bolt of energy passed by so close that the viewport flared with blinding brilliance and the two occupants instinctively shielded their eyes with their hands. Hawk cursed, knowing it was only a matter of seconds—if that long—before the gunners on the enemy vessel got lucky and connected.

  And then something unexpected happened: A bolt of energy flashed past them going the other way.

  They didn’t realize this at first, of course. The blasts moved too quickly for that. What they did perceive relatively quickly was that the enemy was no longer firing directly at them—though it was still firing.

  Hawk frowned and, glancing back at an equally perplexed Falcon, demanded, “Ship! What just happened?”