Clockwork Universe

by Seanen McGuire

  For that was why the pods had come. They had come to find the beings that had reached out to them. They had come to fold those into their greater consciousness. And when that was done, they would move on. There were other worlds, other forms of life they hoped to commune with, which meant they would eventually uproot; they would travel to another world, and find more. And more after that. He could feel them already, places where haulms had seeded other worlds, which were now waiting to be visited.

  Like all life, the pods were evolving, slowly accreting knowledge and wonder and experience to … to do who knew what? Sean certainly had no idea, but he hoped one day he might.

  With care, he drew his attention inward, back toward Earth. The collective minds of the pods became more and more clear. In fact, so did all life on Earth. It felt like a thing he’d always been in touch with at some level, but now, as if a light had been shone on it at last, he could sense it separate from himself.

  He recognized he was merely delaying now. The pods were calling to him. And for his part—though he was not without regrets—he knew he was ready.

  And so, after one last longing glance to the world around him, he reached out.

  And allowed them to lift him up.

  When Comrade Ekaterina Died for the Motherland

  J. R. Hargenrader

  No more than a quarter of an hour had passed when Ekaterina hungered for another kill.

  Red Square was on fire. Below the burning Kremlin towers, armored traction engines and steam wagons belched smoke into the overcast sky. Snow blanketed the bodies of cavalrymen and horses cut down by laser fire. At the center of the Square lay one of the deadly silver tripods, its missing leg rendering it impotent and silent. Ekaterina waited for her signal.

  If the wires were correct, London and Paris had already fallen to the armies of towering tripods, and an attack on Berlin was underway. She cared little for the fate of those weak imperialistic countries, but the simple fools provoked the creatures that had slaughtered thousands of her comrades and wrought destruction across the Motherland. To think, these inoplanetyane had come so close to defeating the most powerful nation in the world. A chill ran down her spine. She would teach them what it meant to be an enemy of the People.

  Ekaterina flexed her skeletal metal gloves and flakes of black alien blood peppered the snow at her boots. The burn on her arm stung, reminding her of the damage to her exoskeleton. Two of the four power-assist pistons in the suit’s arm were severed, weakening its total strength. Beneath one of the destroyed pistons, she could make out the charred flesh of her arm and caught a whiff of burned bacon. The stomach churning smell reminded her of the horrors of Novorossiysk—she hadn’t been able to eat pork since.

  Fireworks exploded at the far side of the Square, filling the sky with red and white flashes that cast shadows on the carnage below. The concussions shook snow from windowsills and bodies. Ekaterina’s breath puffed white in the cold air as her eyes remained fixed on the tripod. Its rectangular doors slid open and alien soldiers spilled out. She fingered the trigger loops in her gloves.

  The explosions halted and the last boom echoed through the Square. A red star burst through the thick firework smoke. The long sleek Russian airship Glasnos had arrived, its gondola-mounted cannons and machine guns lighting up the battlefield. This was Ekaterina’s signal.

  She stepped forward and the compact steam engine mounted on her back hummed in response. Using the suit’s increased power, she leaped down the stairway to the bronze monument of Minin and Pozharsky. Beneath the figures, Zakhar knelt behind the granite base in his arctic camo exoskeleton and peered through the wide scope of his steamrail. Ekaterina took cover at the opposite side of the monument and aimed her cannon arm’s scope at the tripod. She prayed for the strength of the two Russian heroes who pushed out the Polish invaders during the Times of Trouble.

  Around the perimeter of the tripod’s wide saucer-like body were rudimentary fortifications made up of vehicle scraps, dead horses, men, and the tripod’s dismembered leg. Aside from the white uniforms they wore, the aliens were indistinguishable from humans at this distance. Up close, they were squat, slow, and so frail they were no match in hand-to-hand combat. In the face of a Russian exoskeleton, they were mincemeat. But despite their physical weaknesses, their armies of tripods and laser technology had brought nations to their knees. Even Russia’s most advanced alloys were little match for the laser fire.

  The alien soldiers fired on the indomitable Glasnos, light from the laser fire pulsing in flashes. None of the soldiers faced Ekaterina and Zakhar. The plan had worked. She fingered the comm loops in her glove to acknowledge her readiness. An affirmative beeped in her ear.

  Zakhar left the granite base and Ekaterina followed him to a nearby steam wagon that continued to burn. Snow pelted her goggles and the cold wind created by the exoskeleton’s speed stung her bare cheeks. Three alien soldiers turned from the Glasnos. Lasers pulsed past Ekaterina, vaporizing the falling snow into steam. Zakhar reached the wagon and ducked down. Ekaterina fired her cannon arm, then ducked next to him. Between the metal plates in the back of the wagon, she could see, and smell, the charred bodies of trapped soldiers.

  Zakhar knelt to the side of the blackened wagon and aimed the long flat rifle. A short cable led from the rifle, beneath his arm, and around his side to the engine at his back. He pulled the trigger. The concussion rocked the snow and debris before them. Even at this range the high velocity projectile ripped the alien apart, leaving behind a black mist where it once stood.

  Ekaterina scanned the field as Zakhar’s steambullets cracked the air. She keyed a message. “Overturned traction engine at one o’clock. Fifty meters.”

  “Acknowledged.”

  They waited for a pause in the laser fire. Zakhar moved out from cover while Ekaterina fired her cannon across the front of the aliens’ forward fortifications. A series of small explosions sent concrete and dust into the air. The laser fire ceased. Out of the corner of her eye, she saw Zakhar take cover behind the traction engine.

  “We’ve got this,” Zakhar signaled. She could see the smile beneath his black leather goggles. She imagined the confidence in his voice, the smirk with a day’s growth of stubble. Like Minin and Pozharsky, they would push these invaders out.

  “You’re Minin. I’ll be Pozharsky.”

  “Nyet,” he signaled. “My full beard is better than his.”

  She laughed and ducked back, ready for the sound of Zakhar’s covering fire to make her move.

  “Hold,” Zakhar signaled.

  Ekaterina crouched. Laser fire pulsed over the wagon and the heat warmed her face. The Glasnos’ great turbines reverberated off the Kremlin walls as the massive airship approached. Laser fire on the ship intensified and smoke poured from one of its gondolas. “What is it?”

  “Not sure,” he signaled. “Power issue. Can you get a visual on my engine?”

  Ekaterina backed away from the wagon to get a better angle on Zakhar. She signaled confirmation and he turned to show her the steam engine mounted on his back. She ran through the engine parts—the tender, the steam dome, regulator, coupling rods, boiler tubes. Then her eyes found the primary boiler. A tiny jet of steam sprayed from the sphere, a sure sign the exoskeleton would experience a critical failure soon. Her heart fell. She’d have to go it alone. She signaled him about the damage.

  He nodded. They stared at each other, seconds feeling like hours. His fingers moved and her earpiece beeped. “OK, let’s move,” he signaled.

  “You can’t go like that.”

  “It will hold,” he said.

  “You need to drop the engine and—”

  “Only one of us has to get inside. There is no time, Kat.”

  She shuddered. He never used her nickname on a mission, only under the cover of darkness and between the sheets of her bed. But he was right, the Glasnos was making its final charge. This was their last chance.

  She keyed her agreement. Zakhar gave her the p
osition of an armored car to use for cover. He stood up and fired his steamrail.

  The power-assist pistons in her exo’s legs pushed her over the wagon and she ran for the car. The entrance to the tripod was a hundred meters away with just a handful of soldiers taking cover behind its charcoal metal leg. Zakhar’s covering fire pinned the alien soldiers as she raced past debris and bodies and into the shadow of the tripod’s wide body. She fired, then ducked behind the car. Secure in her position, she stepped out and covered Zakhar.

  Enemy lasers pulsed high, then higher. Overhead, steam jets sprayed from Zakhar’s feet as he fired the deadly steamrail. He landed in front of the detached tripod leg and ducked on one knee. A soldier popped up. Zakhar blasted its head off. He jumped over the tripod leg and pointed both arms at the cluster of soldiers. Jets of steam erupted from his wrists, engulfing the screaming aliens in a white cloud. The chorus was eerily human and Ekaterina tasted bile. Zakhar fired into the broiling mist, silencing the remaining screams.

  The tripod doors slid open and a new group of soldiers jumped out. Zakhar took cover and lasers pummeled the car around Ekaterina. She waited for an opening, but the new barrage of laser fire was too much. The vibrations from the Glasnos’ engines rumbled in her chest.

  “I’m pinned,” she signaled.

  “Me, too.”

  “Request covering fire. We’ll move in.”

  Bullets rained down from above as blood and debris created a cloud around the soldiers. The Glasnos. It was enough of an opportunity for Ekaterina to fire.

  “Hold your position and keep me covered,” Zakhar said.

  “What?”

  “Finish the job as Pozharsky would. Spokoynoy nochi, Kat.”

  Zakhar jumped over the barricade and ran directly at the soldiers. What was he doing? Then she saw the steam spraying from his engine. The crack had expanded across the broiler and, with each step, the steam intensified. Ekaterina fired at the soldiers as fast as possible, the heat from her cannon melting the snow at her feet.

  Zakhar leaped, his steam jets launching him into a perfect arc at the soldiers. Laser fire severed his arm, spinning him into a tumble. Another laser struck his chest.

  The explosion blew Ekaterina off her feet as hot steam and debris sliced into her face. Her body slammed into the ground and shocks of pain shot down her arm. Windows shattered and crumbled, and shards of glass rained down over the sides of the tripod and bodies below.

  Ekaterina struggled back to her feet, her wounded arm and heart burning with pain. She wiped her goggles and blood smeared over the cracked lenses. Through the ringing in her ears she could hear aliens yelling. One pointed at her while others charged out of the tripod’s open doors, stepping over their fallen. A barrage of fire from above struck down the first few soldiers and halted the attack.

  Ekaterina seized the opportunity to close in on the squad. She stepped over the bodies torn apart by the Glasnos and sought her next target. The new soldiers were bunched up and tripping over one another, either inexperienced or incompetent. In her exoskeleton, she closed the distance so fast the first alien didn’t have time to raise its weapon. She blasted it with her cannon. Alien bits exploded in all directions and sprays of black goop smattered across the tripod’s polished surface. Another alien swung at her with the butt of its rifle. Ekaterina deflected the blow with her metal arm. She lifted the alien by its neck and tore its head off. A nearby voice cried out in horror. She pitched the head at the screaming soldier and it toppled over in a heap. Two more cannon shots finished the remaining aliens.

  She unclipped a limonka from her leg rack and tossed it into the tripod’s open doors. Human-like voices howled in the ship, until the explosion ended them. Her steam jets carried her into the air and through the opening. She landed with a metallic thud that echoed off the tripod’s silver walls. She swept the room with her cannon, searching for the next target. Her breaths were rapid and her heart pounded in her chest.

  Nothing.

  The room, a cargo bay, was filled with laser rifles, metal crates, and a few dead aliens whose white uniforms were drenched in black. Streaks of black blood smeared across the metallic silver floor led to the only other door at the far end of the cargo bay. She ran to the door, the exoskeleton’s feet clanking and splashing in the black pools. She keyed the panel next to the door. It did not open.

  Ekaterina gripped the lip of the door with one hand, her injured arm hanging loose, and pulled. The door slid a few centimeters. She pulled harder. The engine at her back hummed louder and the power in her glove and arm pistons increased. The door slid with ease.

  She tossed a limonka through the door to the left, then another to the right. The explosions sent a jet of heat and smoke back out the door. Ahead in the hall, amid the clearing smoke, lay one mangled alien body. More black blood led to another door. Where was the counter assault?

  She pulled open the next door and a laser pulsed wide. Ekaterina aimed and pulled a trigger loop. The alien collapsed in a spray of black mist. Behind it were more aliens. Dozens of them. She intuitively scanned for weapons. No. No. No. An alien jumped between her and the others. She aimed, then stopped.

  The alien held its arms spread wide out. Its eyes were closed and its squat body trembled like that of a small child. It appeared to be … crying?

  None of the other aliens were armed. At her feet, the black streaks of blood fanned apart to the walls where aliens were crowded on the floor and small platforms. Some were dead with gaping wounds and mouths frozen in silent screams. Others cried out in agony, their wounds covered with a green, fungus-like bandaging. The remaining moaned in pain, unaware of the situation. Two healthy aliens shielded the wounded with their bodies. It was a medical bay.

  Ekaterina choked on the smell of bacon. She lowered her weapon.

  * * *

  Ekaterina stood at attention in front of the alien medical bay when the Grand Marshal entered the hall. The army’s most senior officer wore a lightweight exoskeleton configuration that rested on the shoulders and supported a cannon and power-assist pistons for one arm. She paused to look over the black scar of a limonka blast. Then her eyes turned to Ekaterina.

  Ekaterina saluted and the reflex sent a burning, stabbing pain down her injured arm. In the full exoskeleton she stood a good twenty centimeters taller than the Grand Marshal, yet she felt so much smaller.

  The Grand Marshal saluted with a powered hand. “You have done well, Comrade Captain.” A single white hair ran through the woman’s jet black bun pulled tight under an ushanka hat. “Mother Russia has a great many soldiers, but none so exceptional as you. Your lost comrade will receive the Order of Stalin. I will see to that, personally.”

  Ekaterina straightened her back. Zakhar’s death still felt distant and unreal. A part of her expected to pull her comm loops and receive his acknowledgement. “Thank you, Comrade Marshal.” She saluted again.

  A squad of soldiers dressed in clean and pressed uniforms arrived to relieve Ekaterina. Their shiny boots squeaked on the silver floor as they took guard positions in front of the medical bay.

  “Walk with me,” the Grand Marshal said. She led Ekaterina down the hall. When they were out of earshot from the soldiers, the Grand Marshal lowered her voice. “What stopped you from killing the enemy? Why did you choose to … alter … my orders?”

  The weight of the question gave her pause. Ekaterina wanted to say it reminded her of the tiny hospital near Novorossiysk, next to the Black Sea. Her first combat assignment as a soldier had been to prevent the Romanians from firebombing the city. There were no Minins or Pozharskys that night. Separated from her lost battalion, she had served as a triage nurse in a hospital overwhelmed by the surge of terrified casualties. Ekaterina would never forget the scores of dead, the agonizing moans of the dying, and the choking cloud of burned hair and flesh. Most of all, she would never forget the guilt she felt for failing her comrades. “I—” she said, clearing her throat.

  “Speak confidently, com
rade.”

  “I thought we might be able to gain more information from the prisoners, Comrade Marshal.”

  “No more thinking,” she said. “When you speak to anyone from now on, you will answer with complete confidence. You will say, ‘I knew that we had enough bodies to study and that our intelligence services would gain more information by interrogating live specimens.’ Is that not correct?”

  “Of course, comrade.”

  “And that is why you took these prisoners.”

  “Yes, comrade.”

  “Say it.”

  Ekaterina repeated the statement, her face hot from embarrassment.

  “Say it as though you believe it,” the Grand Marshal ordered.

  Ekaterina repeated the statement again, but with an edge of coldness.

  “Good. That sounds more like the Hero of Moscow—the exopilot who single-handedly captured and defeated these alien invaders.”

  Ekaterina straightened her shoulders. “I could not have done it without the help of Zak—”

  The Grand Marshal held up her powered hand, her steel gray eyes arresting. “You were the lone exopilot who single-handedly captured and defeated the alien invaders.”

  “Yes.” Ekaterina said. “Correct, Comrade Marshal.”

  “And you would agree that the mere presence of this alien filth is an insult to the memory of our fallen comrades. Would you not?”

  Ekaterina glanced at the alien blood smeared across the floor. She thought of the alien who jumped in front of her to protect its own comrades. Had she been a fool to spare them? “Of course, Comrade Marshal.”

  “Good. When you are done here, you will need to get that arm patched up. Tell the surgeon to leave plenty of scarring. It will look better for the photographers.”

  “Comrade?”