HUSH

by Craig Robert Saunders

  With no face, Hush was far better at keeping her intentions and reactions private than Ulrich.

  ‘We’re going in case a planet explodes?’ Ulrich shook his head, but what use arguing? If he was going to die, blown apart on an alien planet seemed a better death than most he’d faced so far.

  ‘You’re selling the fuck out of this, Hush. What about improved drives? Ships capable of outstripping you? FTL? Warp technology? You returned any updated schematics and developments, yes?’

  ‘Yes. Nothing I believe achievable with technological advancements in the time frame would explain a human presence already established before my arrival and such technology as you suggest is...fantasy?’

  Pride?

  Surely Hush would have considered that possibility, but...

  ‘Can’t think of everything, surely? Earth has not stood still since your departure. Perhaps pride blinds you? Faster, more efficient ships developed after departure?’

  ‘You assign human values, but no. One minute ago Quarrel Class scouts Hard Fall and Sirocco returned to the Clerestory ship bay and their reconnaissance revealed further...enigmas. There is not one colony ship but six. Six ships all of which outstrip my capabilities and compound technologies?’

  If not pride, the inability to see the possibility that she might be in error?

  ‘No margin for error?’

  ‘No.’

  Ulrich nodded. He had no doubt Hush could read his body language, even if he could not see Hush. He was at a disadvantage, but that was always going to be the case.

  It didn’t matter if Hush gave him all the information or not, but if he was to survive, discover the origin of the colony, then he needed to know as much as possible. To go in blind, with no advance intelligence was suicide no matter the mission.

  ‘The colony is not temporary,’ she continued. ‘Scans updating constantly while we speak, and I am now certain these ships have repurposed to become a settlement of some description. Every fact I discovered to this moment is logically an impossibility, but each anomaly exists and therefore must be possible.’

  Ulrich was interested, not because he cared for Hush’s cargo or himself, and he certainly didn’t care for the Company. It was just how he was built. And now, woken, what else was there to do? Nothing. Be cold. Bored. Die, or be killed.

  Ulrich’s preference had always been action over inaction. Ingrained. Incontrovertible and evident.

  ‘All right,’ he said, ‘You’ve got a convert, Hush.’

  At that, Ulrich heard footsteps and turned to see a wide and strangely squat man approach.

  ‘Djima Kanado. Welcome. I am Hush. Meet Ulrich Bale.’

  *

  7.

  Ulrich Bale and the Crew

  Chancel Santuary

  Hush

  Djima Kanado was perhaps two thirds the height of Ulrich Bale, and a third wider. He wore those tight fitting black clothes, too, and filled every inch with muscle and fat on what would have always been a heavy frame.

  Younger than Ulrich by perhaps twenty years, and Ulrich was nearing sixty, but Djima moved slower, with a gait befitting his build. Ulrich was more interested in the set of the man’s shoulders, though, and his face, his eyes. A long time a soldier, a man who had lived among killers and dangerous people for most of his life, Ulrich understood it wasn’t a person’s size, or build, which mattered when it came to violence. The set of his shoulders, his expression, his eyes. That was where the threat might be telegraphed before violence would be done. Not always, but often enough Ulrich watched for it.

  Djima didn’t have the set nor stance of a predator, but to be aboard Hush he was likely a criminal, maybe a killer, even, but that would only be an assumption. A killer didn’t necessarily mean a threat. Some killers were sanctioned, some killed only once and never again. Some were more dangerous than a murderer whether they lifted their hand against another or not.

  Djima seemed more the kind of man to kill and move on. Perhaps because he’d wanted to, or because he had to, but he didn’t look like someone who made a habit of it. His smile, his whole demeanour was pleasant and genuine.

  ‘Would you rather read or listen, Djima Kanado? Ulrich Bale has been apprised of the situation.’

  Ulrich would have added ‘mostly’ somewhere in that statement, but he stayed quiet.

  ‘I get a say?’ Djima laughed. ‘You own me, give me the illusion of choice?’

  ‘A more pleasant illusion is often a comfort.’

  ‘Don’t treat me like a child, Hush. Get on with it. I like you no more than you’re capable of caring for humanity, so shall we stick to honesty? I’ll read, thanks. I’ve had enough of your shit already.’

  Ulrich decided he liked Djima just fine. He offered his hand to Djima, who looked to have Russian someplace in his genetic makeup...he tried to avoid assumption, but assumption, conclusions without adequate facts, these were facets of intellect, weren’t they?

  Facets Hush might possess, too, and be entirely unaware of?

  ‘Pleasure,’ said Ulrich.

  ‘We’ll see,’ said Djima, but he did smile.

  While Djima read, Ulrich kept his thoughts to himself, and Hush was quiet.

  Probably scanning the entire universe.

  For some reason, perhaps just that gut instinct, perhaps prejudice, Ulrich found himself disliking Hush, which was ridiculous. Was it the fact she seemed smug? Assured? He didn’t know. He just didn’t like her, same way as a person might not like mushrooms, or some kind of music. No reason, just a matter of taste.

  ‘Hush,’ said Ulrich. ‘What year is it?’

  ‘2472 A.D.’

  Djima snorted, a laugh without opening his mouth. ‘You think I’d feel more refreshed.’

  ‘New arrivals,’ said Hush, ignoring anything she wished, which was annoying, too.

  Ulrich turned to watch the new members of his team approaching from port and starboard aisles to enter the Chancel, having ascended from the Crypt and taken their long walks past the engines. Drones hovered in the background, then left. They didn’t turn. They were featureless. They just moved in a different direction.

  ‘Steve Ames, John Alison, Samantha Wain, Ayobami, Cassie Kiyobashi, Orde Vella.’

  Ulrich figured a simple nod would suffice as Hush introduced each new member of the team.

  ‘Ulrich Bale will lead the team. This is Djima Kanado. I assume you have all been briefed en route?’

  Some nodded, some shrugged, but Ulrich figured they knew just about as much as he did at this point. Hush was more than capable of holding a thousand different conversations at once through her drones.

  ‘Your ship is readying for departure and will answer any further queries in transit. An Aug will provide commsets for each of you and a drone will escort you all to the Clerestory.’

  ‘Why the rush?’ asked the woman named Cassie Kiyobashi.

  Maybe not up to speed after all, thought Ulrich.

  ‘Seems like maybe the planet we’re going to might explode,’ said Ulrich.

  ‘Oh,’ she said. ‘Do we get breakfast first?’

  ‘That’s what I asked,’ said Ulrich. ‘Doesn’t look like it.’

  Hush didn’t seem to think that deserved a response, either. A drone and an Aug appeared at the port aisle entrance to the Chancel Sanctuary. The Aug passed out commsets to each member of the mismatched crew.

  ‘Apparently she’s done talking,’ said Ayobami, a tired and hunched null with mods and tattoos and body markings which must have run from wrist to face under the black clothes they wore – part of a design ran up from beneath the black to neck and face, like a salamander.

  ‘Please,’ said the Aug. ‘The drone will escort you to the bay.’

  Maybe an hour from waking, meeting strangers, and readying to depart for a strange planet and Ulrich was unhappy and unsettled. He’d done plenty of stupid shit, but this was up there in the top ten, for sure.

  Still, it beat sleeping forever, or dying like the rest o
f the cargo who never made it.

  ‘Blowing up doesn’t sound so bad,’ said Orde Vella.

  Great. Nothing like a bit of team spirit.

  ‘That’s the idea,’ said Djima. ‘Onward and upward, eh?’

  *

  8.

  Dr. Lian Skerry

  The Crypt/Hold L-2

  Hush

  Lian Skerry decided long ago that she was going to be a serious person. Maybe it was when she was a kid playing at being a doctor with her brother. She set her brother’s arm, or leg, and they’d make pretend he was broken. Sometimes he’d play dead, or she’d shine a torch into his mouth and make him say ‘ah’. He’d been six when she was 12. How old was he now? She didn’t know. Didn’t know what year it was when she woke on the Hush, but she was fairly sure he was dead. Everyone she’d known on Earth, most likely.

  Everyone’s gone.

  Most she found on Hush, too, were dead, and they weren’t playing at it.

  Lian sat on the edge of a sarcophagus, the glass still cold at her back. Any warmth was artificial. The environment was cold. Space wasn’t cold, or hot, maybe. Maybe if you were inside a sun it’d be hot. The body at her feet was like space - cold some places, some warmed through. Like a meal in an auto-oven not cooked right, frozen in the middle. She couldn’t shake the corpse, or give it a stir.

  The man’s face remained black, like everyone in cryogen before they were woken by Hush. Insides were probably warm. Maybe his heart had begun to beat, and just stopped. Maybe blood rushed to his brain, and nutrients, and warmth, and myriad other stimulants. Frozen death downgraded to hypothermic state, then gradually dead tissue reanimated. It hadn’t worked like it should.

  Maybe it had. Maybe this was all Hush, and the Company, ever expected.

  She didn’t count the sarcophaguses, but perhaps 80% of these reawakened sleepers were stillborn, and that just in L-2. Some were led away by drones or Augs. Most weren’t. She’d begged to stay, to try to help, or at least understand. Whatever else she was, she was a doctor and she wanted to know. Now, alone in the hold, the last drone spoke at her behest.

  ‘Red line lights through port Aisle, past the Nave, to the Chancel. At port Transept you may refresh.’

  ‘You mean food and toilets?’

  ‘Yes,’ said the drone.

  It wasn’t Hush, nor even part of Hush. A tour guide, and not much better than something which blinked and beeped, like a cleaning drone.

  ‘Thanks,’ she said. ‘I’ll be fine alone.’

  The drone hummed, and its voice changed.

  ‘This is Hush, Dr. Skerry,’ said Hush. Clearly designed to sound female, but outside of her tone, Hush adopted no comforting human persona. ‘When your examinations are completed, please proceed directly to Clerestory. Green line, Doctor. And...good morning.’

  ‘You, too,’ said Lian. ‘I will...Hush?’

  ‘Yes, Dr. Skerry?’

  ‘The attrition rate? It seems extremely high.’

  ‘Higher than expected. With so many variables, it can never be accurate. I am the first of my kind. I deemed waking five Holds would be sufficient for purpose, and for your mission woke ninety humans with comparable and useful innate abilities and psychological traits from each. There was 76% failure threshold. Attrition of 65% is deemed acceptable.’

  She nodded to the drone, not knowing if Hush saw as well as heard, but the gesture was innate.

  ‘My mission?’

  ‘Briefing en route, Doctor.’

  ‘Fine. How long have we slept?’

  ‘The year is 2472. One hundred and seventeen years. Months?’

  ‘No, Hush. Close enough.’

  ‘Very well.’

  The drone hummed – Hush over, Hush out – and said nothing further. It moved away, perfectly spherical, perfectly stable at exactly the same height, as though on rails in the air.

  One hundred and seventeen years.

  Seemed like the kind of thing she should stand around and ponder. Discuss with someone. There wasn’t anyone she could share that information with. She was alone. But Lian wasn’t that kind of person either way. She didn’t like to waste words, or energy. She figured words relied on energy, and energy was finite. In that respect, she wasn’t so different from Hush.

  She shook her head, moved around the hold and continued her examination of the corpses in or out of their egg-shell tombs. She couldn’t help anyone – they were either dead or alive. If there had been an in-between state, it had been so brief it might have only been the blink of an eye.

  She moved to the next, and the next. She saw empty cryogen tombs – those who had woken and lived – but not many.

  She knelt beside yet another corpse, a woman whose face was frozen and grotesque, when a voice in the dark startled her.

  ‘Why bother?’

  ‘Who’s there?’ replied Lian.

  ‘Anna,’ said a woman, stepping from the gloom forty or fifty paces away. ‘They’re dead. You can’t bring them back.’

  ‘I’m a doctor.’

  ‘We’re all dead, doctor,’ said Anna.

  ‘I’m not. You’re not. I’ll try, just the same.’

  ‘You’re a murderer. Thought you’d be putting them out of their misery. Or, you know, taking trophies or something.’

  ‘I’m not, actually,’ said Lian.

  ‘Not taking trophies? How dull.’

  ‘No. Not a murderer. I’m crew.’

  ‘Crew?’

  ‘I volunteered.’

  ‘Then you’re just as fuck nuts crazy as the rest of us,’ said Anna. ‘Welcome to the gang.’

  *

  9.

  Anna and Lian

  Port Aisle

  Hush

  Anna and Lian followed the lights – a strobing red line – toward the Clerestory and whatever awaited there. The lights were off wherever the two women weren’t need. A distant, faint hum filled the high halls and stairwells – the immense engines and propulsion contained in the Nave.

  Anna was unsure if she was supposed to accompany Lian, but it wasn’t like she was busy, and Lian seemed personable enough, and Anna was almost always more comfortable in company than alone.

  They passed Port Transept by without much of a discussion. Refreshments, showers, toilets didn’t seem important, other than for any kind of vanity neither entertained. Whatever cryogen did to a body, it didn’t make it ravenous. Hunger was there, but there was no urgency to it. They’d been pumped full of everything they needed, maybe, and emptied out anything they didn’t.

  The two women continued upward, with the fluctuating red light the only illumination. No other colours, no other paths but that set out by Hush.

  ‘Road closed,’ said Anna, looking down a long, dark artery leading somewhere neither of them were expected to be. She quieted her voice.

  Respectful in the house of a God forgotten, thought Anna. She didn’t need to speak quietly, but the vast echoing hallways somehow impressed. Grandeur, maybe, or just...scale. They were dwarves, wandering ancient halls.

  ‘What?’ said Lian.

  ‘Nothing. Just checking out the sights.’

  ‘Not much to see,’ said Lian, and she sounded thoughtful. Disappointed, perhaps.

  ‘So...you volunteered? Like charity or something?’

  ‘No. It’s still a job.’

  ‘Paid?’

  ‘No,’ said Lian. ‘But we’re in space, you know? A chance to see and experience things no other has before...a chance to see other worlds, other suns, to be...’

  Anna laughed. ‘You’re excited? You really are insane, aren’t you?’

  ‘Maybe,’ said Lian.

  ‘See any stars? See any planets, Doctor? Summer, winter...anything other than steel, or...whatever this is?’ Anna taped on the corridor wall, above the steady line of light set waist high. It barely made a noise.

  ‘No...’

  ‘You’re worse than me.’

  ‘Are you?’ asked Lian. ‘Insane?’


  ‘How would I know?’ said Anna, earnestly, like Lian might have an answer to that. ‘We’re in space, on a ship which tells you where to go. One minute you’re dead, a corpsicle. Next, we’re surrounded by bobbing volleyballs and people half-metal. My father...he told my how things were, way, way back before the Aug War, you know? A world before the dockyards, before the Company...this.’ Anna tapped the corridor wall again, harder, like she might wake it up and get the ship to say something, anything. ‘Is this real? I’m mad, sure. But if I’m mad, you are too.’

  ‘Maybe,’ said Lian, but this time nodded. ‘Probably...but it’s a good madness, if it is. Space, Anna. It’s space.’

  Anna laughed and shook her head, her sparse, thin hair flipping sides to cover a delicate ear, mismatched with the rest of her appearance.

  They turned and turned, always rising, following those lights set into the wall, lulled and taking step after step. Anna was beginning to wish she hadn’t passed up food and a drink after around ten minutes of walking when an immense metal thing, a giant, stepped from an elevator. The elevator was silent. The giant’s footfalls were not.

  Lian let out a bark, like a scream stunted before she could remember where she was, and maybe what was real. This ship wasn’t hers and Anna’s, and it was not solely populated by humans.

  Lian coughed, probably embarrassed because Anna laughed at the Doctor’s surprise, maybe because of the thing’s bold, straightforward response, too – just an inclination of an immense head.