HUSH

by Craig Robert Saunders

  ‘No,’ Jin told her. ‘I can, however, state with reasonable reliability that the matter used in the ship’s construction, and the interior design, is obviously of human origin. There are no alien alloys or features I do not recognise. The drives...’ Jin was silent for a moment, and even Lian, not as good with people as she was with fixing people, understood the Titan was frustrated. ‘I cannot tell. But that these ships were fast enough to outstrip Hush...it seems increasingly unlikely.’

  ‘Subspace travel...FTL?’ said Cassie, still watching the opening at their backs, though she couldn’t have been able to see much of anything in the swirling snow out there. Lian couldn’t, and it was dark out there, too. Their lights were the only comfort to her on that front.

  ‘Perhaps. Guaranteed? Infallible? No.’

  ‘How long have they been here?’

  ‘Hundreds of years, Ulrich. Look around. There’s was an atmosphere, but either this ship was damaged or through intent, it is not a sterile environment. There are signs of damp, of dust, even some small signs of mildewed up in the high reaches of this passage. It’s possible this is used on a regular basis, of course, and that further inside there is a functioning seal or barrier...but there are so many inconsistencies...how did these ships land? They were never designed to be anywhere but space.’

  ‘So humans came and...?’

  ‘Because the ships are human in origin, Ulrich, does not mean the modifications are human, nor that any opposition we noted was human...it does not mean that at all, does it?’

  Now that, Lian had figured before the rest of them. She kept her counsel, though. Think more than you speak. Another of her mother’s annoying little mottos. No matter how far she fled, it seemed something of her past would always be tied to her.

  ‘Something took out the landing ships to give the cargo ships no choice? Disabled their drives?’ Cassie paused, sighed. ‘Fuck. I don’t know. What if they were stranded on purpose?’

  ‘This isn’t the Company,’ said Lian. ‘This is something else.’

  ‘Why?’ said Cassie.

  ‘Because of all the variables,’ she said. It made sense to her, even though they all frowned at her. Even Jin somehow conveyed doubt, and he was denied features. ‘The Company hates variables, Cassie,’ said Lian.

  Cassie opened her mouth to reply, but no words came out. Lian was looking Cassie in the eye, they were speaking, and then Cassie wasn’t there. Her body was falling to the ground, slowly. Lian understood Cassie Kiyobashi was dead before the former cop hit the metal flooring. Mist from Cassie’s head still hung in the air. Lian thought she might have breathed in some of the dead woman’s destroyed head.

  Maybe some hair. Maybe blood, bone. A bit of tasty vitreous humor.

  Lian vomited and Jin was already in action, firing through the rain of what used to be Cassie down the long passageway in a barrage of wild blue crackling power. He didn’t shoot behind them, out into the snow, but into the dark at things she couldn’t see. Jin’s attack was angry and bright enough to fill up the dark, but she was blind to everything but the mist in the air, and she closed her eyes and threw up while the Titan took up the gun once more.

  *

  44.

  Weapons Cold

  Entranceway

  Unknown Ship

  It was only an instant. No more than that. Perhaps three seconds? Ulrich had no idea. His ears rang, and even with the suit’s intelligent protection Jin’s fury had been deafening.

  ...four, five, six, seven, eight, nine, ten...

  Ulrich opened his eyes. Tracers still hung, sliding blunt worms in his vision.

  Cassie’s body lay where it had fallen.

  ‘Jin?’ said Ulrich.

  ‘I don’t know,’ said the Titan, and if their comms had not been linked Ulrich might not have heard Jin’s reply at all. ‘I...cannot see.’

  Jin answered the unspoken question – they weren’t safe. If Jin had been able to see to the best of his abilities Cassie Kiyobashi would be alive.

  Lian was on the ground, kneeling, curled, and he heard her crying through his suit comms.

  Anna moved beside the doctor and wrapped her in her small, thin arms.

  There was nothing left to do for Cassie, but this was on Ulrich now. He wasn’t a leader, but this was combat, and live fire, and people dying and this was always going to be on him.

  ‘What was it?’

  ‘I do not know, Ulrich. I do not think you understand. I cannot see. I have become blind. Audio is restricted. I am crippled.’

  They relied so heavily on the Titan. Now, without him?

  What did a person do in any war? Try like fuck to not die. It wasn’t much more complicated than that, nearly all of the time.

  Ulrich hadn’t forgotten what it was like to come under fire, with no real idea where the enemy was. That every second of a battle was death waiting was ingrained in him. It felt exactly like this.

  ‘Anna. Anna?’

  She didn’t reply, but she did move her head slightly, looking to Cassie’s corpse. Ulrich knew she heard him.

  ‘Take the track-drive. Bring it in. Jin, can you use audio, sonar, or something similar? At least figure out where the walls are so you can walk at least?’

  ‘Yes,’ he said. ‘I think I can.’

  ‘Come on. All of you. Move. Let’s get steel at our backs. Light, warmth, air...any improvement’s better than here. We’re blind ahead and behind. Move. Lian...move.’

  He put his hand under Anna’s armpit, pulled her to her feet, and shoved her toward the track-drive. Then, he took up Cassie’s fallen pistol and kept it in his right fist. The long rifle stayed across his back. Nothing he had was much use in the dark but if he had to turn quickly, the short weapon was the better choice.

  He pulled Lian to her feet, too.

  ‘Move,’ he said, and dragged her those first few steps. ‘Jin, in front. I know you can’t see shit, but you hear anything other than us...’

  ‘I understand,’ said Jin.

  When the Titan moved ahead of them, though, Ulrich nearly gave in. It was as close as he ever came to just giving up, laying down to die. To see a Titan brought so low, moving so slowly, with no confidence at all through the dark of the ship and the passage, tore away any hope Ulrich had left.

  Say nothing, though, he thought. Because we’re all shit out of hope.

  Anna was in shock and Lian could only drag against his arm. Ulrich’s vision hadn’t returned to normal since Jin unleashed his guns.

  But it had. He was crying.

  Breathe, Ulrich. Breathe.

  A moment later, he felt he could speak without stuttering.

  ‘Jin, are you able to light it up?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Then, bright as you can, far as you can. We don’t want to get caught out by the dark again.’

  Jin made the passage glow, his light blinding up close, but Ulrich had to take point and the light at his back allowed him to see the bodies, and body parts, and unnamed things torn to shreds in Jin’s rage. Blood, but metal, too.

  The remains of hundreds of Augs littered the passage. And if they were here, then it was just as likely that there would be more.

  At that thought, it was as though the fire, the weapons, the stench of burned metal and plastic and blood woke Ulrich all the way up. He wasn’t an old man in the cold any longer. He’d forgotten about the constant ache in his hip, and the blind side of his face and the coldness inside him.

  Ulrich released his helmet, because he needed everything available to him. Not just that instinct that had kept him alive through a long life of violence. Here? It wasn’t only about a soldier’s plain senses, or battlefield tech or even augments and modules.

  It wasn’t those thing which created survivors.

  To survive, he needed the cold, the smells, unhindered sight, but feel, too – the changing temperature and shifting wind as the passageways turned them about, the tiniest draft that might mean a movement just beyond the sphere
of Jin’s light.

  Teaching couldn’t make a person a survivor, nor all manner of mechanical upgrades. Surviving. That was what made survivors, and Ulrich had been living a long time.

  *

  45.

  The Perfection of the Dead

  Entranceway

  Unknown Ship

  ‘Lian?’

  She didn’t want to look, suddenly. A lifetime of working on augmented humans hadn’t prepared her for what this was.

  Murder.

  These things had murdered Cassie.

  ‘Lian,’ said Ulrich, his voice soft and low. With his helmet off, and without a sheen of damp and snow to peer through, she saw more in his eye than she’d seen before. There wasn’t just danger and intellect. There was kindness, too.

  ‘They...Cassie...’

  ‘There’s nothing we can do for Cassie, doctor. We might be able to help us. Okay? Please. Take a look at them. You know this, right? What are we facing?’

  ‘I...’

  ‘Lian...straighten up, okay? She’s dead, we’re not. It’s hard and cold and it’s a shitty fucking thing to have to do, but it’s time to move on because we have no other choice. Now, look.’

  ‘Asshole,’ she said, but half-hearted, because she wasn’t stupid. She was in shock, but her mind was working just fine. He was pushing her because he had to. Reminding her she was a doctor so that they might survive.

  ‘Yes,’ he said. ‘Always was. Now look, okay?’

  Jin’s light was plenty to see by. A stark white glow. A surgical glow. She couldn’t miss a thing, even though she might have wanted to.

  ‘Sorry, Ulrich,’ she said. She steadied herself as best as she could and began to move among the dead Augs sprawled across the tall hallway.

  Ulrich gave her the gentlest touch on her shoulder and stepped back, beside Anna, without further word.

  Lian stepped over and around the dead, entirely numb to their pain and thinking only of her own.

  They looked...fresh?

  But it wasn’t possible. It wasn’t reasonable. Every Aug suffered some level of rejection. Skin often turned lurid and angry, as though it was hateful of the metal which replaced parts of a body. A body didn’t understand, did it? No anti-rejection regime was powerful or advanced enough to entirely negate those effects.

  Despite her fear and confusion, she found herself kneeling so that she could move parts aside. She had no tools to dissect or study, but she didn’t need them, not really. Jin’s heavy weapons had most of the dissection for her.

  ‘This...look. These are either fresh, or far in advance of anything I’ve ever seen. Rejection isn’t minimal. There is no rejection. Zero. They’re perfect.’

  That concerned her deeply.

  ‘What does that mean?’ asked Anna.

  Lian saw in Anna’s face the same expression she feared was on hers. Ulrich watched ahead, behind, switching his gaze both ways, trying his best to protect them against an enemy they might not even see coming.

  What does it mean? That’s the question, isn’t it? Such advancements in only one hundred and seventeen years? No rejection, no degradation...to truly have achieved the perfect melding of man and machine...?

  ‘I don’t understand,’ said Lian. ‘I’m not sure what it means. But if these Augs are old, then this tech is insane. Far beyond anything possible when we left earth. Even if they’re new, the melding between organic and inorganic is utter perfection...’

  ‘How is that possible?’ asked Ulrich.

  ‘Honestly? In one hundred and seventeen years? I can’t even imagine. It borders on the miraculous.’

  ‘One hundred and seventeen years?’ asked Jin, but he didn’t wait for her to answer. ‘The drone...’

  There was a pause, fractional, because Jin was near blind but for sonar, but apparently Jin saw well enough.

  His right arm rose, his entire arm lit with crackling blue energy, someplace between fire and electricity. Lian felt her hair rise as that power travelled from Jin’s core and down along the arm, like his arm was a barrel. The drone exploded.

  The feel of a charge in the air dissipated as the shower of shrapnel settled. She didn’t hear the metallic shards of the drone landing, because the blast very nearly deafened her.

  ‘What the fuck, Jin?’

  She heard that.

  Ulrich’s voice, full of sudden anger, but controlled, and she could tell that even though her ears were ringing.

  ‘I see,’ said the Titan. ‘And now I see, I do not trust so easily as I have done for far too long.’

  *

  46.

  Quiet Lies

  Entrance Passage

  Unknown Ship

  Jin calmly held out his hands, as though he showed them all that he was unarmed, but of course Jin was never unarmed.

  ‘Please,’ said Jin. ‘Ulrich, everyone...please do not do anything rash. Listen a moment, and if you wish I will leave you. One moment only. Hush told you this? She told you that only one hundred and seventeen years has passed?’

  ‘Ulrich,’ said Anna, her voice loud for the first time. Angered. ‘Listen to him. Jin deserves that much, surely?’

  Ulrich’s posture, the set of his shoulder, his stance, was tense and alert. He was ready to move in an instant. Lian was wide-eyed, like she was ready to bolt, even if it meant leaping over every dead Aug in the hallway to do so.

  ‘Lian? Just talk. Ulrich? Come on. Talk.’

  ‘Yes,’ said Lian. In shock, for sure. Maybe Anna was, but while Lian reacted in fear and Ulrich in violence, Anna found a strange sense of calm on her.

  Lian held her shaking hands in much the same manner as Jin’s, but in supplication, like she was surrendering to him.

  ‘The year is 2472 A.D.’ said Lian in a cracked, uneven tone.

  ‘Hush told me the same,’ said Ulrich.

  ‘It is not 2472. The year is 2956 A.D.’ said Jin, with a shake of his head that somehow conveyed sadness. The Titan was becoming a master of subtle gestures in even the short time they had spent together. ‘Assumption blinded me.’

  ‘And the drone?’ said Anna, flicking a hand toward the scattered remains of the robot.

  ‘Hush lied. The drones served Hush.’

  ‘And you? Why should we believe you do not serve Hush?’ asked Ulrich.

  Anna was very aware of the pistol in Ulrich’s hand. Her pistol stayed in her holster, and it didn’t cross her mind to draw it. She was in no doubt that Jin was honest.

  Guns were useless against the Titan, yet even if they had been, she intended no violence against him. Mistrust seemed just as useless, and wrong.

  She wasn’t afraid, and she’d known fear enough times that it was second nature, her defence so many times in her life before Hush, before this planet, before she met a being – a man – which could kill so easily and so swiftly.

  In the presence of Jin, though? She felt nothing but comfort. It wasn’t a strange feeling, or some ruse. Jin could be trusted, and Anna needed no persuading from the first moment they had met. Ulrich did though, certainly. Lian needed calming, but Ulrich was the immediate problem.

  ‘I am me, Ulrich. I cannot prove or disprove this, but I have not lied. I have aided, and will continue to do so if you wish, or simply remove myself from your presence. I will not argue.’

  ‘You tell us it’s 2956,’ said Lian. ‘But we have no reason to believe you.’

  Jin fell silent. Thinking, perhaps.

  Anna waited. Not because it mattered to her what Jin would say. Her trust wasn’t in question. She stayed silent because they needed to hear what Jin had to say. She’d spent her entire life before her long sleep, or death, really, believing and disbelieving and had lived through the streets, and death, because of it.

  ‘If not trust, if not our experience together, and the times I have attempted to aid you and ensure your survival, then please think logically through the information we have. The ships were all struck from above. We suspected, didn’t we?’


  ‘None of us trust in Hush, but why does that mean we should trust in you? You blasted that drone to pieces for nothing. What is going on?’ said Lian.

  Lian was panicking. Anna wanted to calm her, to calm Ulrich.

  Jin isn’t the problem!

  She wanted to scream it at them, but it wasn’t her in question, was it?

  Calm.

  If she and Jin could stay calm, at least, perhaps this sudden shift could be swayed back, back into balance.

  The Titan had probably never panicked – maybe not even before he became a Titan. He was always a rock against a storm.

  ‘She lied because Hush wants something and doesn’t wish us to know what it is. I don’t believe her intentions to be benevolent. Do you?’

  ‘Lian? Ulrich? Please. I believe him. Jin didn’t kill Blue Sun Dawning. He didn’t kill Silver Dollar, or Sculptor of Motions. I never trusted easily,’ said Anna. ‘Perhaps I’m wrong, but...Ulrich, would you just lower your pistol? It’s useless and you look...’

  Stupid, she thought, but Ulrich was a man, one of those who believed himself a man...needed to see something masculine in himself to function. Anna might not have any kind of abilities. Maybe her presence her was an accident...some kind of oversight on Hush’s part...but she understood people well enough.

  ‘Seriously, Ulrich.’

  Ulrich sighed and holstered his pistol. He shrugged.

  ‘I look stupid, right?’

  Lian didn’t seem to be listening to their conversation at all, but lost completely to thought that couldn’t possibly be more than wild speculation with all the unanswered, and unanswerable, questions there were.

  Ulrich smiled, a little sheepishly, and Anna liked him more than she had before. His face, with his scars and that missing eye, always seemed somehow angry, but his clear remaining eye which watched belied that surface impression. She watched, too. Ulrich Bale was smarter than he seemed, and far more, she thought, than a simple soldier.