HUSH

by Craig Robert Saunders

  ‘Anna of Earth, we can.’

  Can what?

  Anna found herself getting angry. She looked to Ulrich, but he merely shifted from foot to foot, watching her. If she hope for his intercession, she wasn’t getting it. He smiled at her.

  Every fucker keeps smiling at me, I’m going to start swinging, she thought. Then, she laughed at herself, and caught a smile on her own face, like it was some kind of infection.

  All one hundred and sixty centimetres of her, punching at Ulrich like an idiot, or the sending of this place, which must’ve been fifty metres tall and wasn’t even there.

  ‘Anna of Earth, you do not live because of our intervention. You are remarkable in your own right. Please. We do not know of your friends, and we understand your....disquiet. Will you eat? Drink? The water is pure, and there is sustenance to be had.’

  Anna and Ulrich glanced at each other again, and Ulrich nodded. To the food, because the other thing...

  ‘Jin...Lian? They’re dead?’

  ‘We cannot see beyond this shield. It is all that keeps Hush at bay. Please, take food, drink, and we will converse until you are satisfied of stomach and mind.’

  Anna nodded, just a dip of her head, and turned away from Citadel.

  ‘Odd way of talking,’ she said.

  Ulrich smiled again, but he was clearly tired and his shoulders hunched up with pain.

  ‘She’s not us, Anna.’

  A droid of some strange manner came across the rock, movement similar to a Hush drone, but different in design. Triangular, like a pyramid turned on end, the flat side holding refreshments and the lower point wavering, as though whatever kept it afloat warped the light behind it, such as a heat haze might, though when Anna took a block of some paste and a cup with crystal clear cool water she felt no hint of heat from the droid.

  The water was remarkable, and she drank it without pause. The food paste was dire, and she wished she’d held back.

  ‘We need your aid, Anna and Ulrich,’ said Citadel, after they’d had a moment to drink and spit out the food. ‘We cannot nor would we force anything upon you, but if you will learn?’

  ‘You need our aid?’ said Anna. ‘Brilliant. A fifty metre tall ghost-Titan can’t help, and she wants us to sort it out?’

  Ulrich shrugged, addressing Citadel. ‘We really are a captive audience, Citadel. What do you want with us?’

  The female form before them bowed, low. ‘I wish circumstances were different,’ she told them. ‘But time does not allow respite, and we cannot maintain this stasis field about us with the destruction of Warden’s Stave. Hush will come.’

  ‘And take whatever it is you have that she wants?’

  ‘Yes, Anna. I will explain that which I am able. Do either of you realise just how large Hush is? Did Jin?’

  ‘How large?’ asked Anna.

  ‘She fooled Jin once,’ said Ulrich. ‘Jin’s not infallible, but smart enough to know it.’

  ‘Hush is far, far larger than it was when she set out. She has taken other ships into her. She had consumed other AP minds.’

  ‘No way. You’re mistaken,’ said Ulrich. ‘We reached the top, shipped out from the clerestory...’

  ‘Think, please, Ulrich,’ said Citadel in her kind, soft tone. ‘Did you see anything of the outside of Hush?’

  No, we did not, thought Anna.

  Ulrich shook his head.

  ‘Hush is far more than you realise, and far worse. Why did Hush send you here?’

  ‘Now that...we have no idea. She sold this trip on lies and the small fact of ownership...but if what we suspected, and what you say, is true? It made no sense to send us. A mistake?’

  But Anna didn’t think that was it. Neither did Ulrich, it seemed.

  ‘No,’ said Ulrich. ‘I don’t think Hush made a mistake, and if it did, it’s one of logic, one it couldn’t see, not of mathematics or reason. What is it, Citadel?’

  ‘She’s grown, but her needs have grown, too, and she is clever enough to understand her own logic and abilities are both fallible and finite. She needs materials...’

  ‘Oh. Fuck,’ said Anna, and saw what had should have been obvious.

  She stared at Ulrich, then up, and up, Citadel’s Avatar.

  ‘Hush didn’t just arrive, did she?’

  ‘No, Anna. She did not. She has been here for centuries, and we have fought her back since the start.’

  *

  57.

  What Becomes One?

  Citadel

  Upper Plaza

  The Avatar fell silent for a moment and turned her face toward the sky, as though staring out through the roof of the energy dome to the stars beyond.

  ‘We do not have more time,’ she told them. ‘Hush comes, but there is yet hope. Your friend, the one you know as Jin? He survives.’

  At this, the giantess smiled, and there was something undeniably genuine, bordering on joy, in that smile.

  ‘Please, to understand...will you meet the Kind? Would you trust in strangers on your already strange road?’

  ‘You have a pretty way of speaking,’ said Ulrich.

  ‘Not like we’ve got a choice,’ said Anna. ‘Lian? Our other friend?’

  ‘That, I’m am afraid, I cannot tell. Jin is shielded, and nothing can penetrate that – like this shield of our making which has kept Hush at bay these long years. We believe our shield is the reason Hush send you.’

  ‘Us? Humans?’

  ‘Yes. She thought we would aid you, so she drove you on, toward our protection, and Hush was correct. But she makes mistakes. Everything makes mistakes, no? Even, perhaps, the universe. We, the Kind? Certainly we do. Will you meet us?’

  Anna shrugged. ‘Sure. Ulrich?’

  He shrugged, too. ‘Jin’s alive, at least. Come on. I’m curious.’

  A hole opened up in the ground a few metres from them and a platform seemed to separate from the rock, seams venting steam.

  ‘Come,’ said the Avatar, the sending moving to stand on the platform, and as it did so, it became smaller, so that it was roughly a size somewhere between Anna and Ulrich.

  They joined it on the platform, and began their descent far below the surface of the planet, as far from Hush as they could, toward the Heart of the Kind.

  *

  58.

  The Titans Return

  Outside Citadel

  Snow and wind smashing against Jin’s shield, but the Titan was unbowed, unmoved, an impenetrable sphere seated in the steaming wreckage and the immense crater left behind by Warden’s Stave destruction. A crater more than five hundred metres deep, with no sign of the ship remaining. Whatever energy source the Citadel discovered, or the creatures known as the Kind had discovered, the explosion left nothing, not even the smallest radiation signature that Jin’s sensors could detect.

  Jin dropped his shield, and laid Lian down for a second – not to think, but to rearrange her as best he could. He was already decided and saw only one possible avenue for salvation. Lian would die if he did not try. He was not a medic. He could heal himself, but not a human. Her severed leg streamed blood and the best he could do, and all he knew how to do, was to stem the flow with his hands. One of his huge hands easily encircled her leg, thumb to forefinger, and the blood slowed under pressure. The suit was open to the elements. Her air would deplete, and raising her faceplate would not save her.

  The only place they might find aid was in the Citadel, the place where Ulrich and Anna had fled.

  Aid, or resistance.

  Lian had nothing to lose, and Jin owed her a chance at life, at least.

  As the crater began to whiten beneath the hard-driven snow, Jin dug his heavy feet into the crumbling, melted rock, and climbed. He did not use his hands once, and did not stumble, and did not drop his charge.

  No, he thought. No longer my charge, nor my responsibility. She is my friend.

  *

  Once, Jin had hated the body that was his cage. Now his cage meant Lian might live. If n
ot for him, she would have been sliced, used, nothing of her left.

  If not for him, perhaps she would not have been taken.

  For that, he owed her.

  ‘I am proud to call you friend,’ said Jin. He wanted Lian to know. She could not hear him, and her breath was ragged and laboured, and she would almost certainly die, but perhaps there was something there, some consciousness on the borders of life and death. He did not feel bad for his choice, between knowledge and her – like all choices, some were right, and some were wrong, no matter the reasoning behind them. Even the right choices turned bad, and something that through no fault of his own.

  He’d trusted Hush, hadn’t he? Admired her. Been grateful, even.

  And I was fooled.

  No more than a minute passed before Jin stood at the dome.

  The doctor was a good person. She had always thought of Ulrich and Anna before herself, and even though Jin knew her only a short while, he was resolved to do all he could. He only had his might left to him now, and Lian was bleeding to death.

  ‘I am...sorry for my choice,’ he told her.

  He wanted her to know, because she was going to die. This close to the dome, he finally understood that even his legendary might would never be enough to break a structure like this, a creation larger than a colony-class ship – a field of energy measured in kilometres.

  And if a choice proves wrong, one must strive to correct it, if one can.

  The Titan held Lian’s leg, and her upside down. He didn’t do this consciously, but both acts slowed her bleeding. He placed one hand against the energy dome, and thought through every option, with every resource available to him. He could not reason with the thing. To fire upon it? It would increase the energy, not dissipate nor break it.

  No. It is a defensive measure.

  This he knew instinctively, and now that he knew everything Warden’s Stave had known? Now he knew why Hush wanted this place, what it was Hush coveted?

  He was in no doubt. Hush had not been able to pierce the shield because she did not understand it.

  Jin changed his initial assessment. He did understand it. It was larger than the five remaining ships surrounding it, certainly, but it wasn’t solid, was it? It was energy...it was his energy, that near-mythical thing inside of him that allowed him to create his own shield. It was exactly the same technology, and it could not be smashed.

  He laid Lian on the snow beside the field, and this time, the Titan placed both hands against field and pushed.

  His feet tore up rock, and still there was no other sign of effort from his form, but the shield did bow. A small, tiny shift in shape.

  Now, he tried to push it aside – the entire thing, anchored in five places by the remaining Shields of the Kind – those Bastion Class ships which surrounded the dome.

  It would not shift further, no matter how hard he tried, but there was movement. A slight flex in the field, again. He shifted it a little, side to side, feeling, sensing any weakening, like a balloon might thin in places. Not trying to break it, or destroy it, but to change it. To switch it off, back to what it was – air, turned to matter through energy rearranging and exciting the molecules around it.

  With every simile of muscle afforded to Jin in moment of his creation, with his many evolutions, but with heart, too, and soul, Jin pushed harder, and harder, and the snow melted as his exoskeleton vented heat, then, that meltwater turned to steam so he was obscured by mist, and then, he simply shifted all of that power into on single point of pure energy and the shield blew apart into sparkling light, and water, and ice, and rock from the planet, back to what it had always been – just matter put someplace else. No more than clay, heated and hardened, and that memory of heat stripped from it. Back to nothing at all.

  Delicate blue fissures seemed to dance through the air, just for an instant. The energy was gone, a thing that might never have been there at all, and Jin finally saw inside to the Upper Plaza, and through the renewed snowfall, to look upon the Avatar of the Kind which waited there for him.

  ‘I did not think it could be true,’ said Jin.

  ‘Brother,’ said Citadel, the Avatar not born of the Bastions, but a child of the exiled Titans of Earth.

  ‘Welcome, Coeus,’ said the Avatar. ‘Welcome home.’

  *

  Snow filled the air and blanketed the rock at Citadel’s feet now that the dome was gone.

  Jin had a thousand questions for each of the centuries which had passed since he last saw a Titan, but those questions had to wait. He felt the urgency of their meeting, and the peril to all.

  ‘Sisters?’ said Jin.

  The Avatar, far more expressive than he, nodded, and her smile was broad enough to make his heart soar, no matter than Lian was dying, no matter than his heart was caged inside his shell.

  But then his heart and soul were caged, and at once they were not.

  The Titans were more than metal, weren’t they?

  ‘Sisters...I missed you. Can you save my friend?’

  ‘Coeus, brother...may we scan you?’

  They asked as Warden’s Stave had said they would, and he understood why. Because of Hush.

  ‘You ask my permission? We are family. Of course. Whatever you must.’

  ‘We are family, but also we are the Kind and you know our purpose. We are one, and the threat is real.’

  He felt their intrusion – something he had never experienced, unlike his merging with the Bastion Ship who sent him to meet his kin once more. He and these Titans who had become the Kind had been linked on Earth, but that was so long ago – eons – and since then he had been alone, a singularity. He had evolved...but his sisters had too, it seemed, and far beyond anything he imagined possible, even over the course of centuries.

  Their examination of his mind was a tingle, somehow intimate but not unwelcome or unpleasant. And he wanted to know. Hush had deceived them...and he had been a fool. No more mistakes.

  But he held no doubt at all. If anything, he felt...

  ‘Am I a danger?’

  ‘No,’ said the Titans, his sisters, the Kind, withdrawing gently from Jin’s consciousness and those parts of his mind of which even he was unaware. ‘Please. We did not wish to...intrude.’

  ‘I understand why, and I am grateful. Please hurry, sisters. Help her,’ he said.

  Citadel smiled. ‘Of course.’

  A robot, not an Aug but a pure construct, emerged from a port in the planet’s surface and approached Lian through the snow swirling all around until it reached Lian, beside Jin, and began to work on her immediately.

  ‘You use robots?’ he asked.

  ‘No, brother. We use no one and nothing. We are The Kind, and we protect. Nothing serves us. We serve them.’

  The robot had some powerful tech Jin could not understand at its disposal, and began to construct a leg while it healed, and sealed, Lian’s crippling wound. Her colour already returned to her pale cheeks.

  ‘This isn’t augmentation,’ he said, his voice filled with rare wonder. ‘You have come far...’

  ‘While Hush preyed, we strove to do better.’

  ‘Hush preyed?’

  ‘We will explain all. Your other friends are within. Would you join them?’

  ‘Are they safe? Well?’

  ‘All are safe here, Jin, although...Hush’s own avatars already breach the atmosphere.’

  Jin nodded. He was ready, and resolute. He knew his mind, and what he intended. But something about Citadel felt bereft, to him, despite the warmth and joy of their reunion.

  ‘Not all of you are here, within you? This saddens me as finding you again brings me happiness.’

  Jin knew that was the right word – the sight of Citadel, knowing Warden’s Stave had spoken true – it filled him with happiness. It was an emotion he didn’t understand, didn’t think possible, but what else could it be? A sense that his soul had suddenly become greater, something more, an entity he’d never know inside him.

  ‘Only
us, your sisters, Coeus.’

  ‘I am Jin now.’

  ‘And we have become one. Will you join your friends, Ulrich and Anna? They come to see why we stand.’

  ‘Warden’s Stave educated me...you know this?’

  The Avatar moved toward Jin. ‘We know. And you, brother?’

  ‘I am not you, but I made my choice. I serve naught but my will, and my will is to serve. Ulrich and Anna are in your care. I will wait on Lian...and Hush.’

  ‘She will be some time. We fear Hush, however, will not be long now. Not long at all.’

  ‘As you protect, and as you serve, and as you have become one, I, too, am whole. I aid because I can and because I wish it.’

  ‘Then you are welcome home, and well met, once more.’

  ‘Thank you...Kind. I am ready to be Titan once more. Should we lose each other...’

  The Avatar leaned in, and in a strange, comforting gesture, kissed Jin upon the cheek.

  ‘We are together now,’ she – they – said.

  *

  59.

  To the Heart of the Kind

  The Citadel Catacombs

  The Avatar, a giant above with Jin, but of human proportions within the carved catacombs beneath the plaza, led Ulrich and Anna on. Light flowed through the rock itself, the Kind truly having found a way to work with the planet, and not against it.

  ‘Here, ahead, lies one of many, many chambers,’ said Citadel. ‘You will see why Hush does what she does, and why she is not us. We protect. She takes. Does she understand her failing? We have spoken with Hush. Of course we have. It has been centuries. Hush is beyond understanding, beyond reasons. She can no longer empathise, if she ever could. She has no emotions, no sense of nuance, of the variable and unpredictable nature of living creatures, but of the universe itself? Can she calculate chaos into order? Perhaps she can.’