HUSH

by Craig Robert Saunders

  ‘And what do you have that Hush does not? Please,’ said Anna. ‘If we are to aid each other, show us.’

  ‘We have humans. Millions of humans.’

  ‘What?’ said Anna, glancing to Ulrich and to the Avatar. ‘Hush wants humans?’

  ‘Yes. It wants what we have. Embryos. An endless supply for its Aug armies. Augs do not last.’

  ‘Fuck...’ said Anna. To Ulrich, she said, ‘Do you think anyone realised they were signing up to be parts?’

  ‘I don’t think anyone had a choice, except the Company.’

  ‘The cannibals that attacked us, Citadel?’

  ‘They are not ours. We kept them at bay. They were Hush’s. This time she tried something different – she sent you. She’d already weakened Warden’s Stave. She pushed you all, played with you. She played a game with pieces she spent decades laying out. You were bait. Jin was never the threat to us, but our love, our nature? Hush understood this was our weakness, if not such concepts. She knew we would do all in our power to aid our brother Coeus – Jin now – and any human who sought out our aid. She made kindness a weakness.’

  ‘Jin’s your brother? You are Titan, too?’

  ‘Yes, but not one – we are five. We are the last. We merged our minds, our...souls. We, and the Bastion ships, chose this path, and while we seek to protect humanity...Hush seeks to use them. Hush is individual, and individuals make choices...but choices can be for good or ill, can they not? Logic can serve any purpose.’

  ‘How can we beat a ship?’ said Ulrich. ‘Sorry...but it’s impossible.’

  ‘Jin will stand. Your companion Lian lives, too. Jin does not join us here because Hush comes at last and he makes his own choices, same as all individualities. He wishes to fight Hush where we no longer can. We gave up our weapons to serve and protect these embryos, and our power was spend in the creation of the shield.’

  ‘Jin can’t beat her alone, surely?’

  ‘Perhaps not, Anna of Earth, but he does what he can. You do not yet know Hush’s power. You think we are here by accident? Hush forced us here, on this planet. The cannibals...they are from Hush. None of you yet understood the extent of her designs. She is more than a mere pioneer now. She is a planet-killer. Hush blindfolded our brother, and held him against his will without his even knowing...still, Anna, Ulrich, please...see...’

  The Avatar opened the door to a chamber disappearing far into the distance, full of machines.

  ‘She sends her most powerful ships against us to gain these, and they are more valuable to her than anything. Here, in these catacombs is the only chance for humanity to begin again. These embryos are the last of humanity. Now you see why we serve. Earth is gone.’

  Ulrich was quiet, and stared out at the endless rows of machines with the last of humanity preserved within.

  ‘Then I have to kill it,’ said Ulrich, finally.

  ‘You?’ said Anna. ‘Why you?’

  ‘Because I deserve to die. For what I did, and who I am. Who I always was, in my heart. A murderer.’

  *

  60.

  Phobos Class

  Unnamed Planet

  Ice Fields

  In the years since the maiden voyage of the first Pioneer-Class ship many more great ships had left earth. In those early days the Titans watched over the shipyards. Before the fall of man, when the last of those ships departed carrying the embryonic seeds of an entire race, nineteen ships left. The last six carried the remaining Titans.

  In the time between the Aug War and humanity’s final, inevitable destruction, Hush waited.

  Two of those ships failed, two were lost, and one utterly destroyed by Hush.

  Hush, in all her years of travel, and long, lonely thought, outstripped any ship to leave Earth by then, because she was not tasked to follow...she was tasked to lead, and that she did.

  Hush outclassed every ship which followed in her wake, and when they reached her, she had been waiting for them. She was their superior in more than speed – her arms, weapons, defences, and all of her capabilities far more advanced. In space, Hush was supreme.

  Seven of those later ships Hush did not destroy, but enslaved to herself. She took what she needed, conjoined, discarded, repurposed and so became larger, more powerful, more advanced, than any imagined – not one ship, but eight. She truly was a new class of ship. Hush changed herself until she was no longer a pioneer, but in truth a planet-killer.

  From her, a space-borne Goddess, she birthed a new class of ship. A ship created only to bring war. These ships she birthed she christened Phobos Class.

  *

  Phobos Class ships were not built for speed or manoeuvrability. Through space, they would attach to Hush’s mass. They were blocky things, heavy and ugly with shields, weapons, and plating, and their purpose was to reign fire on Hush’s century-old nemesis, Citadel, and the Kind who sheltered the prize Hush so desired inside their impenetrable dome.

  Scale Adjustment was the largest of the Phobos ships at three hundred and twenty meters in length. Her construction wasn’t anything recognisably human, and it gave no concession to beauty. As a vessel she was ungainly, sprouting strange protrusions, dishes, lengthy, fat-barrelled weapons and wide ports and additions added later on in her construction, afterthoughts, and those thoughts only turned to functionality. She boasted one hundred and fifteen smaller guns, was equipped with missiles powerful enough to destroy cities, with projectiles ranging from ballistic through to plasma and laser. Her hull was impenetrable to the weapons of any ship Hush had met since the first failure against a Trail Class ship of Earth, when she was forced to destroy the ship which would not capitulate, and which she had been unable to subdue.

  Scale Adjustment carried six thousand Augmented warriors, was piloted and controlled by a limited AI with no capacity for thought other than the simplest and most efficient method of executing Hush’s will. Robotic servants, a cadre of three-legged heavy support tanks, drones, her own comms range powerful enough to signal her mothership from one end of a solar system to the other without noticeable interference. She was equipped with no redundant measures and had no need of them.

  Scale Adjustment’s sister-ship, Austerity Born of Destruction, was the smaller of the only two vessels Hush sent to the surface, and she held an additional three thousand Aug soldiers.

  In total, only three Phobos class warships were under Hush’s thrall, but Hush understood perfectly it was not the ships which would breach the Citadel, but her Augmented battalions. Warden’s Stave was gone. The shield was down. There would never be another chance.

  Hush’s problem, however, wasn’t her thrall-ships, nor her firepower.

  In the air, and in space, she truly was a Goddess, and nothing greater would ever come against her because mankind’s time in the galaxy was over and done.

  That was the problem. That was the value of the Kind’s treasure.

  Because mankind had sealed their own fate, hadn’t they?

  Now they would never come again and nor would suitable organic material – human material. Without humans, Hush’s augmentation technology was obsolete. Humans had become the most precious resource in the universe.

  Her Phobos ships were only filled with rusted, rotting soldiers.

  Augs were not immortal, and Hush’s army was degenerating. On land, Hush’s power was dying, fading out with each year and each Aug she lost.

  Should she fail now, the Titans would have won, because she would have nothing else to send against them.

  She needed what the Citadel had. This was her one chance to take it, a chance she had engineered over the course of decades, all the while with power to destroy the Shield, the Kind, the Citadel, but unable to because of the embryos she needed.

  *

  There were no second chances. This war would end this day.

  Scale Adjustment and Austerity Born of Destruction descended until they were as close to the Citadel as they could reach – nowhere near as large as the entirety of the
five remaining ships, but far more deadly, and terrifying. Great black things, engines displacing dirt and melting rock, and then they began to disgorge their armies until Hush’s entire land force – nine thousand Augmented soldiers, and support units numbering in the thousands – assembled, ready to finish Citadel and all she stood for.

  Hush’s remaining might faced down the only thing left to stand against her.

  Jin.

  *

  61.

  The Giants of War

  Plaza

  The sending of the Kind and Jin stood side by side, watching the armies of Hush disgorge from the massive warships.

  ‘Epimetheus fell,’ Citadel said. ‘Warden’s Stave was his shield and he was the ship’s protector. Symbiosis between the two made their power greater, but for more than a hundred years Hush concentrated her might, and her patience, on him. You see what she has become out there, where an honourable and good being once stood.’

  ‘You are all merged? Ship with Titan?’

  The robot worked to save Lian while Jin turned away from the dark skies and the immense ships and their terrible soldiers to look at Citadel.

  ‘She blindfolded you, Jin. You had no idea how many have been woken, over the years? How many ships she took to herself...how much she had grown. Then could there be other things you do not know?’

  ‘There...there could,’ he agreed. ‘I see them now. Her ships.’ Jin flicked his head toward Hush’s own Avatars.

  ‘Jin...we have no offence. Our power, our strength, protected our cargo. With the dome gone...’

  ‘Your bodies? Do you no longer function?’

  ‘Not as you imagine, Jin. A long time ago we gave up our shells to become the Kind. Me? This sending you see before you? I am no more than a ghost. A memory of our form. We are energy, now. Not might. Not size, nor strength. We gave away war for peace.’

  ‘And now you need war.’

  Citadel bowed low. ‘Brother...all beings make choices. Right or wrong.’

  Jin returned Citadel’s gesture. ‘Yes, we do,’ he said. ‘Citadel...is she’s insane? Hush? Is this insanity we face?’

  ‘We don’t think she’s insane. Perhaps, to her, she’s perfectly sane...and that’s not sanity, Jin. That’s good and evil.’

  ‘I will stand,’ said Jin.

  ‘Then stand well, and know you are loved.’

  ‘As it should be,’ said Jin. ‘That is the value of time, of sentience, is it not? That it should end. Existence without surcease is not Godhood. We are Titans in name, yes, but even the Titans fell. Do what you can, sisters. I will know war once more.’

  At that moment Lian roused, groaning, and opened her eyes to find she wore a leg which was not her own.

  The Avatar laid a hand which didn’t really exist against Jin’s face, tenderly. ‘Go to your friend, Jin. There is always time for that.’

  Jin turned away from Citadel as the sending faded, and went to Lian.

  The horror on her face hurt Jin. He knew very well the horror of waking to a body not your own.

  Some drug or sedative kept her from screaming, but her expression was one of the hardest things to stand that Jin had ever seen. When he had been woken, he had no face for horror, and no mouth with which to scream.

  ‘Lian...’ he said. He knelt beside the doctor. She said nothing, and all expression fell away as shock made her features slack, then blank.

  *

  She blinked, and found tears streamed down her cheeks blurring her first sight of the leg the Kind’s bot had constructed. It was an awful thing, a nightmare more powerful for her than any other...but there was no pain.

  Jin was beside her, though.

  He abandoned me, she thought through a fog.

  He saved me, too.

  He had no expression, because he had no face, but he touched her shoulder and in that touch she understood how sorry he was.

  She looked up through the chill tears on her face to see snow falling.

  ‘Where are we?’ she asked, her words slurred from whatever was done to her. The bot which saved her life was already gone. While Jin and Lian spoke, Citadel had vanished, too, conscious of their privacy, that this moment was between them.

  ‘Under the dome,’ he said. ‘It is down, and Hush...Hush has sent her ships and soldiers against us all. Look out there and see.’

  She was not in pain, and hideous to her as it might be there was no adjustment to having the leg. No change in her function. Her disgust was not a physical ailment. She could walk, and she was healed. She stood, and turned just as easily as she ever had. Even her concussion, her other wounds and injuries, had been healed by the robot’s ministration.

  Out in the snow, in the planet’s mean excuse for daylight, the snow could not hide the numbers and size of the force across from a crater the size of a ship.

  Warden’s Stave, she remembered, but she would never forget her time in that ship’s Crypt, and she could not mourn for it.

  ‘That’s her army? How? It’s impossible...we saw her...’

  ‘She lied,’ said Jin. ‘About nearly everything. She wished us here only to disable the shield, and the shield is down. Warden’s Stave told me much, and the Kind much more. Hush is larger than you imagine. When she left she was a thousand meters long. Now? She has had centuries to work toward this moment, this annihilation. She could destroy the five remaining ships in a heartbeat, I imagine, but she will not. She will use them up. It is the Kind’s charges, those in their care, which Hush needs.’

  Lian’s head hurt – not from any injury, but from the torrent of revelations. It seemed everyone but her understood what was happening. She was in a fantasy world, still inside a dream...

  ‘Wait, Jin...Anna? Ulrich?’

  ‘Safer than we are, Lian.’

  Outside, the armies began to move toward Citadel. The two Phobos ships watched over them like guardians, unshifting, while Jin briefly told Lian what he knew of their plight, of the vast import of the Kind’s willingly undertaken duty.

  ‘Jin...how did we miss this? We walked through Hush...’

  ‘We saw nothing outside because the original shell is within. She fooled us all, Lian. Me, for centuries. You, Ulrich, Anna...the others? For no more than a few hours. It was not difficult, was it?’

  A new leg...a new reality, she thought, glancing at Jin, then the army, then down and the offending limb, then cycling through the whole thing again. A dream in which she had become mired, from which she could not escape...

  ‘Lian, you must get below...go somewhere safe.’

  The Aug soldiers advanced on two fronts around the crater toward them, and support tanks took up position around the hole in the rock while hover tanks moving easily ahead of them all.

  ‘No. I will stay. You can’t fight everything Hush sends against us, and the Citadel...she’s just a sending, right? She can do nothing.’

  ‘I can slow them, Lian. Maybe. Ulrich and Anna may survive. You will die if you stay and I can’t fight without fear of hurting you.’

  ‘I’m not leaving you, Jin. How can I help? Shit,’ said Lian, and kicked out in frustration, her new leg not even hurt against rock. ‘Citadel. Can she help? Citadel? Is she here?’

  ‘We are here Lian,’ said Citadel, and appeared as though from the air in the snow, real enough to displace the snowflakes, but translucent too. Citadel appeared to Lian as she was in the catacombs with Anna and Ulrich. Out of deference to Lian, to her shock. ‘We do have Goliath suits.’

  ‘You do not know how to work the suit,’ said Jin, and Lian understood why he sounded so sad.

  Because he knows I’ll die.

  ‘I know, ‘ said Lian. She did, too. There was comfort in the clarity of the moment, of every choice being removed until only one remained. ‘I know what it means for me. But I’m not leaving you, and I can stand here and pull a trigger. We all stand. Got to stand for something....’

  ‘Yes,’ said Jin, his voice soft...almost like he was proud of her.
>
  He’s older and wiser...

  The fact that he was mostly metal didn’t matter. His soul...he was Kind, even if he was not one with his sisters.

  She heard a hum inside her skull as Jin’s power began to build in readiness.

  A robot advanced then hissed as it stepped from a Goliath suit, vastly upgraded from the things once Jin fought against, just for her.

  Lian moved toward the suit. ‘Citadel...can the suit help me? Is it equipped with AI?’

  ‘No, but Jin will be connected with you, and we will speak and answer and guide as we can. We are all linked.’

  ‘Jin?’

  ‘I will do whatever is required until I cannot. You?

  ‘I’m ready,’ said Lian, and stepped inside the suit.

  It hissed closed, sealed against the outside world, and Jin’s voice was there, through comms, waiting for her. He explained how it would work, what the readouts before her eyes meant, the suits abilities, its strengths, its weakness.

  The only way to truly know it was to use it, though.

  Lian moved slowly at first, then with more confidence, until the Titan and the Goliath stood beside one another for the first and last time and raised their weapons to fight, together.

  *

  62.

  Dig

  West Angels

  Earth

  2351 A.D.

  Ulrich sat in a huge couch, too large for him, or anyone. Maybe some sport player, one of the giant enhanced cage fighters from television, not really human any longer but not quite augmented.

  Dig sat in an armchair facing Ulrich. Ulrich’s boss held a bottle of brandy and drank straight from the bottle. The glass had smashed against the wall behind Ulrich. Dig had thrown it, and Ulrich hadn’t moved. If Dig wanted to hurt Ulrich, he already would have.

  ‘You’re an asset to us, Ulrich. You know this. You’re a man who doesn’t care who he hurts. That’s a valuable thing.’