by Paul Hughes
She knelt at his side, dragging the slosh of phase behind and around her.
“It’ll be okay. We’ll be okay.”
Hunter nodded, although he knew that their love would kill him.
“We’ll meet up with a galleon. We’ll find a way to hide you. We’ll split up. I can take the Fleet back to Earth and—”
“I’m not leaving you.”
“You have to. When she finds out that we’re off-target—”
“I’m not leaving you.”
“Lilith.”
“Hunter.”
The phase shield was an echoing frustration. He longed to hold her, reassure her. The silver wouldn’t allow any contact at all very soon.
“Our first concern right now is to outrun the Rebecca.”
“We can’t outrun them. We’ll have to fight.”
“Are you willing to kill a destroyer of humans?”
She tripped over words. Heart pounded beneath cardiac plate. “It would appear I have been all along.”
“Lily—” He exhaled. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean—”
“I know.”
“We’ll find a way to end this.”
“We will.”
“Us.”
“Just us.”
They flew into the void, machinery of night and war, wounded soldiers without certainty, grasping what hope they could from the dream of ending the jihad of silver.
“What’s that?”
He placed the Bic micro metal black ink pen on the countertop, reached for his cup. Slow sip, clink, napkin to lips.
“Just something.”
She smiled, releasing solitary dimple, hiding her eyes. “It’s a new book.”
“Nope.”
“Yes it is! What’s it about?”
“It’s not a new book.”
“A short story?”
He tapped the pen against the counter. “I don’t know.”
“You have to know what it is.”
“It’s something.”
“A journal?”
“Do you remember when you first came here?”
The shop was empty, past closing time. He wrote while she made order of cups and saucers, filled sugar dispensers. He’d helped her put the chairs on the tabletops earlier. She walked around to his side of the counter, took the stool next to him. Her eyes studied the floor, the pen, his hands. Not his eyes, old eyes now gray, old eyes now buried in furrows of wrinkle and thought.
“Yes.”
He reached, took her hands in his. Gently, so gently raised them to lips, traced knuckle and fingertip, slid over ring and ring. He tilted her face up with fingertips layered in callus, guitar callus of decades and night. Her bottom lip trembled, mouth opened to say something, anything. He kissed her cheek.
“I knew it would happen... I wrote about it months before it happened. Something inside me knew.”
“Paul, I’m—”
“No.” They embraced. He spoke into hair and ear. “Sweet girl.”
“Please know.”
“I know. And I knew. And I knew that we’d be together again, someday, somehow.” He pulled back, tip of nose meeting tip of nose. “And now I know something else.”
“The journal?”
“Something’s been speaking to me for years. Long before they found her, long before the wars and the troubles. I hear it in the night, in the loss, in the stillness, in the—”
“Silver.”
He nodded. “It’s gotten worse since it’s begun. Since she’s begun.”
Susan thought of the intersections of that day: the young engaged couple: soldier and silver ring, the author and his girlfriend: Deus Ex and Demian, the man with a white curl.
“‘And so we beat on, boats against the current, borne back ceaselessly into the past.’”
“Hmm?”
“Gatsby.” He found double-meaning in her response.
“I’m sorry I didn’t dance with you.”
“Stop it.” She grinned.
“This is where the fish lives.”
“I have come again—”
“To wound the autumnal city.” Her smile was wide, forgiving, forever. “Delany’s going to sue you someday.”
They laughed, and it was good.
She pulled back from their embrace, tangle of arms, warmth of bodies, scent of coffee, sound of raindrops. Eyes tear-wet, blinking. Blinking.
“Please know, Paul.”
“I know.” He closed the blank book, left in mid-sentence. “I’ll finish this journal another day.”
They walked into the unsteady night, clouds lifting to reveal a sky of stars and starships, the men of war within the machinery that would take them beyond heaven, beyond time and tomorrow. They walked into the night, knowing that it was time, almost time, almost time. Their hands clasped tightly under stars, under stars.
“Susan?”
“Yes?” Blue-green eyes in the light of the moon. Dimple.
“I love You.”
my lips remember the echoes of that night
LES SOLDATS PERDUS: A PLAGUE JOURNAL
And in these final moments, in this final terror, I find stillness.
I remember her eyes.
They give me silence, the pause to reflect, the stillness that exists between two old souls brought together through tragic circumstance. As I hold this weapon, as I prepare to end this war, I remember and it gives me strength.
This is the moment of ultimate truth; I inhale and know all. I know what I have to do to end this. Even as the child stands before me, even as I hold this weapon to target on her heart, I know what I have to do.
It is a flood of thought and emotion; this is the moment before an end, those instants when the world pauses, those instants when everything is revealed and I am held motionless in a hesitant peace.
Inhale.
She begs me to end it. I will, but not before telling you the story of how it all came to be. Seconds stretch to hours, years, decades, forevers. I will take my time.
They’re all dead now on this dusty plain, this barren world where it began and where I will enact an ending. Only now do I realize the depth of my loss; I’ve killed the woman I love by killing the doppelganger sent to replace me. The shot went right through him and hit her as well. What have I done?
Exhale.
She’s in my arms right now, lifeless body. I hope her soul is elsewhere.
So much to say. So little time. The child yearns for this weapon, yearns for cessation and stillness.
She can wait.
How far back does the mind go? How far back does this story stretch? I barely remember the Earth. What still remains in my memory are broken images: a talking teddy bear, a gravel parking lot, the weapon jutting from the ocean, firing the white balls of phase that would begin the war. I remember a fence, a little girl, the static of the dead television. Daddy leaving. Mommy’s gloves. My baby sister, and the tears late at night.
I remember the smell of the smoke rising from my mother’s broken chest as she lay on the ground, dying.
They lied to us. They said we’d be reunited with our families once Archimedes was out of harm’s way. I knew that they were all dead, and I knew that Uncle and the angels were lying. Maybe that’s why I did what I did.
I think my heart has stopped beating.
Is there love between stars and times? Can the lost soldiers ever know that most poignant of emotions? Can something develop between two people brought together by loss and war that transcends explanation, safety, reality?
I can feel her blood through my shirt.
The child laughs at me. The temptation... I can taste it. I want to kill her, will kill her. Not yet, though.
I can’t kill her yet. I don’t want to leave. Images flood this confusion: a hand, her eyes, subtle smile and the shudder of her release. Forbidden love, forbidden coupling. I killed Tallis for what he did to her. I would have killed Uncle if I had known in time. His heart gave out. In this moment, I feel my
own, each beat distinct. I feel the blood coursing through my veins, flushing my face, reaching every last extent of my body. I feel the gun warming to my touch.
This is the final moment. I know everything, I see everything.
dream that your someday child never knows of the rain
I can smell her hair, tainted as it is by sand and blood, sweat and dust. I can smell her hair.
How did it come to this?
Gary’s wreckage to the south, Hannon’s final gambit spilling fire and black smoke into the afternoon sky... What is this place? Can it be home? Did God die for these bleak plains, this impossibility of continuation? Did Lilith die so that I could kill her Mother and be left alone here?
This is the final moment. The ultimate truth. Senses are heightened, flashes of memory dance before my eyes, replacing the child with past, this desert with the cold of space, this corpse with warmth and touch and life.
I know it all now.
We tore the ship apart after I killed Tallis.
The angels tried to keep us from the bridge. They’d seen what happened in the hangar. They’d known all along that Tallis was a special little present that Maire sent along with Arch to keep watch over us, to take over once Uncle had died. They’d known it was coming, could see it in Uncle’s eyes for months before the final heart attack. His great crop of kinked black hair turned from salt-and-pepper to pure white, his rich chocolate skin turned sickly gray, eyes once brilliant white yellowed with age and exhaustion. I don’t blame him. I now know that he was an unwilling participant in this slaughter, just as my father and Uncle Jean were long before I was born.
Did my father see this world before he died?
I can feel that final collapse. I felt it then... But in this moment, he is with me.
Is it the silver? Is that the link between our past and present and whatever lies beyond? It crawls just beneath my skin, jabbing behind left eye, right. It is alive, so much more alive than the little girl, so much more alive than I am in this pause.
Brendan’s blood was still on my hands when we went to the bridge. The angels tried to stop us, but we fell upon them with blades and fists, slashing throats, knocking them down, gouging biomech eyes from silent, confused sockets. I felt nothing. They felt nothing. We emptied the ship of Mother’s spawn. We smashed things. I paralyzed Arch with stripped circuits, broken boards. Lobotomy.
At last, we were alone. Just men in the middle of nowhere.
And woman.
I remember being alone with her for the first time.
We thought it was a drill, but it wasn’t. Must have been fifteen or sixteen at the time, just starting our outside flight training. Brendan’s Attack One was running formations in what we thought was an empty system. Turned out to be inhabited. We were told they were the aliens; I know now that they were probably just an advance team from Hannon’s systemship. Arch went into evasive, left the slithers outside. I was on Catalyst guard shift with Arik. He abandoned his post; I don’t know where he went. But when Arch started shaking, I almost panicked. We’d never been bombarded from close-range before. EM slugs. We lost phase containment on the lower decks, and the system glitched. The Catalyst chamber opened.
She was in there, alone. Crouched on the floor, so scared. I went to her.
I don’t know if she’d ever been held by another human.
It wasn’t until after the attack was over that we realized that my shielding had never activated. I’d been in the chamber without phase, but nothing had happened.
We kept it a secret. Our little secret.
I owe it to decades of planning. When my father was in the service of Mother, she changed him. This child... She knows that I’m the son of Joseph Windham. She knows, she knew, but she still let me get on that ship. Maybe she had plans for me. In the end, she decided to kill me, replace me with an angel named Nine. She never suspected that Hannon would find my Machine in the outer. She never suspected that I would kill her.
This silver is starting to
Maybe she wanted this. Maybe she knew.
She is weak. I can feel her. Digging, clawing, struggling against this, even as she knows that it must be done.
She fades, lashes out. Final struggle against this
Maire is ancient. She is older than this world, older than home Earth and Hannon and the system she tried to kill. She is older than her Judith. She comes from the night between times, the void between stars. She waited for forevers to find a suitable host. She found it in Maire. The
silver
speaks to me without lips, without voice or tongue or breath.
She is.
life like fire
And now I begin to understand. Laughter like pleas for mercy resonate. Purpose. Will be completed. I heard it in the wind and saw it in the sky; I thought it was the end.
Please, give me strength.
I’ve seen God. Judith. Touched her. Held her hand as she died. I wept for her. I don’t know if there are others. I can only pray that there is something beyond this dust, this plain, this dead weight of my love bleeding out into the hardpan. I can only pray that in these moments, it will guide me, give me the strength to do what I must do, to end this war, to kill this child, to find that stillness between
There was music in her voice.
Is this all there is? Please give me solace and strength. Please direct finger to action, pressure against metal, brace for the shock of
We’d trade glances during briefings. As we got farther into the Outer, closer to target, Uncle allowed her into the briefings. She remembered that attack, the way I held her and didn’t dissolve from contact with the catalyst. She remembered a moment of adolescent compassion. All I did was hold a frightened girl, but she knew. You know. You do. She remembered the fence, the afternoon walks where I held my mother’s hand, gloved hand concealing the affliction that killed our species, afternoon walks where I waved to the only little girl left, pretty little girl inasmuch as I could recognize pretty: colorless colorful eyes, curls, unruly. Sad girl behind walls, faceless angel watching over her. She remembered my grocery trips long after we’d left the planet and groceries and the galaxy of home.
I think Tallis knew all along. I think he was jealous.
We found time to be alone, little moments stolen from my menial tasks and her recoveries. We grew into adults in that metal box flying into war. I never wore a shield. I thought the resistance would last forever.
This crawling proves me wrong. This ripple of flesh, this tickling beneath scalp and wrist and thigh. These shaking hands
will find your back; the kingdom i’d unravel in our
So tired. I’m so tired.
Rebecca found us.
We’d crossed paths with other destroyers before, pauses on target, angels gathering to discuss the mission, probably using the boosted signal strength of two vessels to talk to home and Mother. We’d wait it out, just wait without orders until they were done. We’d meet the other crews, trade stories of combat and victories against our faceless enemy, confident that we were doing the right thing, spreading our jihad across timespace.
I’d heard of the Rebecca long before they caught us.
Rogue vessel. Canberra Compound. We heard that something had gone wrong; they’d left target, gone off-course and scope. There were a few ships that just did that. Just disappeared. I assume some of them were destroyed in combat. Everyone assumed the Rebecca had been lost.
and this heart for
It was a hushed conversation, without Tallis, without most of my officers. They never took to other crews, never liked waiting in nonspace for course alterations. They never liked anyone.
I tried to be friendly to most people.
I don’t remember which crew first told me of Canberra Rebecca’s reemergence. I remember the captain was trying very hard to grow a beard. I remember he spoke of a targeted world, arriving in-system to find the planet cracked in half, moons hanging perilously close to contact. He said there was a be
acon, transmitting faintly, whispering into the night: Rebecca was here. That was it. That was their sign.
He’d found angels spaced into that system. They’d killed their angels.
What if Lilith had been on the Rebecca? Would there be anything left of this at all? They killed worlds, killed systems with the very basic weapons provided, without benefit of Catalyst. The slug generators we’d left outside of the Earth system, drawing fire from the suns, channeling it into phase and directing it on target from decades away... I don’t know why she didn’t change the access codes. I don’t know why she let that crew use weapons of night against innocent worlds, other Fleet vessels, eventually themselves. It was a game to her; she loved watching us struggle. We were puppets.
They caught up to us in those three days.
I don’t regret killing my angels, even though we probably would have survived with their help.
The Rebecca must have been listening all along. Must have intercepted Mother’s kill order. I don’t think they really cared about me or about maintaining the Catalyst integrity in a controlled environment. I think they wanted to kill everyone, just to spite Mother. If the painter and the ghost hadn’t gotten there in time, I wouldn’t be here today. It wouldn’t have mattered. Thousands of years of planning would have been lost because of a metal box of bloodthirsty Australians.
How much of Gary was Australia? Phase rudder, starboard side, deck three lavatory? Was his cockpit made of Kansas, his airlocks of Belgium, his voice the wind that scraped Africa?
I didn’t know him long, but he swore a lot.
I don’t want to be awake.
The Rebecca rammed Arch at full speed. Role reversal, sexual politics, the dance of metal sex, pheromones of phase dripping off into the night, sweat and cum of non-life struggle, fingernails scratching, no screams in that silence but fire, fire. And blood.
Too close for slithers. We flew across alone, armed, army of boys, not men, not boys, guarding our female against invasion. They met us halfway, conflicting invasions, hand-to-hand. Astronauts?
