An End

by Paul Hughes

  I saw so many of my men smeared to pulp between the grinding warships, caught between the tons, never knowing life, just this. Just this night.

  The heart breaks because of

  There was no reason for it, no reason for their fury without purpose or thought. They wanted to kill us, and they did, many. We killed many of them in return.

  I watched Arik die. He was my best friend. He was cutting into the Rebecca hull, trying to board. He made the hole. Got that done. His troops poured in after him, flash of fire, spatter of red, limbs. Limbs everywhere. They were waiting on the inside.

  We went in after them.

  So tired.

  Disease to disease, contagion to contagion. We are the plague. We are the

  Could I have lived a normal life?

  All this I have known: combat and bloodlust, training for decades for a final conflict that has now emerged as a child, a gun, a desert plain. I’ve known the love of the final woman, the brotherhood of the lost soldiers. I’ve touched God. I’ve killed millions, with my own hand, with her own heart, with blind and reckless abandon for a tainted purpose. I’ve known. Silver. And more. I’ve known the stillness, will find it again soon. There will be silence on this expanse, silence interrupted by wind, by scream, by despair of solitude.

  Could I have lived as another, as the painter did in the time before Maire, as my father did before the war, as my mother, spectacled, carrying books and given letters, as the author, the author and coffee and marbles, blue, two, hidden in pocket, hidden away from, away from vain struggle? I’ve heard the stories, faded stories of a planet long gone, final, final wreckage smoking to the south, blackened pile of the interior made exterior, made into Guerra.

  She stole more than futures.

  Could I have known a night under rain, warm breath and soft bed, watching the sleep, watching the

  don’t

  This gun becomes heavy.

  No sound, but they lied. No sound as Arch’s phase rudder was torn apart, as Rebecca’s belly split. No sound in those pulses of light, explosions of metal and men. I remember watching, stretching to feel her, reaching to sense that touch, to know that she was safe. And this heart, for

  I felt her touch.

  We stormed the Rebecca interior, phase and light and fire. We killed. They came apart. Struggle for center, scrambling down hallways, cutting, cutting. We killed. Gutted Rebecca from the inside, as I knew they would do to Arch. I left my troops to continue their evisceration.

  Swarms of men outside, sparks and radio screams, bits of metal stippling shield, razoring to center flesh.

  Arch: hangar open, spilling slithers into the night, unmanned, grotesque miscarriage of technology.

  I could feel her running, gasping. Hull was near, Hull was there where I should have been. She carried a weapon and used it as the boarding party made its way to the Catalyst chamber. Hull died, she didn’t, some of them did. Some of them.

  She struck out but they were shielded, hands and snares, grabbing, binding, stealing.

  I jumped like flying, free-falling, between light and void, shield bubbling from heat and cold, slugs and fire. Embraced Arch. Felt them near.

  All of these words approximate. There are no words for this, for Us, for

  I feign strength and we

  The painter walks through the streets; he’s had a fight with his mistress. She wants a ring. He doesn’t want to give it to her. He looks into the sky, sees stars, falling. Fighting starlight. It was his calling; she whispered to his blood. He went to the caves.

  The authors walks through the streets; he’s lost his lover. He wanted to give her a ring. She couldn’t accept it. He looks into the sky, sees stars, falling. Fighting starlight. It was his calling; she whispered to his blood. He went to the coffeehouse.

  I’ve never tasted coffee, but I remember its scent.

  I don’t know how else to be.

  my lips remember

  Daddy had a guitar. Why would a soldier have a guitar, strumming late at night, Mommy silent, sitting, smiling? They thought I was asleep. I don’t remember the words, but it was her song. Tears.

  I miss

  Killed them as they tried to escape through the hole they cut in Arch, as they carried the bound and gelled Catalyst out. She struggled, but there were many. I killed them, severed her restraints. She embraced me. It was all falling apart, Arch dead, Rebecca dead, most of our crew torn to pieces between the vessels, but she embraced me. I was so afraid that I’d lost her.

  They must have sent a signal from the Rebecca. Maybe it was automatic. Black turned to white, stars folded and stretched to lines, stretched toward

  The phase slugs arrived in-system, shot from guns we’d placed decades before. Rebecca became shards. Radio chatter: screaming, screaming and dying. My men caught in between. The initial shot hit Rebecca directly, sent what remained of Arch spinning away.

  I remember grabbing Lilith’s hand and jumping from the hole, pushing off as hard as I could, hoping that the momentum would be enough to reach one of the jettisoned slithers.

  It was.

  We got in as quickly as we could, laden with gallons of gel shielding, freezing from exposure. I slammed the cockpit hatch home as the second and third slugs arrived, again hitting Rebecca, some of Arch, so many soldiers. So many dead.

  I don’t know if anyone else got away, but I didn’t see any other active slithers. I think we were the only survivors.

  We flew.

  I hated to hear her cry, but I was crying, too. Strong commander of the Extinction Fleet vessel Archimedes, Hunter Windham. Crying at the loss of the only home I’d known for twenty years, the only family I’d had. I’d killed Tallis with my bare hands, watched my best friend die in a cloud of blood vapor, seen my Mother mouth “I love you” even as I could see the pavement through the hole in her chest, but only then did I cry. Alone in the night with Lilith, tears floating lazily before my face, batting them aside so I could see the slither monitor, plot a course, escape the system of phase slugs and debris.

  System showed four more vessels arriving in-system soon. Wolves to the scent of blood drawn. Three destroyers and something else... Something huge.

  Mother would want evidence that I was dead. Mother would want Lilith intact. Another vessel would take her and use her. I couldn’t let that happen.

  She spun me around, took off my helmet, hands going to my hair, wiping sweat from my forehead, cheeks. Her lips moved on nothing. No words. In that moment, no words. I felt the silver stirring, but I didn’t care. Subtle pain behind eyes. Her touch was worth the risk.

  Tangle of lips, tongues. Noses fencing. I knew my stubble scratched her face. Skin sweat-slick, tear tracks.

  I searched on all bands for something, anything. Galleons. Had to get to a galleon.

  They called them prisons, but they really weren’t. When Earth system fell to the “alien” attack, there were billions of humans on the outer planets, the colonies, a few nearby systems. They became the galleon refugees, searching for inhabitable worlds in the near-Outer. We came across them from time to time, interacted with the crews. Uncle disapproved. I’m sure Mother disapproved. I’m sure some of the alien worlds we were sent to cleanse with the silver were refugee worlds.

  Two people, tiny sliver of slither, searching for

  i love you for your hands.

  long, lean fingers interlaced with my own, the interruption of your rings, long nail, long nail, short nail. the grasp of small hand within my clumsy, shaking own, the tightening of your grip on my shoulder as you gasp, fingers slipping to my neck, pulling me into a kiss.

  i love you for your skin. smooth, soft, infinitesimal hairs. i love your taste, the salt of our passion, the warmth and wetness of two bodies joined together by desire and love that has waited so long to appear.

  i love you for your lips, the medium of the first hint of Us: stolen kisses.

  i love you for your hair, that halo of tickling that descends to my face when you ar
e above me and shines out around you when you are below. kissing ears through gateways, pulling traces of you from my mouth.

  your dimple. perfect dimple. i love you for your dimple.

  i love you for your tummy. you hide, yet it is beautiful, taut skin interrupted by button, stippled with my kisses on a journey into abandon.

  i love you for your eyes. cliché in action: they are the window in which i see our future.

  your heart. i love You for your heart, that organ of fire that i cross with my fingers, kiss with my lips, feel in the depth of my own. curled together, tender moment: i hear you, the quickness of your acceleration, the echoes of our times together, the futures i

  love you for your soul. my soul. Our soul. decades of searching before we found Us again. i felt the touch of your essence years ago, but never knew that i would find myself within you, that perfect soul resonating with my own, all pieces of one returning to the eternal, two souls traveling the same path for the moment, the perfect moment.

  i love You for your Love.

  How we deny. That moment. Within stillness and cold, how we deny.

  Never had a dog. Our neighbor had a dog. And a baby. For a while.

  Do you know of silver? What she told us, the ice, the wind, a blade? Do you know? Believe?

  There are things we know, resident memory, special memory, species memory coded into us. We know. Just because. There are things we’re told. To read, to watch to be. I read of lions and witches and robots, a desert, a jihad, rabbits and a warren, a submarine, boys on an island. Arch had no Piggy. I read, Mommy read to me, and I liked the stories, although the room shook, the sky was fire. I liked those stories before bedtime, although sometimes they made me think too much, too much to sleep, to breathe. I knew of broken glass: and blood.

  We read of Ender because we were supposed to. There were girls on his ship.

  I read about Hank years before I met him, many years before he died. I never knew he was real.

  Those stories... A different dust, a different wind, a different showdown at noon. Hank was

  How he’d stand, hand poised, brow furrowed, staring, staring down. Hank didn’t wear a white hat, but he killed men in black. Primitive. I can’t imagine

  a lifetime without you, yet it stares me in the face right now

  and he smoked. I’ve never. Smoked. He chewed tobacco sometimes. Spit on the desert floor. Disgusting process, but

  why do i enjoy it so much?

  How the hell did Hank end up in this? Anachronism, fictional character made popular by a return to traditional values after the war of the turn of the century. Hank, last-name-less Hank, on billboards and action figures and prime-time pay-per-view. Hank. He. Was good. For the world.

  A painter, a cowboy, a ghost, a child, a warship, a

  Love.

  Know? Believe?

  that I didn’t want her to shiver besind me, hated that it was so cold, that my skin crawled with silver infestation, that I had to keep shielding in that cramped cockpit so that I wouldn’t

  Her smile was so sad.

  We found a school of unknowns on screen and raced

  like vultures to the

  toward them, hoping beyond hope that air would last.

  I tried to breathe less, slower, but I knew that she didn’t really need the air anyways, hybrid of silver and something, calm to my rage, cool to my heat, heart to my heart. Target locked, we flew. I let the system drive. We huddled together as best as shielding and timing allowed, allowing precious hours to slip by unprotected until the jabbing started along fingers and wrists, behind eyes, and I retreated behind liquid glass.

  Can you appreciate the touch of a lover not marred by distance, flesh to flesh, swimming into, entering, not echoed through phase, cold, wet, not shivering and yet feeling the same pang, the same pain, the same

  The realization of distance physical.

  I was so scared that the galleons wouldn’t be friendly.

  How I miss home, or the idea of home: safety, family, parents still alive, teddy bear unburned, cartoons on the television, no grocery store walks past a little girl, waving. I miss an idea that would have prevented this love. Which life would I choose?

  Better to have loved and lost... Is bullshit.

  I’ve killed her. Weight of body, smell of sweat, tack of blood. I’ve killed

  Lies since birth, all that they taught, all that they taught. I’ve known truths, but I’ve assembled them myself from fragments of Us. I’ve known the silver, the stillness, the loss, the night. I know. i Know. You. Do you? You?

  Focus. Inhale. moment

  It isn’t like books or movies, holograms or

  a boy a girl and the end of the

  No words.

  A mind dissembles.

  I’d passed out by the time we were in range. Lilith activated the beacon, mindful that it might draw unfriendlies too. There was nothing more we could do, dead ship, cold and silver onset within me. I remember snap of static and gush of warmth as they released the cockpit seal in the galleon hangar, shadowed images, old men in miner’s jumpsuits, jaws agape at my passenger. Woman. Shielded.

  Weakness: they lifted me up, out. Conversation like waves, echoes, forth and back. I knew it wasn’t English. French.

  I remember fever: slurred speech, sweaty brow, cool floor, a man squatting beside me, looking from his shipmates to the sick destroyer captain and his companion. Deactivated my shielding, let me breathe deeply of old air, taste of ore, reach out to Lilith, please, just let me hold

  She was uncomfortable. Center of attention, moreso than I was. Because. Just because.

  A new man, my vision fading from black to

  Silver was retreating.

  He knelt, touched my cheeks, forehead. Spoke to his shipmates with foreign tongue.

  Lilith: standard? english? anyone?

  oui. yes.

  I don’t remember what happened after that, but waking up in their sickbay. Warm. Normal, stabbing gone, heart regulated. Rested. I panicked but she was at my side, shielded but there. I wanted to hold her hand, but knew that it was getting too close. To time. The time. When we could no longer be together. She kept her distance, a distance that I knew could only grow. You know. You do. grow.

  She’d spoken with the man in broken Standard. Told him everything. Incredible story, but she was the proof. She. was the proof.

  It was a group of three galleons, miners. They worked around the periphery of a single system where they’d found the closest approximation to Sol that they could. Dead system, planets harvested of almost everything, but still breathable atmosphere, a little water. Nothing left but desert, flattened cities, a spire... Three ships, a few hundred crewmen. When she asked where they came from, they told a story as incredible as ours, yet there it was, intersections, intersections, paths crossed in the night.

  Many of the colony came from rogue Fleet vessels. Soldats perdus. And now I knew, and I knew.

  His name was Berard, and he’d known my father.

  There are histories hidden between these stars, histories that die before revelation. I feel them; they bring poignant tears to tired eyes.

  out of the hell of whatever it was

  Do you know of France, interior struts of Guerra’s midsection, wine country converted to bulkheads? Do you know of Paris, the war, the hole in the earth that led to

  Berard served under Jean Reynald and Joseph Windham after the war, during Mother’s rise. He knew Whistler, the original projection. He was responsible for the Paris Compound. He was the Pierce de Paris, taking his boys to the sky when the “alien” invasion began, for a while turning them into good little soldiers, later breaking target and killing angels and leaving the master plan of the jihad. Berard saw through the plan. Maybe Pierce did too.

  They hid. Found a home. Became soldat perdus of a friendlier persuasion.

  He knew of her beginning, those precious secrets held by precious few: ice, wind, blade. He knew. Maybe she saw it all: intersect
ions in the night. Maybe she let him escape.

  He said I looked like my father.

  Joseph Windham was the strongest man in the world. I saw tears in his eyes once, that day that he left and I knew he would die only months and centuries later, in the cold of this, bathed in a bridge sea, bubbles of gelatin glass, the sound of cracking shell, an instant of

  My father never trusted his path, chose to tell a small circle of his officers that which he’d seen in Mother’s eyes. He wanted them to distrust. He needed them to distrust, because he knew.

  My father told him of

  long summer bonfires, those stupid cushions we put around the fire that get wet as the air cools, sending everyone else off to play hide and seek so we can be alone, a cute girl throwing dandelions at me, the time when we first laid by the fire and i explored every inch of your face with my lips because we were both too terrified to kiss.

  i could go on. i think too much. i wish things had not changed.

  i still love you.

  The child is dying. Younger and younger. The process speeds. Tears of frustration and fury. She begs.

  This weapon is

  The ice plain slipped toward night and

  i win

  I know now of a system of two stars, a species with two hearts who buried their god in the center of the world. I know of centuries of civil war, a fragile peace enacted by machine angels. I know of a woman from the edge of the worlds, trees that swam through the sky, an alien called silver, between times and whens. Silverthought. I know.

  She could have talked, but she was action. She could have talked, but no one would have listened. She heard the whispers in her blood, whispers in her single silver heart, and she acted.

  Berlin, Kath, others. They had access to the lumbers, had access to the inexplicable resonance of flight and time. They helped her at first, wanted to make a difference, wanted things to change. They knew that their god was asleep, that machines were taking key positions in the power structure, that left unchecked, the machines could decide to replace biologic with mechanic.

  and this heart, for

  They never knew that she would try to kill them all.