by Lee Bond
Vasily shrugged at that; Fenris didn’t care and to be honest, every time the man spoke to those ‘in the know’, he spoke with such morbid gravitas that even Goddies shivered. The Harmony soldiers had some kind of bizarre love affair with death and the eventual end of the Universe and they blatantly didn’t care who heard what. So the less the Horsemen of the Apocalypse –as Garth had once called them- stayed in the background, training broken God soldiers in how to reassemble themselves into who they’d once been, the better.
Besides, they had Ute now. Ute Tizhen.
Jesus wept bloody damn tears, what a goddamn nightmare that was. The progenitor of the Tizhen family line, the reason behind every Tizhen since his ‘death’ joining the Army in whatever capacity possible … alive. Alive and –if you ignored the first Harmony soldiers- the second most powerful being in the solar system. The first, now that it was obvious Nickels was on his way somewhere else.
Vasily remembered that first fateful encounter like it’d just happened. When he was old and drooling into a cup, wishing he was still capable of fighting instead of wetting the bed, that moment would be the only thing he’d remember with absolute clarity. He remembered Fenris feigning surprise at Ute’s sudden appearance in the conference room and the look of ashamed disgruntlement on Ute’s broad features; of course the leader of the five demigods had arranged the encounter.
Beyond the shock of seeing the man alive after more than four thousand years, beyond the stunning similarities between the two, there was the feat the man had performed. No one stayed hidden from the Regime for long, even by accident. Sooner or later, someone noticed something and said so to someone else, who either wanted to make a fast buck by selling secrets or was loyal to the Regime and … and you couldn’t look at Ute without thinking ‘this man is a God soldier, why isn’t he out somewhere stomping heathens flat’?
They hadn’t spoken beyond that initial encounter. There was too much to say. Besides, umpty-great grandfather Ute Tizhen was too damn busy helping train the soldiers because, as it turned out, everything Fenris and his freakishly quiet brothers were showing the poor Goddies had been ripped from the man’s experiences.
“It is about time.” Tomas said once he’d done puffing on his pipe.
“Hm?” Vasily didn’t take his eye off his target.
Tomas pointed the end of his pipe towards the now-fading circle in the sky. “Sa Nickels.”
“Ah.”
“What do you suppose is going to happen when his very fancy ship meets the very unbreakable shield?” Tomas wondered aloud.
“I am finding, Tomas, that it is better not to worry.” Vasily shifted his arms a bit. His shoulders were getting sore. “Fenris, Lokken and the other three somehow seem to have everything under control.”
Tomas took another puff. “Mm. This is true. They definitely seem to be prepared for everything.”
“Except this.”
“It is possible,” Tomas murmured gently, “it is possible they left this for you because, for all their talk of Dark Endings and Bright Beginnings, they are truly about helping people come to grips with things.”
“I thought of that.” Vasily admitted. “And…”
“And?” Tomas scrawled on his prote while his dearest and oldest friend stared down the scope of a liberated personal FARS-gun. Not as powerful as the one used by Gurant, it was still excessively deadly.
The avatar ping came back null. No news about Naoko. Tomas’ old man bones warned him that something had gone terribly, tragically wrong. He could feel his daughter was in trouble and try as he might, he could think of no way to get out.
Tomas Kamagana’s eyes turned to the skies once more. Garth Nickels had broken free of Hospitalis and was on his way somewhere else, and thankfully, he knew that Naoko was out there somewhere too. It was a hard thing, letting go, trusting someone else to take care of the problem and he was afraid he wasn’t quite there, not yet.
Garth Nickels was a fairly capable young man with wild ideas who’d done a lot to and for Latelyspace. If anyone could track Naoko down and rescue her from Alastair –oh, Tomas was no fool, he well knew that the dear old Yellow Dog Elder would, if he hadn’t already, renege- it would be him. But there was the niggling worry about the time; could Nickels get to his daughter quickly enough? Would anything he did, even if was there fast, matter? The lure of true power the Kamagana name could wield within Yellow Dogs was might and nearly impossible to resist. Tomas closed his eyes briefly. He’d never thought to instill in Naoko a loathing of that kind of power because … because who in their right minds could conceive of events like these?
“And,” Vasily said grimly, “if that were true, they wouldn’t have hidden the deaths of four towns from me. Two or even three would’ve fallen into the ‘acceptable’ range, as data points in a graph to verify their concerns, but four? The effort to track down all the people afflicted with Pariah, to provide them with a homestead not attached to the ‘LINK in any way … there had to’ve been a better way. I am not so important, my inner wounds are not so terrible, that so many others should’ve been made to suffer.”
Tomas wanted to differ. He spoke often with the freshly wide-eyed Goddies every chance he got. They were uncharacteristically eager to share their newfound knowledge with a short EuroJapanese elder than one of their own kind, and so he knew a fair bit more about the proposed end of the Universe than anyone not a God soldier. To a one, they alluded to some kind of impending greatness for Vasily Aurick Tizhen, something of profound impact, something only he could do.
Then they’d said ‘it all depends on what happens next’.
‘Next’, in this context, was why he was sitting on a wet hill with his best friend, while said best friend stared down a scope at his ex-girlfriend.
If Vasily could do what needed to be done here, now, with the stakes so personal, so intense, then later, when his next great challenge arose, then something wondrous would happen. Or so the Goddies claimed.
Vasily took a deep breath. He exhaled slowly. He took another. He held it.
A gentle squeeze, a puff of sound, a flash of red.
***
Alyssa couldn’t wait until the whole world was swallowed in Pariah, when there was no one left except those who’d thrown her down this dark technological hole. She’d walk into Central, the countless masses of those who followed her because they had no choice at her back. She’d walk up to Vasily and Nickels and Hamilton-who-wasn’t and she’d be ruler again, except this time a ruler of savages who didn’t rely on science any more.
She’d make them all suf…
***
“Thank you for finding her for me, Tomas.” Vasily began packing away his FARS-gun.
“No trouble at all, sa, no trouble at all.” Tomas moved to help his oldest friend with the heavy case, but the OverCommander snorted derisively, so he bowed gracefully and clambered into the truck. When Vasily got in, the EuroJapanese man yawned loudly. “I do believe I am in the mood for some of Si Stonigvale’s pancakes, Vasily.”
“You aren’t in the least bit interested in what happened in the sky?” Vasily threw the truck into gear.
“Oh,” Tomas drawled around a freshly lit pipe, “I am certain everything is going to be ok.”
***
Never never never in his life had he felt such a rush of power. His old body had been a pale, weak thing, trapped and bound and and and so weak but this! Oh this was amazing! This was a miracle of epic proportions!
Sa Gurant’s mistake, Hollyoak saw in an instant, was in trying to grab hold of all those slender, firefly pinpricks hovering in the distance all at once. Each one was a man or woman connected through the communal God soldier link that was in turn a very shallow form of Harmony brought into existence by the weak duronium bridge between here and and and … and there. If he’d only grabbed two or three or a thousand instead of trying to turn all his brothers and sisters into puppets right there on the spot whilst trying to battle whatever it was that Garth
N’Chalez was, why … why …
Hollyoak changed his mind. It was a good thing that Gurant had done what he’d done, had fallen prey to the prime killer of all God soldiers everywhere: hubris. It killed more of the long-lived legionnaires than anything else in the whole word.
Oh but such power! Hollyoak’s cybernetic systems were barely connected, yet the internal God soldier machinery, perverted and upgraded by true connection to a real Harmony had reached out and grabbed hold with relentless, hungry ferocity. The mad scientist could feel and hear things out there in the darkness, scrabbling and clawing at the thin membranes of the Universe, trying to find a way in, to find a way to end everything…
Hollyoak nodded. He liked the idea of ending everything.
He looked over at his old, pale body and grew sick to his stomach. No wonder people had been afraid of him, had been sickened at the sight of him, had moved to avoid his touch, had fled to be spared his presence. Discarded like an old snakeskin, the body that’d seen him through to this moment, well, it didn’t deserve a second thought. He was now who he’d always meant to be and the moment his systems were done merging with the Goddie’s body, then there would be a reign of terror unlike anything this solar system had imagined.
“I do not know what the fuck is going on in here,” a gravelly voice boomed into the room, shattering Hollyoak’s vision of fire and damnation, “but I do know it’s going to be over quickly.”
Hollyoak whirled around, offline sensors driven to life by instinct and need. Ahah! Not all systems were on all the time. Conversation of processing capacity during downtime. Brilliant design. His inner eyes had to switch between half a dozen filters before his unwanted guest became properly visible.
“And who and who are you?” The scientist-turned-Harmony Soldier demanded, his once thin, quivery voice turned into a reedy-but-stentorian blast. Data flooded his mind. This man had a connection to the deepest portions of the thing giving them all life that was … that was greater than his own. By a longshot. No matter. Internal systems were coming online at a ferocious pace. All of Gurant’s memories, stored in the very matrixes of the cells comprising his new body, were being parlayed into experience for the ex-scientist.
No match now, but a match soon enough. All he needed needed needed to do was stretch the encounter…
Ute pursed his lips at the grotesque sight of Hollyoak’s diminutive head clamped via obscene cybernetic legs into Gurant’s old body. He shook his head in disgust, wondering how Fenris could’ve possibly believed he’d find this to be accidental. “My name, Hollyoak, is Ute.”
“No no no I’m not just Hollyoak anymore.” Hollyoak cackled and immediately stopped. Until he gained full control over his body and was properly able to adjust how he sounded, anything other than talking was something to be avoided. “You you you can call me Hollyoak the Destroyer, or Destroyer for for for for short.”
And the stutter. He was definitely going to get rid of the stutter.
“Well, Hollyoak, I don’t know how to tell you this, but you’ve signed your death warrant by stealing that body.” Ute took a step forward. Unlike most of his brothers and sisters, his cybernetic systems rarely displayed themselves anymore. All the data, all the information, all the guesses and suppositions and theories about possible battle moves and outcomes, all of it was just … arrayed. In his head. Like luminous branches of a tree.
All courtesy of full Harmony, Nalanata claimed. According to the Five, he, Ute, was the closest thing to a true soldier of Harmony the Unreality had seen since the original War against the Heshii.
Which was why, Ute supposed as he waited for Hollyoak to decide how to proceed, he was going through this little charade in the first place; Gurant, poisoned by Garth’s massive extra-dimensional explosion in The Museum and further irradiated by Bravo’s limitlessly stupid response, had been snatched up by the … the Anti-Harmony, that atonal expression of Reality espoused by the M’Zahdi Hesh, where he and all the other God soldiers were –allegedly- bound by a music that would –theoretically, if they all didn’t die and N’Chalez was successful- become the Harmony of a Real Sphere.
Ute imagined Fenris’ thoughts on the matter. If the oldest living God soldier couldn’t handily defeat one raging Heshii-monster, then their other troops would stand no chance at all against the throwaway soldiers generated by the Heshii’s quick-troop vats.
Finally finally finally, weapons powered up. Hollyoak the Destroyer reached inside him with the instinctual ease of an ancient God soldier and summoned a raging torrent of energy to scour his opponent into greasy atoms.
Ute batted the blast away and … moved. His fist closed around Hollyoak’s neck. Metallic bones squealed in protest. Hollyoak tried to open his mouth to scream.
Hollyoak felt something shift inside him, felt a voice grab hold. His own mind scrabbled against slippery crystal walls and he felt and he felt and he felt himself fade … “So. This, the enemy?”
Ute tilted his head to one side. This wasn’t Hollyoak talking. The voice oozed age. “Yes.”
“And who are you, then?”
“I am Ute.”
“Ahh, and you have come to the Harmony we seek to destroy. How … unexpected. No matter. You cannot hope to succeed. I have been amidst the stars for millennia. I am the darkness that consumes the light. Shine as brightly as you wish, Harmony Soldier Ute. In the end, the sun always sets.”
Undaunted –though chilled by the ancient evil spilling forth from Hollyoak’s vacant eyes- The Goddie spoke. “It won’t be this easy for my brothers and sisters, you perverted freak. They will fight hard and die harder because they do not have my experience. They will be older than the forces coming against them, so they will have more power, but I know you have machines that can provide endless waves of troops. It will be an even match, I think. Those kin that survive will grow wiser, and thus stronger. When we come to the final battle, we will be less than you thousands of times over, but … we will win.”
“We shall see, little Ute, we shall see.”
Ute squeezed. Hollyoak’s head popped clean off, a most surprised and dismayed look on his face as he temporarily regained full consciousness. Then, because he couldn’t allow anything like this to happen again, at all, ever, Ute proceeded using his newfound powers to thoroughly eradicate Gurant’s body. It took surprisingly little time.
Ute took a deep breath before moving onto the next task, which was … taking care of the poor dwarven Hollyoak. He spared a few soothing words for the dead madman, because that was what you did for a broken animal that has died painfully.
***
“Are … are you okay, Chairman Herrig?”
Herrig felt Sidra’s labored breaths on his cheek; she was directly above him, breathing heavily and sweating profusely from the load on her back. She was also, when not struggling to keep somewhere in the neighborhood of thirty tons of solid metal and rock from crushing them both flat, smiling like an enormous, dusky-skinned angel. “I am fine. How are you? Isn’t that heavy?”
“This?” Sidra shifted a bit to distribute the weight across her shoulders better. “This is … this is nothing. One time, when we were on duty, a spaceship crashed into me.”
Herrig went to laugh before realizing that his bodyguard probably wasn’t exaggerating. It was so easy to forget that even the youngest God soldier was at least three hundred years old. Sidra was over four thousand years old and looked … looked … he blushed.
Sidra smiled. “Do not worry, Chairman. I will keep you safe.” A drop of sweat beaded on her nose, then dropped directly into the Chairman’s eye. “Except, it seems, from accidental blindness.”
This time, he did laugh. His bodyguard joined in.
The weight suddenly shifted on its own, driving Sidra down further. She dropped into a defensive pose, putting her elbows and knees solidly on the ground. She levered herself down until she was less than two inches above Herrig. “I am sorry for this, Chairman, but The Peak seems to be collapsing directly o
n top of me. You will live.”
“I … I …” The heat of Sidra’s breath on his neck was most exhilarating. “I …”
Sidra laughed. “It is all right, Chairman Herrig. Death and danger are the greatest intoxicants in the known universe. It is natural.”
“But I am Chairman!” Herrig replied indignantly, whishing he could squirm away. And then die. Of mortal embarrassment. And then, for preference, The Peak could fall on him. That would be wonderful and more important, infinitely less awkward.
“You are also,” Sidra whispered into his ear as she lowered herself down a little more, so she could feel the rapid beat of his heart against her chest, “the bravest man I have ever met in my life. You, unaugmented in any way, not bound by Harmony, not enhanced with metal and machines, you stood by your friend and waited to greet either his death or his freedom with your eyes wide open, accepting your own death without hesitation. I, who have battled across thousands of worlds and countless years, I have never seen that before. Yes, I’ve seen brothers and sisters perform acts of courage that made me shout in awe, but never have I been moved to tears.”
“I, er, I … I err, should … should like to kiss you, but … ah, the … the rocks…” Herrig couldn’t believe the strangeness of the situation.
Sidra felt a query rush along the Harmony. It was Ute. He was somewhere above her, three hundred feet or more. She signaled that she was alive, that her charge was safe. Then, because she was feeling a stirring in her ancient heart that she hadn’t felt for thousands of years, she told her commanding officer to take his time in freeing them.
Ute’s burst of amusement was uplifting.
“Oh,” Sidra whispered before kissing Herrig softly on the lips, “the rocks will take care of themselves in due time.”
