Space Knights- Last on the Line

by Emerson Fortier

  “Awesome.” Moses gasped. He could feel it already, breath whistling in and out of his lungs like fire, heart beat like one of the light squire’s automatic rifles hammering at the inside of his chest. The suit sped up and he felt as though his legs were going to fly off of him. “Just get us there.” He gasped.

  Without waiting any longer the suit pushed the speed. Moses watched the meter in his suit climb without knowing what speeds the numbers indicated and he tried to hold himself limp as his legs and arms were pumped at a brutal speed. At the two and the five on his meter he felt like his limbs were getting twisted off of him. Each step jarred every bone in his body, every half jump and swerve made him aware of just how precarious the bond was between his limbs and his torso. Then they reached peak speed, a three and a five.

  “We will travel at this speed for ten seconds.” The AI said.

  Moses’ breath came ragged as the world raced by. He only wanted the agony of the run to end. Artillery burst in the dirt just ahead and to his left outside the shield, then it was gone even before the sound of the explosion could catch up with him. A rock rose out of the grass like a meteor aimed straight at his legs and the suit took it in a single stride, kicking off as though into flight. Mid jump the pain of the spring seemed to leave Moses’ body and he felt like shouting for joy as he registered just how fast he was really going. They hit the ground like a bomb, splashing dirt and debris from the landing but still running, and the pain, seemed to have disappeared. He grinned, unable to laugh as his tortured lungs were pumped to the rythm of the suits flying sprint.

  The ten seconds elapsed, and the suit slowed, dropping down, and down while the roaring in Moses’ ears remained.As his heart rate slowed, he felt the pounding ache of the run move from his chest to his head. “I am returning control.” The AI warned him, and suddenly, control was his again. He staggered, then tripped and tumbled across the grass. The armor took the brunt of the fall and he came to a stop at the end of the long furrow it carved in the grass as he slid. He lay in the dirt, looking up at a spinning twilight sky as his breathing caught up with him. He chuckled.

  “You are uninjured.” The AI said as though to question the cause of the laughter.

  Moses’ limbs felt like they’d been beaten with hammers. “I’m going to hurt tomorrow.” He replied.

  “Are you satisfied with the performance?”

  “How long can an experienced pilot sustain that kind of speed?” Moses asked.

  “Indefinitely.” The suit replied. “Though it represents a significant power drain unless it is done in bursts to allow cooling of major muscle bands.”

  “ Is there a way to steer when we get to those speeds?” Moses asked. “I pretty much left the steering to you.”

  “There is a method involving the fingers.” The AI told him. “I can teach it to you if you would like.”

  A voice interrupted them. “Didn’t know the suits could go that fast.”

  Moses rolled over and found Kyra standing in the twilight underneath the shield. Bare of her armor she looked wild, almost feral. An explosion of short red hair stood off of her head like a flame. She was thin as a rail and in nothing but a standard issue jumpsuit that hung around her, obviously cut without a girl’s curvature in mind. She had one of her pistols tied with string to a belt on her hip.

  He pushed his helmet off so she could see his face. “It feels like getting kicked. Everywhere. All at once. Over and over again.” The night air felt cool against his flushed skin.

  She walked towards him and squatted down beside his crater as he propped himself up from the pile of dirt he’d ended in.

  “You do this every night?” She asked. she plucked a grass stem from the pile at his elbow and stuck it in her mouth.

  “First time.” He said.

  She nodded but said nothing and for a moment they sat together like that in silence. Kyra focused on the grass in her mouth and Moses held his silence while his stampeding heart began to slow and his sking began to cool. Night rose from the jagged eastern horizon while they sat, until only a thin line of silver outlined the opposite horizon behind the enemy’s camp. The grass shifted in waves across the miles of emptiness as the breeze traversed the continent and each stalk whistled or chirped as it slid against its neighbor producing an ethereal music to the cadence of the wind like an unseen choir of angels ringing little bells or playing tiny flutes.

  “Did you come out here just to watch?” Moses asked when she said nothing.

  Kyra shrugged. “I came out here because my AI told me you’d be here.”

  Moses nodded, and looked up at the stars just making their appearance in the deep black of the night sky above the pale white line of the horizon. He remembered his penitential prayer, and the way Lisa had looked in the starlight when she told him to remember her.

  “What do you want?” Moses asked Kyra.

  Kyra threw her stem of grass away and plucked another and looked at him, as though trying to see something that wasn’t on the surface. “I just came to talk.” She said around the grass stem. She looked back out at the enemy’s camp. “Of all the guys I grabbed you seem like the best, for talk.”

  “You’d have done better with Marloque.” Moses said. Of their group Moses thought only Pete small had made less conversation in their downtime between fights.

  “I might have gone to Marloque.” Kyra replied. “But there’s a difference between noise and talk. You don’t make noise, you just talk.”

  “Thanks.” Moses said. Uncomfortable at the compliment, or judgement, or whatever it was. “I think.”

  “You were good.” She said after another brief silence. “Better than most, except maybe Marloque. You were right about staying back in the melees. That was good, and keeping Maxwell back. And you’re practicing with your suit when you could be sleeping. That’s also good.”

  Moses didn’t know what to say so he didn’t say anything and she sucked on her grass for a moment longer. He could see when she finally came to a decision and looked at him.

  “What’s it like?” Kyra asked. “The place you’re from?”

  Moses shifted uncomfortably and leaned on one elbow, away from Kyra, but so that he could face her as well as the waves of grass.“There’s trees.” Moses said. Before sitting in the grass looking out at the empty Pampas, he hadn’t realized how much he missed trees. It struck him very suddenly, the emptiness. He hadn’t really noticed it before, too caught up in battle and training, but there was something comforting in trees. They gave you a place to hide and be alone. Out here, It didn’t feel like you could have hidden any place. You would always have been able to see the dome, either one, theirs, or the enemy’s, so that you couldn’t have left if you tried.

  “You signed up in Carmichael. What’s that place like?”

  “It’s small, sits in a valley where they’ve cleared out the Sibsig trees to grow homeworld stock, oats. How’d you know about Carmichael?”

  “It’s on your badge.”

  “You can read then.”

  “Of course. Can’t you?”

  Moses shook his head. “I know my letters but Cardino, my brother, he’s the reader in the family.”

  “They teach it to us so we can read the constitution.” Kyra said. She plucked a piece of grass and extended it to him. “Have you ever had the singer’s drink?” She asked.

  Moses eyed the grass but didn’t take it from her. “What’s the singers drink?” He asked.

  “It’s in the grass. Between the segments. Try it.”

  The grass was a long slender tube broken into segments by its growth, grey green in color, almost black in the deepening twilight. Moses took it and put it into his mouth. When he sucked he didn’t get anything.

  “You have to bite it to break the segments open.” She said.

  He bit, and felt the sap from the plant run over his tongue. It was a rough flavor, reminiscent of roots and stems, and ran hot on his tongue.

  “It’s alcoholic.” Kyra sa
id. “It keeps bugs out of the grass apparently. Some of my family make a liquor from it, call it singers drink. This is the raw stuff.”

  Moses bit into the next segment and let the alcohol drip into his mouth. “What’s a constitution?” he said. Kyra looked at him like he must be some kind of idiot and tossed her old stem to pull up a new one.

  “They don’t have one for Carmichael?”

  “I don’t know.” Moses said. “Carmichael is just where I signed up.”

  “It’s a, document, a book, sort of, that says how the city is supposed to be run, and why, and what’s not permitted, and, stuff like that.”

  “Rules.” He said.

  She nodded.

  “They made you read it?”

  Kyra shrugged. “Everyone reads it. It’s the heart of Eden. It’s, what we’re all about. Building a paradise, at least according to the constitution.”

  “That where you’re from?”

  She nodded.

  “And is it? Paradise?” He asked.

  Kyra chewed her grass, stared across the pampas as she hugged her knees. Finally she shrugged. “It’s just a place.” She said.

  The silence grew between them. This wasn’t a relationship he wanted to cultivate, Moses thought. It stirred up to many thoughts of who he’d left behind, and the promises he’d made. It was a reminder of his guilt too, and the seven day penance he had yet to complete.

  She glanced at him, then got a new stem of grass and waved out into the pampas.

  “It’s out there, on the grass.” Her wave encompassed the spreading darkness. In the starlight the waving grass looked more and more like waves spreading across an immense pool than it did grass, and where the true dark of night had descended it was growing difficult to see anything but the dim halo of the horizon.

  “What is?” Moses asked.

  “Home.” Kyra replied. “Eden. We grow things there, homeworld stock, like Carmichael, and native. Corn, and sourdye, and wheat mostly. Tomatoes too. Lots of tomatoes. They’ve almost gone wild there except the worms get to them if we don’t treat the dirt for them. You’re in the mountains aren’t you? You said Carmichael was in a valley.”

  “Yes. But I’m not from Carmichael. My parents have a homestead in the hills. We raise Porqine.”

  “How many parents?” She asked.

  “What do you mean?”

  “How many?”

  He had to process the question for a moment. “Mom and Dad.”

  “Sounds nice.” Kyra said. “Quiet.”

  “I’ve got siblings.” Moses said. “Brothers. It’s noisy enough.”

  “Why did you leave?” Kyra asked before he could return the question about parents.

  The silence stretched as Moses tried to find the words to say what he hadn’t even told the priest.He hadn’t had the time then, thought he’d tried to find the words then as well. Cardino could have said it, but Moses didn’t know enough words to say it just right.

  “Nothing at home was going to kill me.” He said at last. “Figured maybe someone over there would try.” He waved to the other camp.

  The words felt awkward and she looked at him funny so he turned his eyes to the enemy camp where a single gun still fired on them across the grass. A ball of plasma rose every minute or two to arch up into the stars and down towards them. It passed across the grass like a small sun, the light fading then growing bright as it fell with a boom and a flash somewhere behind them. Moses realized he’d come to the end of the stem of grass and spat out the green pulp to pluck a new stem and put it in his mouth. He could taste the alcohol now, deep beneath the flavor of the grass like a thin flow of cool flame.

  “What about you?” Moses asked after a while. It didn’t seem right to end the conversation on himself. People usually wanted to talk about themselves, and he didn’t want to feel he owed her something in the conversation. “How many parents have you got?”

  “Oh, I don’t know.” Kyra said. “We’re supposed to treat all of the adults in Eden as our parents, but I only really know my mom. She’s the one that raised me.”

  “What happened to your Dad?” Moses asked. It felt like a stupid question but he didn’t know enough not to ask it. It was all that came to mind.

  She smirked. “You wouldn’t want to meet my Daddy.”

  “Oh.” They were silent for a moment.

  “It’s what I named my sword.” She said with a smile.

  “Oh.”

  “My mom always had four or five men around.” She said. “It’s what she told me to do when I told her I was signing up. Get some good men around me. Make sure they were the best.”

  “I see.” Moses said. “That’s why you fought me so many times yesterday.”

  She nodded. “What did you name your sword?”

  “I didn’t.”

  “Oh.”

  “Did you name your AI?” He asked.

  She frowned. “Your not supposed to name AI. That’s what I read. Makes them seem more human.”

  “I named mine Butler.” Moses told her. “Or Argo. It didn’t seem to like it.”

  “Well which one is he then?” Kyra said. “I wouldn’t like having two names.”

  “I’ve got two.” Moses said.

  “I saw it on your tag.” She replied. “Does it serve any purpose? Having two?”

  Moses shrugged. He’d never thought about it. “It’s a family name.”

  They were quiet again until Kyra came to the end of her grass and she had to pluck another stem. “Why do you want to die?” Kyra asked as she nipped the end of the grass and tucked it into a corner of her lips.

  “I dream about it.” He said.

  “I dream I’m naked in front of the whole town, but that doesn’t mean I try to set that up.” Kyra replied.

  Moses plucked a new piece of grass and spun it in his fingers, still sucking on the old one. His gauntlets made the action clumsy and he had to concentrate a little to keep from crushing the stem. “I don’t mind meeting him, in my dreams.” He said. “It’s like I’ve been waiting for him my whole life, like there’s been nothing but him everywhere all the time, and now, here, I might actually get a chance to meet him. I don’t mind dying. There isn’t much to life after all. It’s all just… trying to get to heaven anyways.” The words were the right words but they missed so much of what he felt. It seemed a heavy and awkward thing to say. Such a poor summary of what he’d come to believe.

  “That’s stupid.” Kyra said.

  Moses Shrugged and tossed away the grass he’d plucked.

  “I never understood why people think their life is supposed to get better after death. When you die you’re dead.”

  Moses nodded. “Still. Can’t escape it.” He said. “Might as well go out and find it. I’d rather die well than live…Oh I don’t know. Than to just live I guess. Feels more purposeful.”

  “I like to think life can be enjoyed.”

  Moses pulled the grass from his mouth and absently studied the emptied chambers of the plant. Pleasure didn’t seem a good reason to live, but he didn’t care to argue. Everyone had their own path, he thought, let them walk it. For my part, I will follow Christ. He remembered hearing it in a mass, a quote from some ancient saint or other. For my part, I will follow Christ, who died to save the world. Moses stood and offered her a hand.

  “You’re a Christian aren’t you.” She said as he lifted her to her feet.

  “Yes.”

  “Are all Christians this serious about, death?”

  “What are they in Eden, or wherever you’re from?” He asked. It seemed odd that a place calling itself Eden wouldn’t have a Church.

  “They’re, Edenists.” She waved a hand. “Building a new paradise on Marain. For living people.”

  By this time the last light of sundown had left the horizon and the hard edge of night’s knife had dropped across the world, sheering open the sky to yield a view of the universe beyond Marain’s cage of atmosphere and gravity. Moses turned from the pam
pas and the starlit sky. “Come on.” He said. “I’d like some sleep.” The run had taken its toll on him as they sat in the grass and standing up took more effort of will power than he wanted to admit. If the suit hadn’t carried him, he would have been limping back into camp.

  “You don’t seem quite the asshole the rest of the group are.” Kyra said as they were heading back to the rows of sleeping mats where the army had stretched out for the night. He could hear snoring, and low voices, a few distant shouts of men in argument in the distance. The four tents in the center of the camp offered the only sources of light besides the stars and the occasional strobe of the plasma artillery still falling on the camp.

  Moses grunted. He walked slow to keep from leaving her behind but he was ready for bed.

  “Can I make my bunk next to yours?” she asked.

  Moses gestured at the sleeping figures sprawled in a grid. “No one’s stopping you.”

  She grinned and chewed her stalk of grass.

  They went to the supply tent together to check out Moses’ mat and she told him she already had a spot he could set his up. He followed her through the sleeping men until they found her armor folded up at the head of an empty sleeping pad beside an empty square of ground.

  Before he could step out of the suit and unroll his sleeping pad the AI beeped at him. “The lieutenant colonel wants a word with you.”

  Moses looked at the sleeping pad. “Right now?”

  “You’ll find him in the briefing tent.”

  He sighed. “I’ve got to go.” He told Kyra.

  “Where are you going?” She asked. She’d already knelt down on her sleeping pad and looked up at him as she asked, a look in her eyes like she was ready to be dissapointed.

  “Lieutenant Colonel wants to see me I guess.” He said.

  “They’ll probably make you an officer.” She took the sleeping pad from his hands. “Let me roll out your pad.’ll be here when he’s finished with you.” She grinned and Moses felt something stirring that he didn’t want to stir.

  Chapter 14: Moses // Argo

  “She’s right you know.” Moses said to the AI as he followed its guidance through the night towards he command tent.