Paul Hughes - An End

so was she.

Berlin’s hands were to his face. His body shook silently from within the glass filter, crouched on the floor beside his daughter. Little body, little-to-no-body left. Pile of metal forged into human, human forged into metal.

should we—

no.

Fingertips traced the grit of dissembling silver dust, filter scraping away parts of what had been a child’s cheek. Berlin saw what he was doing and stood up in frustration and disgust.

They’d found his old living quarters without incident. His floor had been beneath the zone damaged by fire and falling towers, although buckled bulkheads and cracked load-bearing supports of the superstructure gave evidence of the force of the attack from above. They wouldn’t stay in here for long, even though neither escape nor continuing really mattered at this point.

Walk past nears, standing at attention, lifeless faces hidden behind black metal, weapons and searchlights bristling from armor. Walk down hallway, past open doors where toys sat in forever disarray, photographs hang on walls now stippled with something , where viewers were black. Frank the cat, a pile of filings.

End of the hallway: Push open bedroom door.

Berlin sobbed when he saw her

Kath. Botanist.

on the floor.

Hands swam through liquid glass filter, up to neck, activation points grasped. He knew the nears wouldn’t stop him. Couldn’t stop him. Two points, turned clockwise and counterclockwise. Snap into place, pull up. Glass dissolves.

He turned off his shield.

away, away from vain struggle

Alarms, immediate, as frigid nitro closed in. The glass pool splashed to the floor, drops spattered the armored legs of nearby nearish. The rapid change in pressure activated Berlin’s emergency communications beacon: a swarm of luminous nanos erupted from the chest pack of his atmosphere suit, stopped in formation several feet away from the man and the nears, and pulsed into the sky in stuttering phase bursts. The nears’ chestpacks all began to glow in similar readiness.

Berlin wiped silica gelatin from his eyes, nose, mouth. The comm implant in his right temple began to throb, but instead of acknowledging the incoming transmission, he swiftly brought his fist up, colliding squarely with the side of his head, crushing the metallish creature underneath his skin. The pain was almost as swift as his blood.

A return of the swarm: the near nearest Berlin snapped to attention, infinitesimal lances of light cutting through space and silvered atmosphere and building to penetrate the non-mind of the lump of flesh and download a carrier pattern. It removed black composite faceplate to reveal almost-human face, eyes glowing with universes of comm nanos.

As brain matter re-arranged itself to accept the signal, atrophied mouth, tongue, vocal chords came to life, producing nonsense sound, an uncomfortable experimentation with non-mental communication. Signal lock. Dry tongue instinctively licked dry lips. The glittering link seemed to connect the top of the near’s head to the ceiling in an unambitious rendition of a halo.

“Berlin.” Voice beyond hoarse, but still recognizable. Berlin was still disconcerted by the technology they had acquired from the planet of trees and botanist and

“Let it be, Hannon.”

The near walked closer in a disturbing pantomime of Berlin’s second, who right now floated safely miles above the planet, a similar nano halo linking him to this non-human. “You shouldn’t have done that. You know that you can’t—”

“I know.”

“It didn’t have to—”

“Yes. It did.”

“We could have—”

“I know you saw it all, Hannon. My wife, Maire, the trees.”

The near stood in silence.

“I’ve known since the attack. And I know what you had planned for me.”

“There’s no way you—”

“I didn’t want this.”

“Then you shouldn’t have—”

“I know.”

Berlin bent to his wife, form silvered in shadow. His hand reached out to touch her cheek, hesitated, withdrew.

“Just kill me and get it over with. Have them kill me.”

Silence.

“Hannon?”

The near approached, looked down on Berlin’s face. The wind-torn flesh was without emotion, but the voice that it channeled was razor-sharp.

“No. No quick death for you, traitor.”

The air burned with cold

above the lumber plains on the night that Maire had been so convincing. It was a winter month, and the floater didn’t offer much protection against the wind.

It wasn’t dancing, and it wasn’t singing, but the flora hovered in formation below them, basking in the phosphorescent hydrostatic mist of the mid-atmosphere. The canyons echoed with their keening midnight song.

Berlin wrapped his arms around Kath, hands clasped in front in a bundle of their intertwined fingers. Squeeze. Sniffle and one hand went to her face as demure form shook with sob and fear. In moonslight, twin tracks on windburned cheeks: just two tears, but they were two too many.

“They’ll be harvested.”

“Analysis was conclusive. We can isolate the flux ability.”

“Then why—”

“Because they can. And they don’t want anyone else to figure it out.”

“So that’s it? They take a few lumbers for sampling, isolate the tech, and kill the rest?”

“That’s the way we work.”

“No.” She turned around in his arms. Gray eyes swallowed by black pupils. “That’s the way they work.”

“I can’t—”

“You can’t. But we can.”

She slipped from his grasp, walked to the other side of the floater, leaned precariously over the edge. The vehicle swayed in the wake of a forest passing beneath them. Berlin walked to join her.

“We?”

Kath hesitated, cleared her throat. “You don’t have to know about this.”

“Do you think I’d—”

“No.” She squeezed his hand, let go. “But they’d kill you if they knew about it.”

“Tell me.”

“I’ve met someone. There’s a woman who can help.”

“Help what?”

“She comes from the outer. Came in months ago on a transport. Just something about her…”

“Who?”

“She knows what to do. To make it right.”

“Kath—”

“She’s not like us.”

“If you’re talking about—”

“She wants to help. Not just this planet. She can make it right again.”

“Make what right?”

Kath’s hands balled to fists at her side. “The last war…Nothing’s been the same since. Planets in slavery, One ruled by machines and nears. Gods dropped into the slumber. Nothing’s right anymore.”

“We had to fight that war.”

“But we didn’t have to become this.” Her fingertips traced the insignia on her chest, moved to her temple, where the metallish uplink writhed under her skin. “We didn’t have to give up our—

“It was for the best.”

“ Whose best?”

“Our best. It had to be done.”

“We’re killing the system! The stars can’t support us anymore. The energy load alone between the two—”

“That’s why we need the lumbers. Deep galactic survey missions, colonization hives—”

“We have all that we need right here. We’ve just forgotten how to live within our means.”

“We can’t turn back now. We’re pushing the saturation mark as—”

“We don’t have to be pushing the saturation mark.”

Berlin felt the throb of the comm uplink, but kept it static. “You can’t be talking about—”

“Planet One alone uses eighty percent of the system resources.”

He said nothing.

“A lot of bad people on Planet One.”