Paul Hughes - An End

He gunned the engine and flew into the atomic impact crater. The worldship was a monster, the edges of the crater dozens of fortified decks. Hunter noticed with a morbid fascination the tiny figures even now being sucked into the vacuum of space by the dozens. Hundreds. Thousands? The crater’s periphery was a ring of fire as the vessel’s atmosphere was vented. It was a green fire.

Hunter’s squad covered him from behind as he released the tether control. A phase slug rocketed from his slither’s underbelly, shielding a densely-packed core of human genetics. The tether exploded on impact, splattering a mile of coagulated “blood” on the worldship surface.

“Tether in place. Proceed with Catalyst injection.”

Pierce turned to his angels. “Is she in place?”

“Catalyst is secure in the firing chamber.”

He wiped sweat from his brow. A headache spiked from behind his eyes, and his chest felt tight.

“Are you okay, Uncle?”

“I’m fine.” His brown skin had taken on a gray pall. “Activate Catalyst when ready.”

“Understood.”

Pierce flexed his left hand. He felt a growing pressure, a tugging pain.

“Uncle?”

“I’m—” He cried out and fell from the vacuum chair, head that had once been crowned with salt-and-pepper and now crowned with pure white connecting solidly with metallish floor. All of the angels but one ran to him.

“Activate Catalyst.”

From the firing chamber, Fleur felt the vessel shift to vertical, felt the tube begin the resonance pattern. All became silence, all except the skittering click of her cardiac shield releasing, the sound of her own inhalation and scream of pain. Somewhere out there, they had attached a lump of human genetics to a target, and unshielded from her affliction, the silver within her exhausted body yearned to attack.

Hiss and release as the firing chamber opened, draining her atmosphere to the absolute zero of a combat zone without reason. A lifeline halo surged around her exposed body, giving meager protection from the cold, from the suffocation. Her hair flew into her face, obscured her vision of the target.

She was the center of the vessel, the center of her species’ vengeance. She knew that three worldships had been in pursuit. She knew that she would be used to destroy them.

Within this machinery of night, she felt the rape of her soul and knew that she would kill again.

“Silver on target! All vessels move to a safe distance!”

Attack Two withdrew from the combat area. Hunter was uneasy about the motionless second and third worldships. Most of the enemy fighters flew in confusion at the retreat of Hunter’s forces. They might have sensed the

silver

blinded Hunter with its intensity and that tugging that always accompanied it. He felt Lilith’s scream, watched the catalyst wave erupt from the center of the Archimedes, effortlessly cutting through enemy fighters in its path, boring into and through and out of the central worldship, rippling out and out. Metal became liquid, flesh became fire.

can it be this easy?

They’d destroyed planets with the Catalyst, eliminated entire civilizations along their target trajectory. The metal worldships were no match for the mercurial fury that Maire had bred into her unwilling daughter. The central vessel collapsed upon itself. The enemy fighters began to erupt with phase feedback, tiny dots of fire and then nothing in the vastness of this combat arena.

Hunter watched with a sinking feeling in his chest as the two motionless worldships began to emanate energy coronas. Weapons? His fear was allayed as the vessels slipped from space/time to Light X, escaping the silver of the Arch.

“They’re running! All vessels return to Arch and prepare for pursuit!”

Hunter gunned his slither toward home. The firing chamber was closing and realigning.

“Somebody tow Tallis in.”

The door alarm chimed. She sighed, activated her shield. “Enter.”

Hunter walked in, face still flushed from combat and

“What’s wrong?”

His mouth moved on words that he couldn’t speak. His hands writhed around themselves.

“Lock door.” click beep. She dropped her shield, walked to Hunter, wrapped her arms around him. “What is it?”

“No one’s told you?”

“No one’s told me anything. What happened?”

“Uncle…”

She saw the look, felt the touch of his mind. “No.”

“He had a heart attack. A fucking heart attack.”

Tears spilled over her cheeks. He pulled her close.

“What happens now?”

“Tallis is in command. He said that he chooses me for his second.”

“And we—”

“He wants to keep going.”

“But what if—”

“We have to keep going, Uncle or no.”

“Did I kill them all?”

Hunter shook his head against her face and hair. “We took out the biggest. Two got away.”

“What will—”

“They’ll head home. Try to warn them that we’re on the way. We can’t let that happen.”

“Would it be so bad?”

Hunter didn’t have an answer. “We’re having a service for Uncle in the launch bay. You should be there.”

“Okay.”

He lifted her face up to meet his gaze. “Are you okay?”

She weakly smiled. “No.”

He kissed her cheek, her nose, her other cheek. “Me neither.”

“Will we be okay?”

“We’ll find a way. We’d better get to the hangar.”

“Uncle is gone. I’m your Commander now.” Tallis paused in front of him. “I choose Windham as my second.” He continued down the line. “We all knew the day would come that the last vestiges of home would fade away. From now on, we’re on our own. We’ll continue on target and fulfill our mission objectives. We owe it to Uncle to succeed. We owe it to Mother to succeed.”

Hunter bit his tongue.

“Let’s get to work. We need to fix this boat and get back on the road as soon as possible. They found us, they killed our Uncle. Let’s find their home.”

Tallis nodded toward him. He cleared his throat.

“Okay. Damage control teams sweep the decks. We took a lot of phase flak below. We have slithers to repair, hull damage, and that breach in the primary flux generator has to be contained before we can move. Decks one through ten are flooded. Let’s get to work.”

Officers barked orders. Hunter took one last look out the hangar entrance: Uncle’s coffin was invisible against the fabric of night, just another dot against black. What cairn in this sky, what memorial to the lost soldiers in the midst of the night?

He caught Lilith’s gaze as he walked by her. Mind to mind, touch to touch. Her lips attempted a quiet smile that he could not return.

“Arik.” He grasped the man’s shoulder as he went by. “You have a working slith?”

“Yes, sir.” Arik Mandela snapped to attention. “Attack Three is at ninety percent.”

“At ease.” Hunter already didn’t like the new hierarchy, the new formality. Uncle had been a good commander, a human commander. There was something about Tallis that tickled the base of Hunter’s skull. “When can you be ready to fly?”

“Now, sir.”

“Good.” Hunter looked across the hangar at Tallis, in animated conversation with members of Attack One. “We’ll take a ride over to the worldship wreck.”

“Yes, sir.”

“And Arik?”

“Yes, sir?”

“Call me Hunter. Stop with that ‘Sir’ shit.”

Mandela smiled. “Alright.”

Hunter patted his shoulder and went to suit up.

Door alarm. She activated and swam. Tallis.

“We need to talk.”

“What is it?”

“You’ve spoken to Windham recently.”

“Before the ceremony.”