Paul Hughes: Enemy

“Did the Teller have visual contact?”

“No, sir. They reported a complete systems blackout before and after the impact. Whatever came down came in fast and close. It almost hit the Teller.”

“Three impacts within fifteen minutes. How fast can we have teams at the sites?”

“We’ve sent seven ships to Santa Fosca, and we’ve ordered the Third Pacific Fleet to Guam to assist in recovery operations.”

“And Lake Superior?”

“The Indomitable is investigating the impact site.”

“I want five other vessels taken from the Containment Line and sent to that site. We have to know more.”

“Yes, sir. At the Guam site, we’ve called in remote subs and a destroyer from the Atlantis settlement to investigate. The Mariana Trench is the deepest trench in the whole Pacific. We’ll try to gain visual contact with whatever came down, unless it was a bomb.”

Jennings pondered that statement. Unless it was a bomb…

“We need to know what we’re dealing with. I want everyone on this, stat. But keep it quiet. We need to know if we’re talking meteors or atomics or…” He drifted off. “Something else.”

“Yes, Mr. President.”

“Contact Satcom. Level three online alert.”

“Yes, sir.”

It would be a long night.

Bad, bad feeling…

the black

OBJECTIVE ONE: DISPATCH SUCCESS QUESTIONABLE.

REPORT.

SUSPECTED LIFEBOAT SURVIVAL.

A SUPPOSITION((?))

PROBABLE SURFACE IMPACT, CREW SURVIVAL.

THEY WILL FALL WITH THE REST.

THEY WILL. PROGRESS((?))

BELT DEPLETION NINETY PERCENT.

DEPARTURE SOON. PLANET HARVEST FOLLOWS((?))

PLANET HARVEST FOLLOWS. UPLOAD FOLLOWS.

joy in the black of hell

AUGMENTATION OF PURPOSE PATTERNS FOLLOWS. SOON.

PURPOSE WILL BE COMPLETED.

COMPLETION IS THE PURPOSE.

knowledge of ancient honor. pleasure

QUERY. ONE BELT REMNANT, ONE BACKWARD((?))

insight

REMAIN THEN. COMPLETE HARVEST. WE DEPART.

GO THEN. WE WILL JOIN IN THE PURPOSE SOON.

PURPOSE BE.

the darkness within the void parts

one remains. one fades into distant memory

Panic.

Water flooded the lifeboat.

They blew the hatch, and everywhere there was water.

Reynald activated the auto-delete sequence as he gasped his last breath of air before climbing out of the lifeboat. The water was stifling, frigid. They swam up into the moonlight.

In the night air, eight men released their burning lungs and inhaled for seemingly the first time. Most of the young men had never before tasted real air. They were born anew in a world of black and cold.

Lights to one side: the darkened shoreline.

They swam.

Magdalene:

She slept but did not sleep. She felt the ocean around her, the suffocating press of the depths. When had she last felt water, really truly felt water? Memories of too-cold-to-actually-be-enjoyable dips in the North Channel.

So tired.

Thoughts. Flashes in the black ocean of her mind.

She snapped out of her daze. Kilbourne—the Fleet must be alerted, at least those remnants that hadn’t been swayed. Simon must be warned of the plan.

Under her careful and gentle watch, she initiated a quantum singularity, just large enough to slip a communications beacon into the void.

(compressed beam communication relay initiated. tight beam when hole search initiated.)

A pause. A glimmer of hope.

(relay reports tight beam when hole site identification positive. whenstream beacon placed.)

A frown.

She saw, she felt them. So many screams, so many souls.

(when hole collapse initiated. tight beam communiqué to upwhen, as follows:)

A particle of matter is shifted into non-existence. It bears a message into the past, present, future.

(judas clearance gethsemane magdalene emergency relay: enemy forces on alpha-direct transit. request assistance from any available judas. purpose nears completion.

(the purpose must be prevented. from all whens, converge.)

Exhausted, Magdalene slept.

black

A BEACON. A SIGNAL. PURSUIT FOLLOWS.

A BEACON((?)) THE JUDAS LIVES.

ACTION((?))

A RUSE; A TRAP.

a smile in hell

THEY BELIEVE THE PURPOSE IS COMPLETED.

PURPOSE PATTERN SACRIFICE, AUGMENTATION.

initiative. flicker of a higher purpose

INITIATE HARVEST UPLOAD, JUDAS SEARCH.

THIS MAGDALENE WILL SERVE US…THE CONTAGION OF HER COMRADES WILL COME TO HER AID. WHEN THEY DO—

THEY WILL BECOME ONE WITH THE PURPOSE.

the darkness parts.

Harkness, Michigan.

Located on the Keweenaw Peninsula. Population 1,250. Major industry: commercial fishing.

Harkness was a quiet town. Little crime. The people were honest and God-fearing. The most exciting event in Harkness was the Saturday night bingo and dance at the American Legion downtown.

Harkness was a peaceful town, one of those backward holdovers from an era and a way of life that died long before the wars of the third millennium. It was indeed a happy town.

1:45 A.M.

Buddy McClure was the town drunk of Harkness, and as always, Buddy was piss-drunk and loving it. He left the dance at about midnight and went to Smitty’s Bar for a couple of cold ones. A couple of cold ones turned into twelve beers and a dangerously nondescript mixed drink someone had left on the bar. Buddy was on top of the world and riding it like the bucking bronco he had sometimes hoped it would be in those naïve and energetic days before he discovered the companionship of booze and smokes and dangerous women. Well, truthfully there had been a lot more booze than smokes, and statistically speaking an amazing dearth of dangerous women in Buddy’s life, with the notable exception of that cheating bitch he had knocked up in high school and knocked around so much during the course of their three-month marriage that she left him for Buddy’s best friend, and that shrew he lived with now who day by day sucked more of Buddy’s life-energy from his soul.

Buddy now stood on the rocky beach, feeling the cool night air come in off the lake. The moon was in the ice-clear sky, creeping back down from Tuesday’s full moon. Buddy had spent Tuesday night here on the beach staring down that devil moon in much the same state as he was this fine evening.

Smitty had taken his keys, so Buddy had decided to walk down to the beach. He stopped in the parking lot to take the spare bottle of Jim Beam from the back of his ancient pickup truck. Jim was always a good friend to have along with you when you took drunken walks on the beach at one-thirty in the morning.

It was a quarter to two when Buddy found that his good friend Jim had up and left him. He took up a pitcher’s stance and threw the empty bottle into the air. He had been three-time All-County pitcher back in the adolescent days of locker rooms smelling of sweat and back seats smelling of cheerleaders smelling of Buddy. His picture still graced the trophy case of Harkness High School. Made it all the way to the state finals back in ’28, only to be soundly defeated by Marquette. Steroid-pushing fucking queers. What a bunch of assholes. Twenty-two years, five jobs, two wives, and three brats later, Buddy found that he still had that glorious pitching arm.

The bottle flew up into the night air and for a brief moment it was a silhouette over the face of the moon. He heard the bottle splash in the lake, a hollow, dead sound that always raised the gooseflesh of his forearms.

Looking out onto the lake, Buddy saw the blinking lights of a boat. It was much too big to be one of Harkness’s fishermen pulling a late night. This vessel was a monster, and the spotlights emanating from the deck, sweeping out across the lake, revealed the massive deck-mounted artillery. It was definitely one of the Containment Line.