An End (32 page)

A procession of angels entered the room, surrounding a middle-aged man in a charcoal gray suit. He looked over the boys with a gaze like fire; Hunter felt he was human. He felt the angels weren’t exactly angels. There was none of that tugging he’d become used to from the projections. Eight, ten, twelve: the angels walked amongst the boys, helped some to their feet, gently held the weeping, surveyed the little soldiers for damage.

The man cleared his throat.

“My name is Captain Pierce. You may call me ‘Uncle.’ Welcome to your new home. His name is Archimedes.”

An angel bent to Hunter’s level, turned his face from side to side, looked him over. “Do you hurt?”

“No.”

“Are you sure?”

“My Mommy’s dead.”

For an instant, the angel froze, head cocked, as if listening to a voice from within. “Your mother is safe now. You will be reunited with her soon.”

“You’re lying.”

Motionless non-human: the pause was longer this time. “Are you hungry?”

“No.”

The angel didn’t respond, but moved on to Brendan.

Uncle walked around the room, patted the heads of his new soldiers. “We’ve come a very long way, boys. We have a lot to do. We have a lot to learn. But first, we’ll have something to eat. Who’s hungry?”

There were a few noncommittal affirmatives.

“Good. You have to eat and become strong like your fathers!”

Hunter wondered if Uncle’s father had been killed somewhere between the stars, too. Somewhere deep and black, a place with two stars, where the squeal of shattering glass had been the last sound before—

“Let’s have some supper, boys!”

“Three days.” Hunter sighed.

Lilith cradled his face in her hands. She knew he was thinking... too much.

“We’ll find a way.” Her eyes to his eyes, her soul to his

“Arch?”

yes?

“Have you met the Rebecca before?”

outsystem offensive action, fourth extinction air support group.

“Why don’t I remember that?”

Lilith held his hands. “We’ve been through so many—”

“Arch?”

yes?

“Where’s she from?”

rebecca crew ascended upon initial Earth siege.

“Soldats perdus. City?”

canberra
compound.

“Fuck.”

“You’ve heard of them?”

“Arch, set course and engage.”

specify destination.

“Deep Outer, full speed.”

specify destination.

“Just fucking
fly.
” Hunter stood from the vacuum chair, fingers groping through unruly hair. He paced the bridge. “Up bubble three, four, five. Full speed.”

“Hunter?”

crew secure for Light X.
Sirens roared to life.

“What?”

“Who are they?”

He slammed his fist to a dead control panel. “They’re a rogue…”

Pacing. His hand moved to his right temple, rubbed. Reflex.

“Hunter?”

There was a building pain underneath his fingertips. Lilith looked from his closed, frowning eyes to his temple, fingers massaging in a circle: forth, back, forth, around.

“Hunter?”

He opened his eyes, grabbed a dead angel from one of the command chairs, threw it across the room with a growl of fury. Mechanical guts spilled across the bridge floor. His hand went back to his temple and forehead.

“Hunter?”

“
WHAT?
”

“Your hand.” His heart broke a little more when he saw her eyes, her gaze. The way her hands were clustered before her mouth.

He looked, horrified before he even saw, because he knew, and he knew, and he knew.

Faint lattice of silver, just below the skin. It crawled from fingertips to palm to wrist. He spun an overhead monitor into the light, saw even in the reflection of the dead display that the silver was working its way underneath the skin above his skull.

Lilith sobbed as she activated the shield mechanism on her cardiac plate. The phase gelatin engulfed her form as she stood from the vacuum chair. “Hunter, I—”

“No, it’s not—”

“I’m so—”

“It’s not your fault!” He cried out as the silver gave one last twinge in his head that brought him to his knees. “It’s not your fault.” The pain subsided as Lilith’s shielding provided a buffer between his flesh and her affliction.

She knelt at his side, dragging the slosh of phase behind and around her.

“It’ll be okay. We’ll be okay.”

Hunter nodded, although he knew that their love would kill him.

Pierce took off his jacket and slumped into a bridge chair. “When did you find it?”

“About ten minutes ago. Faint at first, then a signal spike. It’s definitely for us.”

“Stop Arch and snag it.”

“Yes, Uncle.”

He hated the machines, hated the way they spoke to him, hated the way they looked just enough like real humans to disturb, to place that sliver of doubt in his mind. He hated the machines, hated Mother (
Maire
) for this prison without end, hated this war and this purpose. He hated being the caretaker of several hundred boys trapped within a box of metal flying faster than light toward a galaxy that they would kill. He might have hated the girl most of all, the brat who had once stolen a doll from his grasp with a
mine.

“Temporal brace in position.”

“Display.”

The bridge bubble shielding retracted, allowing Pierce to see the quantum physics of their communication: all of space bent toward a single point, starlight forsaking points for curves, time bending to the will of an ancient species.

“Let’s see if it works.”

“Wire mechanics aligned.”

“Open tight beam.”

He squinted at the array and saw the particles erupt, faint patterns of phased communications bullets shot into the quantum singularity. He thought of rainfall.

“Carrier beam aligned.”

“Lock and load.”

The bridge lights dimmed, leaving an illuminated platform at the chamber’s center. Light bent toward the platform and Maire was there, image at first filled with static, half-translucent, but the wire mechanics adjusted to secure the signal from thousands of years across space/time.

“Mr. Pierce.” It was a voice of echoes.

“Maire.”

“What’s the situation?”

“Cargo intact.”

“I trust they’ve all been fed and tucked into bed by now?”

“Of course. Training starts tomorrow.”

“No time to waste.”

“Has the enemy fleet—”

“Orbital defenses held them off long enough for most of the childships to escape the system.”

“But not all?”

“Forty percent losses.”

Pierce’s heart leapt at Maire’s interpretation of the word “most.”

“And we’re on target?”

“Courses projected and fleet on targets. You’ll rendezvous in-system with several others eventually.”

“Will you tell me the specifics of this mission?”

“Just keep the girl safe. The angels will handle the rest.”

“Yes, Maire.”

“I’ll check in monthly.”

“Yours or ours?”

“Your months. My millennia.”

“Understood. Maire?”

“What?”

“Is there anything left?”

“Complete surface destruction. Total atmosphere loss.”

“But you—”

“Don’t worry, Pierce. I’ve saved some specimens.”

“And the enemy?”

“The worldships left orbit after a few months. They sent a few expeditionary forces to the surface and obviously didn’t like what they found.”

“Are you sure?”

“We’ve been tracking them for years now.”

“And where are they?”

“Since they didn’t find anything down here, they’re on their way after you.”

“Great.”

Maire grinned. Pierce noticed for the first time that the lines around her eyes were no longer there. She looked younger. “You’ll be fine. They’ll never find you.”

“Easy for you to say.”

“Even if they do, you’ll have a vessel full of the strongest warriors to meet them.”

“I’d better get to work.”

“That’s the

spirit to the eternal void of night. Ashes to ashes, dust to dust, silver to silver.” Tallis nodded and Pierce’s coffin was ejected from the hangar. The soldiers saluted in unison, stood at attention. Tallis walked down the line, scrutinizing his troops.

“Uncle is gone. I’m your Commander now.” He paused in front of Hunter. “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.

“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.”

He nodded toward Windham. Hunter 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, a

breach in the primary phase flux generator. Decks one through ten are flooding.”

“Shit.” Another volley rocked the Archimedes. Pierce held tightly to the arms of his chair as internal gravity compensated. “Lock decks and attempt to drain.”