Fall of Icarus

face. Above her, a perfect replica of herself stood, her silver hair sparkling even in the meager sunlight on the brown world. A gentle and caring smile was cast upon the doppelganger’s lips and she batted her eyes with a seemingly infinite patience. Keryn knew the doppelganger; had seen it before. During her time at the Academy, the replica had appeared to Keryn in a dream. Now, however, the dream had found a physical form. When it spoke, it sounded neither male nor female, but speaking instead with either masculine femininity or effeminate masculinity. The doppelganger reached out her hand to help Keryn to her feet.

Scowling, her mind still reeling from her double’s sudden appearance, Keryn batted aside the outstretched hand and pushed herself to her feet unaided. The warm, welcoming smile of the doppelganger never faded as she stood calmly by and let Keryn regain her thoughts.

“If you’re who I think you are, then I don’t want your help. I made a mistake.”

And just who do you think we are?

Keryn arched an eyebrow toward her double. Something tugged at Keryn’s consciousness, just beyond the realm of her understanding. “You’re the Voice.”

Yes, we are.

It was then that Keryn realized what had struck her as unusual about the doppelganger; what set it apart from the similar vision in her dream during her time at the Academy. It wasn’t that the Voice sounded androgynous. Instead, Keryn realized, it spoke as though a hundred individual male and female voices were overlapping, drowning out any individual inflection until all that remained was a droning tone that was neither male nor female.

“We?” Keryn asked nervously.

Still smiling its infallible smile, the Voice gestured behind itself. Stepping one step to the side, Keryn was stunned to see a line of more than a hundred Wyndgaarts queued behind her doppelganger. They all smiled the same cordial smile. Keryn recognized her mother and father standing in line behind her replica as well as her grandparents behind that. Familiarity, either from personal interactions or through apparent physical family similarities — living and dead — stretched back as far as Keryn could follow until, near the end of the line, she was unable to make out more than the general shape of the Wyndgaarts.

“What is this?” Keryn whispered in disbelief.

The genetic memory of all your ancestors, the Wyndgaart all replied at once. Every one of your ancestors who ever merged with the Voice is immortalized within you.

Disoriented after watching over one hundred Wyndgaart all speaking simultaneously, Keryn stepped back in front of her doppelganger. To her amazement, the rest of the Wyndgaart disappeared behind her double as though they never existed.

We understand that you weren’t ready for us when your friends all went through the Ritual of Initiation. You only called out to us when placed in a position of utter helplessness, when there was no one left to turn to. We have answered your call.

Keryn shivered despite the warmth in the air. “I don’t think I can do this,” she said weakly.

You face death without us. We came to you only when you were ready, in your heart, to merge with us. There is no turning back now.

Tears welled in Keryn’s eyes and spilled unabated down her cheeks. Turning her head aside, she tried to focus on anything else in the desolate, rocky plain. She had turned to the Voice in desperation and, as she knew it would be, the Voice had been there to answer her call. Regardless of whether or not she now thought it was a mistake, she had set in motion events that could no longer be stopped. Keryn was now left with little choice than to accept her new fate.

Taking a deep breath and feeling slightly more resolved, Keryn turned back to her doppelganger and wiped away the streaking tears on her face. She asked the only question that she thought mattered now.

“Will it hurt?”

No, it won’t. Nor will we ever let anything else hurt you again.

The doppelganger lunged forward, its arms extended toward Keryn’s abdomen. Instinctively, Keryn tried to move backward, out of the Voice’s reach, but the doppelganger lifted into the air and flew at her. As its outstretched arms touched Keryn’s skin, they passed into her as though her body were insubstantial.

Keryn’s breath caught in her throat as the arms, head and shoulders of the doppelganger disappeared into her body. Still moving forward, her double slid deeper inside of her. Keryn could feel a warmth spreading through her torso and limbs as the legs finally slid into her body and the doppelganger passed completely within Keryn. Gasping, Keryn looked up to see the entire line of Wyndgaart moving toward her. One at a time, they passed into her body, the line speeding forward until the individual bodies became little more than blurs as they slammed into her exposed torso. Tilting her head backward, Keryn screamed as the never-ending line continued.

The scream subsided as Keryn sat upright in the pilot’s chair of the Cair Ilmun. Less than a second had passed since she had muttered an acceptance to the Voice’s insistence. The missiles from the Terran fighters still advanced, the radar still blaring its imminent impact warning. Stretching slightly, like a feral tiger would once finally released from its cage, Keryn let her hands close over the ship’s controls.

Smiling sadistically, Keryn easily maneuvered the Cair Ilmun out of the way of the incoming rockets before driving the ship directly toward the Terran fighters.

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

Moving the wounded from the Destroyer and into the Cair was exhausting. By the time Yen collapsed behind the controls, sweat was beaded along his brow and his breathing was labored. Adam slipped through the cockpit doorway moments before Yen detached the boarding causeway and the Cair ship broke free of its moorings.

With his fingers moving adeptly across the ship’s controls, Yen turned the Cair so that they were facing the rest of the Alliance Fleet. Yen felt drained. The adrenaline that had kept his reflexes so keenly empowered was starting to wane. There were limits to how much a body could remain in a heightened state before the exhaustion of battle began to settle into its bones. Unfortunately, Yen knew, there was still far too much to be done before he could earn a good night’s rest.

Accelerating forward, Yen skimmed the hull of the Terran Destroyer. The once gleaming hull was scarred by missile strikes and rail gun slugs which had gored unflattering streaks along the armored plating. Slipping left and right, Yen avoided the protruding radar arrays and weapon ports that jutted from the otherwise sleek surface. At such a low altitude, the Terran warship would have difficulty pinpointing their position. Aside from any defending fighters, Yen could fly virtually invisible until it was time to break from his position and fly at high speed toward the Revolution.

On both sides of their speeding Cair ship, Yen and Adam were able to see other Cair transports still docked to the Destroyer. Over a dozen teams had attacked the Terran Destroyer en mass and many of those teams were still inside, fighting and dying to complete their mission. Yen frowned, feeling cowardly for flying away from the Terran ship while so many of his brethren were still fighting. Still, they had come to complete a mission and, as far as he knew, they were the only team to succeed. Guilty as he might feel, he had no reason to feel as though they did an inadequate job.

His worries about the other teams were interrupted as one of the Cair ships to the right side of the cockpit erupted in flames. Though soundless in the void of space, Yen flinched as the core of the ship collapsed in a ball of flame. The wings crumpled, tilting toward the hull of the Destroyer before breaking free and floating into space.

“We got fighters coming in fast,” Adam cried out.

Against the black backdrop of the starlit night, Terran fighters dove toward the Destroyer. They fired volleys of missiles as they approached, the trails leading unwaveringly toward the helpless Cair ships. Long plumes of smoke trailed behind the rockets as they covered the distance. Slamming into the Cair transports, the Alliance ships were consumed in flames one after another. Of all the ships that were destroyed in the fighters’ first pass, Yen only saw one try to break from its position and run.