“Light ’em up.”
“What are they saying? What the fuck are they saying?”
“Who cares? Light ’em up. Trigger it. We’ll iron out the paperwork later.”
Hunter shook his head. “This isn’t right. Something isn’t right.”
Tallis glared through him, flipped his visor down. “Call in the fucking strike, Windham.”
“Sir, I can’t just—”
Tallis tore the comm from Hunter’s grasp, shoved him aside. He locked the device into the hardlink on his throat shield. “Tallis wing to orbital firing group. Bring the weapon online.”
“Sir, listen to them. They aren’t—”
“Hunter, don’t—”
“They aren’t humans.”
“The fuck are you—”
“
“It’s an off-chart language. So what? We have orders.”
“Tallis,” Hunter pulled off his helmet. “Listen to them.”
She hung in velvet black, pressed into place by the cold non-hands of her mechanical caretakers. They would take what they needed from her, as they always had, that gentle rape that they called duty and she called rape.
Tallis had called a strike on the city.
The forces held her motionless in the halls of vapor and light with a liquid precision, the intimate caress of the weapon flux. She cringed at the metal whine of the contact jack as it reached over her shoulders, secured itself to her chestplate: eight subtle penetrations and a locking click, then the deeper invasion of the central hub.
Tears: two.
Somewhere below, there was a planet. There was a city. Somewhere below, there were innocents reaching to the sky, screaming at the invasion force, reeling in confusion at the vessel that blocked out the faded cold of the surviving star. Lilith knew that somewhere below, Hunter was standing with weapon drawn, helmet off, shaking his head.
“System?”
No answer.
“Stop the cycle, please.”
The firing chamber was moving into position.
“Stop the cycle, System.”
Felt them: heard them speaking without words, weeping without tears, screaming without hope or substance.
“Stop it!”
Lilith couldn’t move.
Shimmer and shift, silver and submission.
An instant of light, a forever of end.
Hunter shouted in frustration and disgust. Tallis looked pleased.
It struck from above: the beam was peaceful, gentle, a faded light draping across the city, barely casting shadows, barely touching anything at all. From within the static shielding, Hunter and the dozens of other droptroops braced themselves.
The natives fell silent. Hunter realized with a morbid fascination that they had never actually spoken at all. The guttural tones that came from underdeveloped mouths had been the only thing Tallis had heard. He had failed to listen to the voice of the
mind, the Voice of the people who were now an instant from the eternal cease.
Hunter heard. He heard them all.
walked across the ice plain to the wreckage of Task’s vessel, which was rapidly being consumed by blue-tinged fire. It was a world of silence, except for faint whisper of wind that brushed painful ice crystals across her face and the crackle of fire as polyalloy ignited from within. One of the men on the top of the vessel hoisted the other figure over his shoulder and jumped to the ground. She heard the distinct wail of pain from the crumpled man as they landed in a pile upon the snow-covered ice. His cry echoed back and forth across the expanse, bordered as it was by cliffs that might have been stone, might have been ice.
She felt a flicker. Tiny flicker. It was returning.
Tears streamed down Task’s face. He was lost in a haze of agony, his body shaking, his breath coming in great gasps as Berlin pulled him away from the twisted remains of his vessel. Task knew that somewhere within, Elle was nothing more than a puddle of melted metal and plastic, returning again to her base elements of manufacture. All that s/he had been was now lost.
Berlin wiped his brow. The fire was overwhelming, mixed with the toxic fumes of the collapsing alloys. Whatever was in this atmosphere was causing the ship to burn with remarkable heat. He inhaled deeply, coughed as smoke singed his lungs with an alien taste. Mixed with the frightfully weak gravity, the harsh light of a single star in the sky, the smoke made Berlin dizzy, nauseous. He had the sudden desire to lay down on the snow, just to rest for a moment, just to close his eyes and try to still his rapid hearts. He just wanted to—
“What’s that?”
Task was looking off in the distance, where for the first time Berlin noticed a faint shimmer of
There was a person walking toward Task’s wrecked ship.
Berlin squinted his eyes, felt the biomech corneas zoom, focus. The figure shifted into clarity.
Maire.
Berlin released Task’s shoulders and he fell unceremoniously to the ground, his legs splaying in divergent twists of shredded fabric and exposed bone. He writhed in pain, sobbed again. Berlin noted for an instant the grisly black path stretching from the place beside the vessel where they’d landed to Task’s present position. He wouldn’t last long if they couldn’t stop the bleeding soon.
“It’s Maire. She’s seen us.”
“But how—”
“We must have been fused to her bubble when they ejected her.” Berlin released his phase weapon from its holster, knew what he would find already: the charge was lost, depolarized from the liquidspace flux. The weapon was useless.
“The gun?”
“Dead.”
“Here.” Task unsheathed a blade from a side pocket on his pants. “Take it.”
“That won’t—”
“It’s something. Take it.”
Berlin nodded, held the knife blade-down, concealed behind his forearm.
“I’ll be back. Just hold on.”
Maire’s heart pounded as she saw one of the figures begin to walk toward her. The wind grew in intensity, whipping clouds of stinging ice crystals into the air. She wiped the side of her face, felt seemingly for the first time the strange numbness of cold flesh. The approaching figure was concealed for a moment by a swirl of snow. The stark light of the star above created new levels of blindness. Finally, the figure came back into view, closer than she had expected him to be.
Berlin.
Maire blinked, squinted. It was him.
He stopped walking, his figure thrown into silhouette by the intense light of the fire engulfing the vessel behind him. He wore a weapon at his side. With a reach of her mind, the gun spun from its holster and fell safely some distance from them.
