day for twenty years. Flying is for us, as natural as walking, or weeping.
My concentration is split. I have a computer readout on my visor; I hear intercom voices in my inner earpiece; I see a video screen of the battle which I can switch at will; and my heart is with Hera. I watch her tackle a dozen Doppelganger Robots, weaving in and out of them like a deadly dolphin in a shoal of shattered and bewildered sharks.
They thought they could best us in open space! In truth, their only useful weapon is superior firepower and greater resources. In every other respect, they are, indeed, shite.
“Left flank, Alliea!” Hera screams at me, and I zoom in a circle and blast the ambushing robots behind me. I complete the circle just in time to see…
… two DRs blow Hera’s head and feet off simultaneously with their laser blasts.
For a moment my heart stops.
Then I cut the robots to ribbons with my own laser and speed into the next assault.
The carnage becomes mechanical. After a while, I cannot believe I am still alive. But my rocket keeps flying me, my laser keeps shooting. DRs keep exploding. The war keeps on. The war continues. The war continues.
The war is over. I am still alive. I check my visor. I have programmed my computer to flash red every time one of my children dies in the course of the battle. I have, in all, forty-three children. Forty-two of them are adopted, twenty-one are girls.
Slowly, carefully, I count forty-three red lights on my visor. That doesn’t include Hera. So first, I mourn Hera.
For one long, agonising, heartfelt minute, a second at a time, I mourn her. And each second is a death knell.
Then when my pain is purged, I mourn each of my forty-three children. I mourn them for five seconds, each.
Jack.
Hermione.
Silver.
Garnet.
Hilary.
Roger.
Lustre.
Ji.
Ajax.
Baldur.
Mystery.
Jane, Sheena, Magic, Leaf, Phoenix, Edna, Sharion, Jayn, Shiva, Persephone, Garth, Rob, Will, Diane, Apollo, Catherine, Jon, Letitia, Leo, Dawn, Sunset, Raphael, Zayna, Cosmos, Rob Junior, Ashanti, Amor, Tara, Helios, Jenny, Rosanne.
And Roberta.
After 215 seconds have elapsed, I disconnect my oxygen cylinder. I take off my helmet.
I breathe in a huge lungful of deep space.
Grendel
I watch Alliea die. I have already seen my beloved friend Hera blown to shreds. And when I see Alliea kill herself, I rage at the waste of a talented warrior, though I respect her choice. However, I am Grendel, leader of the pirate pack. I have vowed never to die peacefully.
My leg is blown off by a rocket blast, but the suit self-seals and I battle on. I am a huge, flying one-legged killing beast. I battle on. And on. I see limbs floating freely, weightless and shorn, both human and robot. I see streams of blood that form red comets in the still emptiness of space. The speed of the warriors fighting in this battle is so extraordinarily fast that we resemble molecules in motion in a murky liquid.
The flashing lights are laser beams. Shock waves rock us to and fro, but we continue moving, bobbing, flicking, surging. I kill many many DRs, and I savour each one, for each is a precious, and a cherishable victory. My radio is silent for the most part, but I have programmed my earpiece to play a solitary drumbeat as I fight. DUM dum-dum-dum-dum, DUM, dum-dum-dum-dum, DUM. It calms me, and it gives my body an inner rhythm, as I whirl and veer like lightning trapped in a jar.
And so, and thus, I fight.
It is some time before I realise I am dead. I wonder… where am I?
Brandon
I am on the bridge, with Harry, who is in a howling rage, and Jamie, who is the cybergeek god incarnate.
I drafted this battle plan, to Flanagan’s brief. And on my computer screen I can feel the war unfolding. Ambushes and boobytraps are carefully seeded, like twists in a detective novel. But most of all, we rely on the sheer fighting power of our rocket-propelled warriors flying outside the ships. They are like wasps that bring an elephant to its knees, and chew its bones.
“Brandon?”
The Captain is speaking to me. I realise that, for three long seconds, my heart has stopped beating. I gulp, force myself to breathe again.
“Alliea is dead,” I tell him. He stares at me blankly.
Alby
The rules of my ssspecies tell me I cannot intervene in any way in this combat. We are a paccccifist, nonwarrior life form. We do not fight, it is alien to usss, imposssssible to our nature. We cannot fight. Ever!
I watch as ten Corporation warshipssss close in on the Captain’s ship. I worry that they will be able to destroy Flanagan before his crew notice this new threat.
Sssso I ssssupernova. The nova becomes focussssed into a ssssingle flare. I lunge and plunge and ssssoar and sssspike, ripping through the enemy warships like a ssssun turned javelin.
It issss gloriousssssssssssss!
Flanagan
“Shit, what was that?” I ask.
Jamie checks his computers. The debris of enemy warships litters our path.
“Not sure, Cap’n. Spontaneous combustion?” he hazards.
The shattered warships are burning up, they are actually melting in deep space. I make a guess.
“Thank you Alby,” I murmur to myself.
Flanagan
Lena is in her room. I go and visit her. She is actually asleep.
I gently kiss her cheek and she awakes. “Oh, you,” she murmurs. Then her eyes flash open. “It’s over?”
“It’s over.”
“We’ve lost.”
“We’ve won.”
“How many survivors?”
“Very few. Perhaps, three ships in all. Maybe a hundred pirates still alive. Plus our own ship.”
Her face is ashen. I’m surprised. I didn’t think she would have cared that much.
“A hundred left,” she says, “out of eleven million, and that’s a victory?”
“Well, we killed all of them.”
