Tallis waited for them in the hangar.
“What the fuck have you been doing?”
“Recon.”
“Do you know how dangerous it was to—”
“I was aware of the dangers. It was a dead ship.”
“And you just—”
“We didn’t find anything, Brendan. It was slag.”
Tallis sneered. “Get out of the suits and into the bubbles. We’re ready to fly.”
“You’ve tracked them?”
“We know exactly where they are.”
“How far?”
“Days.”
“Will Lilith have enough time to regain her—”
“She’ll be ready.”
“Good.” Hunter feigned eagerness. “Let’s go.”
Ten thousand midnights, the blink of an eye in Light X, a slumber barely refreshing, fraught with uncertainty and echoes of a planet now dead, the woman hidden at its center, a vessel preparing for war, his love hanging at its center.
“Crew prep for aerial bombardment.”
“No.” Tallis strode across the bridge. “We’re going down.”
“There’s no need to risk—”
“They killed Uncle. We’re going down. Crew to transports.”
“We can hit them from above, just—”
“I want blood. We’ll take the tether down ourselves. Get to your transport.”
Hunter’s eyes locked on Arik’s as Tallis stormed from the bridge.
The target worldships had landed long ago on the central continent. The phase technology of the enemy apparently provided a faster ride; cities had grown around the sunken spheres. Hunter swallowed hard as he watched the descent from his monitor. He couldn’t let this happen.
The transports landed just outside of one of the cities.
There was little resistance.
Tallis’s Attack One cut through the city without mercy, slithers strafing from above, ground troops storming the streets. Hunter’s own Attack Two and Arik’s Attack Three were just as brutal, although Hunter himself never fired a shot in offense. He felt sick to his stomach at the slaughter enacted upon the “harboring” world.
Outside of the city, a city collapsing and a city on fire, the centerpiece the worldship hemisphere rising above it all, now cracked and falling. Tallis called all of his forces to the outskirts of the city for tether placement.
“Isn’t it great?” His smile disgusted Hunter, refracted behind the shield, twisted into a leer.
“We have to talk.”
“Leave it for the ship.”
“No. We have to talk now.” Hunter’s weapon swung ominously close to Tallis.
“Tether in place.”
“Incoming!”
A fresh sea of combatants stormed from the city, had to be combatants, couldn’t be unarmed people, unarmed men. Couldn’t be. Running, hands outstretched, shouting—
“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.”
copy, wing one.
“Sir, listen to them. They aren’t—”
“Hunter, don’t—”
“They aren’t humans.”
“The fuck are you—”
“Listen to them!”
“It’s an off-chart language. So what? We have orders.”
“Tallis,” Hunter pulled off his helmet. “Listen to them.”
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
i have come again to
mind, the Voice of the people who were now an instant from the eternal cease.
Hunter heard. He heard them all.
berlin hannon judithgod
maire
“You knew!” Hunter knocked Tallis to the ground with a swift, unexpected blow. Both of their shields rippled from the impact. “You fucking knew!”
Tallis stood, shield purging dust and dirt from a hundred invasion points. He wiped the mud from his chest.
“Back to the ship. We’re done here.”
“This isn’t over. You knew they weren’t aliens. They’re people.”
“Back to the ship.” His growl chilled the windless plain. The city outskirts were silent, the inhabitants frozen in place, replaced with something from between the stars and times.
Slithers docked.
Hunter leapt from his cockpit, released seals on gloves and helmet, let them drop to the floor. Other pilots climbed from their vessels in silence. They had seen; they knew what would happen.
Mandela jogged to Hunter’s side. “Don’t, man. Maybe we can—”
“Stay away from me.” He deflected Arik’s grip from his arm.
Tallis walked from his slither, cracked his neck seal. “Do you have a problem with me, Windham?”
He walked up close, too close. Breathing heavily, fraught with bitter emotion. “How long have you known?”
“Known what?”
Hunter swung, but Tallis blocked. He’d always been the swifter of the two. He held Hunter’s forearm and grinned.
“I repeat: Known what?”
“That
there are worlds out there, boys, so many worlds we could never hope to count them all, and on some of them are monsters.”
Hunter turned to Brendan, whose face stared at Uncle in rapt fascination. The boys sat in the schoolroom, Uncle at its center beneath a slowly-spinning holograph of the galaxy. Hunter frowned. It was the only sign of his fear.
“Where did they come from?”
“Good question!” Uncle smiled, patted the inquisitive boy’s head. “Very good question.” He zoomed the display out, their galaxy shrinking to a point amidst thousands, thousands shrinking to a point amidst eternity.
Hunter didn’t understand. He leaned forward, cradled his chin on his palms.
“There’s a place out there somewhere, a galaxy much like ours. It’s a bad place, very far away, and that’s where the monsters come from.”
“And they killed Earth?”
Uncle smiled sadly, nodded at another boy. “Yes, son. They sent the worldships to kill Earth.”
“Why?”
Hunter remembered the pause, the tilt of Pierce’s head, the bobbing swallow of his Adam’s apple.
“Who gave us the ability to fly, boys?”
“Mother!” Unison. Disconcerting unison. Hunter realized that he had replied in reflex.
“And who took away war and disease, gave us all a new purpose? Who cured the world of affliction?”
“Mother!”
“Yes.” The affirmative was a hiss, slow and calculated. “Mother.” He circled the room, sweeping his gaze across the pre-pubescent soldiers of the night. “The aliens hate Mother. The monsters want to kill Mother. They killed Earth to try to kill her, and now we’re going to make them pay for it.”
Hunter saw that Brendan was smiling widely.
“We’re the last hope, boys. We’re here to kill them all. We’re here to cleanse the universe of this disease. We can’t let the aliens win.”
“Never.” Brendan whispered to himself.
“We have to be the best soldiers we can be, boys. We have to learn to fight, to fly, to kill. We have to save Mother from the monsters.”