We went in after them.
So tired.
Disease to disease, contagion to contagion. We are the plague. We are the
Could I have lived a normal life?
All this I have known: combat and bloodlust, training for decades for a final conflict that has now emerged as a child, a gun, a desert plain. I’ve known the love of the final woman, the brotherhood of the lost soldiers. I’ve touched God. I’ve killed millions, with my own hand, with her own heart, with blind and reckless abandon for a tainted purpose. I’ve known. Silver. And more. I’ve known the stillness, will find it again soon. There will be silence on this expanse, silence interrupted by wind, by scream, by despair of solitude.
Could I have lived as another, as the painter did in the time before Maire, as my father did before the war, as my mother, spectacled, carrying books and given letters, as the author, the author and coffee and marbles, blue, two, hidden in pocket, hidden away from, away from vain struggle? I’ve heard the stories, faded stories of a planet long gone, final, final wreckage smoking to the south, blackened pile of the interior made exterior, made into Guerra.
She stole more than futures.
Could I have known a night under rain, warm breath and soft bed, watching the sleep, watching the
don’t
This gun becomes heavy.
No sound, but they lied. No sound as Arch’s phase rudder was torn apart, as Rebecca’s belly split. No sound in those pulses of light, explosions of metal and men. I remember watching, stretching to feel her, reaching to sense that touch, to know that she was safe. And this heart, for
I felt her touch.
We stormed the Rebecca interior, phase and light and fire. We killed. They came apart. Struggle for center, scrambling down hallways, cutting, cutting. We killed. Gutted Rebecca from the inside, as I knew they would do to Arch. I left my troops to continue their evisceration.
Swarms of men outside, sparks and radio screams, bits of metal stippling shield, razoring to center flesh.
Arch: hangar open, spilling slithers into the night, unmanned, grotesque miscarriage of technology.
I could feel her running, gasping. Hull was near, Hull was there where I should have been. She carried a weapon and used it as the boarding party made its way to the Catalyst chamber. Hull died, she didn’t, some of them did. Some of them.
She struck out but they were shielded, hands and snares, grabbing, binding, stealing.
I jumped like flying, free-falling, between light and void, shield bubbling from heat and cold, slugs and fire. Embraced Arch. Felt them near.
All of these words approximate. There are no words for this, for Us, for
I feign strength and we
The painter walks through the streets; he’s had a fight with his mistress. She wants a ring. He doesn’t want to give it to her. He looks into the sky, sees stars, falling. Fighting starlight. It was his calling; she whispered to his blood. He went to the caves.
The authors walks through the streets; he’s lost his lover. He wanted to give her a ring. She couldn’t accept it. He looks into the sky, sees stars, falling. Fighting starlight. It was his calling; she whispered to his blood. He went to the coffeehouse.
I’ve never tasted coffee, but I remember its scent.
I don’t know how else to be.
my lips remember
Daddy had a guitar. Why would a soldier have a guitar, strumming late at night, Mommy silent, sitting, smiling? They thought I was asleep. I don’t remember the words, but it was her song. Tears.
I miss
Killed them as they tried to escape through the hole they cut in Arch, as they carried the bound and gelled Catalyst out. She struggled, but there were many. I killed them, severed her restraints. She embraced me. It was all falling apart, Arch dead, Rebecca dead, most of our crew torn to pieces between the vessels, but she embraced me. I was so afraid that I’d lost her.
They must have sent a signal from the Rebecca. Maybe it was automatic. Black turned to white, stars folded and stretched to lines, stretched toward
The phase slugs arrived in-system, shot from guns we’d placed decades before. Rebecca became shards. Radio chatter: screaming, screaming and dying. My men caught in between. The initial shot hit Rebecca directly, sent what remained of Arch spinning away.
I remember grabbing Lilith’s hand and jumping from the hole, pushing off as hard as I could, hoping that the momentum would be enough to reach one of the jettisoned slithers.
It was.
We got in as quickly as we could, laden with gallons of gel shielding, freezing from exposure. I slammed the cockpit hatch home as the second and third slugs arrived, again hitting Rebecca, some of Arch, so many soldiers. So many dead.
I don’t know if anyone else got away, but I didn’t see any other active slithers. I think we were the only survivors.
We flew.
I hated to hear her cry, but I was crying, too. Strong commander of the Extinction Fleet vessel Archimedes, Hunter Windham. Crying at the loss of the only home I’d known for twenty years, the only family I’d had. I’d killed Tallis with my bare hands, watched my best friend die in a cloud of blood vapor, seen my Mother mouth “I love you” even as I could see the pavement through the hole in her chest, but only then did I cry. Alone in the night with Lilith, tears floating lazily before my face, batting them aside so I could see the slither monitor, plot a course, escape the system of phase slugs and debris.
System showed four more vessels arriving in-system soon. Wolves to the scent of blood drawn. Three destroyers and something else…Something huge.
Mother would want evidence that I was dead. Mother would want Lilith intact. Another vessel would take her and use her. I couldn’t let that happen.
She spun me around, took off my helmet, hands going to my hair, wiping sweat from my forehead, cheeks. Her lips moved on nothing. No words. In that moment, no words. I felt the silver stirring, but I didn’t care. Subtle pain behind eyes. Her touch was worth the risk.
Tangle of lips, tongues. Noses fencing. I knew my stubble scratched her face. Skin sweat-slick, tear tracks.
I searched on all bands for something, anything. Galleons. Had to get to a galleon.
They called them prisons, but they really weren’t. When Earth system fell to the “alien” attack, there were billions of humans on the outer planets, the colonies, a few nearby systems. They became the galleon refugees, searching for inhabitable worlds in the near-Outer. We came across them from time to time, interacted with the crews. Uncle disapproved. I’m sure Mother disapproved. I’m sure some of the alien worlds we were sent to cleanse with the silver were refugee worlds.
Two people, tiny sliver of slither, searching for
i love you for your hands.
long, lean fingers interlaced with my own, the interruption of your rings, long nail, long nail, short nail. the grasp of small hand within my clumsy, shaking own, the tightening of your grip on my shoulder as you gasp, fingers slipping to my neck, pulling me into a kiss.
i love you for your skin. smooth, soft, infinitesimal hairs. i love your taste, the salt of our passion, the warmth and wetness of two bodies joined together by desire and love that has waited so long to appear.
i love you for your lips, the medium of the first hint of Us: stolen kisses.
i love you for your hair, that halo of tickling that descends to my face when you are above me and shines out around you when you are below. kissing ears through gateways, pulling traces of you from my mouth.
your dimple. perfect dimple. i love you for your dimple.
i love you for your tummy. you hide, yet it is beautiful, taut skin interrupted by button, stippled with my kisses on a journey into abandon.
i love you for your eyes. cliché in action: they are the window in which i see our future.
your heart. i love You for your heart, that organ of fire that i cross with my fingers, kiss with my lips, feel in the depth of my own. curled together, tender moment: i hear you, the quickness of your acceleration, the echoes of our times together, the futures i