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.
“Tired, Maire? Or can you do it all?”
“So it was you. Your vessel got in my way.”
“Looks like it. You must be drained, or you would’ve killed me already.”
“Yeah. I’m drained.”
“Good.”
“Who’s that?” She gestured at the wreck.
“Just a photographer. I needed his ship.”
“Is he dead?”
“He will be soon.”
“Good.”
“Yeah. Good.”
Awkward silence. The wind was becoming colder.
“You killed my wife.”
Maire smiled. “We killed your wife.”
Berlin glared. He shifted the knife nervously in his hand. If she knew about it, she wasn’t showing it.
“She didn’t deserve to die. Not like that. Not at all.”
“You had such promise, Berlin. Such promise to change that place.”
“So did you.”
“So did Kath.”
Berlin snapped. Maire wasn’t expecting his attack.
He lunged forward, sweeping the blade from behind his arm. The first slash lacerated Maire’s throat deeply, cutting almost to the spine. She staggered backward, strangely-red blood pouring over uniform and snow and Berlin, who slammed into her. Her hands reached up to her neck, but Berlin knocked them away on the return path of his blade, which sliced hilt-deep between Maire’s ribs, through that single heart. Berlin’s twisting wrist ensured that the heart would be destroyed beyond repair. He fell with her onto the ice, and with a final snap, he jerked the blade up, breaking through her ribcage. A small geyser of blood erupted from Maire’s ravaged chest.
She fell into stillness.
Berlin stood, shaking with exertion. It couldn’t be this easy. He wiped her blood from his face, neck. It smelled like copper. It was red.
With a swift, brutal motion, Berlin fell upon Maire’s body, plunging the blade again and again into her skull. Overcome with grief, shuddering with emotion, he stabbed her again and again, covered in her blood, slivers of her bone, great chunks of that mind that had meticulously planned the genocide of his species. He stabbed until she was gone, stabbed until he was satisfied that she could not possibly be anymore. He stood and surveyed the extent of his fury.
Maire knocked him to the ground, one foot connecting solidly with his jaw as the other landed on his knife hand, crushing fingers and shredding his palm with his own blade. Her form shimmered with silver flux, fading between solid and snow, sky and ice. With horror, Berlin realized that
Maire stepped away from him, walked to the bloodied doppelganger. She reached into its open chest and removed a tiny silver sphere, threw it playfully into the air and catching it with ease. The projected dissolved to static and nothing. Berlin cradled his crushed hand, rolled over to look up at the true Maire.
“I win.”
The door cycled open, revealing sub-commander Hull. His eyes were averted, tracing the grid of the floor. He cleared his throat.
“I’m sorry to interrupt.”
“What is it?” Lilith’s voice bounced around the interior of her shield: what wha wh is is i it it t
“We’ve—” His eyes remained on the floor, but glanced toward Hunter for an instant. “We’ve removed Tallis’s body from the works. What should we do with—”
“Space it.”
“No.” Lilith turned to Hunter. “There’s something we need to do first.”
He nodded in realization.
“Sir?” Hull was restless, his hands clenching and unclenching on nothing.
“What is it?”
“Do we have orders?” Hull’s eyes were now locked on the broken command display, the shattered biomech angel, the wires hanging like vines from ceiling displays.
“We’re making our own orders from now on.”
“Yes, sir.”
“Take me to the body.”
Hull nodded an affirmative. “And sir?”
“What is it?”
“Your—” Hull’s hand went to his fly. His brow furrowed in embarrassment. He was one of the youngest soldiers on the vessel, just now growing facial hair for the first time. “Your—”
“Thanks, Hull.” Hunter blushed and zipped his pants.
Within her bubble, Lilith covered her smile with a silver hand.
“Let’s go.”
The head was gone now, crushed between the gears of the inner workings of a docking bay slither cradle. The vessel itself had twisted away from its dock, and now it sat incapacitated on the bay’s floor. Hunter could still see the coagulating black outline of his former commander’s end underneath the slither. The rest of the body was almost intact. Hunter flexed his swollen hand, felt the incisions threaten to tear open again. It could have been his blood under that vessel, splashed across the gears and pistons of the cradle. It could have been, but then it would have been red.
“It’s in the chest cavity.”
Hunter undid the soaked top of Tallis’s uniform, pulled the fabric back to reveal a hairless chest.
“You’ll have to crack through the bone. It’ll be between the hearts.” She pointed to a place just under the sternal notch. Hunter’s blade sliced through the thin film of near-skin in an “I” shape. He used the tip of the knife to fold back each flap. It wasn’t a human ribcage.