Silent Partner

"How was work." Daily question without even a tone of interest. I shrugged at the floor while Marla stared at her tabletron. Silence bridged us. Golden sunset poured through the office windows. Ninety floors up, hip-deep in the mass of hovercars rushing to get home, drivers dying to hug their wives and husbands and kids, watch some quality 3D.

Not Marla. She had her tabletron.

I dramatically dropped my workpack onto the floor. "Whoops." It crunched. I'd probably smashed the screens, maybe broken the drives. I finally looked up at her: head bowed down, face washed out by the pale light of the tronics. Ghostly. "Call Ed, he'll replace that for you."

Ed burst in as if on cue. "We've got a problem."

Marla's face turned, eyes hidden behind the ultra-reflective glasses. I could see her forehead crease. Ed never rushed in. Never used the word "problem". The atomic disaster on Mars was a "setback". "Ed?"

Ed was a foot taller than me, but seemed double that. He peered down, gave me a nod, then said, "Perhaps we should speak alone?"

Marla agreed and ushered me out. I gave her a pained glance; she might've responded, had she bothered to look at me. The doors slid shut, and glowed red around the doorframe. Locked.

Luckily, I had a sharp ear. I leaned in and listened.

Ed: The courier ship, headed for Mars yesterday? (Ed always had that way about him...asking instead of telling.)

Marla: Uh-huh. The Crescent IV.

Ed: Never arrived.

Marla: It came back.

Ed: Not that either. It's gone, Marla.

Marla: Juggernauts don't just vanish, Ed. Plus, we've trace-locators. Fire it up and find her quickly.

I could see Ed shaking his head violently, face reddening: Did that, five hours ago. It's gone! No trace. Sent thirty Scoopers out to search for ion trails, debris. Came back with shrugs and nothing more.

Marla: That ship has thirty-five Neutrino--

Ed: I know, I know...!

The voices had gotten progressively louder, and only too late did I realise they were approaching the door. With a whisper the doors parted, and I looked into four very anxious eyes. I was smart enough to know I wasn't supposed to hear that thirty five Neutrinos were missing.

Marla's pupils were like lasers. "Snooping is for spies. You know what we do with them--"

Ed studied his hands, then rested one---it was cold and shaky---on my shoulder and gently pushed me away, whilst saying, "Marla, we had him intrigued, leave him be-"

Marla whirled around and she looked ready to pounce. Ed flinched. Marla then quietly commented, "That was a rash comment from a divorced father of three kids he never sees. Maybe your advice is unnecessary, eh? Maybe you should get those world-bombs found and put back in my factories, eh?"

Ed nooded, eyes glistening, and patted my shoulder again as he scurried off. What a weasel---I felt bad straightaway thinking that. Marla's coldness, rubbing off on me. Figuratively---our marriage had long since negated any phsical rubbing off. Her job was primary focus, apparently.

Marla--she was staring at me. Really looking at me, for the first time in a long time.

"Neutrinos," she said, "are classified technology. Everyone wants to know what we're up to, even UniCorps." The last word was spat out like an epithet. She adjusted her expensive suit, slicked back her hair, gave me a cold smile. "And if I see Neutrinos mentioned once in the media, I'll know it was you."

She stepped up close, and although we were at eye-level, I felt myself shrinking under her terrible stare. "I'll send you to the mines. Now get the hell out of my sight."

I ran to the nearest lift. One rushed up, swallowed me and spat me into my room-cubicle. I shuddered, grinned, groaned. I knew where that ship was. Knew exactly what had happened her and her crew. Every cell in my body cried out Save them! But how? Without a doubt, if I told my wife what had occurred, she would send a Sweeper team to slaughter every last one of them. Delete their files. Erase their familes.

And when they were done, she would kill me.

No, I was going to need someone's help. Someone with a ship, and some guns. A name burned brightly in my mind, and I smiled. Perfect.

Mirrors in the Sky

The air is thin at the peak of the Sky City. I slip on a mask before I step out onto the balcony. Out into sunshine, away from the murky apartment, and the corpse.

Winds break through the geo-shield, fussing with my jacket. Shut my eyes, imagine I'm hovering twenty-thousand feet above ground. It's not a stretch. Sky City has a triad of ion repulsors keeping her high above the Wasted World. Nothing but fire and craters down there; this is the new world. Fresh start. Safe, secure...yet there it is: the body, propped up in its seat, looking out at me with eyes that had long glazed over, its jaw slack, as if to say:

Why me? What'd I do?

"Wrong place, wrong time, buddy," I murmur through my mask. My voice is odd to my own ears. The corpse says nothing, just stares.

Did it move?

I blink, rub my nose. No. Still there, watching the clouds roll out onto the horizon, watching the empty blue sky, and watching me.

I step back inside. Damn near fall down when a young face jumps out at me. "Jesus--knock or something!" I throw the mask away. "What is it?"

The face beams, barely out of his teens, wearing a suit double-worth mine, thanks to Daddy Mayor. "COD, Detective. Cause of death verified: Laser-line."

Years of experience unfurl across my thoughts; I'd been planetside before the Burn. Saw crimes go unhindered; saw the victims, scattered and splattered. Laser-lines were common back then: perfect for long-distance. Back when there were buildings and streets, and people on the ground. Not all of us clustered in one giant hub in the heavens. And not when we're monitored and scanned. Every action recorded; every kill prevented. Until now.

"Laser-lines belong back in the twenties," I inform him, feeling smug and sour at the same time. The apartment's big, wide, full of tech and art I couldn't dream of acquiring. The dead guy, in his forties, chest torn open like bag of crisps. Bowels at ankles; scorch-marks orbiting the tear. Consistent with laser-lines, sure. What else? Oh. I lean in. Should retch--been ages since I sniffed a cavader; yet the old instinct--breathe through mouth in short, shallow breaths--serves its purpose. Nose-to-nose with the dead thing in the chair, and in the eyes I see writing.

Words. Scrawled perfectly around the irises. I read them.

"Boss?"

Re-read them. "Get the chief."

"On the pod?"

I give him a look that rivalled laser-lines for ferocity. "Get him here. Now."

The young guy yelps a little, mutters Rightaway something, and falls into the horizontube. Whisked away, the gush of air easing off, leaving me alone in that gorgeous pad, staring into the dead eyes, the words leaving scars in my soul:

This man is a clone, says Left Eye.

Right Eye: And so are you, Detective.

Gravestones of Fire

She's there when I close my eyes. In the darkness, floating, hair rippling in unseen currents. Her face is pale--as it should be. Her clothes--the last outfit I ever saw her in--are baggy, bright white like the moon, whiter than her skin, shining bright. I wince--I always wince--because then her eyelids flick open, and what I see terrifies me beyond imagining.



I awaken in a pool of my own sweat. Tears cascade down my cheeks, and my chest quakes with a deep and dreadful sadness--so deep, so dreadful, that my body dares not let it free. I sob silently, my open mouth letting out a gasp like the last gasp of a dying man. Eeys wide, adjusting to the darkness, I soak in my surroundings--each and every time I suddenly remember:



Space. Mission. You're the captain. I'm the captain.



Meds lie beneath my mattress. I always take three, to soothe me, lull me into a dreamless sleep. Never do it going to bed at first---I won't see her then, and I want to see her, painful as it is, dead as she is. I want her.



But just this once, leaning forward, ignoring the aches in my joints, I deny myself the meds. I close my eyes, breathe in the recycled air of the cruiser Everlast, and let my heartbeat drown out the sounds of ion engines hurtling me and three guys into the heart of space.



Sleep. Her dead face. I groan and cry, I reach out across the black, touch her, feel her soft smooth features harden and crumble under my fingerstrokes. Like old paint. Fragments of my lover's flesh tumble by, and she smiles, even as her lower jaw tears off.



"Alert! Captain to the bridge!"



I snap awake. I push the memories down to my gut, let them fester. Out of bed, into uniform, and onto bridge, double-time. Jane is there, and she's looking worried.



"Came out of nowhere. Heading straight for us. Vector Alpha-two-nine. Speed, point-three L."



"Jesus." The bridge is cramped. The front port dominates. The rest is consoles and tiny seating for me, Jane, and Tom. I look out the port, see the flicker of blue out in the nothingness. "ID?"



"Unknown."



It's not the black hole. It's an object, a something, in the nothing. Traveling at point three L. A third of lightspeed. Ten times faster than us. I think of sci-fi shows, of spaceships, of dead faces. "Comm HQ: send them a link."



Jane gives me two eyebrows up and a creased brow. "Tried that a minute ago, no luck--"



"Try again." I lean into my seat, drum up a few command sequences. Scanners usually taste an asteroid no problem. Comets come up nice and simple. Old satellites lost in space belch out radio waves. This thing is a ghost.



I think of Morena, and the night she choked to death, her eyes wide, looking right at me. "Anything?" Jane shakes her head, punches in more commands; Jane hates to lose. And she's scared. So am I. Please, she cried. Morena. I mouthed the word. She begged me to save her. I love you, I said.



"Rut this," I grunt. "Tom deserves his beauty sleep, but I need his brain. De-cryo, fast-pace."



"Could hurt him," Jane tells me, and I nod. "Can't we-"



"Wait?" Shaking my head, I say flatly, "No." Jane is opening her mouth just like Morena. I push the thought away, blink, hope the single tears dries quickly. "That thing is coming for us. I put us on evasive. It matched out trajectory perfectly."



Like a ghost. Chasing us. Jane said, "Sequencing cryo-negative process. Tom'll be with us in five."



Space is silent and dark. The stars do not gleam like those in holos. They are pinpricks in an ocean of death. They are themselves the light of the dead, shining brightly, in remembrance. Gravestones of fire, burning themselves out. So even the fires of the dead die. I look at the shadow I cast upon the deckplates, and wonder, when I die, will my shadow die too? Do shadows stay, while light dies away?



"John." It's Tom. He's groggy, and hugging his ribs.



I give him a grimace. "Sorry. but there's odd sh!t out there, and that's your specialty. You OK?"



"No, but I will be. ID?"



"No clue. It's big though," says Jane, and she flashes him a smile that tells me she has recently, or plans to, bed him. It doesn't make me jealous, especially at a time like this, but I feel a lot more alone, these two lovebrids, while my Morena rots away long lost, and that big boogeyman comes toward us at a speed that makes the hairs on the neck of nature curl.



Tom takes his spot, rubs a sore rib, and peers into the goggles mounted on his board. A beat. A gasp. "It's here."



Jane throws me fearful eyes. I stay calm. No fear in the unknown. It's excitement, I tell myself. "Here? Where?"



Tom points, and I follow his still icy-arm to the port, where a thin haze of rippling light shimmers before the glass, and I think I see a heartbeat.



Here. All round us. We scatter signals, send pulses and beams. All come back contradicting one another, like a bunch of professors in a room crying out for attention. Like a bunch of bugs scrambling over one another to chew at the corpse's meat. All vying for alpha-attention.



The readouts say yay, nay, organism, ship, matter, anti-matter.



"Well one way or another," I say, and I'm shaking, "it's got us. Now what?"



Tom rubs his eyes. He's pale, and not just from the cryo-stasis I lurched him out of. Tom's as sh!t-scared as me and Jane. "You're the captain, Captain."



Jane mumbles, "We're not moving, our air is fine, energy cubes up and running...but I'm picking up weird energy-streams."



"Where?" I bark that. Shouldn't have done that.



"Everywhere," and suddenly Jane is that young student I seduced with stories and drink and bedded two nights before Morena died in front of my very eyes. Did Morena know then? Was that why her eyes said, Why? as she tumbled out of the airlock? I still felt the gentle thud, as air and machinery and Morena were sucked out into space. Still felt the hum of the console, as my finger slipped away from the blinking red button, and I stepped back, watching my wife die. My finger, warm, after touching the big red button.



"Thing's got us encapsulated," I state. Two meds, pop-pop, chew them like gum, hope they don't notice, or if they do, don't care. We're dead meat anyway. "So we bring the fight to them."



"Fight!" Tom rubs his shaved head. "This is a phenomenon. It's an aberration. It's not--"



"A Spectre? A Spectre, Tom? Cos it sure rutting looks like one to me, Tom." I lean in, and yeah, I'm mad. The meds ate up my fear, left a big bag of hate in my chest, and I'm dumping it on baldy's head. "Now go get your gun."



No... ]She's here, in my head, in my ship. No... she says, and she's in the outfit I last saw her in, the baggy space-suit, and she's tumbling, only this time she's tumbling towards me. Tales of Spectres kept kids awake at night, it's fun, right? Only one's really got us pincered, and now there's Morena, in the room, in her suit, reaching for me. I see her face, the red eyes, and I embrace her. I close my eyes, and when I open them, I can see the Everlast, turning away, heading home. I'm floating. Warm, burning white.



She's all around me, my wife Morena. Her light is enveloping me, protecting me, a womb of light in space, and I am unafraid, I am with her again, she is alive!



You killed me, she says sweetly, as she pushes her visor down, and I see my own reflection, and it is a mask of fear now.



I didn't! I didn't want to!



The black helmet with my face stretched across it nods once. I had the Virus. You did right. You did right... But two days ago, you slept with her. And I knew, and I forgave you, and then you let me die...



The white light is fading around us, and I suddenly I feel very cold. I'm sorry. I should've tried---



I'm sorry too. She fades to nothing, and I wonder, as she hurtled into space with only a minute of O2, could a Spectre have found her, and saved her? Was she real?



I wonder this for a milisecond. This milisecond. This very moment. I am frozen in time. I know now, in the next heartbeat, in the next fraction of infinite time, my body will submit to space. I know, but I do not want to know.



I'm sorry.

Loose

You and me, he said, we're special. We see through the layers that cloud man's eyes. Through the bull and the waffle, the ego and the title. We see.

His eyes widened, he leaned in, and I struggled not to flinch. I kept my eyes on his even as he leaned in close enough to breathe garlic on me. Eyes like water, trembling with a terrible darkness trying to break through—Mr Herod was no perv, I knew, but he sure was crazy. I could see that.

You don't believe me. Back, he leaned back, his narow frame nearly disappearing into the confines of his leather chair. The room looked huge when he did this, but it was a small classroom, in an old school, with ancient rules. And Herod hated it all: the rules, the school, even the chair that threatened to gobble him up.

But he liked me. So I said, I believe you, sir.

That strange smile played across his lips. The eyes glowed, renewed with an odd energy. Leaning forward again slowly, a slender weird man, he said, Good. Then I have something I want you to do for me. My heart pounded in anxiety. Not a perv. Not a- It's going to seem, ah, inappropriate to ask, but it would please me. Smile, nervous, trembling eyes. Will you?

Will I what. I coughed the words, swallowed my bile.

I want you to kill a man named Howard Whyte, tonight, with your mind.

Howard Whyte was sixty two years old with cancer. When he cycled home to work, he did so with a well-tuned sense of purpose. Years of army training had instilled in him a level of self-discipline that his dad's beatings had damn near pulverised. Killing—soldiers, villagers, children—had hardened him. Civilised life was a breath of fresh air, as fresh as city air can be, and he took deep breaths, and built a store and a family, and lost both to circumstance, and now had carcinogens worming away at his innards. Six months on the outside, said his doctor behind small glasses. I'm sorry.

Those words rang like the bullets he popped at the runners and pleaders, the fighters and bleeders. Bang bang. I'm sorry. No. You're just glad it;s not you. Again, something he was very familiar with. Bang bang.

I sat on a park bench in a quaint square of green grass and withering flowers, watching the old dying man dismount his bike and guide her round the side of the old house. Pebble-dash walls, windows that relfected the world, showing nothing inside.

I knew what lay inside. I heard the cries of those innocents, from his past. Bang bang.

Soon as he disappeared behind the granular walls I darted across. I was in my usuals—t-shirt, jeans, runners---and I carried only one extra item, of which I shall discuss with you later. No-one stopped to stare at me, future-OAP-killer. No-one was there, see.The streets were empty. The wind was high—I felt buffeted by fate,as I slowed and then creeped along the side of the home to the back gate and pushed through gently, finding a garden in disarray. Weeds grew high. Grass had browned and fragmented. The wind stirred the corpses of long-forgotten roses. Thorns remained, drooping. I took it all in while the object weighed heavy in one hand. The other was clenched.

Like the fist that smashed my nose from one side—bang bang—twice it hit me, making my head explode and knees give way. My head bounced off the ground twice—bang bang—white stars popped in my eyes, like those bullets, and...Those kids...

Bang-bang...I'd said it, two words, through bloodied teeth, swollen lips. Those kids. His feet paused, one in mid-swing, and he settled down, stared.

Whaddya know? he grumbled. He leaned over, like Herod, his eyes were different though: splintered with gold, narrow to a point, piercing. Whaddya say?

Feign surprise, I said, laughing, choking down vomit. Those kids.

The war was a long time ago, he shook his head, spittle flying from his grey lips.

Kill him, said Herod, two hours previously.

I showed Whyte the object: The gun, Mr Whyte. I ushed myself to one feet, and to the other. The gun you used on those kids.

No.

Not the war, Mr Whyte. Long after. Just recently. Very recently.

No.

I stole into his thoughts and saw so many children weeping as he used all his anger and despair on their fragile little bodies. Crunch went a bone, at the pubis, as he convulsed, laughing and smashing the child's dreams of happiness away. You scraped the leftovers, burned the bodies. But some lived, and squirmed, like worms, didn't they.

Yes. No!

So you killed the worms, stone dead. Bang bang.

And he screamed and ran inside, and fled upstairs, and I took a hop-skip-jump across space and time and took a peek into his head, just as his own bullet exited the other side. His thoughts zapped away like a cathode ray tube, winking, and blinking, and shrinking to zero. Zipped back to my bruised cranium, the whip-crack of the gunshot tickling my ears. I laughed, then said, Ow. A tooth had come loose.