Machina Obscurum Page 3

  “I—”

  “You don’t understand. I know. I don’t either. But all our best pilots are away. I saw your exam, son. I know you trained to fly the Worldkiller.”

  Worldkiller. The ship’s name haunted me. I had studied it years before. The WTC’s big project. Enough bombs to cook ten planets. Enough nano missiles to carve a hole in a Star-Eater’s gut. Right here, right in front of me. Surely someone else can fly it. I can’t. Not with Jack dead. I’m not ready, Dad. Can’t you see?

  “Dad, no,” I stammered. “Why can’t you fly it? Why do we need it anyway? Where’s Jack? Why now?”

  “It can’t wait,” he said.

  “It’s too slow, Dad. If the Mimics are already here—”

  “It’s light-xx.”

  “Light-xx?”

  “Double exponential. The coordinates are already programmed. To reach the Mimic homeworld and get back home, it’ll feel like thirteen minutes of flight time.”

  “Impossible.”

  Dad smirked. I’d never seen him smirk before. “The WTC has been busy,” he said. “Very busy.”

  I shuddered, “Why should it even need a pilot? Just punch a few buttons and make the Mimics die. It’s for Jack, Dad. You don’t need me.”

  I saw a cold light in his eyes. He was angry, more so than I had ever seen.

  “Something like this shouldn’t be rushed, should it?” He gritted his teeth. “The WTC knew as much. The Worldkiller requires a single human pilot. One pilot. Human. No other species. It’s to make sure a living man pushes the button. Strange that it only takes one, but better than someone sitting at a terminal, having a bad day, deciding to end a world on autopilot.”

  The way he said it chilled me. I supposed the WTC’s reasons were logical, but the thought of all the time and energy they had put into their planet-ending ship froze me to my bones. Until that moment, I had always thought of xenos as little more than dots on humanity’s interstellar map. The science of deep space had always fascinated me, rarely the living, breathing, magnificent array of creatures our universe housed, over whom we like to play God.

  “Dad,” I pleaded, “what about Jack?”

  “He’s dead. I’d never lie to you. I’m sorry. We have to focus, Jonathan. You’ll have all the time in the world for grief when you return. Trust me.”

  “You want me to pilot the Worldkiller,” I said without emotion. I needed to smother my feelings, just like Dad. “You want me to destroy the Mimic homeworld. The coordinates are ready, like you said. This is our revenge, isn’t it?”

  Dad nodded. If Mom had seen him, she would have been terrified. “You’ll know the planet when you see it through the window,” he said. “It’s unmistakable.”

  “How so?”

  “It’ll look exactly like Earth.”

  “Huh?” I squinted at him. My mind hurt to conceive such a thing.

  “That’s right,” he continued. “They’ve been copying us for centuries. Every building, every tower, every landmark. They like the way we look, Jonathan. They’re obsessed. They’ve copied mountains, rivers, and forests. Their ocean waves are Mimics, their orbital stations are Mimics. They even have a Worldkiller, same as ours. Every cell, every face, every window in every storefront…all of it. Copied.”

  “Impossible.”

  “You’ve studied the science. You know it can be done.”

  No. Not that science, I almost said. They didn’t teach me the physics of lunacy. We had no classes for obsessive alien stalkers.

  “Now go,” he told me.

  “Now?”

  “Now. We have no time. The moment of WTC is here. The Mimics annihilate what they copy. We only just learned.”

  I let him lead me to the Worldkiller. I knew only numbness, felt only a cold hollow in my heart where Jack used to be. I wondered if Xander were dead, too. I dared not ask. Dad will tell me everything when I get back. Thirteen minutes. Round-trip. That’s all this’ll take. Thirteen. Minutes.

  When we reached the Worldkiller, I stared at it as though I were six years-old again. The ship looked impressive, though not particularly dangerous. A hundred twenty feet of polished chrome. Permo-glass windows. No wings. No visible payload. Just a needle of metal, really. And inside, a small quantum engine, synthetic air and food-makers, and weapons. Lots of weapons.

  I gaped at the ship. I knew where the weapons were. Two fistfuls of nano corruption-bombs and a satchel-sized compartment filled with worm missiles lay beneath a hidden panel, waiting to murder billions. The WTC believed in nothing, if not thoroughness. If the Mimics’ homeworld were as perfect a copy of Earth as Dad said, the Worldkiller had enough weaponry to turn it into slag a hundred times over.

  “Which payload should I use?” I asked as Dad used a remote to open a chrome panel on the Worldkiller’s flank.

  “All of it. Have to be sure.”

  “What about the orbital stations? What if they have defenses?”

  “The fall-up from the planet dying will melt the stations. And since their Worldkiller is identical to ours in every way, they’ll see you and not know the difference.”

  Until it’s too late.

  Behind the chrome panel, a membrane door awaited. The gooey-looking blue portal would probe for my humanity, I knew. Any non-human trying to pass through would be vaporized. At least no Mimics can get on board, I thought. I don’t want to do this, Dad. But I will. All for Jack. I love you, brother.

  “Can’t you come with me, Dad? I’m dying here. I’m…scared.”

  “I have to stay,” he said. “Besides, there’s only one chair.”

  For a few breaths, I stood in silence. The sky, the ship, and the air surrounded me, crushing me. I looked to Dad one last time.

  “Dad—”

  “Go,” he said. “Remember your training.”

  I climbed seven steps up to the membrane door. I hated membrane doors. Walking through them felt like having your skin peeled off, every hair in every follicle pulled out. It puckered when I walked through, and then popped back into its normal, rounded shape. I suppose I was human after all, as the door failed to disintegrate me, but in the moment I felt anything but.

  “Bye, Dad,” I said to him, but the membrane door blocked all sound. He’s not listening anyway, I knew. He’s lost in his head. Must be thinking about Jack.

  I found the chair. The ship’s console awaited me, an air keyboard and twenty small switches capable of ending worlds. I sealed the door, sat down, and buckled in. Light x ships created localized gravity fields, meaning the universe outside my window would pass me by at billions of miles per second, but I’d feel no acceleration. I’d feel nothing anyhow, I figured. I’m about to murder a planet. I’ve never even met a Mimic. ‘Facile est ultio,’ Mom would have said. Easy vengeance. ‘Never harm a living thing whose children you’ve never seen.’

  I wish Mom would have been there.

  I never would have switched the Worldkiller on.

  I flicked the ignition to active. The ship hummed for a moment as the engines neutralized all the exterior gravity, and then went silent. I punched the ascend button. I tried to look out the window and spot Dad, but the WTC towers were already a thousand miles beneath me. I tapped the navigation screen. After ten seconds of flight time I’d skirted a dozen orbital stations and entered near-Earth orbit. The ship was fast, scary fast.

  I panicked a little bit, but then took several deep breaths. This is the right thing, I convinced myself. It’s them or us. Would I kill a billion Mimics to save one Jack? Yes. And what about saving Xan, Dad, and Mom? Yes.

  Doing the right thing felt too easy. My emotions fell from my heart, and all my years of cold, calculated study drowned me. My fingers danced on the keyboard, pulling up the coordinates Dad had promised. Sure enough, there they were. In modern interstellar terms, the Mimics lived only a hop and a skip away, their star floating on the opposite side of the MW’s galactic nucleus. I had wondered if our enemy’s planet laid ten galaxies away, maybe a hundred, but
there they were in the thick of the MW, six and a half minutes across the galaxy. Our galaxy.

  I traced my finger along the coordinates on the screen. I trusted Dad had done the math. The image flickered, the engines hummed for a few breaths, and all the stars beyond the windows went black. Hurtling through deep space felt like floating through a dark, silent room. I heard myself breathing, but nothing more. What if something happens out here? I wondered. I’ll fly to edge of time and beyond, and no one will ever know. I should’ve said goodbye to Mom.

  More than anything, I wished I’d done just that.

  The Worldkiller slowed to a crawl. If not for the localized gravity, the deceleration would have scattered my body into stardust. Through the window, I saw a bright blue planet growing larger. I saw the shapes of continents, so very like Earth. I glimpsed lights winking on the planet’s dark hemisphere and glimmers of silver towers on the sun-touched side. Thousands of orbital stations ringed the planet. I even saw a moon. I remember thinking, They copied the Moon? Thieves! If Dad is right and they annihilate everything they copy, there’ll be nothing left of us, not even our goddamn moon!

  I piloted the ship closer. No enemy fighters swarmed me. No planet-based missiles or corruption beams leapt out at me. It worked! I thought. They think my ship is theirs! We’ve won!

  I wasted no time. I hammered the air keys as though they were tangible, imprinting the shapes of the Mimics’ continents into the weapons system. I did the same for the Moon, just in case they kept colonies like we did. My brain worked like a machine, every gear locked into place, all concern for morality piped into the sewer of my mind.

  I finished mapping the targets. I knew I was sweating, trembling, and afraid, but the rational part of me smothered my senses. This is for you, Jack. We love you. We’ll miss you. I wish Dad had asked me to do this before now. Had I known, I would’ve stolen this ship and done the deed myself.

  Had I known.

  But for a lone question, the targeting screen went black.

  Kill targeted planet? it asked me.

  I sucked in a shallow breath. With one sweaty fingertip, I tapped in my answer.

  Yes.

  As the Worldkiller’s payload streaked toward the planet, I heard nothing. I glimpsed little black balls of nano bombs tumbling down and silver worm missiles knife through empty space, but then lost track of them. Ten, nine, eight… I counted down in my head. …seven, six, five…

  On four, the Moon caught fire. The big pale ball turned molten red in four spots, and then all over. The corruption bombs did their work at a terrifying speed. Small lakes of fire became oceans of boiling rock. I knew what was happening. During our school sims, the chain reaction of atoms rupturing had looked fake on the cinema screen, but out here it looked terrifying. Rock turned to magma. Mountains became ash. Vast craters overflowed with burning, dying particles.

  When the Moon was half dead, the missiles hit the main planet. I saw continents split open, fractured like the breakfast wafers Mom had cooked me only yesterday. I imagined the speed at which the Mimics died. They won’t even have a chance to be afraid, I thought. It’s almost too quick. After the missiles, the bombs hit. The impact looked different than on the moon. The oxygen in the atmosphere caught fire. The oceans boiled and turned black. White clouds blazed scarlet before melting away above a planetary inferno. For a few minutes, the planet looked like a tiny sun. I tried to look away.

  But I couldn’t.

  I regret watching it until the end. I should have released the weapons and shut my eyes. I should never have cracked a grim smile as the planet and its moon turned black and dead. I should have hated myself when the orbital stations fell to the planet’s surface, and burned like everything else.

  Hours later, I awoke as if from a trance. The planet and its moon were charred to ash. The fires burned no more. I scanned for survivors. Nothing, not even the lowest form of cellular life, had survived the Worldkiller’s touch. I killed billions…no…trillions of life forms, I remember thinking. Every animal. Every plant. Every mother, father, and child. I felt sick with what I had done.

  But the worst feeling was yet to come.

  I keyed up the navigation screen again. Dad had entered the coordinates to reach the target planet, but not to return home. No worries, I thought. He was in a hurry, probably as panicked as I was. I’ll just key in this…and that…and this. I’ve got to get home to Mom. She’ll need me.

  Coordinates invalid, the screen blinked at me. Destination is current location.

  “Destination is current?” I said aloud. “No, stupid screen. I want to go home.”

  I tapped in the formula again. Six and a half minutes, I told myself. And I’ll be back with Mom, Dad, and Xan.

  Coordinates invalid. Destination is current location.

  I let my fingers fall from the console. “What does that even mean?” I said to no one. “How can home be here? You’ve got it backwards, Worldkiller. We’re nowhere near our destination.”

  I did the math in my head. I stared at the screen. I still felt frazzled from ending a planet, but focused enough that I knew I’d not gone crazy. Slow as a Star-Eater, I typed in the coordinates again. Fifty-seven thousand light years from here. Six and a half minutes. Come on, stupid ship. I want to go home.

  Coordinates invalid. Destination is current location.

  I sagged in my chair. I felt angry and desperate. Even then, I didn’t panic. The Worldkiller was a state-of-the-art instrument. No way it’s wrong. It’s a perfect machine. Simple. Elegant. The best quantum computer ever made. An engine that will never go quiet.

  So why does it say, ‘Destination is current location?’

  To this day, I’m not sure why I thought of the permo-glass box Dad and Jack had brought home. The image just sort of popped into my mind, a little starburst in the dark space between my brain and my heart. I closed my eyes and saw Jack slide the box onto the couch. I saw Dad standing with his arms crossed, looking proud, looking smug. I remembered kneeling beside it and squinting at the little ash hillocks, the smooth grey and black powder. I felt the same sickening sensation as when I’d stood up and backed away from it.

  I saw the look in Mom’s eyes.

  I wonder if she’d known.

  One last time, I rekeyed the coordinates. Every student in every school knew Earth’s galactic location code: E1-101. It was one of those things our teachers had drilled into our heads. It had never seemed important as a kid. “The computers all know it,” we used to say. “Why’s it matter if we do, too?”

  Coordinates invalid. Destination is current location.

  I pounded the console. I remembered the permo-glass box yet again. I didn’t want to remember it. I just did. I should’ve insisted Dad get his scope, I thought, so that we kids could‘ve seen the Mimic inside. But I hadn’t insisted. I’d kept my mouth shut. Turns out the feeling in my gut had been dead on. The only thing more terrifying than a dead xeno lying in a box on our couch had been the two Mimics standing in the room with us, pretending. I tried to tell myself the ashes in the box hadn’t been Jack and Dad’s. Maybe it’d only been a WTC clerk, a receptionist, or maybe the old guy in the blue coat who used to wipe the glass doors to our apartment clean every night. Maybe. Right?

  No.

  I swiped away the coordinate screen and entered the ship’s log. I never felt hollower than when I saw what awaited me.

  Coordinates to xeno location SX-997: Deleted. Non-retrievable.

  Path rerouted to location E1-101.

  Circular route via extrasolar flight path: 6.5 minutes required.

  Six and a half minutes.

  Round. Trip.

  Quaking, I looked out the window again. Ebon crust covered the Moon’s surface. I could barely see it anymore. It was so black it blended with space. On Earth, the oceans looked like tar, the continents like grotesque skeletons of the beautiful things they had been only a few hours ago. I would have urged the ship closer to better see the carnage, but I didn’
t need to.

  I already knew what I had done.

  Dad wasn’t Dad. I crumbled to my knees. Jack wasn’t Jack. They knew. It was just the two of them. Together. The ashes in the box. They were mocking us. And the membrane door. Dad couldn’t walk through it. His rant about the WTC. He hated us. He hated them. I used every bomb and missile. Used them all so I’d have none left for revenge. Oh God… Mom. Xan. Oh God…Dad and Jack lied to us.

  Two Mimics had given their lives to murder thirteen billion humans.

  I don’t remember the days and weeks afterward. I stayed in the ship, my window gazing down upon all that I’d killed. I went through every stage of grief, rage, self-loathing, and utter despair. I think I broke my hand against the window during a fit. I’m almost sure I tried to starve myself, but gave up in the end. I may or may not have witnessed the Moon break apart and collapse upon the Earth. I might have dreamed it, for all I know. But now the Moon is gone and the Earth covered in black clouds. It must have happened. I didn’t dream it.

  The Mimics won.

  Somewhere, on a world that looks nothing like ours, they must be at ease. Though I live on, floating in eternal orbit around a dead, ruined rock, I am the last human. I might live forever if the Worldkiller preserves me. I might punish myself by existing as long as I can.

  Forgive me, humanity.

  I miss you, Xan.

  I miss Jack and Dad, the real ones.

  I miss Mom most of all.

  She was right.

  Pretend inferiority. Encourage our arrogance.

  And they did.

  Phoenix

  River Fairchild

  T he altar shimmered with candlelight, the mirror sitting behind it multiplying the glow. Renae glimpsed her reflection, younger-looking than truth, unhappiness a burden crushing her soul—or it would be if she still had one. Her hand fluttered over a deck of Tarot cards resting between two of the pillared candles, waiting to reveal the answers to her unspoken questions. If she dared to ask.