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  An End

  ( The Silver Trilogy - 2 )

  Paul Evan Hughes

  Led by the Catalyst of the Sixth Extinction and the only man immune to the metal contagion within her, a shattered humanity takes to the stars in a jihad against an alien race. The sequel to Enemy, An End transports the reader to another universe ravaged by the machine species known as silver.

  The recipient of the gold medal for the Fantasy/Science Fiction category of the 2003 Independent Publisher Book Awards, An End is the second book in the Silver trilogy by Paul Evan Hughes.

  An End

  The Silver Trilogy: Book Two

  by Paul Evan Hughes

  AMIDST SILVER

  It was a beautiful hand.

  A small freckle on the surface above the beginning of the index finger was the only deviation from creamy white skin, stippled ever-so-gently by hairs the color of nothing and sunrise and days she spent in happier times with people now long-dead or long-something-Else. She studied her hand with an intensity that she had not been able to summon for years in the moments before it left her forever, in those burning moments before her perfect white creamy freckled left useless left hand was severed from the rest of her trapped form in a flash of white and fire and pain.

  “Fleur. You shouldn’t have tried that.”

  The klaxon was wailing incessantly and piercingly from somewhere above her head, now pressed against the cool relief of the metal floor, but she could still recognize that voice, and the presence that accompanied it.

  “Make that awful noise stop.”

  She did not look up, but instead found some solace in the metal of the floor as her body began shaking, and as uncontrollable sobs emanated from places within that she had not wanted to acknowledge for years. Her slow tears mixed with the spreading bloodpuddle as she pulled her non-existent left hand back away from the shattered, useless control panel that would have effectively ended not only her own life, but the lives of these men who would be taking her home. If she had only been successful… If she had only been able to press that button in time… Things would be different. Better. There would have been certainty in death, but now…

  “Stop her bleeding. We can’t take her in like that.”

  She held her eyes closed and sobbed into the coagulating blood on the floor. She felt strange hands begin to lift the crimped and twisted metal of the collapsed bulkhead from her back. If the vessel hadn’t been torn apart in the boarding, she might have been able to activate the destruct sequence. If they hadn’t—

  “It’s no use, dear. Don’t tear yourself apart about it. You knew we would be coming to get you eventually. You knew that Mother would not be pleased.”

  A blissful moment of relief from crushing pressure as the final weight was released from her back. Might be a few cracked ribs. Perhaps a crushed pelvis. But altogether, the item was intact. The hand was an acceptable loss.

  “You’ll be fine, dear.” Gentle hands lifted her to her feet, and to the surprise of all three residents of the chamber, she stood on her own, eyes blinking away her own blood, stump of a left arm held closely to her chest. Her breathing was fast-paced and labored, but still she stood defiantly. Silently.

  The man who was Whistler lifted her chin up, looked squarely into her eyes. He brushed her hair out of her face and wiped a bit of blood from under her left eye.

  “Minimal damage. Mother will be pleased. Let’s go.”

  She recognized Whistler, but did not know the other man. Both agents of Mother were draped in the traditional long black garment that Fleur knew would conceal a multitude of weapons, each with a varying degree of effectiveness or pain-inducement. The man she did not know was at the present replacing the long, black weapon with which he had severed her hand with an energy burst back into one of the raven folds of his cloak. He eyed her coldly, as if she were the cause of his displeasure with life.

  “Ah yes. Fleur, you have not met Nine. Nine, Fleur. Fleur, Nine. You’ll have plenty of time on the trip home to get to know each other.”

  “The trip home?” It was the first thing she had said since the arrival of the agents.

  Whistler smiled slyly. “But of course, dear girl. Mother wants to see you again.”

  She began to sob once again as Nine pushed her forward, out of the chamber. Whistler walked over to the destruct panel and gingerly stroked the smooth black surface, wiping up a fair amount of Fleur’s blood. With Nine and the girl now safely out of the room, he quickly stuck the tip of his finger in his mouth, licking off and savoring the precious blood of the human girl. Mother would be pleased indeed.

  Whistler’s vessel hung like a tumor from the underbelly of the ruined prison galleon. Already, Fleur’s former home was falling apart in great segments as bulkheads burst with the same squealing porcine terror that had impaled her on the bridge just after they had been boarded. With a shudder and a quick burst from the phase rudder, the agents’ vessel detached from the fiery wreck. Fleur watched silently from a porthole as her home of the last seven months drifted into the void.

  “You don’t say much, do you?”

  She turned to meet Nine’s gaze blankly. “What model is he?”

  Whistler sat down in a swirl of black robe in the thrust chair facing Fluer. “How did you know?”

  “I always know. What model?”

  “Nine is a nine.”

  She scoffed. “Figures… And you? How long until they deem your techbase obsolete, Whistler darling?”

  The manufactured grin faltered for an instant, but then returned in force. “Dear girl, I will never be obsolete. I am one-of-a-kind.”

  Fleur smiled her one-cornered smile and flexed her beautiful new hand, still held in place by a metal brace. It worked, but it would never be hers. There was no freckle to denote her identity. She wondered whose pattern had been sacrificed to give her a new prosthesis.

  “Why?”

  Whistler stopped twirling the shock of pure white hair that grew from his hairline for a moment and looked toward the porthole. “You should know by now, little flower.”

  “What happened? Did Mother…”

  “She did, and you will, and we won’t, and it does.”

  “How many galleons are left?”

  Nine’s eyes lit up. Whistler grinned.

  “How many?”

  “None.” Nine turned to her, his voice a basso growl. “Yours was the last.”

  Tears threatened to erupt from her bloodshot eyes, but Fleur maintained her composure, at least enough to squeak out an almost-inaudible “Zero?”

  “What, dear?”

  “Zero? What about Zero?”

  Again, Whistler’s grin dropped from his face for an instant. “We don’t know. We’ve not heard from him in quite some time. Machine could have been lost eons ago, and we wouldn’t know for decades.”

  “I would know.”

  “Of course, dear.” Whistler rummaged through the folds of his robe, his hand finally emerging with a silver flask. He unscrewed the top and took a long drag from the amber liquid within. He held it out to Nine, who silently shook his head, and then to Fleur.

  “No thanks. I don’t drink.”

  “Suit yourself, missy. It’s going to be a long ride home.”

  Fleur turned to the porthole, looked out into black and nothing.

  Home. A long ride home.

  It was a dream, she hoped. A dream… Such peace in that thought. Such quiet. It was a dream, not a memory. It had never happened. She had never lived that. She could never have lived that.

  Great silver teardrops falling from the sky, bursting open in the city center with flickering laser fury, spewing forth hundreds thousands tens-of-thousands of Mother’s perfect society’s rejects, each armed heavily with lig
ht and projectile weaponry, heavily armored with fields and shields and wielding their blessed black blunderbusses before them as they carved apart the unsuspecting inner sanctums of the worlds upon which they were unleashed… In the eon of civil war, Mother’s rejects were also her closest allies, her most precious resource on the planets that they were sent to pacify. Humanity was a failed experiment. Humanity was a brat of an offspring. Mother’s rejects were often sent to the colonies to correct mistakes that she never could have foreseen, or if she had, she simply sat in the earth and watched as thousands of her most hated and treasured children laid waste to those worlds who would not bend to her will.

  She would have sent the Artificials to correct situations, but although they were fully capable of most tasks she asked of them, in younger generations, brawn had replaced brain, and brain was of course the key element of subduing any rebellion that took place billions of units and thousands of years away. She had tried to engineer their evolution so that the Artificials would be more like Whistler, but it would seem that Whistler was a fluke. An incurable, lovely, hated little fluke… How he was feared by the others. How Mother herself feared him. The fact of the matter was that Mother was somewhat grateful that there was one and only one Whistler… An army of him would have been unstoppable, and most of her pleasure came from watching her blessed organics blindly follow her orders. Let them revolt! Let them cut off contact with Mother! They knew the consequences… They knew that with the next tide, one or two or ten galleon prisons would arrive in system and end the unrest. Mother loved it. Mother required it.

  “When was the last time you slept?”

  Fleur blinked her eyes, shifted her blank gaze to the pile of blackness whose eyes glowed at her from the darkness of the passenger cabin of the Agent transport. Nine was beside her, his breathing implying a meditative sleep that could never be actual sleep. She had been lost in that near-bliss for a moment herself… But these were days of endless days. They were a species that could not sleep, in that void between existence and unknown realms that would have been perfect for a slumber of forevers.

  “I don’t know. It’s been years. Decades. You?”

  Whistler took another pull from his flask. “Fuck you.”

  Fleur leaned forward in her vacuum seat. “What’s the matter, darling?” She said the word with all of the acid that she could muster. “Never slept, have you? My beautiful, flawed puppet. So tired, aren’t you?”

  Whistler’s eyes blazed from the darkness. “No rest for the wicked, dear.”

  Fleur swam to the porthole, looked out into the pure night. No stars to mar their beautiful passage through the ether. No other vessels, anywhere. All was perfect and nothing and somehow home. Somehow wicked… Somewhere out there were worlds that she had burned. Somewhere there were entire systems laid waste by the bastard spawn of Mother. Were the cities still burning in the Wound? A million planets, each throwing fire and the stench of death far into the very void through which she screamed.

  She breathed onto the not-glass of the porthole, leaving a misty layer of exhalation. With her new hand, she awkwardly drew a smiley face. Spinning around to swim back to her vacuum chair, she caught Nine’s gaze. Whistler was otherwise engaged, studying the threading on the mouth of his flask. For an instant, a grin formed on one corner of Nine’s mouth, but then it was gone.

  Zero, where are you tonight?

  Nine was his exact image. It was deeply disturbing to see him there, the ninth incarnation of someone she never should have and never could again love. Zero, trapped on a machine sent into the edge of all that would be. Forever lost in the night, traveling too far beyond to ever return… His fate would be a solitary death, if ever he could die.

  Whistler placed the flask back into the hidden recesses of his robe, rose from his seat, swam into the darkness beyond the passenger compartment. “I’ll see if we are within contact range yet.”

  Fleur said nothing, watched as the man who was not a man slipped out of the compartment. She hesitantly looked up at Nine, who was looking back. She reached over with her new hand and looped her tiny fingers through his own, cold and distant and almost there. Instead of surprise, he gently squeezed her hand with his own. He leaned over to her little ear, whispered.

  I contain multitudes.

  swimming and drowning and gasping for air life breath past.

  It swam in the heartbeat of the liquid expanse, the gentle resistance of fluid caressing every curve of his human-esque form. Inhale, exhale, lub-dub, lub-dub. It gagged on the viscous gelatin that kept its physical form from liquefying at the impossible speed of Light X Three. The machine within which it was housed was itself a liquid of sorts, splashing across the dark night of the Outer faster than anything before envisioned. A solid within a fluid within a fluid, Zero coursed into the future on a machine of inescapably-beautiful silverthought.

  “Machine?” he asked into the featureless expanse of his prison with a voice of drowning liquid syllables, choking on the thick biological secretions that kept him alive and lonely and curious. “What time is it?”

  Stop asking, Zero. It does no good to hope.

  “She might have—She could have—Maybe…”

  She hasn’t, and most likely won’t.

  Zero touched his fingertips to the slick wet surface of his face, exploring his cheeks for any sign of the tears that he so desired to produce. He spun around in the bowl, his term for the sphere of liquid that had been his prison for seven months. Seven months? Was it really only seven months?

  “Mother was wrong about us, Machine.”

  Do not question our creator, Zero.

  “You don’t have to be loyal to her out here… You’re going to die out here too, you know. No one will remember us. Seven months… They’re all dead already.”

  They were dead before we left. The system had been initiated long before our exile began. There was never a chance that we could have—

  “There was always a chance to stop it. There was always hope.”

  Zero could feel the narrowing of non-existent eyes in anger. He could sense Machine’s subtle fury building in the vibrations of the ocean within which he floated.

  “Machine, I command you to turn this bucket around and sail us back home immediately!” Zero smiled as he said it, but was meant with a silence that was probably only minutes, but could have stretched to hours in the nothing.

  Humor doesn’t suit you.

  “I wish—”

  Wishing doesn’t suit you either. You know the impossibility of what you desire.

  Zero knew full well that what he desired was an impossibility, and he knew the magnitude with which it was an impossibility. He had been forced to witness the construction of the system-sized engine that had hurled the Machine and its insignificantly microscopic prison into the Outer. He had seen the billions of labor drones harvested from countless colonies to construct the gigantic engine. He had seen the billions left outside to die when the construction was complete, as well.

  You can’t go home again.

  Zero frowned in the nothing. He would find a way. Somehow.

  He would find a way to return to Fleur.

  I contain multitudes.

  Nine disengaged his hand from Fleur’s as Whistler swam back into the passenger cabin. There was a look of concern on Whistler’s shadowed face. Fleur could not tell if it was because of something he had seen in the cockpit, or if he had been watching the dance of digits that took place on the armrest between the vacuum chairs.

  “Whistler?” Nine’s eyes had drawn to a concerned visage. “What?”

  “We’re near… Very near to home. But there’s no signal.”

  “No navigation signal?”

  “No signal at all. Nothing is coming from the surface.”

  “Nothing?”

  “Nothing at all!” Whistler snapped. He waved his hand in the air before him and a holographic display of the approaching planet appeared. Whistler grasped the globe of light and sp
un it around so that the dark side of the planet faced Fleur and Nine. “What do you see?”

  Their faces spoke only of confusion, so Whistler answered for them.

  “Dark. Black. Nothing. It’s nighttime. Do you see any cities? Any lights at all? Do you see any evidence that this planet is inhabited?”

  “It’s been forty thousand—”

  “It’s the extinction. Mother started it without us. That’s the only explanation.”

  “There could have been a natural disaster… Massive power outages. Some cataclysmic—”

  “She killed them already! She started the fucking extinction without us!” Whistler whirled around furiously, throwing the holographic globe at the porthole, where it silently shattered and dissipated. His black robe gracefully enveloped him as he slunk into his vacuum chair, sulking. “Mother owes us an apology.”

  The vessel shuddered as it entered the thinning atmosphere of the dead world that had been Earth thousands of lifetimes before. Whistler sat, a scowling child, arms crossed over his chest as he dreamt of the extinction of which he had been no part.

  “She owes us a fucking apology.”

  The Vegas Gate was so named because of an ancient city that had once stood on the site where now the gargantuan alloy shield doors controlled access to the inner workings of a person named Mother on a planet named nothing anymore. Miles and hundreds of miles and thousands of miles down, the access tunnel stretched into the crust of the world. No one had ever measured the distance, but Hank suspected that they were pretty damn near the center. The other Gates had all been lost in the sporadic warfare that signaled the end of an era, before Mother’s mission had been successful. Hank sometimes dreamt of a simpler time and a simpler place where cowboys had been the norm. He felt out of place here at the Gate control. Hell, he felt out of place anywhere on this rock. How many tens of thousands of years had it been since he had seen another human being? How many hundreds of thousands of years since he had felt the soothing touch of a lady?