Ex Lacrima Remnant

Track #53 – A Long Fall

The absence of gravity made everything more uncomfortable than it had the right to. Mal cursed under his helmet, keeping his eyes trained on the clock. Four hours since they left Atropos. Twelve more to go. He hated space travel, despised it from the bottom of his heart. Still, teleporting was not an option – nobody invented that yet – and, even if it were, he was not sure he would have made use of it. There was a movie about it, a movie that played with that exact idea that haunted him – every time a teleport is engaged, what happens to the body left behind? The body that gets destroyed to create a new one on the other side of the machine? Of course, the new body, the one generated at the destination, keeps their memories and sense of self seamlessly. Yet, the old one is gone. Deleted. And, in the last moment before transfer, its memory diverges. For a short instant, the two of them are different individuals that exist simultaneously. But one lives, the other dies. That movie made him wish never to enter a teleport cabin, if it were ever invented. The story of that girl in the movie, whose left-behind-body wasn’t destroyed and found seven other clones of herself made him shiver. Maybe, after all, RSVs weren’t the worst vehicles to move in the vast emptiness of the unending cosmos.

He turned around, trying to get a read on the other guests on that shuttle. Prim was sleeping, leaning her head on his shoulder. Her helmet was shifted to dark mode, preventing him from seeing her face. Behind him, Felce was slumped on her seat, tracing imaginary lines in the air, while chatting with Agave. Agave, on her side, was probably spacing out, trying her best not to feed the other rhizome’s bonkers conspiracy theories.

“…yes, Lagash has a second moon! Or, at least, it had one! The seedship destroyed it with aaaall the aliens inhabiting it to make the planet more similar to Earth! I tell you, the nanos were a weapon used for that! It’s crystal clear!”

“Huh-uh.”

“The governments knew about them! There’s no way they didn’t know about the Turn being a trap! I tell you, it’s all a way to keep a tighter control on the people! You’ll see it, in a month or so there will be a super ultra weapon that can stop the swarm, but only for nations agreeing to…”

“…please, shut that trap. I’m tired, Felce.”

“…but this is the important part…”

“Where does Zaiken fit into this?”

“It doesn’t…?”

“Then, leave me alone.”

Mal didn’t say a word. He just turned his attention to the other passengers, the ones that made the onward trip stashed in cryopods. Seeing them wearing the same kind of spacesuit as him and sitting on the other side of the isle felt jarring. Especially the big one, the guy with the robotic head. The standard suit stretched just enough to fit him, with the result of looking like some elongated rubber costume, one mostly seen in cheap parody shows. Close to him, the other three former prisoners, now free people, were talking with an amicable tone – of what, he couldn’t tell. One of them, the rhizome called Lacrima, had kept staring out of the window for the whole trip so far, never taking her eyes off the coldness of space, as if she was enraptured by that vision. To add just another out-of-place detail to that already colorful picture, said Lacrima was holding something fastened to her lap – a huge sealed box with several layers of protective insulation material and an extra oxygen bottle attached tor it. A birdcage. That thing. Was a space birdcage. And, inside it, there were two hummingbirds. Two. Frickin’. Hummingbirds. Going back from Atropos to Lagash. A gift, apparently, one that she was allowed to take back with her. Fortunately, the small animals had been sedated for the trip – otherwise their constant chirping would have caused the other passengers to go insane in no time – but that didn’t change the fact that she was flying back to the planet with. Two. Hummingbirds.

So, to summarize: a bunch of misfits. A bunch of Peacekeepers. Four rhizomes in total. A self-proclaimed elf. A terrorist that wasn’t actually a terrorist. And two living, breathing hummingbirds.

Mal couldn’t stop himself from groaning.

“What even did that old man think…?”

**

“We fuckin’ did it! We did it! Suck it Lagash! Suck it!”

Chris’s voice breached the silence, pierced the ears of everyone around her. Then, everyone followed her, jumped on their seats. Cheers of jubilations, tears of joy even. As Captain Commander Lily contacted Atropos back, just to say ‘it worked’, the atmosphere lightened up. Hugs, shouts, everyone seemingly in high spirit. Chris closed her arms around Lacrima. Dobrio clamped his arms around both of them, lifting them up, rocking them like babies, all under the inscrutable gaze of Robin. Mal couldn’t get a read on her, on that living mystery, on that pulsating gem in the middle of her forehead. If she really were an elf from a previous cycle, that made her the old humanity’s equivalent of a rhizome. That was interesting, from a purely anthropological point of view. Her mankind created a companion that could record events and feelings, to make historical records accurate. His mankind created rhizomes because a creepy guy had a hard on for plant girls. Everything about rhizomes was designed to reflect his kinks. Absorbing nutrients through their feet. Sexual stimulation as the most efficient way to drain their excess lymph. Excess lymph that was continuously generated even when their body didn’t need it, turning back to having to drain it regularly. All of them looking like young women in their early twenties too, without a gram of excess body fat. There was no doubt – Dr. Graham Zonta was a first class pervert that somehow managed to turn his perversion into art, crossing the line twice and creating something so grossly catering to his personal taste that it became awesome in hindsight. If that weren’t enough to mark a distinction, it was clear that the goals of their makers were completely different. Elves were made for peace. Rhizomes were made for war. Mal wondered what thoughts went through Robin’s mind – provided ‘Robin’ was her real name to begin with. It felts like too common for a creature that lived for centuries, crossed space to avoid the plague and was still looking no older than twenty-five. From an old civilization, he would have expected more apostrophes, more groups of letters with hard sounds, more useless connection particles, more hyphens – something like Rah-Al’da ve Bin-n. Robin, for all intents and purposes, was a very anticlimactic name. Still, rhizomes were all named after common plants. So, maybe, his expectations were just too high.

Among the cheers and hugs and kisses (Mal was pretty sure to have spotted Lacrima shoving her tongue inside Chris’s mouth, unapologetically in front of Prim), only one person seemed not to be able to enjoy the moment. That person was Station Commander Vettor Geiger, staring at the people assembled in the mess hall not unlike a zoo guardian watching over a bunch of caged animals. His massively thick eye bags and his uncharacteristically unkempt beard didn’t help with the poor impression he projected. He sat at the table, with his hands crossed under his chin, silently watching the situation unfold. Something was clearly bothering him, to a level deeper than Mal expected. Still, it was hard to understand what that ‘something’ was. So, seeing how Felce and Agave were pushing Prim around while celebrating, he decided to check on the old man instead. Mal performed a perfect military salute, oozing respect from every pore of his face.

“Station Commander!”

“…at ease, Malstrom. At ease.”

Geiger’s voice tone was subtly different than usual. Tired. Resigned. Their eyes locked, brown irises meeting emerald in an intense exchange of stares. Geiger patted his hand on the chair close to him, inviting Mal to sit there without saying a word. Mal nodded, complied. From that position, the celebrations looked even wilder, with the weird metalheaded shirtless dude now lifting Agave and Felce, loading them on his shoulders while they desperately tried to leave his grasp, kicking the air without success. Geiger shook his head, with what looked like a faint chuckle.

“…I wish I could do that too.“

“Sir?”

Geiger pushed a button on his watch, let a small hologram play in front of Mal’s eyes.

“Malstrom, this is a message I received from our government, before the satellite connection went dark. Fresh news from two hours ago.”

His voice lowered more, his eyes lost their light.

“New Netherlands has signed an unconditional surrender. Our land is now in the hands of the Pangean Union and the Eastern Coalition. They’re already talking about splitting it in half, after the swarm is dealt with. This station belongs to them too, now – they’ll send two RSVs soon to take control of it. We’ve been instructed to comply and cooperate with the invaders and to give them access to all files and weapons.”

Mal glanced at the broken mountain of a man mourning in front of him. For someone like Vettor Geiger, seeing the country he served going down the drain like that must have been painful beyond belief. Now, he was even losing the only thing that was still under his control – that useless, over-engineered space station where he found his peace. A peace that was going to be shattered, even in the face of a major success – a success that developed only because of a chain of events that started when he decided to trust a brave plant girl. Despite that, despite having found a way to fend back the nanos, he lost anyway. But that was just a question of time, no matter what. The elf had been clear: after seventy-two hours in the precious cycle, the seedship started to target the space stations. At best, that gave him two more days of freedom. Freedom he wouldn’t relinquish so easily.

A tap on the wrist, a second hologram incoming. Another document, this time signed by him.

“So, I’ve played my cards before they stopped having any value and sent an urgent message to Pangea... well before we knew our little sound trick worked. I still have a couple of connections there.”

“What did you… write them?”

“Just a few lines, plus a short list of names and mugshots. Our satellites are going down like flies. I wanted to be sure they received it, tried to minimize the data load.”

Something akin to a smile took hold of his face.

“We know how to stop the swarm, tests successful on space station Atropos. Grant every person on board of Atropos official immunity and we’ll deliver the intel at the Saborai spaceport, tomorrow afternoon – arrival time dependent on the weather. List of occupants follows. All or nothing, no negotiations possible.”

“Saborai?”

“Probably the smallest spaceport in New Netherlands, around seven hundred kilometers southwest of New Babylon. Safe from the swarm for at least six Lagash days from now, maybe even seven.”

His finger tapped back on the watch, called yet another document.

“And this is what I got as an answer.”

Mal’s eyes were assaulted by a short series of documents, each with a name, a holographic stamp and a signature. Immunity. Asylum granted. And the names, the pictures…

“That’s… that’s all of us! Even… even Prim? Chris? Even… even Felce and Agave? And the metalhead too?! Sir, how did you…”

“The power of a good bargaining chip, Malstrom. He who can destroy something, controls it. If Pangea said no, the secret would have died with us, before they could even think about boarding Atropos. Simple as that.”

For the first time during those celebrations, Geiger managed to crack a genuine smile.

“Also, it’s just a question of perceived value. Let’s say we don’t have anything and we’re bluffing. The price for Pangea is to allow, what, two dozen people to get safely to the ground and avoid jail time. But, if we truly have something, that’s worth the literal world to them. Remember, the nanos are knocking at their door right as we speak. And, now that we know that the ultrasounds are really effective, our position is even stronger.”

Mal massaged his chin, recalled Geiger’s message once again in his mind.

“Tomorrow. Saborai space port. Are you going down there?”

“No, no – you are going down there.”

“Excuse me?”

“You, Commander Primula, the other two rhizomes and the four ex-prisoners, plus a couple of my men. The others… well, I talked with the guys and nobody wants to leave yet. We still have… unfinished business. Atropos is our home, after all.”

Mal stared back at the cheerful crowd, at the two plant women slapping the metalheaded man in the abs, kicking his ass on the ground, under the amused gaze of Prim and Robin.

“…when are we scheduled for take off?”

“Tonight. We need to finish the checks on the RSVs, but everything is set. Departure at zero zero sharp. I’ll make an announcement later. Now, I’ll let everyone celebrate a little longer. We had horrible days to cope with. We’ll have even worse days, coming forth.”

“…understood, sir.”

Mal stood up, performed a military salute. Only for Geiger to pull his arm down, bring him close to his lips.

“Just between you and me, Malstrom… Commander Primula is a true force of nature. I wish she were my comrade in arms. You should have seen how aggressive she was, when she bargained for your safety. She has cojones of steel, Malstrom… even if she doesn’t look the part. When I told her I’d strip her of her rank for insubordination and throw her in jail, you know what her only request was?”

“…no?”

“That I let her keep her – how did she call it? – ‘emotional support plushie’. That was the only thing she was worried about. No complaint. No plea. No tears. No begging. Just… a stuffed rabbit. Not something you’d expect from a soldier who’s going to be sent behind bars, right? I tell you, Malstrom – she’s a raw gem. Don’t let that other blind gal make more moves on her.”

“…huh, Prim’s just… a friend, sir. And I’m her… emotional support human.”

Geiger winked at Mal, patted his hair while wearing a grin.

“Yes, yes, ‘emotional support human’, alright! Well, your ‘friend’ did a lot of physical activity with Ms. LeFou. I stumbled upon them right after the act – only Lagash knows how long they went at it. The cleaning personnel is still complaining about the overtime their… performance caused. But, who knows? Maybe you still have a chance. Or, maybe, since you’re just a ‘friend’, this doesn’t bother you at all.”

“Your point being…?”

“Just that time is of essence and you’re running with a gimped tricycle against a dragster. Now go, don’t let your ‘friend’ wait. I’m sure she’s wondering where you are and why you’re wasting your time with gramps here.”

**

Geiger’s words were still twirling in Mal’s mind, especially now that Prim was sleeping on his shoulder. That geezer was a relic of an older generation, one where friendship between a man and a woman was an utter unknown, one where conversations went from “hey!” to “let’s fuck” in the blink of an eye. Mal wasn’t cut for that. Mal didn’t share that vision. Prim was of course beautiful. Denying it would have been the greatest lie he ever told himself. The moments they spent in the greenhouse, their small talk, the way Prim opened up to him, considering him more than an annoyance... all that time had been totally worth it. Interfacing himself with a different form of intelligence, one that answered to completely separate moral rules. He knew how she ticked, she knew how he ticked. That was the best he could have asked for. So, he let her sleep on his shoulder, shielded by her darkened visor, while her sisters kept warring on whether Assault Robot Zaiken could beat the swarm, if it were real. Mal found the strength to chuckle. Rhizomes made his life so much more interesting, with their quirks, their way of being themselves, their odd jumps in logic. If anything, he hoped he could share more moments like that in the future. Moments to treasure, even in the infinite boredom of a sixteen-hours-long trip back to Lagash.

“Hey, hey! Look at that, look! What is that, Dobrio? What is that?”

Mal turned around, towards the voice. Lacrima. Excitedly pointing at something just outside the small window. She couldn’t see what that obnoxious, bird-obsessed plant was pointing at, but he figured it might have been something trivial, like a bird-shaped satellite or a scenic view of the planet underneath them.

A white flash shone through the glass, the light pierced his eyes, right through the visor. Suddenly, the spaceship accelerated, the bearing abruptly changed. Mal hugged Prim, gritted his teeth. He waited. Waited for the shaking. For the shockwave. For their vehicle to explode. For the void of space to kill all of them.

Yet, nothing of sorts happened.

The shuttle.

Just returned to its normal attitude.

Resuming its long orbit.

As if nothing happened.

The radio cracked, the a voice filled the cabin.

“To all passengers, here’s First Pilot Ramdan Canadi. We had to adjust our trajectory because of a collision: a satellite constellation has been hit by a fragmentation missile. Fortunately, it happened far enough from our current position that we won’t be impacted by it – but we might encounter debris later during our descent. We will take extra caution about not deorbiting above the seedship to avoid being targeted by its ground-to-space systems. Pilot Canadi over and out.”

Mal felt his heart pumping fast. That could have been them. They could have been the target. It was exactly as Robin said – Lagash was attacking the satellites, was burning them down one by one, deleting every trace that humanity ever existed in the first place. That was her way to wipe the slate clean, prepare a new cycle. At that thought, Mal suddenly felt like going back to Atropos, to the comfort of that floating ring. Before realizing that it wouldn’t have changed anything – sooner or later, Lagash would have destroyed it too. He pushed a button on his helmet, obscured his visor. Then, he let himself slump on Prim. Sleeping. That was a good plan. Even if they died, he wouldn’t have realized it. End with a bang. Without fear. Without apprehension.

So, he closed his eyes, made himself comfortable. There were still twelve hours to go.

It was more than enough time for Lagash to adjust her aim.