Enemy (3 page)

     Panic.

     Water flooded the lifeboat.

     They blew the hatch, and everywhere there was water.

     Reynald activated the auto-delete sequence as he gasped his last breath of air before climbing out of the lifeboat. The water was stifling, frigid. They swam up into the moonlight.

     In the night air, eight men released their burning lungs and inhaled for seemingly the first time. Most of the young men had never before tasted real air. They were born anew in a world of black and cold.

     Lights to one side: the darkened shoreline.

     They swam.

     Magdalene:

     She slept but did not sleep. She felt the ocean around her, the suffocating press of the depths. When had she last felt water, really truly
felt
water? Memories of too-cold-to-actually-be-enjoyable dips in the North Channel.

     So tired.

     Thoughts. Flashes in the black ocean of her mind.

     She snapped out of her daze. Kilbourne—the Fleet must be alerted, at least those remnants that hadn’t been swayed. Simon must be warned of the plan.

     Under her careful and gentle watch, she initiated a quantum singularity, just large enough to slip a communications beacon into the void.

     (compressed beam communication relay initiated. tight beam when hole search initiated.)

     A pause. A glimmer of hope.

     (relay reports tight beam when hole site identification positive. whenstream beacon placed.)

     A frown.

     She saw, she felt them. So many screams, so many souls.

     (when hole collapse initiated. tight beam communiqué to upwhen, as follows:)

     A particle of matter is shifted into non-existence. It bears a message into the past, present, future.

     (judas clearance gethsemane magdalene emergency relay: enemy forces on alpha-direct transit. request assistance from any available judas. purpose nears completion.

     (the purpose must be prevented. from all whens, converge.)

     Exhausted, Magdalene slept.

     black

     A BEACON. A SIGNAL. PURSUIT FOLLOWS.

    
A BEACON((?)) THE JUDAS LIVES.

     ACTION((?))

    
A RUSE; A TRAP.

     a smile in hell

     THEY BELIEVE THE PURPOSE IS COMPLETED.

    
PURPOSE PATTERN SACRIFICE, AUGMENTATION.

     initiative. flicker of a higher purpose

     INITIATE HARVEST UPLOAD, JUDAS SEARCH.

    
THIS MAGDALENE WILL SERVE US... THE CONTAGION OF HER COMRADES WILL COME TO HER AID. WHEN THEY DO—

     THEY WILL BECOME ONE WITH THE PURPOSE.

     the darkness parts.

Harkness
, Michigan
.

     Located on the Keweenaw Peninsula. Population 1,250. Major industry: commercial fishing.

     Harkness was a quiet town. Little crime. The people were honest and God-fearing. The most exciting event in Harkness was the Saturday night bingo and dance at the American Legion downtown.

     Harkness was a peaceful town, one of those backward holdovers from an era and a way of life that died long before the wars of the third millennium. It was indeed a happy town.

     1:45 A.M.

     Buddy McClure was the town drunk of Harkness, and as always, Buddy was piss-drunk and loving it. He left the dance at about midnight and went to Smitty’s Bar for a couple of cold ones. A couple of cold ones turned into twelve beers and a dangerously nondescript mixed drink someone had left on the bar. Buddy was on top of the world and riding it like the bucking bronco he had sometimes hoped it would be in those naïve and energetic days before he discovered the companionship of booze and smokes and dangerous women. Well, truthfully there had been a lot more booze than smokes, and statistically speaking an amazing dearth of dangerous women in Buddy’s life, with the notable exception of that cheating bitch he had knocked up in high school and knocked around so much during the course of their three-month marriage that she left him for Buddy’s best friend, and that shrew he lived with now who day by day sucked more of Buddy’s life-energy from his soul.

     Buddy now stood on the rocky beach, feeling the cool night air come in off the lake. The moon was in the ice-clear sky, creeping back down from Tuesday’s full moon. Buddy had spent Tuesday night here on the beach staring down that devil moon in much the same state as he was this fine evening.

     Smitty had taken his keys, so Buddy had decided to walk down to the beach. He stopped in the parking lot to take the spare bottle of Jim Beam from the back of his ancient pickup truck. Jim was always a good friend to have along with you when you took drunken walks on the beach at one-thirty in the morning.

     It was a quarter to two when Buddy found that his good friend Jim had up and left him. He took up a pitcher’s stance and threw the empty bottle into the air. He had been three-time All-County pitcher back in the adolescent days of locker rooms smelling of sweat and back seats smelling of cheerleaders smelling of Buddy. His picture still graced the trophy case of Harkness High School. Made it all the way to the state finals back in ’28, only to be soundly defeated by Marquette. Steroid-pushing fucking queers. What a bunch of assholes. Twenty-two years, five jobs, two wives, and three brats later, Buddy found that he still had that glorious pitching arm.

     The bottle flew up into the night air and for a brief moment it was a silhouette over the face of the moon. He heard the bottle splash in the lake, a hollow, dead sound that always raised the gooseflesh of his forearms.

     Looking out onto the lake, Buddy saw the blinking lights of a boat. It was much too big to be one of Harkness’s fishermen pulling a late night. This vessel was a monster, and the spotlights emanating from the deck, sweeping out across the lake, revealed the massive deck-mounted artillery. It was definitely one of the Containment Line.

     Something caught his eye: a shooting star.

     A smile lit Buddy’s face. The arc of light across the black sky flew across the face of the moon.

     Buddy’s smile faltered. Shooting stars are not triangular.

     A visceral and sensual flood of memory engulfed Buddy as he remembered high school geometry class, Miss Banks interrogating young rough Buddy on the difference between an isosceles and an equilateral triangle.

    
I don’t know.

     But you’ll have to know for the test, Buddy.

     Who cares? When will I ever need to know about triangles out on the fucking docks? When will I ever need any of this?

     He blinked and Miss Banks, the unfortunate mixture of teacher, disciplinarian, and creator of countless pubescent schoolboy mid-class erections was gone, replaced by a burning light in the sky, painful to look at directly.

     He followed the path of the shooting star. Didn’t meteors usually blink out after a second or two? This one looked like—

     It was going to hit the lake.

     Buddy staggered and fell backwards as the sky became fire and a sickening heat. It was going to hit the boat, he was sure of it.

     Buddy screamed at the impact.

     A massive plume of water erupted from the lake.

     The lights on the boat began to furiously bob up and down. The vessel struggled to maintain horizontal, and it scarcely avoided rolling over completely.
Good lord
, Buddy thought.
Think of the wave that’ll make.

     Seconds later, Buddy was encompassed in the twenty-foot wall of water that washed the beach. The shockwave and concussion knocked him against the ground, and cold bitter water flooded his open mouth and stole his breath. Flailed around like a rag, Buddy was pulled back into the lake as the water receded. He fought to right himself, his lungs on fire and his world becoming sheer frigid black.

     Buddy McClure’s neck was broken against the rocks in an inaudible snap as he joined his old friend Jim Beam on the lakebed.

     “Report!”

     “Horizontal maintained, stress breaches belowdecks. We have men in the water.”

     “What in the name of Sweet Mother Mary was that?”

     “We don’t know, sir. Complete radar failure, and we’re running on reserve power. We’re trying to contact—”

     “We’re taking on too much water. We can’t—”

     “Get Fleet on the com. Someone has to find out what the hell that was, and we’re going to be a little too busy saving our own asses in a few minutes to give a rat’s ass. Call in the nearest Line vessel.”

     “Fleet is sending the Indomitable, sir.”

     “They’re twenty fucking miles away! Tell Fleet to lock in the line and we’ll launch our lifecraft. The Indomitable better haul ass.”

     “Yes, sir.”

     a white place, out of time.

     the judas persevered.

     waging a war out of time and space, they chased the enemy, dying to prevent the damnable purpose.

     within the white place, a distress signal was found.

     [commander? a beacon from judas gethsemane magdalene. priority channel.]

     “What’s she say?”

     [enemy sighted and tracked on direct alpha purpose transit. the purpose nears completion.]

     “Harvest?”

     hatred. knowledge of past failures.

     [they’re apparently ready to synthesize the upload generators.]

     contemplation. realization.

     “Open channel to Judas Simon.”

     [done.]

     ((hannah?))

     “Simon, we’ve identified and tracked Enemy vessels on a direct-Alpha run. Is your fleet prepared for combat?”

     ((we’re at 90%, but no one’s been able to find maggie—))

     “She’s already there. We sent her on a recon run in Fourteen-seven. She found a nest, and they’re ready to complete their mission.”

     ((fourteen-seven? that’s five thousand years earlier than we—))

     “
Take your fleet and intercept the Enemy before they can make it to the Alpha Point. Find them in transit and destroy them. It will buy us a little more time to gather our other forces for the final assault
.”

     ((and magdalene?))