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in the void, they dwell
chapter fourteen

Written by Proxy

Adair scrambled towards a nearby terminal as the proxy paced closer, scraping some kind of blade against the metal of the ship’s fuselage. The pilot didn't turn around, inputting a series of commands line by line as if everyone’s life depended on it. Florian and Bruno filed in behind her, interlocking hands forming a wall between the assailant and their comrade. Cassian knew exactly who was coming, even before they tossed the table over a guard-rail and marched forward to meet the crew of wayfarers. He reached down and tore a broken pipe from a nearby, exposed, section of the station. A long shadow emerged from the bend in the corridor behind them, accented by the endless blood of the emergency light. Then, a slow marching of other shadows that took on an appearance almost like a flickering candle. They were surrounded.

Adair shouted, “I got it,” but before she could explain further, Ambrose advanced far faster than anyone had expected. Suddenly Cassian found himself tossed against the far wall, chest bruised from the impact. He struggled to his feet to see Florian and Bruno similarly thrown further into the bridge. Adair had only enough time to duck under the coming swing of the proxy’s hacksaw as it tore clean through the terminal. Cassian scrambled to his feet, snagging the pipe in one hand and, as he passed Bruno, wrenched him to his feet. Adair had already clasped Florian’s arm at the joint.

Cassian took the briefest of glances around. Rows of computers lined a plateau like a metal floor. All around them were recessed turrets, overhead holographic displays, and dome of glass. Cassian’s survey was interrupted by the stray thought of Ambrose’s sheer speed; and sure enough he spun around just in time to catch the proxy’s hacksaw against the flimsy guard of the pipe. In that clash, Cassian finally got a good look at his assailant. Ambrose was… frankly a walking corpse. Her jaw was attached only at one end and strange sludge like black liquid dripped from her decaying skin. It reeked of putrefaction. Her bloodshot eyes swiveled and rolled as if each were attached to a dremel. Cassian spotted her neural-implant; a mirror of his. She had clearly modified it through extensive mutilation. The implant seemed to extend backward into a cavity where her brain used to be and down below her distended jaw. The entire construction was gore-covered and Cassian almost lost focus on the presence of mortal danger as he imagined her forcing her hand into her own skull and wrenching out, handful-by-handful, chunks of decaying greymatter. He was wrenched from his nightmare by her foot placed squarely on his bruised chest. Kneeling down to grip the steel plated deck, Cassian scraped against the ground and landed at the feet of his allies.

Ambrose smiled, or at least twitched her mouth in the shape of a smile. She extended her hands above her head in a performative gesture reminiscent of a ballet dancer. A series of overhead monitors blinked to life all around the dome shaped bridge. Each monitor showed a live feed of the crew’s shuttle. Then, from behind Ambrose the blast doors at the bridge’s gateway dropped with the grating of metal on metal. Adair was the first to put two and two together; the sounds of the vessels had ceased their clawing and HE was nowhere to be found. This was always a trap. The wayfarers watched on as hundreds of vessels rushed their shuttle; corpses piled on corpses pushing with all the force their exo-suits and armatures would let them. A strange gravitational force took the shuttle by its engines and pressed, having left depressions in the shape of massive tendrils. As the airlock gave way and the corpses rushed to fill every inch of their only way off this necropolis, the weight of gravity’s embrace compacted the craft. Cassian, Adair, Bruno, and Florian watched with wide eyes as the horse they rode in on drifted into oblivion, shepherded by a cloud of the damned, rotating around it like flies.

Cassian felt the wave of it first. His blood began to boil and with fears' approach in his voice he let out a scream. Willing his body to move, he took only one single step before Adair’s arms gripped his chest for dear life.

“Let go. Let me fucking go,” he shouted. Adair lowered her forehead against him wordlessly. Cassian felt his pulse slow against the heat of her presence and halted his advance. Ambrose cocked her head to the side.

“Shame. And here I was hoping I’d get to impale you again,” she said, voice was more… synthetic than the crew recalled it and… piecemeal. Bruno squinted, as if trying to focus his eyes on the space just beyond Ambrose’s 'mouth'. “You’re welcome to fight your integration with our gracious savior; of course it’d be a worthless pursuit. This has ended a thousand times and a thousand times you have been consumed by His glory; your entire existence defined by His. Writhe. If you must,” Ambrose croaked, every other word coated in the hiss of static. Cassian opened his mouth to speak again only to be cut off by the proxy once more. “You have approximately 15 minutes. Then your limbs will be distended from their sockets and I’ll replace them with the automatic turrets, or perhaps if I’m feeling creative, I’ll take the cleverest and hardwire his spinal column into the flight-computer - leave him just aware enough to feel like his skin is being boiled and flayed each time I query the main-system. Ask a more interesting question, rouge.”

Cassian stood there baffled. Bruno, previously mostly composed, was now shivering slightly, his eyes full of silent tears.

Florian had been studying the room in Cassian’s stead. That meathead was want to fall for every little distraction one put in front of him. Lord knows Florian had spent centuries flourishing this and that in front of him for his own amusement. No, now was the time for quicker wit. Whatever the Knight might say they could still win the day.

They stood back to the main console, its indicator lights and holographic displays blinking their standard routines. Adair would be able to access the broken terminal’s final command using a system back-up; that was really good news. To the left, lying against the navigation station, was the corpse of someone dressed in officer’s attire with a service pistol resting at its side. It was a ceremonial gun, anti-personnel, really 20th century technology. Florian guessed it fired .455 caliber rounds - if they were lucky the revolver had six bullets. If they were unlucky, five. Their eyes darted up and down the senior officer’s rotting body; they noted a pack of cigarettes protruding from his suit-breast. Over to their right, Florian studied the command center’s facilities for defensive systems. Just as they were about to write it off they noticed the glimmer of blue, stripped, paint at the base of a long-metal butt-stock. Then, they began to concoct a plan. Cassian wouldn’t listen to reason and, eventually, would decide to be a fool again engaging the proxy in single combat. Adair would do the same, unless Florian was able to communicate the plan whilst Cassian played the distraction. Bruno would need to break right, thought Florian. He would come up with something absurd at precisely the time they needed it - as he often did.

In the time it took Florian to ideate, Cassian and Ambrose had been measuring the lengths of their blades (verbally). Though, it seemed the time for meaningless sparring was over. The weight of Cassian’s boot echoed through the bridge. Florian turned to their compatriots with a soft expression; one that had only graced their face twice in the entirety of time.

“Cassian, Adair, and dearest Bruno; would you honor me with one final waltz at the end of this world?” they said. Adair and Bruno returned Florian confused but earnest nods - and Florian felt joy.

Cassian only realized he had taken another step forward after his footfall rang out through the ship. Adair had suddenly recoiled her arms. Cassian turned around with a confused and sullen look; as if he was being sent forward to his death. Much to his surprise his gaze was returned with a timeless trust. Returning his eyes to Ambrose, Cassian steaded the metal pipe in his hands, twisting it into a batter’s pose. His breathing was erratic as he and Ambrose began to circle each other, pacing left and maintaining distance. Then… something clicked. Cassian closed his eyes and felt the world fissure around him - again the salt flat ripped into existence. At once his gaze was met by a candle not five paces from his body, burning with a strange blue glow. Cassian took a step forward and was met with the hazy visage of a man out of time. He knew it to be himself and he knew himself to be it. The figure placed a steady hand on his grip and Cassian felt the rush of a lifetime of information: shame over an uncaring regal father, the aching cold of death accented by Adair’s warm hands, and of course a profound distaste for the bells of Florian. What he had at once merely glimpsed he felt meld into his very bones and, blinking away the salt-flat, he shifted his grip to the center of his body and tilted the pipe back. Ambrose tilted her head, as if nodding to the visitor from another epoch. And, having taken the position appropriate for a swordsman of aptitude, Cassian stepped forward.

Ambrose once again wasted no time, closing the ten paces between them in the time Cassian could take two. Cassian, however, knew well the tendency of his opponent to strike at the center of mass, and quickly adopted a position to knock the hacksaw to the left, then push the crude end of the pipe into Ambrose’s shoulder. With a ringing sound, Cassian pressed the advantage, only to watch Ambrose leap backward and bring the hacksaw down onto his head. Her swing was faster than it should have been and so Cassian threw his weight into the blow and bet on the reach of the pipe finding purchase just under her arm. To his surprise he felt resistance and the gust of wind that followed the proxy’s swing, just ducking under it. Cassian took a step back, regaining his balance and Ambrose met his gaze again in turn. Raising his blade, Cassian adopted a defensive position as Ambrose lunged forward. Cassian’s eyes tracked the gap intrinsic to a hacksaw and completely missed the cross aimed at his ribs. Pulling his blade up to hook his adversaries weapon, he felt searing pain as the wind was forced from his lungs. Wheezing Cassian clung onto his improvised weapon, bracing against the extreme grip strength of his opponent.

Behind him, he heared Bruno incomprehensibly shouting followed by a quick, “Would you fucking stiffen up for once in you life Bruno?” from Adair. Slowly planting his feet Cassian pushed as hard as he physically could, marching forward and glaring into his opponents eyes. There was a soft touch at his cheekbone and the familiar smell of electrical fire. Then… inky blackness.

Florian jogged up just in time to catch Cassian mid-flight. They guided his head to the main console without so much as a mild-concussion, laying the rouge down as his eyes rolled back in his head and his body twitched uncontrollably. Florian let out a prolonged sigh. Even with the help of his memories, Cassian had not bought them quite the amount of time Florian had expected. It was instead the remarkable dexterity of Adair which had saved their plan; she was likely climbing just below them. Ambrose’s gaze locked onto Florian, now the only soul on the field of battle. Letting out a tired sigh, Florian put his hands in his pockets and strolled toward Ambrose.

The proxy once again lunged forward, only to swing at thin air. Florian had pre-emptively swung his body under the hacksaw. Now standing at Ambrose’s back they quipped, “Less fun when I do it, hm?”

Ambrose grunted a response and began swinging wildly toward Florian who jumped forward toward the proxy, planting a foot on her head and stepping over her effortlessly. Ambrose dropped her hacksaw and whipped around just in time to kiss Florian’s boot, shrieking as pressure was put on her nearly detached jaw. Florian lowered themselves back to a resting position and then dropped down to their knees as Ambrose threw a left hook toward the place they should have occupied. Standing up, they jammed their left shoulder into Ambrose’s and, in a swift motion, brought their knee up into Ambrose’s ribs. Something began whirring inside of Ambrose’s flesh and Florian knew they only had a few seconds before the raw strength of the augmented-corpse would overpower them. Staring into Ambrose’s eyes, they smiled. The stink of singed flesh filled their air.

Adair had made it, jamming her knife into the exposed cabling on Ambrose’s spine. The whirring stopped and Ambrose wrenched her head 180 degrees on a swivel. She disengaged Florian and turned her attention to the armed combatant. Florian wasted not a second planting a second, more firm kick, on the wound Adair had opened. Ambrose staggered forward and Adair pulled her knife up to stab the proxy in the heart. Florian pushed off the ground attempting a follow-up, only to hear the warp of a vacuum and collide with an iridescent blue surface. Adair was similarly caught off guard bouncing off the spontaneously generated hard-light barrier. Adair and Florian slid across the steel flooring, now several paces away from their adversary. Studying the proxy as it pocketed the personal repulser, Florian shot her a glance and a hand signal with two fingers crossed. They hoped she had finally remembered enough to understand the signal. Somewhere nearby, Florian heard the echo of sheet metal scraping on sheet metal and knew Bruno and found his part to play.

Cassian’s breathing was labored; he could feel every single part of his body shaking, sweating, and pulsing. Then, a sharp pain like a hand rooting around in his skull. The dark holes in his sinking vision began to fill in as a man in a strange beige-uniform adorned with a white band marked with a red-cross loomed over him. Then he began to scream with all the air in his lungs. His limbs convulsed, his mouth frothed, and then something snapped loose. The man faded into smoke and slowly his breathing steadied. His vision filled with a brilliant flash of blue light. Cassian tried to focus his eyes on the conflict, but found he just couldn’t. He put his hand to his temple and repeatedly pressed the exposed metal of his neural implant to no avail. Whatever happened, it had completely bricked Cassian’s left eye. He pressed his palms against the floor, sliding back instead of finding purchase. Steadying his breathing, he focused everything he had left into getting up one more time.

Adair glanced at Florian’s hand, then back to Cassian as he screamed bloody murder. She gritted her teeth and kicked off, dashing toward Ambrose with renewed vigor. The proxy pushed her hand up against the tip of Adair’s knife, gripping down hard and quickly planting a kick into Adair’s left knee. Adair felt it buckle and recoiled, swapping the hand of her knife and minimizing her profile. Her eyes tracked Florian as they broke for the officer’s corpse and then she took another swing toward Ambrose. Ambrose stepped back and Adair stepped forward to meet her just to feel the air from a wild jab. Adair took the opening and aimed for the proxy’s head. Instead, her knife merely nicked an ear. Ambrose quickly grasped Adair’s outstretched arm and, with the strength of her augmentations, flipped Adair onto her back. A strange and deafening warble filled the room and a green glow began to emanate from the proxy’s ribcage. Adair closed her eyes in panic as the directed energy canon ripped a hole in the space between them. Then… nothing.

Adair opened her eyes only to just catch Florian’s body as it was thrown in the direction of the blast doors; the smell of disintegrated flight-suit filled the air like chalk-dust. In Adair’s grasp was the service pistol, laid out like a serendipitous power-up in a video-game. She snagged the firearm and turned over on her back pointing it at Ambrose and firing. The explosive sound of antiquated weaponry echoed with a deafening ring and Ambrose vaulted backward, seemingly unharmed. Florian, now back on their feet, strolled up to Adair and offered her a steady hand. She placed her knife in his palm and climbed to her feet with determination. The jester began to laugh.

“Oh yes, how could I forget, you’ve never once needed my help,” they said.

Adair spat blood at their feet, “You just happen to be in the right place and I have the decency not to say no.”

“But of course, once more into the breach?” Florian smiled, clearly hiding the shallowness of their breathing.

Adair rested both of their hands on the grip, and pointed the cumbersome gun toward Ambrose. As the proxy began to rush toward Adair, Florian wasted no time clashing against the exposed metal of Ambrose’s armature and bracing his weight against the knife. Adair tried to steady herself. With Florian’s skull in the crossfire, shooting a weapon she was familiar with would still be russian roulette; with this thing she could do little more but wait for an opening. She watched as Florian summoned the strength to force the proxy back and then, moving like a person possessed, they racked the knife across Ambrose’s ribcage sending blood into the air. Adair could see it from behind: the blood-stains on his suit, the bruises on his neck. Still, Florian moved with a precision she had never seen trading blow for blow with the augmented-corpse. There was simply no way Florian can keep this up, thought Adair. She steadied her resolve knowing that she had to find a way to shoot through the flurry. Sucking air into her lungs one final time, she watched the world grow as hazy as a painted picture.

Adair stood in an endless field of goldenrod. Every few feet a lamp-post jutted up from the meadow, stalwart against the gently waving prairie flower. In the distance was the soft glow of an ocean-bound horizon and the endless starfield of planet Earth’s heavens. She reached out as if expecting a hand to fall into hers and stumbled toward the nearest lamp-post. As her hands grasped at the cold-iron of its body, the flame at the top flickered to life against the moon-lit evening. She steadied herself and noticed the silent presence of a man whose body was obscured with a sort of sentient dust. Adair stared into it with a silent wonder as he seemed to smile, place a hand on her head, and ruffle her hair. In that moment she felt utterly at peace. The goldenrod glistened as if stardust and the brutal reality of their struggle came back into focus. Feeling the trigger of her firearm serene in her hand, Adair took the shot. Ambrose raised her arm for another strike, just for the bullet to ricochet off of it and lodge itself squarely into the proxy’s head.

Bloodsplatter covered Florian’s face and they grinned like a madman. Finally, Adair was home.

Cassian had clawed his way to his feet, bracing himself against the pipe he had once used as a sword. He flopped onto the control panel covered in sweat, fighting his muscles for one last push. His comrades were giving everything. From this vantage point Cassian could see the blood drip from Florian’s mouth, the near black bruises all over his chest, and the ever decreasing rate of his blows. Ambrose showed no signs of fatigue but the bullet in her skull had no doubt forced her to rethink simply outlasting the jester. Then, just as Ambrose pulled back to retreat, Cassian watched Florian jam the knife into the proxy’s jaw and press into it. Another crack sounded as Adair flawlessly hit the end of the knife with a round. Cassian saw the knife protrude from the back of Ambrose’s spine, heard the shriek of pain, and watched the flesh on Ambrose’s lower jaw splatter against the stained metal of the deck. In less than a second Florian was knocked to their knees, shoving something in his pocket before vomiting a river of blood. Ambrose then wrenched the knife from her spinal column, and with a flick of her wrist lodged it squarely into Adair’s left arm. Adair let out a scream and the revolver slid across the ground before sailing over the railing into the glass between the crew and endless space. Cassian reached forward reflexively as his lover’s arm went limp at her side. Then his legs moved without him, his hands grasping the pipe one final time, and his gaze made level by purpose.

Sparks flew as Bruno spliced a control module from the nearby gauss cannon, its blue buttstock still barely visible from the command deck. Sweat beading on his forehead, he poked his eyes over the row of terminals just as Florian, Adrian, and Cassian charged Ambrose one final time. He heard it before he saw it; all of the automatic turrets built into the bridge began to hum with the soft hatred of a fluorescent bulb. A red glow radiated from the muzzle break on each and then… softened back into nothingness. The turrets swiveled back into their inactive position as Bruno, breathing in a panicked stupor, input code after code into the control module. Wasting no time, Bruno popped a chip from the base of his Macgyvered rig and made a mad-dash for Ambrose. It was time to end this.

The smile on Florian’s lips couldn’t stop growing. They couldn’t even feel their limbs screaming anymore; it was as if there was no world beyond this moment. Turning their head, they matched Adair’s gaze and the two slammed their fists into Ambrose. Florian landed a blow to the head, Adair to the chest. Florian kicked the proxy’s knees in, Adair deftly sunk her thumb into one of her eyes. The two matched each other perfectly, as if there was a metronome in their minds, ticking away with each drop of blood they extracted from this now pulverized specimen. Then, the warble returned. Florian saw Adair’s eyes widen. A hollow green glow coated their skin. And Florian grinned as wide as the night was long.

Ambrose attempted an all or nothing gambit; firing her directed energy weapon one final time at Adair, Florian triggered the repulsive shield in his pocket and the iridescent hard-light barrier sprung to life. There was a flash. Then a growl as if some strange beast had come-into-being and died in an instant. A barely flesh metal skeleton stood like a flagpole sundered, its eyes white and its mouth agape. The barrier recoiled and while pocketing it in a swift motion, Florian pressed their foot once more on the chest of Ambrose. There was a small bloom of coagulated blood. The sound of crunching bones and metal grating on metal. Cassian had pushed the pipe clean through Ambrose, staking her as a vampire. The proxy began hemorrhaging all of the fluids, mechanical and biological, left in her decaying body and in that haze the scribe ran up like a bat out of hell. Bruno pressed a chip into the hole where the proxy’s mouth used to be. Florian, Adair, and Cassian caught their breath as what remained of Ambrose began writhing and foaming at the mouth; short circuiting before growing still on the broken pipe. Against all odds, they were still here.

Cassian dropped the pipe with a deafening clatter. He doubled over laughing through gritted teeth, “Holy hell.”

Stillness took them for a minute while each caught their breath. Then, the sound of pounding fists on metal; fifteen minutes had passed and all that lay dormant in hell had piled up to greet the victors. Bruno rushed to the control panel at the head of the bridge and then began to stutter nervously. Turning to face the other wayfarers, he shouted, “Permission to do something really really stupid.”

“Permission granted - you may finally do what you were born to!” Florian called.

“Adair, which one of the two did you activate” Bruno screamed back as the pounding grew louder and louder. He didn’t wait for a response. “Hell, just hold on-to something - PLEASE”. And with that, Bruno pressed a single button that would seal their fates. A single, round, red, glowing button which would simultaneously open every single air-lock on Entropy IV. The blast door opened and there was an impossible moan.

Bruno gripped the control panel with white knuckles. Florian slid across the floor before finally colliding with a terminal on the navigation-side, serendipitously managing to yank the cigarettes from the decaying officer before it flew its final, corporation-sanctioned, interstellar flight. Cassian managed to grip the railing on the edge of the bridge just before the blast door. Adair attempted the same - only to find her fingers unmoving. She slid closer to the abyss.

Cassian watched the love of every single life-time he had been cursed to repeat slide across a blood-splattered steel floor toward a frigid, lonely, demise. He jumped. He didn’t think, not for a second. He didn’t aim. He didn’t plan. He just wrapped his arms around Adair and closed his eyes expecting the end. But once more the end decided it would rather procrastinate than be punctual, and as he was pulled down the maintenance access corridor his hands gripped the very gash in the very terminal Adair had activated what felt like hours ago. Hand in hand the two looked at each other with eternity between them eclipsed by the sound of cascading air.

And then, just like that, it stopped. The emergency lights flashed one final time. The sirens sounded as if greeting a fond friend. Cassian and Adair fell to the ground in each other's arms. Both turned as if ready to claim the other their savoir, blushed, and shared a simple, “I love you”.

Bruno had climbed back to his feet and stared into the depths of space. Maybe for the first time, out-there seemed more lonely than in-here. He felt a hand on his back and turned to see an exhausted, battered, bruised Florian smile at him.

“You did good”, they croaked out in a frail voice, trying not to choke on the cigarette between their lips.

Bruno rolled his eyes, “Pretty sure I should be saying that to you”.

The two shared one final laugh, the lovers returned hand-in-hand, and the bodies of thousands of vessels lined the windows of the Entropy IV as if snowflakes on the exterior of a snowglobe.

And yet, there was still one more choice to make.

Art by Skyler