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Dafydd ab Hugh, Brad Linaweawer

DOOM
Endgame

1

The ship was 3.7 klicks long, and I walked
every damned meter of it, trying to find where all the
creaks and groans were coming from. I wasn't sur-
prised to hear the haunting noises; I expected nothing
less nightmarish from the Fred aliens. They came to
us as aliens in demonic clothing, playing to every
Jungian fear that panicked the human race, from deep
inside the collective whatever you call itЧArlene
would know. Now their ship sounded like it was
tearing apart at the seams ... or like the entire uni-
verse was finally winding down. I walked down moist
fungus-infested passageways that were too tall, too
narrow, and too damned hot, listening to the universe
run down.
Down and out. Mostly I walked the ship to keep
some sort of tab on Lance Corporal Arlene Sanders,
my ghost XO, who was falling apart on me. Nobody
goes off the deep end on Sergeant Flynn Taggart, not
without my say-so. But there was Arlene, sitting cross-
legged on the observation deck (the "mess hall") at
the stern of the Fred ship, staring at a redshifted eye of
light that was all the stars in the galaxy swirled into
one blobЧsome sort of relativity effect. She sat,
unblinking, peering down the corridor of time to
Earth today, which was probably Earth two hundred
years or more ago.
Christ, but that sounds melancholy. Arlene hadn't
changed her uniform in three days, and she was
starting to stink up the place. I didn't want to inter-
rupt her grief: she had lost her beloved ... in a sense;
by the time we hit dirt at Fredworld, kicked some
Fred ass, and got them to turn us around back to
Earth again, about two hundred years would have
passed for the mudhoppers. Corporal Albert Gallatin
would be a century in his grave. He was as good as
dead to her now.
Space is a lonely place; don't let anyone tell you
different. The spacefaring surround themselves with
friends and squadmates, but it only holds the empti-
ness of deep space partway off. You can still feel it
brushing your mind, probing for a weak point.
We tried playing various games to stave off the
loneliness; I came up with the favorite, Woe Is Me: we