Malefactor

by Robert Repino

  “We know,” she said wearily. Everyone in the infantry liked to show their impatience with the Vesuvius when it sat pretty and safe in the sky, far away from danger.

  “The wolves tested our defenses yesterday,” Quince added.

  “How did it go?”

  “The defenses work.”

  Ruiz leaned in closer to Falkirk. “Sir,” he whispered, “we could fire a few shots into the woods. Scare off the wolves.”

  “Too close to the civilians,” Falkirk said.

  Falkirk asked O’Neill to shift the camera toward the camp. The Mudfoot had been rampaging along the border for weeks, but Camp Echo posed their first major roadblock. The cement walls cast enormous shadows. Three turrets faced the woods, each nested with snipers. More soldiers waited in the main courtyard, along with an armored personnel carrier with a mounted machine gun.

  Falkirk reached over O’Neill’s shoulder and shifted the camera back to the refugees. He zoomed in as far as he could. He spotted a few wheelbarrows, a stretcher with a sick old dog on it, a couple of wheelchairs. On either side of them, the trees rustled. More blurry shapes zigzagged between the branches. A simple, unavoidable question entered Falkirk’s mind. How many more? How many more lives would be snuffed out today while Falkirk floated above the clouds, safe but powerless? Tomorrow, this could be another bullet point on his tablet, right under the news about the al-Rihla, lost at sea.

  His heart quickened.

  “Camp Echo, do you still copy?”

  “Yes. Go head, Vesuvius.”

  “Tell your escorts to run.”

  “Run?”

  “Drop everything and run as fast as they can. They’re almost there.”

  “Sir, do you see something?” Ruiz asked.

  “No. That’s the problem. I don’t see a damn thing.”

  Quince yelled something incomprehensible. Some shouting followed.

  The dots on the trail moved faster. They left their belongings in the dirt. The dogs carrying the stretcher fell behind, and two more helped them.

  “Come on,” Ruiz said through clenched teeth.

  “Sir, I’m picking up gunfire,” O’Neill said.

  “I can hear it too,” Bulan said. “It’s coming from the turrets.”

  “Camp Echo, are you under attack?” Falkirk asked.

  “No,” Quince said. “We’re the ones attacking.”

  The gate opened, just a small crack. The dogs formed a line, slipping inside the gap one at a time. As the refugees entered, four soldiers created a perimeter, each one aiming their rifle into the trees.

  “Get in,” Ruiz said.

  The overhead image appeared on multiple consoles, resembling a simple puzzle that at last came together. Smoke drifted from the turrets, where the snipers fired at will. The microphone picked out random shouting, taunting. Humans, most likely, screaming at the faceless enemy.

  “Here, doggy!”

  “Come get some!”

  “Sit, boy!”

  A few more gunshots accompanied maniacal laughter. The bitter laugh of people who had witnessed too much death.

  At last, the gate closed. A simple movement from this height, like a lever pivoting on a fulcrum. And with that, it was over. The danger passed, the tension drained. Falkirk breathed again. He pulled his bobbing tongue into his mouth before anyone could notice. He figured that the hearty Cadejo dogs would have laughed at him for being so nervous on their behalf.

  “Vesuvius, this is Camp Echo. All refugees accounted for.”

  Ruiz silently pumped his fist.

  “Glad to hear it, Echo,” Falkirk said. “Reinforcements are on their way. With medical supplies.”

  “Do cigarettes count as medical?”

  “You have to ask nicely,” Falkirk said. “We’ll be monitoring your position until they arrive.”

  “Thank you, Captain.”

  Onscreen, Falkirk noticed the objects strewn about the trail. He could only imagine what they were. Clothes. Tools. Children’s toys. Maybe a relic or two from before the war, for those who had lived long enough. The same things that Falkirk left behind when he ran for his life.

  “Major,” Falkirk said. “You’re the border now.”

  “No shit,” Quince said.

  Night fell, and the Vesuvius continued to orbit Camp Echo. For over twelve hours, the spotters detected no movement among the trees. The crew performed admirably and on schedule, showing how far they had come in the last few months. Falkirk signed the typical orders, approved the inventory status, rubber stamped the shift schedules. But as the red night lights switched on, an uneasy calm settled over the ship. For weeks, the news in Hosanna had focused on the peace talks with the wolves. Now that the border had been more or less solidified, Hosanna still needed to hammer out some of the more tedious details, such as who would control the train line, and how they would share some of the disputed water supplies. And then these attacks erupted with no explanation, only a series of denials from the pack elders. The dogs in Hosanna who complained for years about unequal treatment found common cause with the Mudfoot. They staged protests; committed acts of vandalism and arson. To them, the separatists spoke the obvious truth: that Hosanna had become corrupt, a failed project with a veneer of holiness. To make matters worse, the Archon issued a statement reminding people that the Mudfoot were not indigenous to the region and that they had invaded in the wake of the war. But, as so many of the animals pointed out, the humans no longer enjoyed the privilege of declaring an entire species to be indigenous.

  Like all military officers, Falkirk banned any open speculation among the crew. No point in salting old wounds with idle gossip. Orders like that rarely worked in practice, and even then, only for a short time. Falkirk hoped that he would not need to enforce it for much longer.

  To take a break from the bridge, Falkirk gave the con to Ruiz and went to the archive, a windowless cell with a mainframe and a monitor. Bullet holes dimpled the metal door, a reminder of the firefight that had taken place in these corridors. Though he could access some of the records from the bridge, the information he really wanted remained classified. Every time the Vesuvius passed within range of Liberty One, the signal updated the archive. He entered his password and waited for the system to load.

  “Good evening, Captain,” the screen read. A search window opened. Falkirk entered “MUDFOOT.”

  Too restless to sit, Falkirk nudged the chair aside and scrolled through the search results. There were too many reports to count, all with long, bland titles. Summaries of skirmishes along the border. Recommendations for a swift attack on Mudfoot terrorist cells. A list of steps taken to “pacify” an area, which included corralling the deer, seizing the water supply, and leaving the most aggressive wolves with no choice but to launch a futile attack. After that, the Sanctuary Union troops could take out the remaining dens and declare victory. Falkirk flipped through dozens of photos of soldiers posing in front of caves, planting the flag of Hosanna, praying to the Prophet on the wolves’ sacred ground. All of it was designed to break a people who were unbreakable.

  A few overhead photos showed the valley after the Mudfoot staged an attack on a chemical plant. The attack had backfired. With the plant destroyed, the chemicals poisoned the entire valley. According to the neighboring pack leaders, the Mudfoot carried a new disease as a result of the pollution, and it made them even crazier than before. An enemy with nothing to lose, disowned by their own species.

  During the war, Falkirk’s brother Wendigo spoke of the wolves with admiration—as most dogs did. Wendigo thought of himself as a kindred spirit. One day, while stationed at an outpost somewhere near the old Canadian border, a pack of wolves tromped through, tracking escaped humans. Wendigo and Falkirk, being the youngest in the unit, were put on guard duty. After the wolves finished their howling for the evening, Wendigo left his post, tried to sp
eak with them. It did not go well. Their leader told him that huskies served as glorified pets, nothing more. Wendigo almost got himself killed picking a fight with them. Falkirk intervened. He pulled his brother away and apologized, saving his brother’s life. Three months later, Falkirk had to identify Wendigo’s body following a shootout at an abandoned farm.

  He cleared the screen and started with a new search, the one that he planned to do all along: “AL-RIHLA.”

  He found some schematics and a crew manifest. From there, he dug up a photo of the crew taken before D’Arc came on board. When he sorted the results by the date they were saved, the same bullet point from the morning waited at the top. And yet it had a new timestamp from only a few hours earlier. A folder icon indicated that a supplemental document had been attached.

  Holding his breath, Falkirk clicked on the file. It was a communiqué from the SUS Douglass, a supply ship that traveled from the mainland to Golgotha.

  COMMUNIQUÉ No. 197

  Report:

  SUS Somerset arrived at Golgotha with f ull inventory.

  Gr ound crew loaded supplies to SUS Douglass. Dr. Hunt will accompany Al pha specimen to Hosanna.

  “Alpha?” Falkirk said.

  Some of the details of the supply run followed. And then:

  Transmission received from SUS al-Rihla. Pursuing Alphas east. In tends to warn Hosanna of potentia l threat. Last coordinates: 37.98, -74.15. SUS Douglass will relay message when it is within range.

  They’d picked D’Arc because of her knowledge of Alphas. Falkirk could still smell the earthy flavor of the ants that she taught him to ride. Strange, unnatural beasts, machinelike with their hinged legs and tough shells. Falkirk knew she was special then. It was why he told her she should go on the expedition. Don’t let anyone stop you, he had told her. Not even me.

  As he made it to the end of the communiqué, Falkirk’s walkie-talkie crackled and whined.

  “Captain, this is Ruiz, come in.”

  Falkirk cocked his fist, ready to slam it through the computer. Slowly, he lowered his hand and switched on the speaker. “Go ahead, Ruiz.”

  “You’re needed on the bridge, sir.”

  It took all his willpower to muster a simple, emotionless response. “On my way.”

  Falkirk passed crew members in the halls—some heading to their bunks for the night, others beginning a new shift. When he arrived at the bridge, the doors opened, and the noise of a bustling crew greeted him. Bulan held her enormous hands over the headset so she could hear. “Camp Echo, this is Vesuvius, do you copy?” Beside her, a bleary-eyed O’Neill called out coordinates while tracing a line on her screen with her finger. At the front of the bridge, Unoka noted the coordinates in his logbook. Outside, a sliver of blue light painted the horizon. The stars clustered in the cloudless sky, almost as bright as an emerging sunrise.

  Ruiz had assembled the senior staff in the middle of the night.

  “Captain on deck,” the foreman shouted.

  Ruiz set his coffee at his workstation and ran his hand over his parted hair. “Sir, we’re tracking a distress signal north of Camp Echo.”

  “North?” This was in Sanctuary Union territory. “Did Echo respond?”

  “We can’t reach Echo.”

  Falkirk glanced at Bulan. Holding the microphone over her mouth, she again requested a response from the camp. Falkirk could hear the empty static in her earpiece.

  “What did the signal say?”

  “It’s garbled,” Ruiz said. “They said something about an attack. Said they were on the run. Then it cut off.”

  “Someone’s activated a beacon,” O’Neill said. Falkirk watched over her shoulder: a blinking red dot on the map, north of the camp.

  “Let’s get a visual on Echo,” Falkirk said.

  “Bringing it up now,” she said. She clicked on the window, expanded it. An infrared view washed over the image, leaving a pale blue background with small yellow shapes scattered about, indicating heat signatures. Vesuvius carried one of the only thermal scanners that could account for varied body temperatures across different species.

  “Wolves haven’t moved,” Falkirk said, pointing to the forest.

  “Our spotters didn’t see anything,” O’Neill said.

  “How many people are in the camp?”

  “About . . . a hundred, with the refugees.”

  “No. Look.”

  “Definitely not a hundred,” Ruiz said. “Roll the footage back.”

  O’Neill clicked on the time scale and slid it toward the beginning of the recording, when the refugees entered the gates. As she did it, the yellow shapes inside the camp zipped about in reverse, ricocheting off the walls. In the surrounding forest, the wolves lurked nearby, close enough to watch, too far for the guard towers to pick them off.

  O’Neill slid the time scale forward, speeding through the refugees forming a queue near the mess hall. “They’re in line for food, I think,” she said.

  At the two-hour mark, the dogs congregated inside one of the flimsy sheds that Major Quince erected to house them. Falkirk pictured them taking stock of what little they still carried, placing all of it onto their pallets for the night. Not long after that, they formed a giant blob in the courtyard. A single yellow dot stood apart from the group—probably Quince welcoming them, making them feel safe with a pep talk.

  They assembled in the temple. Falkirk always admired these places of worship out in the field. No frills, no gold piping or ornate fountains, no giant tapestries depicting the trials of Michael and the Warrior and the Mother. Instead, this place most likely had a single image of the Prophet, along with an altar and two candles nearly melted to the nub. The dogs of Cadejo gathered here, filtering into the pews in a perfect symmetrical shape. There they remained until, at the end of the ceremony, they filed past the painting of Michael. And then, one by one, some of the dots froze in place. Falkirk’s tail lowered when he saw it. Slowly, the yellow faded to green, to blue, and then vanished. A handful of the dots streamed out of the building, scattering to the edges of the camp, where the guards still watched from their towers.

  “The dogs murdered them,” Ruiz said, his voice breaking. He swallowed.

  “The refugees?” O’Neill said.

  “They’re dogs!” he snapped. “They’re practically wolves themselves. They’re working together.”

  Cringing, Bulan stopped hailing the camp and sucked her lips into her mouth. Her eyes rolled toward Falkirk.

  “I’m sorry, sir,” Ruiz said, suddenly gathering himself. “I know Cadejo. These dogs—these people—they’re not on our side.”

  “Captain!” Bulan said. “We’re getting the distress call again.”

  “Let’s hear it,” Falkirk said.

  Bulan pressed a few buttons. The speaker clicked on in the middle of someone shouting.

  “. . . heading, uh, northwest . . . to the lookout point on Collins Hill . . .”

  A woman’s voice. Exhausted, breathing heavily. Footsteps nearby. Branches rustling. Random people speaking at once.

  “This is Vesuvius, we hear you,” Falkirk said.

  “Vesuvius!” the woman said. “We need evac right away!”

  “Who is this?”

  “Right. I’m Koster. Second Lieutenant with MEDCOM—”

  “I need the security code, Lieutenant.”

  She mumbled something, probably a swear word. “A-61 . . . 7962.”

  Falkirk motioned to Parish, one of the enlisted humans. Parish immediately typed the number into his database.

  “What happened, Lieutenant?” Falkirk said.

  “The refugees. They turned on us. Major Quince is dead. We barely made it out.”

  Ruiz stamped his foot when he heard it. A bead of sweat perched on his cheek.

  Koster explained that she and the other doctors had
run away from the camp. Four humans, plus a dog and a cat. She gave her coordinates, which O’Neill entered into the nav system. While Koster talked, Parish waved Ruiz over to his console.

  “We’re heading to Collins Hill. ETA . . . nine minutes?”

  The bridge was silent.

  “Vesuvius?” Koster shouted.

  “Go ahead, Lieutenant.”

  “They’re on our tail! We’re dead if you don’t come get us!”

  One of her comrades shushed her. Someone else told them to keep moving.

  “Sir,” Ruiz said, “this security code is from yesterday.”

  Falkirk made a throat slashing gesture. Bulan cut the audio. “It’s past midnight,” Falkirk said. “They never got today’s codes.”

  “There can be no evac without a proper code.”

  “Can anyone hear me?” Koster pleaded.

  Falkirk snapped his fingers at Bulan. She switched the audio on again.

  “Dr. Koster,” Falkirk said. “What’s the worst menu item at the academy cafeteria?”

  It was an inside joke that only a former cadet would know.

  Without missing a beat, Koster said: “I’m still alive, so I wouldn’t know.”

  Falkirk nodded. “We’re headed for your position at Collins Hill. You have nine minutes.”

  “Sir,” Ruiz said. “The wolves could be baiting us. Like they baited Camp Echo.”

  “I know.” Falkirk faced the front of the ship. “O’Neill, send the coordinates to Unoka’s station.”

  “Aye, Captain.”

  “Take us to a thousand feet.”

  “Sir,” Ruiz said again.

  Falkirk kept going. “Parish and Warner, I want infrared view on both your screens. We need as many eyes as possible.”

  Ruiz stepped in front of Falkirk, his jaw clenched. “Sir,” he whispered through his teeth. “We cannot do this. A lot of people are already dead.”

  “I know that!” Falkirk snapped. For the past twenty-four hours, he watched people die as numbers on a screen, as blips, as bullet points. He wasn’t going to listen to it happen. After gathering himself, he noticed O’Neill sitting frozen, her hand hovering over her keyboard.