by Tim C Taylor
“Hey, over here,” called a voice that he recognized instantly.
Romulus slowly turned his head back to the dresser. The reflection grinning back at him was not his own.
“Psst… I’m not real, Romulus. Don’t freak out. I’m just in your head.”
The man was gaunt, but his eyes spoke of an iron determination. Even if he weren’t speaking the local dialect called English, his light frame and pale skin would give him away as an Earther.
“I recognize you,” Romulus whispered. “Your voice is as familiar as my mother’s, but I can’t remember who you are. This is a very odd form of madness.”
The man rolled his eyes. “Sheesh!”
“This never gets easier,” they both said in unison.
“Nice one, Rom.” The man smiled, but Romulus saw both bitterness and shame etched there, so ingrained that they would never leave that face. “My name’s Zantoz and I’m your handler. And don’t worry about being overheard because all of this is going on in your head. That’s part of the deal with the gum in the drawer. You’re running off Earth-tech here. Not that second-rate crap you use in the Legion.”
“You mean…” Romulus had to search his memories. What had the Earthers called their wrist implants – their development of the tech that augmented Admiral Indiya? “Nano-effectors! I have nano-effectors inside me?”
“Top marks. Before you brought your furry friends with you to Earth, all full citizens of the International Federation had wrist implants based upon the same White Knight tech all their military slave species are given, except we developed it far further. A culture based on rich, nanoscale conversation that you, my friend, could never understand. All banned by the Pelts, of course. Bastards! But what we smuggled inside you is some fine work indeed.”
“Pelts? You mean the Hardits?”
“Pelts, chimpos, furballs, Hardit fuckers, murdering scum. The only name you really need to know is the enemy.”
“So… there are nano-machines inside me and they made me think about the drawer.”
“Yeah, the gum. Disgusting but works. You know, when I first met you, Rom, you’d never touched liquor – said it could degrade the AI interface you needed to fly your fancy space fighter. Well, my friend, I have to inform you – once again – that your flying days are long gone.”
“Are you sure the Hardits can’t hear you? I thought they can hear everything inside my mind.”
“Yeah, well that’s Tawfiq’s Pelts for you. Arrogant. I’ll be honest, it’s not been easy. Left alone, their Blood Virus would have had an unshakable grip on your mind by now. But it hasn’t. It’s our control that’s strengthened instead. There’s been a tech war raging in your mind for years. And we won. Although, it seems we had a little outside help.”
“We? You said you’re my handler. Who do you work for, Zantoz?”
“The Resistance. Same as you.”
Romulus bowed his head. “No. I’m a failure. A traitor.”
“Listen to me, my friend. You have much to atone for, and a whole bunch of your guilt is absolutely deserved. But you are not a failure. You are with the Resistance.”
Foreign memories launched themselves at his mind. Romulus gasped, trying desperately to blink them away but they would not be denied. They insisted he owned them, but he would not. Could not.
Could he?
Caches of stolen Hardit weapons.
Assassinations.
Sabotaged shuttle craft.
Resistance cell members so deeply embedded in key posts that even they didn’t know they were fighting for freedom.
And then the discovery, execution and reprisals as the New Order slowly wore the Resistance down, tightening the noose around the shrinking movement, getting ever closer to its leader, the Voice of the Resistance.
Romulus fought back, striking for the surface of the sea of memories trying to drown him.
The Voice… that was the key. Some said the Voice was an AI. Others that it was not one individual but the most secret of the Resistance cells, its members split across every continent to avoid New Order infiltration.
But these angry memories demanded that he acknowledged the truth.
The reason the Hardits never revealed the Voice’s identity was because it was the least likely person on the entire planet.
It was Romulus himself.
He was the Voice of the Resistance.
“You… Zantoz. Are you a real person? Out there. Outside this prison.”
“Yeah, I guess bits of my corpse are still out there somewhere.”
“You’re dead?”
“I am, and let me tell you, being dead sucks. It’s so difficult to get anything done.”
“Tawfiq! I’ll kill her.”
“We all hope her death will be long and painful, but, no, you killed me.”
“But…” For a moment, Romulus had felt a flickering memory of horror. Not anymore. He shook his head. “I have no memory of that. I’m sorry.” The words felt as substantial as dust.
“Snap out of it, man! Hardits and Resistance aren’t the only ones playing nano-games in your body. You damned Marines have so many anti-toxins running through your system, you could drink for America, and wake up the next day wondering why all the proper human beings had a hangover. We need you drunk to confuse the Hardit Blood Virus, but you crazy Marines can’t stay wasted like regular folk. That means we don’t have much time, so listen up, and remember to hit the gin again as soon as I’ve finished my briefing. You don’t have any memories of killing me because I programmed them in advance to be wiped. And you shouldn’t feel guilty about our deaths because I instructed you to kill us. To kill all of your handlers to cover your tracks.”
“Was… was I really so cold?”
“No. You’d lost your confidence. Not surprising. That’s the thing about the Earth-tech nano-effectors. If you don’t have them yourself, then we can make you dance to our every whim. You fought us hard, but you had no choice. Sorry Rom, you’re a good guy, but we had to program you to be a heartless killer. It’s war.”
Even darker memories returned. Other killings. An astronomer. Leon Vogel had been his name. He’d spotted something the Hardits hadn’t, a possible sign of a Legion attack. The Hardits couldn’t be allowed to learn of it and so he’d killed the astronomer.
“Yeah, that’s it. That’s what we need. I can tell you’re remembering now. I can’t tell what, of course, because I don’t know squit about what’s happened since I died, but I can hear something rumbling in your subconscious. Tawfiq’s taunted you with some secrets again, hasn’t she? Is this the big one? Is it time to act on what we know? We won’t get a second chance.”
“You can’t know, can you? The Legion’s invaded. They’ve taken most of Africa, although they’ve hit the Great Rift Valley Fortification Line.”
He could feel Zantoz buzzing with shock. “You’re shitting me! No, don’t bother answering, I can tell you aren’t.” The dead Resistance man gave a low whistle. “Guess this is the big one. What we’ve been working towards. Tell me everything.”
Romulus had only covered the essentials of his report when Zantoz stopped him. “We need to contact the Legion forces, Rom. Prepare a message in your head, Rom. Someone will be there to receive it.”
“How?”
“Remember the part about drinking for America? I wasn’t kidding. Keep at the Victory Gin and it’ll work out okay. And, Rom… we might not meet again, so I gotta tell you something important. We set you up as a traitor, same as the Hardits did. Made you commit terrible crimes history will revile you for. And I would do it to you all again tomorrow if I had to. But for what little it’s worth, Rom, I’m sorry. You deserved better. Maybe the greatest heroes are the ones whose deeds are never recognized. Now, go win this shitty war.”
Romulus fell straight out of the hallucination – and banged his head on the open drawer as he collapsed onto the dirty carpet in real life.
He gave a bitter laugh. Whether that business
with Zantoz had really happened or whether it was just another psychotic hallucination made no difference. The correct response was the same in both cases.
He grabbed the bottle and glass from the left-hand drawer, and grinned. Drink for victory! What a brilliantly ridiculous way to win a war.
He shrieked!
Pulse racing, and grip tight on the gin bottle, Romulus turned around slowly because someone was there!
Some-thing more like. It was a Hummer. Had it been there all along?
“What do you want?” he snapped.
The Hummer didn’t reply.
Romulus necked the gin.
You have a message to deliver. The alien’s thoughts felt like a snake swimming through his mind on a stream of hard liquor. He hated the intrusion, but the psychic touch of this alien felt familiar.
What if I do? he thought back.
You have a message to deliver and you must pass it to me. The mental connection to the Hummer colored. Was that amusement? Governor Romulus, I am your partner in the Resistance.
His face creased up. This orange blob… his partner? The idea was so frakked-up that he would not accept it.
Then he looked in the mirror and saw the augmented human staring back out of its coating of alien scales with eyes filled with anguish that blazed like beacons of despair.
Romulus was a soul already lost; only the husk of his body persisted. No, an orange blob made a perfect partner. How many of us are there? he asked the alien. Is there a Resistance army waiting to rise up?
Not anymore. Very few of us remain. You think you have lost your soul, Romulus. I choose to believe you are mistaken. Whether our numbers will be enough depends on you. Have you the stomach for the fight?
Romulus could feel the creature’s fierce scrutiny, but the Hummer was wasting its time. I don’t have the guts to take on Tawfiq.
He examined his soul, searching for a spark he could fan into flames of resistance.
But there was nothing. Only despair.
Janna and Remus are alive, the alien said in his mind. They fight in Africa. Do you care whether they live or die?
“How dare you? You foul, disgusting, alien creature. What would you know?”
I know that you are angry. It is your spark, Romulus. Use it now!
— Chapter 45 —
Flashes lit up the eastern horizon. Bloehn could feel the shuddering through the steering wheel as he drove through the dust shaken out of the track.
Less than a hundred miles away, two great armies were clashing… And both of them were invaders. Aliens and… freakish races of abominations who had long ago been human but were now something else entirely.
Worst of all, in this fight for his world, Bloehn had no part.
He smacked the horn of the ancient truck again and again, startling a large snake just feet away from the road, and sending it slithering to safety through the grass.
A mile, and a thoroughly disturbed selection of local wildlife later, Bloehn calmed enough to remember his duty.
He wasn’t one of the armored brutes fighting over the Rift Valley; he was Bashiri Bloehn, a humble farmer, and his herd of cows and goats relied upon him. War or no war.
If nuclear holocaust cleansed the Earth, his goats were such hardy beasts that he wouldn’t be surprised if they thrived in the ruins. “But not you, my friends,” he announced to the grazing cows as he pulled up at the pasture.
A few of the herd regarded him languidly as they chewed their cud. Then they looked away.
“I’m not fooled,” Bloehn chided them as he grabbed a box of feed from the back of the truck. “I know you miss me.”
As if obeying a hidden command, the herd limbered into life, mobbing him friendly but insistently, while others with a little more intelligence, jostled for position at the feeder.
“I missed you too. Especially you, madam,” he said to an individual blocking his way and flaring her nostrils in his face.
He laughed and dodged around her, so he could refill the circular feeder.
His cows were emotional creatures, who needed the familiarity of his voice and scent. On his more thoughtful days, he wondered whether the cows thought the same of him.
Despite the fast-grow grass variety in this pasture, there would never be enough to feed the herd. Didn’t need to be. Hunger wasn’t a problem, not with the pellet-grower machines back at the main farm compound.
So long as the war didn’t disrupt the water supply pumped from the distant coastal desalination plants at Dar es Salaam and Mtwara, the pellet machines would continue forever, sucking at the soil and extruding their green bounty. Cellulose, proteins, silicas, klason lignin, chlorophyll, free-monosaccharides, uronic acid, and the other many components of natural grass: the pellets contained everything necessary to feed not only the animals themselves, but the microbiological engines in their rumen stomachs. Theoretically, the pellets mined the soil according to the same program followed by natural grass. The goats loved grass pellets, but the cows knew they weren’t right. It wasn’t hunger that bothered them, they were stressed by an anxiety to find fresh pasture that was never satisfied.
They needed him.
In the old days, robots automatically supplied them with pellets but could never reassure the herd the way Bloehn could. He spent ten minutes talking comforting nonsense while he checked the health tags and ran through the security summary, looking for any signs of unwanted visitors.
The results weren’t good. Rad levels were up, and chemical toxins and fallout were drifting over the farm from the battlezone. None of them were enough to harm the cows yet. But the fighting had been ongoing for only a few days and, to his ears, had fallen into a grinding pattern of attrition. If days stretched to weeks, his herd would sicken. But where would they go? Most of the people in the region would flee the fighting if they could, but the Hardits did not permit free movement. For now, staying was marginally safer than leaving, and he reckoned the same applied to his livestock. Bloehn had it easy really; he didn’t have to make that choice for himself because his duty required him to stay.
Satisfied that all was as good as it was going to get in the shadow of war, he said his goodbyes and continued his rounds.
He had seven sites on his itinerary today. Six of them involved checking over the livestock, but the seventh was different: the hillside beauty spot overlooking the river where he sat against a wall of rock warmed by the sun, and spread out his feast of biscuits, jerky, and an apple, all washed down by a flask of hot ersatz coffee.
Come rain, baking sun, and orbital bombardment, Bloehn had taken his lunch at this spot almost every day since he’d been recruited to the cause, not long after the Battle of Cairo.
Nearly twenty years he had done this, waiting in quiet obscurity for the activation call to wake him to action.
The key fob in his pocket vibrated. He froze – half-chewed apple filling his mouth – but only for a moment. It seemed beyond impossible that an enemy would be observing him, but he nonetheless forced himself to finish his meal without hurrying. Nothing to see. Just going about my daily routine.
Once he was done, he carefully wrapped up his napkin, picked up his flask, and walked inside the cave.
The last time the hidden receiver in the case had summoned him via the fob was seven years ago. That time, Bloehn’s mission had been a systems check of the equipment cache, but he knew in his gut that today the activation call was for real.
He hesitated briefly on the threshold of the dark entrance, worried for his cows. But such concerns belonged to Farmer Bloehn, and as he stepped inside the dark of the cave he left that persona behind and became once more Sergeant Bloehn of the International Federation Defense Force.
His planet had recalled him to the colors.
— Chapter 46 —
Remus peered through the dead branches to get a good look down the steep hillside at the path below, trying to make sense of what his goggles were telling him.
Flickering red threa
t alerts firmed into enough solidity for him to grip his cannon, but then vanished. There could be a family of warthogs passing along the gas-choked path, racing through in search of clean air that didn’t burn their lungs, or perhaps an enemy squad laden with flamethrowers and poison-tipped trench clubs were quietly advancing, ready to spring upon the rest of Remus’s patrol up ahead where the path opened up.
More likely there was nothing at all. He turned off the interpretive option on his goggles and trusted his eyes.
Thick yellow smog had collected in the valley between the hills, deep enough to conceal enemy troops, but shallow enough that he expected to see a disturbance in the gas cloud if anyone moved through.
The ground shook.
Fifteen miles away, kinetic torpedoes were raining down upon the mountain fortress on the west bank of Lake Tanganyika, to be met with the force bubbles that shielded the Rift Valley Line.
This was only harassing fire from the Legion navy in orbit, but it was enough to shake chaos into what had been stagnant clouds of toxic gas. A herd of rhinos could be charging through now and you would never tell.
A few seconds later, right on cue, the New Order force bubble turned off for an instant, just long enough for the defenders to answer with a missile salvo of their own.
Remus crouched down for cover in his stony hillside ledge, nearly knocking heads with Jinnee who was doing the same.
Even hugging the ground with his eyes tightly shut, Remus could see the instant the sky turned white, the light so bright that it pierced deep inside his head. His suit began pinging an insistent rad alert a few seconds before the shockwave hurled itself against the hill, shaking dirt into the air to mix with the gas.
Remus poked his head out of cover. Sure enough, over to the northwest, a mushroom cloud rose like an angry fist.