Into the Fire

by Mark Tufo

  “How about you?”

  “What, man? That thing didn’t control me.”

  “Me thinks the gang member doth protest too much.”

  “Don’t go quoting Shakespeare on me. The fool doth think he is wise, but the wise man knows himself to be a fool.”

  “What the hell does that mean?”

  “That, my friend, is Shakespeare.”

  I was pretty sure I’d just been insulted—but not a hundred percent sure—and to open my mouth now would only give him ammunition to that argument. “Umm, forget it. I just need to know what you were feeling.”

  BT hesitated as he looked to Tracy and then me. “I don’t trust him.” BT was pointing a beefy finger at me.

  “What the hell did I do?”

  “BT, whatever you tell us won’t go past this room,” Tracy said as tenderly as she could.

  “I never agreed to that.”

  “Talbot!” Tracy smacked my shoulder.

  “Fine.”

  BT glared at me. Gotta admit he was pretty good at it, but he’s got to remember my best friend is a Genogerian champion, and we were next to most likely the scariest living thing known to the universe. A giant, pissed off black man was really third tier right now. That’s not saying I’d want him to exercise his abilities on me because that would not work out well for yours truly, I’m just saying that threatening gestures weren’t really going to cut it, comparatively.

  “I was seventeen when I first saw her. I don’t know what it was, never in my life had I been so drawn to a person.”

  “Did she feel the same way?” I’d said it in a tone that would imply most people must run from him.

  “I was as attracted to her as I am repelled by you.”

  “Damn. You fell for her hard then,” Tracy replied.

  “I can still have our marriage annulled.”

  “You can’t, I looked into it,” she came back even faster. I’m not sure why I even bother trying to cross words with her. You know how most normal fights escalate, one person says something, the other replies with something equally or marginally worse. Potentially a slap may come into effect, followed by possibly a punch if things get really out of hand. With Tracy, it goes from verbal assault to nuclear warfare in the span of milliseconds.

  He was still looking at me like he was looking for the set-up, but there was none. Maybe in a gang you can’t express how you feel for another person, but I was certainly not going to be the one that was going to give him grief for feeling that particular emotion. He looked down.

  “It’s okay, man. I’m not going to give you grief about that.”

  “My head would reel and my heart would beat faster when she was around. Most times I had to make sure my eyes weren’t half closed and my mouth wide open. She twisted my innards up. I couldn’t even think straight.”

  “What happened to her?” Tracy asked intuitively as she placed her hand on his arm.

  A tear the size of a quarter formed in the corner of his eye, his lip quivered. I think he was ashamed to show any sign of weakness.

  “We’re friends here, man. I swear,” I told him.

  That fat tear rolled down his cheek, he quickly wiped it away. “We were going to get married. She was the reason I was getting out of the gang. I was going to make something of our life together. Something we could be proud of for us and our future kids. She died when the Progerians bombed L.A.”

  “I’m sorry, BT. I am.”

  “Even years later after we met, she still had that effect on me. It was almost kind of nice to feel that just now. I thought it might never happen again. I could almost pretend she was still around. But no, I would have never let him go. No matter if he told me I could feel that way forever, I would have known the lie for what it was.”

  Tracy was rubbing his arm. “I’m so sorry.”

  I may have mumbled an apology as well, but guys just don’t do that kind of thing. I don’t know what it is. Maybe we don’t want to think about it, to voice the unthinkable is to give it substance, validity and that is a path I don’t think I could ever follow. Once was close enough for me in this lifetime. Maybe in other lifetimes losing Tracy would be close as well. I just didn’t have to worry about that now.

  “I think that was why I was more readily acceptable to the Stryver’s help when they approached us,” BT continued. “I was so angry at the Progs I would take help from anywhere to defeat them.”

  “And yet this is how you treat one who has helped you?” Our prisoner had been silent for so long that I think we all did our best to ignore the six hundred pound spider in the room.

  “Let’s get one thing clear, Spidey. Fuck no, not Spidey, I like him too much to use that moniker on you. Ugly unsightly thing. Yeah, that’s what I’ll call you, Uut. Listen, Uut, we both know you’re not helping us so much as you’re helping yourself. In your defense I get it, trust me. Using us as pawns and telling us we’re equals is brilliant. I’m sort of alright with that too because we sure need the fucking help. No…where I have the problem is that, if we should pull out of this and actually win, me and your kind are not going to shake hands and go about our merry little ways, happy in our victory. No, you duplicitous fucks are going to kill us and take our world, so excuse me if I don’t go getting all warm and tender over our alliance.”

  Uut was silent. I could see him trying to figure out how much I knew and how he could possibly respond to the accusation and save his skin. It was strange actually, like watching a six-year-old struggle with their reading as an unfamiliar word popped up in their book. Was lying a phenomenon practiced only by man? Did the Stryvers even know how to do it before they ever encountered us? The Progerians and the Genogerians still hadn’t figured it out. It makes sense on their evolutionary path to not lie. To say one thing and do another was bound to get them killed. Just like here I suppose.

  They obviously had different mating rituals as well. What male human had not at some point lied to his female? We learned this long ago when the first cavewoman asked her husband, “Does this Wooly Mammoth dress make me look fat?” Oh, by the way, he answered yes and she smashed him over the head with a twenty-seven pound rock. All the other tribe members learned the correct response after this. If they ever needed a reminder all they had to do was to look over at the poor recipient, Tillick, as he now could usually be found at the back of the cave licking the wall.

  “We are your friends.”

  “Not very believable, Uut. Your acting skills are sub-par at best. What sort of extra devices do you have on this ship?”

  He was silent, although I got the distinct feeling that he knew there was something here, he just didn’t know what it was.

  “I am a soldier.”

  That I got. Soldiers aren’t told everything; there’s no reason to.

  I was about to interrogate him some more when the ship lights turned from their ordinary hue to a flashing red before Paul’s voice came over the sound system. “Crew of the Guardian, our Stryver guests will be leaving shortly. As soon as they are off-ship we will be buckling back to Earth where we have been informed that two Progerian war vessels are in orbit around our galaxy. I have been shown some surveillance footage of what they have been up to in our absence. Most of the major population areas on our planet that were still in existence have been bombed. Our home needs some help, and we’re going to deliver it in the form of a good, solid ass kicking. I will need all senior level officers in the conference room in a half an hour. That includes you, Colonel Talbot.”

  “Fuck.”

  “You can’t go to that meeting,” BT said. “There’s no way you’re leaving me behind with this thing.”

  “I’ve got no choice, I don’t show and Paul will come here. Let’s just knock him out again.”

  Uut just about screamed, “You cannot! I will not attempt escape!”

  “See that? Uut is already getting a case of Stockholm Syndrome.”

  “I don’t give a shit if he likes us or not, I don’t want to
be around it.”

  “You’re going to hurt his feelings.”

  “Will you two stop? BT, we need to go. I will send some of my most trusted men back here to relieve you.”

  For a second I imagined the big black man putting the back of his hand to his forehead and sitting heavily across a chair saying, “Oh, thank goodness.”

  That would have been priceless. He nodded instead.

  We were just killing time for now, so I asked Uut a question. “What did you do before the war?”

  He sent the image that he did not know what I was asking.

  “I mean did you build webs or snares to capture prey? Were you a spider accountant adding up one’s personal fortune in flies and other bugs?”

  I think he finally caught what I was meaning. “I have never known anything but war. My mother was killed as my siblings and I were being born. Only a few of us escaped.”

  “A few? How many are born with each litter?”

  “Our births are called a clutch. Upward of a hundred can be born at one time, although only twenty to twenty-five survive.”

  “How are you guys losing to the Progerians?”

  He hesitated again. I could feel his pain and anguish. I’m not saying it made me feel anything for the beast; I’m just saying I could feel it. “They had been destroying our habitats. When they realized that wasn’t going to be enough, they began introducing viruses into our populations that made conception difficult, and if it did happen, the off-spring had a higher mortality rate. We have begun working on a cure and are making strides towards eradicating this from our genome. If it does not happen soon, we will perish.”

  “Good fucking riddance,” BT said it first, but I completely echoed his thoughts.

  Tracy went to find some guards. I was pretty much through with our new guest. He was a foot soldier, there wasn’t much he could tell me. Now to scientists and doctors, I’m sure he could tell a lot. I’d let them do their dissections and vivisections.

  Tracy must have given the three a heads-up, because they didn’t so much as blink when they came into our already cramped room. Those were some tough Marines.

  “I know I already briefed you on the way here, but if you start to feel euphoric for any reason you can’t explain, the first thing you need to do is shoot and feel good about yourself after. Is that clear?” she asked.

  “Yes ma’am,” they replied. There were two men and a woman, Sergeant Diego, was in charge of the detail.

  “Or depression,” I blurted out. I’d caught something in Uut’s thoughts that led me to believe that the Stryvers had done some experimenting on this particular phenomenon. Screwing with a human’s serotonin levels in such a way that their captives had become suicidal and had found all sorts of unique ways to end their lives. “There is not much they cannot do once they start rooting around inside your head, so do not give him the opportunity. I’d rather he was dead than anything befall you. Clear?”

  “Yes, Colonel,” Sergeant Diego replied.

  “I’m going back to my room. Don’t ever knock on my door again, Talbot.” BT left without saying another word.

  Tracy and I were out the door after a few more cautions to the sergeant. When we got to the meeting, we realized we were a few minutes late.

  “Nice of you to show,” Paul said snidely.

  “I’m here, shut up about it,” I told him. There was at least one gasp, maybe more. Definitely a few shocked expressions at the minimum. I noticed Beth in attendance as well. “She’s not an officer,” I said, pointing at her and not yet taking a seat.

  “She has a part in this as well,” Paul replied.

  “What part? Is she going to lead a raid? Does she maybe know how the weapons systems work and is going to be directing the targeting?” Paul was glaring. “No, seriously, I’m asking. Why is she here?”

  “Take your seat, Colonel. That’s an order,” he added for emphasis.

  “Fuck you.” I began to walk out.

  “Don’t touch that button,” I heard Tracy say behind me. “Those guards you are about to summon, General, are loyal to me, and I am loyal to my husband. They come in here and I will have you relieved of your command under Uniform Code of Military Justice Article 92.”

  I wanted to ask her if that was real. I never paid much attention to the finer points of being in the service—I generally just shot stuff. My guess is Paul probably didn’t know whether she was bluffing or not either.

  “Mike, I need you in here,” Paul sighed.

  I turned. “She goes, then.”

  Now it was Beth’s turn to glare. Or maybe she already had been. Tracy seemed to bring that out of her in spades. Paul looked over to his wife like a dog that had just taken a shit on its owner’s finest Oriental rug and known he’d done it.

  “I absolutely will not leave,” she told him in no uncertain terms.

  “Beth, please.”

  She was now shaking with rage, furious I had called her out, furious that her husband had been threatened by her rival, and now furious that her husband was capitulating rather than defending. “As far as I am concerned, your command has already been relieved,” she told Paul as she stood up and walked out.

  I felt somewhat bad for Paul, as his foreseeable future was looking fairly bleak. Fuck it. Why am I even sugar coating it? Any future with Beth is bound to look bleak. Whatever had snapped inside of her was not going to be fixed anytime soon…if ever.

  Paul was now looking over to me, both of us still standing. I almost felt like I could see into his mind, much like the Stryvers could. If I had, I’m sure his words would have been, “You’ve won now, would you not question my authority anymore and sit down?” So I did. He followed suit.

  He gathered himself before he spoke. “The last of the Stryvers left less than ten minutes ago. We are preparing to buckle shortly. I am just giving my weaponry crew a chance to better understand the enhancements that our allies have performed on the systems. We are also in the process of scouring every inch of the ship that the Stryvers touched to make sure that nothing else was added.”

  “Nothing else, sir?” Captain Anders asked. He was a tall man with thin, wispy brown hair on his head. He looked like a stiff breeze could take him for a ride, but I had the utmost respect for the man. He was the leading force behind the resurgence of the fighter arsenal we had been amassing.

  “Some of you may know already, and some may not. The Stryvers are our allies out of necessity, not desire, and as such, we must be careful that their repairs do not carry any type of devices.”

  The captain was astute. He could see that his general was not telling him everything and began to prod him for more information. “Devices, sir, as in for spying?”

  “That’s one possibility.”

  “The others, sir?”

  I was glad to see Paul’s ire shifting to another. “Potential incendiary or self-destruct devices.”

  There was a bunch of protests when that little nugget of information became public.

  “We cannot risk that chance,” the captain loudly agreed, drowning out the rest of the outbursts.

  “We cannot risk doing nothing,” Paul said, as images of a burning world dominated the view behind him. The shots were from space, but it was easy enough to see that whole continents were covered in heavy clouds of soot and ash caused by the devastation of so much landmass. “If the Stryvers, at some point, deem this ship unnecessary or a threat and they blow us out of the sky, so be it. But first we are going to do everything in our power to stop and right this great wrong that is being done to our home.” He stood and banged his fists against the table.

  I had to admit, I was proud of him. There was finally something more important to him than his relentless pursuit of power. Although, now that I thought on it, he might only want to preserve Earth so he had something to rule over. That was always a possibility. Haters gonna hate. Tracy elbowed me. She subtly pointed to my lips, which were pulled up in a wry smile.

  “We know from
our intel that one ship is in orbit around the planet, and another is out in the galaxy a bit. My guess is, it is playing bouncer should anyone want to crash the party. Singly, this ship is no match for either of them, even with the Stryver enhancements. I’ve been working on a plan that I think might give us an advantage, at least in the short term.”

  I was all ears as he spoke, even leaning forward to make sure I didn’t miss anything.

  “I’m going to take a couple of chapters from the American Revolution and perform hit and run scenarios.”

  Captain Anders spoke again. “Sir, I’m not trying to be disrespectful, but there are no trees out here to hide behind, and from everything we’ve learned about these ships, they’re faster than we are. We have no hopes of striking and retreating with any modicum of success.”

  “That’s where you’re wrong, Captain. We’re going to buckle almost on top of their location, let loose with everything we can, and buckle out before they can muster a defense.”

  “Um, Paul, General,” I started, “what about the imminent displacement? Won’t they be able to tell we’re coming more than an hour before we actually do?”

  “Sort of.”

  “Sort of? We’re already playing with a booby-trapped ship and now you want to go traipsing through a land mine? Any chance you could elaborate on what is sounding like a suicide bombing?”

  I was betting Paul wished he’d worn a sidearm right about now.

  “As you all know, imminent displacement has to do with a ship in buckle, pushing space in front of it, much like an earthbound ship pushes water away from it, causing a wake that can be detected with instrumentation. Now, normally we would be doubly exposed because of this wake and the signature this ship will send out, kind of like an airliner’s transponder. The Stryvers disabled this second problem. As for the first, they have found a way within a buckle to slow a ship’s speed down so that the wake it creates is nearly invisible to Progerian sensors.”

  “Nearly? You keep using this quantifying lingo, Paul…err…General.”

  “Mike, nothing is guaranteed. It is below the threshold that will set off an alarm, but if the operator is astute enough and sees the fluctuations, we may have a hail of enemy munitions meet us when we appear.”