WHEN THE BATTLE IS OVER, WE WILL CONSUME YOU.
Accompanying the statement is a twisting sense of impending doom, exploding from my mind and out through every cell of my body.
“What the fuck?” I say, horrified that I’ve misread the situation and the blue Europhids’ influence over the reds. “I’m not sure you understand. I—”
JOSHING.
“What… Oh…ho…Wow.” I start laughing. “Holy shit. That was good.” My laughter stops. “But seriously, you’re not going to consume me, right?”
There’s a long pause. And then…
NO.
My relief is short-lived. The Zorak descends into the jungle just fifty yards away.
“It’s go-time, Red,” I say. “Can I call you Red?”
NAMES ARE IRRELEVANT.
“I’ll take that as a ‘yes,’” I say. “You understand what I want to do?”
IT IS…UNCONVENTIONAL.
“Unconventional as fuck,” I say. “And that’s the point. Just be ready.”
I stand, shaded by the thick canopy above, and lit by the glowing blue blobs growing from earthen spires. There are ten of them here, each one emitting mind-bending pheromones to which I am now immune, thanks to the Europhids in my head.
“This supposed to be your Leonidas moment?” Whip asks, stepping into the clearing. “One man against an army. Though I suppose Chuy is out there somewhere.”
“I’m the only person here,” I tell him.
“What?” Whip says, holding a hand to his armored heart, feigning a wound. “You don’t think of me as a person?”
“Not you,” I say. “And not them.” I nod to the soldiers stepping into the clearing behind Whip. Carter, whose lithe armor is recognizable, leads the pack, breaking away and joining Whip. Her masked head is on a swivel, no doubt looking for Chuy.
“What are we waiting for?” she asks. “Just kill him, and let’s get on with it.”
“Really?” he asks. “You think he’s out here for shits and giggles? This is part of a plan.”
“Yep,” I say.
“Have you seen how many of us there are?” Whip asks.
“I see them all,” I say. Best guess, the landing ships are about half empty now. Just need a few more minutes—long enough to cut off their retreat.
He cocks his head to the side, trying to figure me out.
THIS IS FOOLISH. ATTACK.
Wait, I think.
Red sounds a lot like Carter. Eager to fight, and overconfident.
“You know,” he says, “in the grand scheme, none of your lives matter. You’re standing in front of a tidal wave, and no amount of bitching, moaning, or sneaky plans are going to make a difference. By this time tomorrow, every single person on this planet will be erased.”
“On that,” I say, “we agree.” Before he can make any sense of what I’ve said, I add, “I’ll make you a deal. Fight me. One on one. You can keep your armor. Keep your whip. Just let me see your pretty face so I can punch it in.”
“Single combat, huh? Two leaders determining the fate of their armies. I like it, but you know that even after I kick your ass, we’re going to roll through here like—”
“They’ll surrender,” I say. “If you can take me down, the Undesirables will lay down their arms and come out.”
“You know we’ll still kill them, right?”
I shrug. “Quickly, though?”
“Sure,” he says. “I can do that.”
“I have one condition.”
“Oh, yeah? What’s that?” he asks.
“If you win…kill her.” I point at Carter. “For Benny.”
Carter raises her rifle, about to shoot me down. Before it comes all the way up, Whip catches it. “Now, now, let’s hear the man out.”
“We were family,” I say. “You, me, Benny, Brick, and Chuy. And you let her carve out his head like a fucking melon. You’ve got the uncaring tough man act down, I’ll give you that, but Benny’s death has been eating you up. She did that to you. She killed your brother.”
“He’s trying to turn us against each other,” Carter says. “Shut him the fuck up. Now.”
“He ain’t wrong,” Whip says. “You did kill Benny.”
NOW.
Red is getting insistent. The Union army has left the fleet, but they’re still too close to ensure no one escapes. “Almost,” I say, and I freeze.
I said it aloud.
Whip’s face mask snaps up. He’s got a shit-eating grin on his face. “Who you talking to, Dark Horse?”
I honestly don’t know how to answer. I just need to keep him talking for another minute. “You want the truth?”
“I’d expect nothing more from a man of your integrity,” he says, and then he chuckles.
“Okay, here’s the deal. You all pissed off an ancient, alien intelligence, and now they want the Union gone. Best way to do that?” I point at myself. “This guy. I’m the reason we’re here. The reason we were brought to the future. All of this was planned, right down to this exact moment, where I keep talking, and you keep breathing.”
“What alien intelligence?” Carter asks, while Whip looks somewhat stunned, and amused. “We have found no evidence of—”
“They look like little red and blue cucumbers,” I say. “Ring any bells?”
Her silence says that it does, but even then, who would believe that a field of glowing vegetables could be sentient?
“Stay away from those,” Carter says, pointing at the spires, talking to the men framing up around the clearing.
“Oh, they have nothing to worry about,” I say. “Whip, on the other hand…he’s pretty well fucked.”
At that, Whip busts up laughing. “Little Einstein cucumbers! Pff! Oh, wow! Oh, man. You are too much!” He’s delirious. The pheromones are working their magic.
“Moron,” Carter says, slapping the side of Whip’s helmet, dropping the face shield back down.
NOW?
I smile. “Now.”
Carter’s head whips toward me, her weapon coming up, but she’s too late.
The ground beneath us shakes, throwing her off balance. Her lazzer blast punches a hole in the tree canopy, allowing a beam of sunlight to slip through.
All around, armored Union soldiers shout in confusion. The land beneath them roils.
Carter finds her footing.
Takes aim again.
About to put a hole through my torso.
Earth explodes into the air. A wall of coiling red tendrils fills the space between us. I feel Red’s pain as the lazzer blast intended for me strikes its body instead. But Red is a planet-sized organism. This world’s immune system. The blast is less than a pinprick.
The tendrils split apart, revealing Carter. “Surprise,” I say, as she stumbles. The ground beneath her rises several feet, lifting her up. I hold up an index finger. “First, fuck you. Second, fuck the Union. Third…” I smile at her. “Four!”
A tree sized red appendage snaps out of the ground, whooshes through the air, and strikes Carter’s side, launching her up and away. She punches through the thick canopy a moment later, still climbing. I don’t care how tough their armor is, no way she’s surviving a fall from a mile up. I give her a wave as she disappears from view. “Adios, bitch.”
DOWN!
What happens next catches me off guard, despite my connection to Red. A tendril wraps around my ankles and yanks me off my feet, just as a lazzer blast cuts through the air where I’d been standing.
“Thanks,” I say.
WE HAVE YOUR BACK.
Can’t help but smile. Red is a brute, but he/it/whatever gets it. We’re in this together.
Whip is back on his feet. Cackling with laughter, but now it sounds maniacal.
I reach out with my thoughts, driving Red to act in the same way I did with Carter. A roar rips through the air, as a bus-sized Basil pounds through the forest, shredding Union soldiers as it plows toward Whip. The creature’s mandibles snap shut, on target to
crush Whip, but he’s no longer there.
He rotated, I realize just a moment before he emerges from the fourth dimension behind me, wraps his arms around my torso and rotates the two of us away.
45
We appear ten feet over the solid stone cliff top above the Minutemen base. Whip positions me beneath him, manhandling me with his suit’s robotic strength. Then we topple to the ground and collide like a wrecking ball in free fall.
Air coughs from my lungs. My body feels like a pressed panini. Stars swirl in my vision.
When Whip rolls off me and stands, all I can do is watch.
I can feel Red coming, twisting coils climbing the cliff face from below, stretching out of the jungle atop the cliff. But Red can’t move through solid stone. For the moment, Whip is free to act.
He aims the lazzer rifle at my chest. “You had a good run, boss. Going out like a fighter. I respect that…” He laughs. The pheromones haven’t worn off yet. “And Carter? Holy balls. That was awesome. Pi-chuuuu.” He looks up into the sky like he can see her again, toppling away. “Good on you. She had that coming.”
His laugher fades. “What’s up with your eyes?”
While I’ve been lying here, the Europhids inside me have been hard at work clearing my mind. Not sure what they’re doing, but I feel pretty good. For the first five seconds, I was genuinely stunned. Since then, I’ve been faking it.
“You know what?” he says, sounding more like himself and less drugged. “Fuck it.”
I trigger my PSD and rotate away, just as he fires. The lazzer blast grazes my shoulder blade. Pain lances from the cauterized wound, but quickly fades. The Europhids aren’t healing me, they’re dulling the pain receptors in my mind.
Going to suck when they stop, I think, and I rotate back out, in the air behind Whip.
I land on his back, hands wrapped under his chin. I throw my weight back, catching him off guard and stumbling him back toward the cliff. When we careen over the edge together, his rifle falls away. I push off his back and activate my PSD. A moment later, I return to the cliff’s edge.
Peering over the edge, I watch Whip pinwheel toward the ground, gaining speed.
Then he disappears into the fourth dimension.
Shit.
I scan the area. Where the hell is he?
WE CANNOT SEE HIM.
“I was asking myself.”
WE DON’T CARE.
During the momentary reprieve, my senses reach beyond myself, experiencing the battle around the planet. What started as pinpricks have evolved into serious, very painful wounds. The Union is armed with lazzers, energy weapons, rocket pods, and flame throwers. All around the planet, Red is coming apart, oozing its insides into the Earth. Hundreds of Basils are dead.
But the beatdown Red is receiving pales in comparison to the counterattack. Armor be damned, Red strikes with shocking savagery, crushing men, rending them into pieces, and in some cases, invading their minds and turning them against each other. It’s a kind of determined savagery that Blue is incapable of, but exactly the right kind for taking down a bunch of Nazis. The Russians did the same during World War II, sacrificing untold numbers in defense of the Mother Land. Red is doing the same for this planet…and all the others that Europhids call home. It frightens me, but I’m also glad to be fighting alongside them.
My hope is that our alliance will last when the war is won. That we won’t enter into a kind of Cold War hostility…partly because I’d be the first casualty.
Motion in my vertical periphery throws my body into motion. I dive and roll to the side, just as Whip crashes down, using all the momentum from his hundred-foot fall to pound the ground where I had been standing.
Solid stone cracks.
If I hadn’t moved…
How did I move so fast?
OUR SENSES ARE YOUR SENSES. YOU ARE FASTER BECAUSE—
“You going to take credit for everything I do?”
YES.
Can’t help but laugh. Not sure if the Europhids have a sense of humor, or if they’re just being bluntly honest. Either way, it’s funny.
“What’re you laughing at?” Whip asks.
The cracked cliff behind him crumbles and falls away. He looks back at it. “Not so funny now, eh?”
Rocket pods in his shoulders and sides, and even under his ribs, snap out. Dozens of projectiles fire, spiraling through the air, forcing me back into the fourth dimension.
Exactly where Whip wanted me.
He rotates in unison, closing the distance between us in a blink.
He punches my chest, throwing me back. I fall. Ribs broken. Lungs empty.
I don’t know where to go, I think. Rotating now would most likely drop me in space, or worse, inside a star or a black hole. I’m cut off from Red here, so I relinquish control of my body and let Blue guide me. The Europhids are no stranger to Slew technology, and they have a good portion of the known universe mapped. It’s like having my very own predictor in my head.
Lost in a sea of white, Whip pounding toward me, I trigger the PSD and rotate back to the third dimension.
I fall several feet, land on my stomach, and I’m surprised when the impact is soft. And wet. I press my hands down, attempting to push myself up, when I notice water seeping up around my fingers and the purple earth compressing beneath my weight.
I know this place…
I’ve been here before.
And it’s not Beta-Prime.
It’s—
STAY DOWN.
The voice in my head is different. Where Red is more like a Klingon, Blue has more of a Vulcan vibe. The lack of emotion makes Blue easier to trust. But will the logic-driven mind be as good in combat as Red?
Whip appears twenty feet away. Takes in the purple-hued, puddle-pocked landscape. His heavy armor sinks his feet into the spongy ground. He lifts one foot at a time.
“This like a greatest hits tour?” he asks, revealing that the Union really was tracking my every move. “Ain’t nothing here that—”
The sound of wet flatulence announces the puddle-jumper a moment before it collides with Whip’s back. Thin tendrils snap out of its maw and wrap around Whip’s facemask. Its mouth opens wide, consumes his head, and starts grinding on the metal.
The naked, winged sloth grasps Whip’s arms, fighting against his robotic strength. When the pair spin around, grunting and struggling, a detail jumps out. Something I missed last time, or maybe something that simply wasn’t present on the creatures I encountered—a spine of small red Europhids running down its back.
Red!
HAVE YOUR BACK. STILL.
As dangerous as a Europhid-controlled puddle jumper might be, no way it’s chewing through that armor. But it’s bought me a little time.
Blue, I think. We need to disable his slew drive.
UNDERSTOOD, Blue responds.
Then my mind is filled with views of Whip from the past few minutes. I see his every move in slow motion. I can move in and out of focus. I watch his body the moment before he rotates. While I need to smack the device on my hip to rotate, Whip’s PSD has been integrated into his armor. But he still needs to activate it somehow.
There! I think, focusing on his left hand. He squeezes his fist twice before rotating. That’s the key. We need to disable his left hand!
AGREED.
A second puddle-jumper surges out of a nearby pool, catching both me and Whip off guard. It careens into his metal gut, holding and clawing. But it’s still not enough. The mechanized armor is too strong.
That’s when I see three more puddle-jumpers incoming, arms spread wide, stretched skin warbling in the wind. I stand by my original assessment of these things. They’re freakish spazzes, but at least they’re on my side now.
Just as it appears Whip will get the upper hand, three new puddle-jumpers join the fray, colliding with him en masse. All six of them fall to the spongy ground, sinking in, as water flows around them, forming a new pool.
It’s hard to t
ell what’s going on under the water. There’s a lot of thrashing, the occasional fart-roar, and a whole lot of froth.
A puddle-jumper explodes from the water. Its arms don’t open. It doesn’t glide. It just crashes down to the ground and slides to a stop. There’s a fist-sized indentation in its forehead.
They can’t win.
NO.
“I need to help them,” I say, trying to think of how, but jumping into that mess of claws and machine would be like dropping a Gremlin into a meat grinder.
WAIT.
“For what?!” I can feel the puddle-jumpers’ pain through my connection to Red. Whip is slowly dismantling them.
A plan unfurls in my mind. It’s simple, bold, and absolutely insane.
I like it.
Froth explodes as Whip launches out of the water, landing on the pool’s far side. His armor is scratched up and dented, but is it enough?
Four injured and bleeding puddle-jumpers burst from the pool, charging Whip. I sense that the fight is over, but Red is incensed, lost in bloodlust.
“That’s it!” Whip shouts. He grasps the whip on his side, snaps it out. It crackles to life, sweeping through the air with an electric snap.
The puddle-jumpers are undeterred—
—until the whip cracks and slides through their bodies, one at a time, severing them in two and ending their lives. I flinch back, feeling their lives end.
Whip catches his breath. Motions to the dead with his free hand. “That’s what you’ve got? That’s your big fuckin’ play? I’m disappointed, boss. I thought you’d do better than that.”
“Just getting warmed up,” I say.
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