Exo-Hunter

by Jeremy Robinson

  “They’re falling back!” one of them shouts, confirming that Brick’s people are withdrawing.

  The Overseers begin to pursue, but as they’re leaving, a stocky woman sees me and Hildy, and she double-takes.

  “Gonna need some cover,” I say, taking out the second PSD and cracking it open. “Just point and—”

  “I’ve played video games,” Hildy says.

  “Using a gun is not like a video game,” I say. I fail to see how a side-scrolling inch-high character can prepare someone to wield a weapon of war.

  “They’re inside the core!” the stocky woman shouts. She storms toward us, as three more Overseers stream in behind her. None of that is good, but none of them are visibly pregnant—and that is.

  Hildy unleashes six rounds, each of them a hit. All four women fall to the floor. The first two might be dead. The second two are clutching their legs.

  “Okay,” I say. “Maybe it is like video games.”

  “VR games, beyond your time,” Hildy says. “Now, hurry up! I might be good at this, but I don’t like it!”

  Just as I turn my attention back to the PSD, a searing pain cuts through my thigh and drops me to the floor. The PSD falls from my hand and skitters away. I reach for it, but I pull my hand back when a lazzer blast strikes the floor between my outstretched fingers and the device.

  Three more Overseers stalk toward us, weapons raised. Behind them, a small army of grumpy looking ladies swarms into the core. I think they understand what’s at stake, and they look ready to do anything to stop us.

  Hildy has her weapon raised, but she isn’t pulling the trigger. “I don’t think I have enough bullets.”

  “No,” I say, grimly. “You don’t.”

  48

  This is gonna get messy.

  And I’m not opposed to mess. Sometimes, as a soldier, a little John Rambo behind-the-machine-gun action is called for. The gun feels good in your hands. The power makes you feel like a man. But if you watch the effect it has… The destruction, the blood, and the pain…

  It leaves a scar.

  And Hildy is about to get her first taste of that if she can stomach it.

  We duck behind a control console on the inside of the large, circular catwalk that’s surrounding the sphere. Lazzer blasts scorch the far side.

  Luckily, the Overseers are proceeding slow and carefully, waiting for us to expose ourselves rather than trying to rush us at the expense of their own lives.

  Gives me a few seconds.

  “Take this.” I hold my rifle up to Hildy.

  She looks unsure, but after a lazzer blast burns a trough in her hair, she takes the weapon. A Spaceballs quote flits through my mind, but I don’t bother saying it.

  “Works same as the gun,” I say.

  “I know how it works,” she grumbles. “Point and pull the trigger.”

  “This has two triggers,” I tell her.

  She looks at it, and she’s confused.

  “Well, what’s the second one do?” The Overseers are nearly upon us. Time is running out.

  “Grenade launcher,” I say. “Three rounds. Just aim it at the floor, near your targets. The shrapnel and shockwave will do the rest.”

  “Shrapnel?”

  I can see her imagination hard at work, giving her a taste of just how horrible it will be.

  “But they could be pregnant.”

  “I don’t think so,” I say, glancing at the nearest Overseers. Not a baby-bump among them. The Overseers might be fond of pumping out new bodies for the Reich, but those guarding the core are lean, mean, non-pregger fighting machines. “If this works, none of them are going to survive anyway, but millions more will live.” I focus on the PSD, still out of reach. If one of the Overseers hits it with a lazzer blast, our mission is—

  Sparks explode from the PSD. My eyes snap shut. When I open them again, the device is gone. The grated floor where it was is now charred.

  Fuck, I think.

  “Fuck!” Hildy shouts. “Now what?”

  “Same plan,” I say, plucking the PSD from my belt.

  “But we won’t be able to rotate… Oh. You already know that.” Sadness washes over her, and I feel it, too. She’s young and recently freed. Had a whole new and exciting life ahead. I had a mission. One I believed in. One I would have died for, but I never thought it would be now. I still had so much to do.

  Sorry, I think to the Europhids in my head.

  No reply.

  No intuited feelings.

  They’re just silently observing.

  “What’s this called?” Hildy asks. “Doing something you know will get you killed?”

  “A noble death,” I say.

  “A suicide mission,” she says.

  “That, too. But I like mine better.”

  She nods. “Noble death it is.”

  A lazzer blast strikes the console, just missing her. She ducks down a little further. “Thank you for it. Better to die like this than at a hundred and fifty after a lifetime of breathing this shit air, staring at screens, telling ships where to go, and pumping out babies for someone I don’t love.”

  “You’d have made a hell of a Marine,” I tell her.

  She smiles. “A Space Marine? Like Vasquez? From Aliens?”

  “I know who Vasquez is,” I say. “But not quite. That’s Chuy’s job.”

  “Then Ripley? Can I be Ripley?”

  “More like Newt,” I say.

  “I’ll take it.”

  “But you can be Ripley if you go to town with that rifle and buy me the time we need. Like, now.”

  “Deal,” she says. Then she stands, levels the rifle toward the Overseers, and holds down the first trigger.

  The Overseers, who no doubt thought we were done for, are caught off guard, and then overwhelmed by Hildy’s barrage of tungsten rounds.

  “Let’s rock!” Hildy shouts, still angling for the role of Vasquez.

  My instinct is to watch the battle play out. To give advice. To take part. But for the first time, I need to be the brains behind the scenes.

  I don’t like it, my inner bitch says.

  Shut up and get the job done, my Marine self says, backhanding the other voice into submission.

  I crack open the PSD and get to work. I’ve seen the inside of a PSD just twice. Porter felt the need to explain how it worked, and how to change the settings. I mostly tuned him out, but the Europhids have access to the memory and everything Porter showed me. As I focus, I feel my control slip away. My fingers are moving, but I’m not moving them.

  I take the opportunity to say goodbye. “Chuy, give me a sitrep.”

  “Kicking ass and taking names,” she says. “Why are you— What’s wrong?”

  “Things are going sideways down here.” The words hurt coming out. “Don’t think I’ll be coming back this time.”

  “Are you hurt?” She sounds worried. Not like herself.

  “Well, I’m shot. Again. But that’s not what’s stopping me.”

  “Then what the hell is?!” Sadness morphs to anger.

  “The second PSD was destroyed. We’re stuck here.”

  “Get out on foot,” she demands.

  “No can do. We’re pinned by a small army of angry ladies.”

  “You can’t just—”

  “Chuy…” I don’t know what to say. “I know that we were supposed to have a future together. That our children and their children are destined to fight this war for a thousand years. I started looking forward to that life. I mean, don’t get me wrong, it’s still weird. That’s a paradigm I’m not sure either of us considered before. But it sounds like it worked, and I wanted to give it a shot. What I’m trying to say is…”

  Her letting me get through a meaty slab of dialogue like that, without interrupting, is odd. “Chuy?”

  No response.

  “Chuy? You copy?”

  Did she cut our connection? Is she pissed at me for dying? Blindsided by what I said? “Chuy?”

 
I’m dragged out of my thoughts by two things. One, the Europhids are done. The PSD is in my hands, reassembled. Two, Hildy shouting, “Fire in the hole!” followed by the poonch sound of a grenade being launched.

  Arms to my head, I duck down just as the round detonates. The explosion feels like a nail, driven into my ear. The shockwave shakes the platform. The chaos is followed by shouts of pain.

  I lean to the side, and I look back. There are several Overseers on the floor. Some dead. Some on their way. But what I linger on is the platform itself. The grenade tore it up. Created a hole.

  I pocket the PSD and grab hold of the console, hauling myself up. Leg hurts like a motherfucker, but I’m about to die. I can handle the pain.

  I hold a hand out to Hildy. She gives me the weapon, happy to be rid of it. I chamber a fresh grenade, take aim and fire. As the grenade detonates, I load the last round and fire. When the smoke clears, the platform is in ruins. On the near side, the dead and dying, on the far side, a mob of very angry Overseers who can shoot all the lazzers they want, but they won’t be able to hit us behind the console.

  A handful of them—the fast ones I’m guessing—sprint in the opposite direction. They look like black-clad Olympic runners, rounding a track. Their weirdly perfect posture, long strides, and speedy limbs carry them around quickly, but it will take a good minute to reach us.

  And by then…

  I slide down against the console. Hildy is beside me.

  “Glad to have met you, kid,” I say. “If I was going to have a daughter, I’d want her to be like you.”

  She smiles at me, tears in her eyes. “If I ever got to meet my father, I’d want him to be like you.”

  I put my arm around her, and she leans the pom-pom hair against my shoulder. I hold the PSD out, activate it, and toss it into the air. It tumbles away, out over the open space between us and the black sphere.

  Then it disappears.

  A moment later, it reappears, its momentum ceased.

  It flicks out of reality again, reappearing for just a moment before disappearing again. It rotates in and out of the fourth dimension at a faster and faster rate, building speed, racing toward an unknown limit, where it will unleash a devastating explosion of unknown force.

  The device starts to glow.

  A hum fills the air.

  The sprinting Overseers arrive faster than I would have guessed. I tense, waiting for them to blast us into steaming piles of meat. But they see the shimmering PSD hovering in the air and wisely choose to bug out. I don’t think it will matter, but it gives me a few more seconds to—

  “Moses!”

  What the hell? That’s Chuy.

  I push myself up, but don’t see her. She must be on the sphere’s far side.

  “Chuy?” I shout. “We’re on the other side!”

  A shout of surprise tears through the air above us. Chuy falls ten feet to the floor. Coughs for air and holds out her hand. She’s carrying one of the other PSDs. “How the hell do you use this thing so well?”

  I blink in shock, watching her push herself up.

  “Don’t just stand there, pendejo!” she shouts.

  I snap out of my surprise, grasp Hildy by the waist, and step in to Chuy, so she can wrap her arms around me.

  The floating PSD’s hum shifts to a high-pitched whistle. The light glows brighter, but it’s flickering now.

  I trigger the PSD and rotate away.

  We emerge a moment later, in my quarters. Bitch’n is moving fast. There are ships and debris everywhere. The space battle is still underway, but the planet below is still visible.

  And the explosion…

  It’s impossible to miss. A white-hot sphere billows from the surface, growing and shifting to yellow and orange. The fireball expands for ten miles. A visible shockwave expands in every direction, scouring the surface clean.

  The cost in lives will be enormous, and I’ll have to live with that. Knowing the universe is free from the Union will make it a little easier. Nothing about war is good, but now maybe the future can be.

  “Drago,” I say, activating my comms. “Let Brick know that the core has been destroyed.”

  “I think he knows,” Drago says. “Minutemen forces already rotating away. Union vessels seem…confused.”

  “Where is Burnett?” I ask. “We need to—”

  “Already here. Took damage. Had to come back. But all okay.”

  “Awesome,” I say, slowly absorbing the fact that we not only won, but also survived. “Good. Rotate away with the Minutemen.”

  “Would if we could,” he says. “But we took damage, too. Power is failing. Slew drive is primed for one jump.”

  One jump.

  Those two words carry a lot of weight. Feels wrong to bail in the wake of a successful mission. To not say goodbye again.

  But this is the mission, too.

  The real mission.

  And there is nothing to say that hasn’t already been said.

  “Everyone,” I say, letting me broadcast to the whole crew. “I need you all on the bridge, seated and buckled, ASAP. Let’s move, people!”

  “You okay?” Chuy asks, giving me a ‘What’s up with you?’ stare.

  I hold my arms out to the pair of women. “Could just be a bumpy ride, is all.”

  They step into my grasp and the three of us rotate to the bridge. Burnett, Drago, Adrik, and by extension, BigApe, are seated and buckled.

  Burnett smiles at me. “We were already here.”

  “Go,” I say to Chuy and Hildy, nudging them to their stations. As I sit in my chair and buckle up, I ask, “You’re all in this fight for the long haul, right? No matter where it takes us, or what the risks are?”

  The group collectively turns toward me like I’ve asked them all if they prefer their thongs made from spider silk or bologna.

  “Just fuckin’ punch it!” Hildy shouts.

  So, I do.

  49

  The rotation starts like any other, slipping into white. But the moment that happens, I’m overwhelmed. The changes to the slew drive are too much. The distances involved. The fucking math. It’s more than I can handle on the fly. So, I relent and give my blue brain control.

  And things don’t get much better.

  A typical rotation feels odd. It can be nauseating for the uninitiated. But it’s never painful.

  This…this feels like I’m being stabbed to death by a thousand maniacal Smurfs.

  Through the pain, an overwhelming, almost crushing gravity pulls me down. An elevator in free fall. I scream, but I’m moving faster than the soundwaves. My voice is silenced. My vision is white. My body ceases to exist. Reality is coming apart.

  This can’t be right.

  Something’s gone wrong.

  I become immaterial. The seatbelt’s pressure slips away. Nothing of Bitch’n remains. And my crew… Lost in a sea of white or destroyed.

  Pressure builds around my head, crushing out another silent scream until—

  I wake up on the floor. I’m still in Bitch’n. Still on the bridge. But I’ve slipped out of my chair despite the buckle being fastened.

  The important thing is that we’re no longer in the fourth dimension, or whatever the hell dimension that was. I push myself up to my hands and knees. My head feels like a dingleberry wedged between Andre the Giant’s ass cheeks. The room spins.

  I take a deep breath. Then another.

  Little help, I think to the blue in my brain, and then I open my eyes again. The pressure remains, but the spinning has stopped. I glance through the windshield. Outside—stars. No debris. No Union ships. We’re clear.

  The question is—

  Did we make it?

  “Chuy?” I pull myself up, using my seat to hold my weight. “You okay?”

  “Ugh…” comes the response, but it’s not in the room. It’s in my comms. “I’m in a closet, I think.”

  “On board Bitch’n?”

  “Well,” she says. “I’m staring into the c
rossed eyes of an anime babe with baseball tits, pink braids, her tongue out, and stains I don’t want to know about.”

  Burnett’s closet. Gross. “Get back to the bridge as soon as you can walk.”

  “Already on my way,” she says, proving once again that she’s tougher than me.

  Back in my seat, I scan the bridge. Burnett and Hildy are still seated. Drago is on the floor and starting to stir. Like me, his body somehow slipped through the seatbelt. Adrik is on the floor, too, mostly out of view. All I can see are his feet…

  Four of them. And two are bare.

  The fuck?

  I stand, unsteady, but I really don’t like the idea of a stowaway. Clinging to consoles, I work my way closer. One of the bodies is naked, tall, and white as snow, like it was some cave-dwelling creature. The other…is Adrik.

  Or used to be.

  A husk of a body barely fills his clothing.

  If Adrik is dead, then who… A tattoo on the man’s blazing white shoulder stands out. It’s a bald eagle, clutching the Earth in its talons, but the globe becomes an ape’s skull. Clutched in the skull’s jaws is a dagger, blood dripping from the tip. Above the image is ‘USMC.’ Below it, ‘Semper Fidelis.’ It’s a one-of-a-kind tat, and I’ve seen it before.

  “BigApe?” I step over Adrik, legs shaking, and I grasp BigApe’s arm. With a grunt, I roll him over. His face is pale and pruned, like he’s been in a pool for a few days, but also from age. He’s still thirty years older than me. I check for a pulse. Strong and steady.

  “What happened?” It’s Drago. He’s clinging to the wall, fighting to stay upright. Saddened by the sight of his old friend.

  “They separated,” I guess. “When we rotated.”

  “Was not normal rotation,” he says.

  I shake my head.

  “Hope it was worth it,” he says, and he rolls Adrik over. His face is missing, smoothed out like a mannequin.

  “So do I,” I say, taking off my outer shirt and laying it over BigApe’s nakedness. He’d always been a little ashamed of his small stature…down below. Claimed to a be ‘a grower, not a show-er.’ I’d feel bad if he woke in his own body for the first time in thirty-plus years only to remember he’s not well endowed.