by Jerry
No one said deserter, but Eddie knew his people were all thinking it. And he saw Rhonda’s face when she looked at the lieutenant now. They were back down to five again, but it was the wrong five—and she blamed the lieutenant.
It was two hours later when Lt. Coker sidled up to Eddie as they marched. “Captain, I’m sorry—I didn’t catch this before. I’ve been using map co-ords too much lately and I haven’t been paying attention to town names.”
“Not much of any towns or cities left,” Eddie acknowledged. “Names don’t matter anymore, not without people.”
“Yessir. The thing of it is Emil, Sgt. Aim, was from Crestwood.”
“The town we left back there two-three days,” Eddie nodded. For some reason the name on the map had stuck in his memory. “No wonder he knew about the potential food cache. Probably shopped at that store . . . before.”
“I think he bugged out for home.”
“No question, I’m sure you’re right.”
“Again, I’m sorry, sir.”
“The man made up his own mind,” Eddie said. “I don’t agree with his decision—the fight isn’t over—but home is always a strong lure in an endgame situation.”
“You think this is the end of the war?”
“Aliens were trying to bug out and go home themselves last night.”
“Then victory is ours?”
Eddie looked around at the rubble. “I don’t know about victory, but the battles may be almost over.”
They had a long slow climb up Hill 40—Hill 1266-141-3-40 if one wanted to be precise. Eddie didn’t like not knowing what was on the other side, but he didn’t feel it safe in such quiet air to launch one of the probes and give away their position. He let the team get close to the crown of the hill before he stopped them and they all lay prone. “Snake a look, master sergeant.”
Rhonda unhooked a fiber optic spool from her equipment belt and began to feed the line up over the trampled dirt and stones. Eddie bent his head down, closing his eyes momentarily, then opened them to stare at the grains of sand and grit in front of his face. He barely heard the soft click as Rhonda attached the camera to her end of the fiber optic.
“I’ve got a ship,” she reported. “A single.”
“Ours or theirs?” he asked.
“Theirs. Looks like a scout ship.”
Good, Eddie thought. He didn’t want to stumble onto one of the big troop ships, not with this small a team and this short on heavy weapons.
“Do I send a fire mission?” Lt. Coker asked. Eddie was annoyed with the other officer’s constant questioning—if there was to be a fire mission, the man would know Eddie’s will soon enough.
“Hatch is open,” said Rhonda. “Nobody’s around.”
That changed everything. “Can you fly it?” Eddie asked her.
“Not native, sir.”
“Then open source it.”
“Roger that,” Rhonda said, putting the feed onto everyone’s eyeshields. “I make it as an AE or an AK?”
Coker spoke first. “Looks like an AJ to me.”
Feeling that for once the lieutenant was being useful, Rhonda set up the download. “AJ it is . . . loading up.”
“You’re going to fly it out of here, captain?” Coker asked.
Eddie didn’t get a chance to answer. “Movement,” Rhonda said.
“Hold one.”
Lt. Coker ran his own sight scope over the top of the hill. “I’ve got a Gumby,” he said. “1550 meters.”
Ahead Eddie could see a small patch of blue sky. He flipped his eyeshields out of the way to get a better look. The sun would soon break out over the target zone. “Is he green?”
“Uh, roger that, captain,” Coker said. “It’s green.”
“The movement’s a white flag,” said Rhonda.
“Geez, Cap’n. You gotta see this to believe it,” Robbie said, a small chuckle escaping through the net signal. He relayed the new images to the eyeshields—the alien had its bare, scaly green back to them, wearing only a waist thong and boots in its patch of sunshine, while its hard carapace suit lay open on the ground nearby. A three meter or so flexible piece of metal had been wedged into some rocks with a cord running to the Lizard’s boot. As the alien periodically flexed a foot, the white fabric tied to the top of the metal bar jerked back and forth.
Eddie closed his eyes. “R.O.E., gentlemen.”
“Captain . . . ,” Coker complained.
“I don’t make the Rules of Engagement, lieutenant. The alien is not threatening us at the moment, he’s greening itself and showing a white flag.”
“May I remind the captain that we don’t have enough personnel to manage any prisoners.”
“Thank you, Lt. Coker, I know my options. Leap-and-frog formation, team. By twos.” Eddie sketched on his knee pad with his thumbnail. The map flashed on everyone’s eyeshields. “Execute.”
“I offer you no harm,” the Lizard croaked without turning its head.
Eddie stood four meters away, weapon leveled at the alien. “Are you monitoring our position?”
“I heard you. Better hearing,” the Lizard said, motioning towards the small ear hole amidst the head ridges.
“Yeah,” Robbie said, “and no sense of smell.”
“Yes,” the Lizard said sadly. “You smell better.”
He made it sound like a joke, thought Eddie. Weird. He hadn’t ever heard that humor translated between species.
“Do you have a name?” Eddie asked.
“No one you care about,” said the Lizard. “Call me Tooth.”
“All right, Tooth. I’m Captain Eddie.”
“Yes, Captain.”
“What’s your game here?”
“I not understand you.”
“You were sitting here, waiting for us. Why?”
“I am waiting for you.”
“Yeah, we know. We beat you. Why didn’t you leave with the others?”
“I ordered to wait for you. You did not beat us.”
“What do you mean? We drove your people back and they bugged out . . .” Eddie paused to wince at his choice of words. “They retreated back to space.”
“We left,” Tooth said. “You attacked our planet . . .”
“Your planet?” Eddie found himself getting annoyed. “You invaded our colony.”
“Of course,” Tooth said. “We successful. But you came and attacked later.”
“Can’t apologize for that. Took Earth a while to get the word and mount a response.”
“War was over.”
“It hadn’t even begun.”
Tooth waggled its head again. “We beat you, but still you fight. We try to capture you, end this thing, but still you fight. Again and again, you set off nuclear weapons. Land is ruined. Biology is ruined. Planet is dead. No reason for us to stay.”
“I don’t believe you,” Eddie said. “The aliens we keep meeting are still shooting at us.”
“There are no more aliens shoot at you.”
“They’re gone?” Coker asked.
“Quiet, lieutenant,” Eddie said. “We can’t confirm anything Tooth says. I need to contact Battalion.”
“You are last of human army,” Tooth rasped. “You will get no answer.”
“On the whole planet? There’s half a billion people in this colony.”
“Army gone. Non-army long gone.”
“You mean the civilians?”
“Ci-vil-lians.” Tooth repeated the unfamiliar word, then its own handheld computer beeped and displayed an unruly scrawl of symbols. “Yes. Civilians—they are all gone. Dead.”
“Jayes—try to get the Civilian Administration on channel seventy.”
“Yessir.”
“Your Civilian Administration,” Tooth went on, “ceased broadcasting data forty-two days ago.”
“Channel seventy’s been active,” Eddie said.
“But you not contact them.”
“No,” Eddie conceded. There’d been no need to contact the C
ivilian Administration—they’d seen no living civilians or refugees. “Yes?”
Pvt. Jayes shook his head. “There’s not even a carrier wave on channel seventy, sir.”
“Do a freq survey.”
“Right, captain. Give me about four minutes.”
Tooth’s mouth gaped slightly. Was this an attempt at a smile, Eddie wondered.
“Captain Eddie,” the alien said, “if you are similar to other units engaged in near weeks, then you have had no new orders in very long time.”
“Private?”
“Sir, I can pick up eleven-hundred-and-eighty-three distinct radio profiles.”
“Any of them voice?”
“Outside of our own comms . . . negative, sir,” Jayes said.
Cpl. Robbie was beginning to think about what Tooth had said. “You know, sir, we haven’t seen an active refugee camp in, like eight weeks.”
“All other humans dead,” Tooth said.
The sun shone brightly now. Eddie looked up. “Shirts off, everyone.”
“General . . .” Lt. Coker began to protest. Eddie cut him off. He was not yet acknowledging what the alien said.
“We’re operating under a white flag here and he’s already greening up, so we should, too,” Eddie said, pointing at Tooth. “Jayes—can you get a carrier for Unit Reporting?”
“Yessir. I think so.”
“Send our current sit-rep.”
“Um—what is our situation, sir?”
“Never mind,” Eddie said, dropping his armor jacket and pulling off his shirt. He came over with his handheld folded open to the keyboard. “I’ll write it.”
Afterward, he waited an hour. But other than the usual receipt blip! there was no reply to his situation report. Same as always. Rhonda came over.
“What’s the deal, sir?”
“You sure you can fly this?” Eddie nodded at Tooth’s ship.
“Absolutely. Give me five minutes to integrate the download—there’s a lot of modules to fly a spaceship.”
“Gear up,” Eddie finally said. “We’re going upstairs to look for more survivors.”
“Look for more humans?” Tooth asked. For some reason, the alien didn’t seem surprised. “There are no more. Only you.”
“You said that. I don’t believe you. But even if it were true, we’ll just restart the human race on this planet,” Eddie said. He didn’t quite believe he’d just said it, but he had to answer the alien.
“Not possible,” Tooth said. “Your female is too radiation damaged.”
Eddie stole a glance at Rhonda, but she didn’t look back at him. She knows, he realized. She’s had a medical scanner all this time.
“We’ll take this ship and get help.”
“No,” Tooth said. “I am here to show you your dead planet. Then return to ground.”
“You’ll take us where we want to go,” Eddie said. “And if you won’t, we know how to fly it.”
“Yes,” Tooth said. “You might know. But no more fuel. They took it all. You destroyed the rest. No more fuel forever on this planet.”
“Then you’re stranded, too.”
“Yes.” The Lizard said it with such simple effort that Eddie realized it had to be true.
“Why are you telling me this?”
“Because my kind are not like your kind.”
“We know that.”
“No,” Tooth said. “You not understand.”
“Then tell me . . .” Eddie paused. “Tell me what I don’t understand.”
“You are impossible to control.”
“Humans understand control. Just not by you.”
“No,” Tooth said, shaking its head. “All other civilized species understand. One species invades, the other fights. When it is settled, it is settled. You will not stop.”
“Surely it’s always been a possibility,” Eddie said.
“Eighty-five species have my kind found. All but one understand. We leave.”
“Why invade at all?”
“Why are you on this planet?”
Eddie hadn’t expected his question to be answered by a question. He considered not answering, but frankly the Lizard had been polite all along. “We’re expanding.”
“Same as all others.”
“Then where’s the problem?”
“Not enough planets. None can expand forever. It is a conservation law.”
“General Eddie . . .”
Eddie closed his eyes and shook his head as only now he realized what Coker had said earlier. Of course the lieutenant would’ve figured out Eddie was Supreme Army Commander, if what the alien said was true. General, indeed. What a waste.
“. . . you can’t trust it.”
“It’s not your call,” Eddie said. “I don’t trust him either, but we’ve been traversing wasteland for a long time. We need to go upstairs and see who else we can raise—and Tooth here has the vehicle. Master Sgt. Rhonda, you’ll be flying.”
“Yessir.”
He doubted she’d find it easy to call him General. Even if it were true.
Their tactical database held quite a lot of information on the alien technology, both in their own gear and from the still functioning military network. Not only could Sgt. Rhonda download instructions and control overlay screens onto her eyeshields, Cpl. Robbie got a tech report which enabled him to isolate the panels nearest to where Tooth was secured; he also disabled all the alien voice controls. Whatever the alien had planned, the humans would be in command of its ship.
Within the hour they were ready for space.
“Lieutenant, keep your shock gun trained on the prisoner,” Eddie said just before they launched. “This is a spaceship—no projectile weapons allowed. Jayes, activate your IFF module and keep a watch on all the comm frequencies. I don’t want our own people, or our own machines, firing on us.”
“There is no one else,” Tooth said. Its English continued to get better the more it talked with the team and Tooth wasn’t afraid to speak up to Eddie.
“That’s what you say.”
“You report in then.”
“Why do you say that?” Eddie asked. “If no one’s left.”
“Tooth says no one left. You don’t. You should follow military procedure.”
Eddie wasn’t sure what game Tooth wanted him to play, but he paused to dial up a link to space control, even if he had no idea if anyone was listening. “Control, this is Team 84632. We’re taking a captured AJ to orbit for recon mission. Lt. Eddie, out.” He couldn’t bring himself to call himself “general” or “captain”—not to the army.
They rode up in silence—five humans and one alien. It’d been a long time since Eddie had looked down on a planet. No matter how damaged, it still appeared starkly beautiful.
“Sir,” Sgt. Rhonda said, “I’m seeing some new arcs crisscrossing the upper atmosphere on the radar.”
“I see them, too,” Jayes said. “There have to be thousands of them.”
“Are any targeting us?”
“Negative, captain,” Cpl. Robbie said, comparing his scanner to the alien control board. “These are sub-orbital. Are they ours or theirs, sir?”
“I don’t know,” Eddie said. “Is this some sort of trick, Tooth?”
“They are yours,” Tooth said. The alien made a rattle in its throat which sounded disturbingly like an attempt to mimic laughter. “Is something you did to you, General.”
“What are you talking about?”
“Radioisotope laced warheads.”
“You mean like dirty bombs?” Robbie asked.
“Very dirty, very bad,” Tooth agreed.
“You’d do that?” Robbie seemed horrified.
“No. You did,” Tooth said. “Activated when last humans lifted off in ship. If humans can’t have world, no one can. We heard this from captured prisoner, but did not believe. Then found active warheads. Many warheads. It’s why we left. You killed you.”
“Earth will send reinforcements.”
�
�They will find dead planet. No one left. Not you. Not Tooth.”
“Why?”
“You killed planet. Humans. Expansion ends here.”
“You invaded this planet. You started it. Your expansion ends here,” Eddie said, getting a little heated.
“We left,” Tooth said. “You killed you. You can have dead, broken planet.”
“You sonofabitch!” Lt. Coker yelled and pulled the trigger on his shock gun. A sharp crump accompanied the brilliant blue-white lightning flash and the alien’s chest turned into a smoking burnt pit in an instant. “You filthy goddamned Gumby, you tricked us!”
Tooth gaped once and hissed, “Never lied.” And it died.
Rhonda pulled her own weapon from its holster and fired at the lieutenant. “Sorry, Eddie,” she said in a tone which indicated she didn’t care if he knew she wasn’t sorry at all. He also noted she’d dropped any hint of military honorific—perhaps it was just as well. “He shouldn’t have shot it. He disobeyed you.”
It was the four of them now. Just the team—his team.
“We’re done up here anyway, Ronnie,” Eddie said to her gently. “Take us down.”
“Where to?”
It didn’t matter—they were dead, too. But what made them human wasn’t only how they played the game, but how they finished. That, Eddie realized, was the difference between the aliens and the humans. They gave up—humans did not. Not as long as they still breathed.
“Let’s try Crystal City. I always wanted to get there—see the museums,” he said casually. And, they didn’t know what the conditions were like far to the south.
“Crystal City is it,” Rhonda said, and her hands glided over the alien controls, rolling the ship around for its re-entry burn. “Maybe there’s still some gear at the Government Laboratory Complex.”
“Maybe,” Eddie said.
“I’ll see what’s in the database,” Jayes said.
“Right,” Robbie said. “We’re going to need bigger pills to deal with this new fallout. And there’s got to be some people who weren’t wearing locator chips.”
A moment ago Eddie hadn’t been sure, now he realized they still had a chance. One they had to take.
Below them the first bright flashes began to flare across the nearest continent. There was a terrible beauty to the bombs going off, but only Eddie was watching. The others were still talking about what they knew of Crystal City. Robbie already had a map displayed.