Izmit opened his pack, took out two short shovels, and handed one to Kellen.
Kellen grasped the proffered shovel. “We’re going to save the world with these?”
Izmit gave him a scathing look, then his face softened and he laughed. “We could use an automated excavator, but those require power and ID.”
“Right,” Kellen said. “What exactly are we looking for?”
They walked further along the passageway, their boots making clopping echoes.
“A way down,” Izmit said. “We’ve got to find something below the city, deeper down. I can feel it waiting for us.”
It? Whatever it was, Kellen took Izmit at his word. For once in his life, all his doubts had fallen away. Something’s down there, and we’ll find it.
Tools in hand, they dropped into a fissure where the passageway had shifted and cracked open, unmasking earth. They struggled to penetrate the layers of soil, silt, and cobbles at first, then dense clay. Downwards, always down. Kellen’s hands chafed under his gloves, his soft skin not accustomed to manual labor. He didn’t complain. Thrust, pry, lift, heave. His thoughts dissolved into a rhythm of labor until he heard Izmit’s shovel clink.
Izmit grunted and struck the bedrock they’d exposed. “We’ll try somewhere else.”
They worked their way along passageways, Izmit running his scanner along the walls, listening to its buzzes and clicks. Kellen followed, carrying the shovels and picks. They’d been at it for an hour when the scanner died.
Izmit inspected the device, turning it over. “Dead.”
“Batteries?” Kellen asked.
“Just replaced ’em.”
Izmit shrugged and tapped the smooth walls with a shovel, his ear to the wall. They went along like that until Kellen’s arms and back hurt. He wasn’t anywhere near as strong as Izmit. He stopped to rest, laying the bag of tools at his feet. Izmit looked at him and walked back to where Kellen sat against the wall.
“That’s enough, Kel,” he said. “We’ll find a new spot next time.”
It would be dawn soon, and activity would increase. It would be harder to move about undetected. Kellen nodded and got to his feet. They returned to the surface and parted at the gate.
Chapter 2 – Soldier
Prone in the mud, pinpricks of rain on her arms and neck, Sheemi thought of her brother and felt the dead space inside billow out like a shroud. It settled over her until she couldn’t feel her own body, except for one finger on the cold metal trigger. The scope fed her eye a magnified image of a Hexi marching down a path a few kilometers away, well within the reach of her K91. Her K-soft agreed with her target choice, all systems go, windage and rain accounted for, laser guide cal’d. She waited for her platoon leader to call it. From the other end of the line, Danbury gave the signal—three short clicks. It was on. Weapons fired along the line as Second Platoon engaged.
She held her breath and lightly squeezed the trigger. Her explosive round flew downrange, supersonic. She scoped the kill zone to confirm her shot. Her target had been reduced to a heap of jet-black limbs crowned by a splattered head and torso. You should have taken me instead.
She smiled and looked for another target, but her squad must have gotten them all. Only the designated alien survivor stood, looking stunned. It swayed, and she thought it might fall.
They stayed in position, providing cover as First Platoon swept the kill zone and recovered the prisoner. Danbury signaled to pull back—two long bleeps. Sheemi crawled through the brush as they withdrew. Minutes later, mud and fire leapt skyward at the position they’d just vacated. The Hexi artillery sent shrapnel whirring through the air. They waited for the initial salvo to end, then disappeared into the forest before enemy drones arrived.
Nestled among tree roots, Sheemi ate something tasteless while Nguyen dialed into their company’s encrypted channel. Trees danced as another round of air bursts tore apart the forest canopy, then the artillery fell silent.
“On your feet!” Danbury yelled.
They ran through the forest, covering the distance to the linkup point. First Platoon arrived on their heels, dragging the Hexi along with them. Third Platoon had the perimeter covered, their big guns focused toward the coast.
“We got ’em alive!” shouted one of First Platoon’s squad leaders.
That’s ironic, Sheemi thought. They usually celebrated the opposite, but this time it was different. Their orders had been to capture a prisoner intact.
The alien strained silently against its bonds, to no avail. It struggled, they beat it down. Repeat. Repeat.
Someone’s round had blown one of its legs half off. The ruptured flesh gave off gouts of blue blood until Freddy sprayed it with sealant. The alien slumped over.
“Is it dead?” someone asked.
“Everyone shut up and take cover,” Danbury said.
Sheemi joined the perimeter and stared downscope.
“You think we’ll get hit?” Kelly whispered.
Sheemi shrugged. Sometimes the Hexi wouldn’t reinforce when one of their units was ambushed, other times they came in droves.
They scanned the horizon until the fliers rumbled in and took them into their bellies. Safe. She strapped in and slept.
In her dream, Brin bled out in her arms. He was all shot up, yet he didn’t scream or cry or beg for life. “I love you,” he said. “Never give up.” She tried to say it back, to tell him that she loved him, that she wouldn’t, but her voice drained away.
#
Back at King City, Sheemi helped carry their prisoner to the lab. The thing was so large it took four of them to lift it, and it pulled against them. At least it hadn’t died yet. It must have been in quite a bit of pain, she guessed, but the Hexi didn’t make any noise. They never did. They were marsh creatures, at home in the mud and muck. The Army hadn’t yet been able to push them back, and the Hexi didn't seem anxious to advance. They kept to the coasts, within striking distance of the cities, building their floating compounds, round and oblong, like eggs rising up from the brackish water.
Sheemi had never seen a Hexi up close before. Its black skin felt rough, like sandpaper. She guessed it would be at least three meters tall standing. It wore armor with holes for its six limbs. More armor protected its four biggest legs, all the way down to the splayed, plate-sized feet. A breathing tank was strapped to its back, with tubes running down into holes under its head.
She studied the chisel-shaped head, bisected by a long, stabbing snout. The Hexi had evolved to hunt with it, perpetually looking down for prey to impale. It had four pebble-like eyes and two the size of saucers below the central ridge of its midnight face. The eyes were round and black and shiny.
They brought the Hexi inside the lab, a large building Sheemi had never had occasion to enter. Inside, it resembled a kitchen-office hybrid. Scientists in white coats clustered at computer work stations along the walls or at lab benches with sinks and glassware. Pressurized cylinders stood alongside complicated devices full of tubing and racks of little bottles and other stuff she didn’t recognize. Science had been one of her least favorite subjects.
The Hexi’s neck slumped onto the concrete floor as they strapped it down using anchors embedded in the concrete to cinch the bonds tight. She couldn’t tell if it was awake, if it looked at them or not. She resisted the urge to put a round in its head.
The other soldiers left, but something held Sheemi there. The scientists smeared some kind of jelly onto the elongated, oval pads at the end of the alien’s delicate forelimbs. Jelly. Trust scientists to do something weird and disgusting. She stuck around anyway, wanting to see what would happen, even though her muscles hurt like hell.
One of the scientists attached clamps to the Hexi’s pads. The clamps were wired to computers. The scientists wore headphones and talked softly among themselves. One of them murmured into a microphone, then all heads turned towards the alien. It lifted its head, seeming to look at them, though she couldn’t be sure. After more discussion, th
e one with the microphone spoke again. The Hexi’s limbs traced patterns in the air. A few of the scientists cheered.
Are they talking to it? But how? The Hexi wasn’t making a sound. Sheemi moved closer to a young man watching squiggly lines march across a computer display. Each time the Hexi moved its limbs, more lines appeared.
“Do you want to listen?” he asked, excitement in his voice.
She nodded, and he handed her his headphones.
A familiar sound filled her ears. It reminded her of the woods each spring when cicadas woke by the millions, singing their songs, swelling and fading, until she couldn’t hear herself think.
“They communicate using electricity,” he said.
The sounds faded to static. She looked over in time to see the alien collapse. Its head hit the floor, its limbs limp.
“It’s gone,” someone said.
Dead, she corrected them silently. It’s dead.
The first batch of scientists left as new ones arrived with tools and carefully opened up the massive body. She put a hand over her nose, but the smell seeped through—spoiled cheese and jet fuel. Underneath the black skin, they exposed glistening, coiled structures the size of her palm.
One of the scientists scooped the coils into a glass container. “Nerve clusters?”
“Could be parasites,” another said. “Or embryos. They seem distinct from the rest of it.”
“Let’s assume they’re organs, Gil,” said an older scientist. “Occam’s razor, remember?”
Sheemi had seen enough. She left them to their cutting. On her way out, she passed the young man who had given her the headphones.
She tapped him on the shoulder. “What was it saying?”
“We don’t know yet,” he said. “But we will soon.”
She shrugged. “I don’t really need to know.”
She just needed to kill them.
#
Back in her quarters, she peeled off her cammies and armor and went to clean up. Mud and blood blended as they trickled down her skin to the shower drain, brown and blue and red. Her back hurt more now, but she ignored it.
Kelly and Dunn laughed, kissing next to her.
“Hey,” said Kelly. “You’re wounded, Sheems.”
“Fuck,” Dunn said, turning her around.
Sheemi examined her shoulder in the mirror. Two holes not much larger than her pinky finger dripped blood onto the tile floor. No wonder she felt so bad.
“What’s up?” Danbury asked, coming into the showers. “Shit, go see the docs right now, Sheemi. You guys go with her. Make sure she gets there.”
“I’m fine,” she said.
Danbury gave the others his platoon leader look. They dressed and walked her to the hospital.
The doc didn’t make a fuss. Pulled out some metal, real small pieces, patched her up and gave her some tranqs. She was done in short order.
“Fit for duty?” she asked as the doc entered her visit into the logs.
He looked at her, gauging more than the holes he’d patched, she guessed.
“You’re fit, Sergeant Tanamal.”
She rejoined her unit in the mess. Most of Second Platoon was there, chowing up before starting the evening’s maintenance cycle. Back before the Hexi had begun to raid the settlements surrounding King City, they had bitched about the hours of weapons cleaning. No one complained anymore. They did the work with a reverence for the tools that helped keep death at bay.
Danbury called her over. “You’re off tomorrow, Sheemi.”
“No, I’m in,” she said. “With Xan down, you need me.”
“We can take Sweeney.”
“Shit,” she said. “Sweeney’s a nice guy.”
He didn’t have the fight in him. She knew it, and so did Danbury. Some citizens didn’t.
“You’re wounded. You need rest.”
“Hell I do. Doc said I was fit for duty. Says so in my record. You can check it.”
He looked down at his food tray.
“I want to be out there, Dan. Not sitting holed up here in King.”
“I know you do, Sheems.” He looked her over much like the doc had. “Okay, zero five hundred. Pad C.”
“See you then.” She smiled, grabbed a fritter, and left for the weapons bay.
#
The insects sang to her in the night. Waves of sound, millions of singers, vibrating, calling. Blue blood dribbled from Brin’s mouth. “Don’t give up,” he said. Then he died and died and died and—
Sheemi woke the next morning wanting to see more blood. Blue blood. She blinked. Zero four thirty. Time to gear up. See you soon, brother. But not until she did more killing. Kill until killed. She laughed and shut the door behind her. She stopped at the armory on her way out, then took an elevator to the surface.
Her father caught her as she stepped onto the airfield, appearing out of nowhere as he always did.
“Dad,” she said. Beyond him, she saw Danbury and the other soldiers assembled at the flier.
“I remember when it was Daddy,” he said.
He looked older than she remembered—his hair mostly gray, worry wrinkles above his nose, the same hard eyes, broad shoulders like Brin’s. She remembered riding on his shoulders at a picnic long ago. Mama was alive then.
“I’m a soldier, Dad.”
“I know.”
She nodded toward the flier, wanting him to get out whatever it was he’d come to say. “I’ve got a mission.”
They hadn’t talked much since Brin died. It hurt too much, and he’d wanted her to get out of the fight. That was a no-go. She had the fight, too much of the fight. Or it had her. Either way, there was no going back now.
“You do have a mission,” he said, “but not that one.”
She looked at him sharply, eye to eye. What had he done? Her father the colonel.
A message popped. She blinked it, and the text overlaid itself on her natural vision. Orders to report tomorrow. Zero nine hundred. The hospital. Coded by General Enge himself, commander of all North American forces.
The muscles in her neck pulled taut, her hands clenched on her K. She scrutinized her father with narrowed eyes. “What is this?”
He brushed a strand of hair from her forehead, kissed her there. He gave her a look she couldn’t place, a searching look. For a moment she felt like a child again. Was that what he saw? She looked down at her boots, unable to face whatever it was he couldn’t communicate. What had he done?
“Goodbye, sweetie,” he said and walked away.
He hadn’t called her that in years and years.
The flier rose up overhead and turned north, flooding the airfield with jet wash.
“What is this, Dad?” she yelled at his back.
The flier leapt toward the horizon, her voice lost in its roar.
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NOTE TO READERS
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Daniel P. Swenson lives in southern California with his wife, two children and two furry aliens with claws and whiskers. He does most of his writing on the train or in other odd, in-between moments. Comments and questions are welcome. He can be reached at [email protected].
Websites:
https://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=100010050854893
https://danielpswenson.wordpress.com/
OTHER WORKS BY DANIEL P. SWENSON
BOOKS:
The Farthest City
Fate Multiplied (collected stories)
SELECTED SHORT STORIES:
Overwrite My Love
Thieves on the Long Dark Road
Belly of the Universe
Space Tagger (published in Neo-Opsis issue 25)
Lonely, Lonely (originally published in Lore vol. 2, no. 1)
Just a Boy
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Thieves on the Long Dark Road Page 2