“This is where the leader stood. Or squatted, rather.” Devon stood a dozen paces away, studying a raised platform covered in a mass of melted and re-solidified plastic. He walked over to the nearby wall. Each step was a slow leap in the moon’s ultra-low gravity. “Their translator was here.”
Adria glared. The death and the darkness had fouled her mood, and his history lesson wasn’t helping. “Save it. I went to school, I know how it all went down.”
Devon didn’t seem to hear. He was standing at the base of a wheeled vehicle. A metal frame held rows of platforms stacked at least ten meters high. The metal was bent and blackened, the wheels melted and deformed.
“This was one of their material transports. They built it out of salvage from their spaceship. Must’ve been something else, leaving their home behind and packing their civilization’s survivors into that escape pod. Flying in the darkness, for all those years.”
Devon walked over to a smooth portion of the wall, where shadows from their headlamps twisted and writhed.
“Their shields went up over here, on the way out of the lower chamber. A thing of beauty, like a big blue waterfall.”
“There was no lower chamber,” Adria said. She pointed across the room. “And they found the shield residue over there.”
Devon followed her finger, then looked back. “I’m pretty sure—”
“They’ve got 3D models of all this stuff, everyone studies it in school. The shields went up over there, after you detonated the bombs.”
Devon put a hand to his head. He dropped to one knee, and his gaze was vacant.
Adria took a step forward, then stopped herself.
Devon shook his head and regained his footing. He turned again to the smooth wall. “No, I’m sure it was over here.”
She grabbed the slack end of her rope and began strapping herself in. “I’m leaving.”
Devon crouched down and plunged his hand into a methane pool. He groped around.
“What are you doing—”
The liquid shifted around Devon’s hand. A deep grinding sound filled the chamber. The segment of wall behind Devon slid back, revealing a smooth tunnel. Scorch-marks lined the walls. A rusty haze obscured shapes hunched in the distance.
Adria’s jaw hung slack. “What the—”
Devon walked into the darkness, leaving Adria alone in the outer chamber.
Adria stared after him. This cave network had been scanned, mapped, and searched for years. Was there some kind of Lanaid technology that had survived the fires, keeping this place hidden all that time?
She unclipped her rope and headed after Devon. The tunnel sloped downward before opening into another, smaller chamber.
Devon stood in the center of a scene of untouched carnage. Charred and glistening corpses littered the cavern. Most were Lanaids: mounds of greenish-brown flesh, mottled with a slick mucous. A few were humans, their bodies twisted and deformed, burnt faces locked in eternal screams. All were perfectly preserved in Titan’s frigid climate.
Adria fought off a wave of nausea.
Devon picked his way through the bodies. “They brought us down here after the introductions.” His voice was softer and more distant. He seemed to be talking only to himself. “We had been trained to kill, but the Lanaids seemed so… peaceful. They crouched near the ground, big eyes watching us, and they seemed…happy to see us.”
Devon looked toward the far end of the cavern. “The power cells were over there, our mission objective. But everything was so strange. Surely there had been a mistake, some kind of a miscommunication in the chain of command. The Lanaids just wanted to talk. Commander Tashner didn’t want to pull the trigger—none of us did. And then… Jerome gave the order.”
Adria’s heart pounded against her ribcage.
Devon looked as if he were in a trance. “I still remember how his voice sounded, choppy and delayed coming from the orbital ship. ’You have your orders, team. Destroy the Lanaids or we will do it for you.’ Tashner pushed back. He was a good man. If he…things would be different now if he had survived instead of me.”
“Tashner said: ’Sir, I cannot order my men to execute innocents.’ So Jerome remote-detonated the first bomb. The bloody thing was still strapped to Tashner’s back. Took out five of our own, probably three dozen of the aliens. I’m pretty sure the Lanaids thought it was an accident at first. They put up their shields to protect the rest of us, for Christ’s sake.”
Devon paused over the body of a fallen soldier, blackened arm extended, fingers bent as if clawing at the rock. “Tommy Long. Just a kid. Three years a comms officer, and then…”
Devon stumbled backward a step. He brought a hand to his head.
Adria stepped closer. “Devon—”
Devon steadied himself. “I’m ok.”
Before Adria could protest, he turned and walked over to one of the Lanaids. “This one tried to tell us something…”
Adria walked up to the body of Tommy Long. Devon’s voice droned on in the background. The corpse was in a grisly state. He must have fallen face-first—portions of the front of his uniform were still intact, shielded from the explosions and the fire. Adria reached down, snagged his dog tags with a trembling hand.
The movement caused the body to shift. Metal reflected off of the light from her headlamp. A thin cable ran from the remains of the man’s comms gear to a puck-shaped device on the front of his belt. It looked like an outdated version of the recorders her platoon used. Adria tapped the power button. The display, scratched but intact, lit up.
Adria thumbed the controls. An audio recording crackled to life. She jumped at the sound of her adoptive father’s voice. Captain Jerome DeRosa.
“…have been issued a direct order. Sandoval, you are now acting commander of this squad. Retrieve the power cells and exterminate the Lanaids, or we will detonate the remaining bombs ourselves…”
A sharp hiss overtook the audio, and when it dissipated another voice had replaced Jerome’s. It was Devon, his voice trembling through the interference. “Alright soldiers, you heard the man. We’ve been left with no choice. We’re not leaving here until every last alien has burned. Kill them all.”
A burst of static ended the recording. The chamber fell silent. Adria wrung her hands to keep them from shaking. Jerome, the man that had raised her, trained her, culled her for the Brigade. Had she been his repentance project, raised to absolve him of these heinous crimes?
She looked up. Devon watched her from a few paces away.
“The oxygen torches were custom-built for Titan’s methane-rich atmosphere.” His voice was slow and soft. “The Lanaids were not prepared. We… killed them all. It was a massacre. I can still hear their wet cries over the rush of the fire and the pounding explosions. We took the power cells, torched the entire cave system, and ran for the shuttles. The entire colony…destroyed.”
By the time he ended, Devon’s voice was barely a whisper. Tears streaked his face beneath his mask. Adria found herself standing before him, arms wrapped around him in an awkward embrace. His body trembled. She stood, surrounded by reminders of this man’s wretched life, and felt his own shame burning inside of her like the fires that ripped through those very caves so many years ago.
Her lip quivered. “I’m sorry.”
Devon rested a hand on her shoulder. “You know, I’m not sure why I closed this place off on the way out. Didn’t even remember doing it, to be honest. Guess I’m glad I did.” He glanced around. “Can I have a moment down here alone, before we leave?”
“Sure. I’ll be in the shuttle.”
She walked back to the main chamber in silence. This was a loathsome place, the walls charred with humanity’s greed and ambition. Along with the Lanaids, thirty men and women had been punished for humanity’s crimes. Some with their lives, others with the shame of living.
She clipped into the rope and engaged the auto-ascender. The cave disappeared from view as she ascended toward the surface. A bright light swept ac
ross the lip of the cave entrance, above Adria’s head. She slammed the ascender to a halt. A Coalition patrol ship cruised overhead, descending toward the landing pad.
Dammit, there weren’t supposed to be patrols. The Lanaid technology must have triggered their sensors. With their shuttle parked in plain view on the surface, they were caught for sure.
She flipped the device to rappel mode and slid to the base of the cavern. Unclipping herself, she jogged to the far wall.
The tunnel was gone, once again concealed by the smooth rock wall. Devon lay propped against the base of the wall. His gaze was vacant, his face downturned.
The air slowly escaped from Adria’s lips. She sat down next to Devon’s body and took his lifeless hand in her own. Tears fell from her eyes, and it felt good. In her other hand, she clutched Tommy Long’s recorder. She waited, hand in hand with her father, for the police to arrive.
THE NEIGHBORHOOD ANGEL
by Charles Ebert
We all hear voices inside our heads. Me, it’s mostly my own, figuring out the details of my day. “Is this guy disrespecting me?” or “How much can I squeeze out of this joint?” Sometimes I hear my mom’s voice, “Vincent, you should move the couch and vacuum under there.” Given my profession, I suppose the devil speaks to me, and I listen more than I should. I still hear my grandmother warning me about him, the blood draining from her knuckles as she worked that rosary.
But there are other voices that I can’t account for, ones I guess most people can’t hear. More than once in the past ten years since I dropped out of high school and went to work for Mr. Colletto, I was leaning on someone and heard a whisper that I should stop. When Joey the Stick gave up his drug business and offered to sell it to me, it seemed like the smart move at the time. Selling junk was the route to money and power. I turned it down though; something told me I didn’t want to get involved with that stuff. That turned out to be lucky. The cops cracked down on the dope and Mr. Colletto let them. The sucker who took the Stick’s gig is still in the pen.
It was like some angel was looking out for me.
Then one day it got real confusing because it wasn’t just voices anymore. I woke up about noon and dragged my six foot three inch frame out of bed, showered, shaved and dressed. I made sure my gun was where it usually rested in the inside pocket of my suit coat where it wouldn’t make too much of a bulge. A couple of extra magazines went into another pocket. A Russian crew over in the bottoms was making moves on our territory so we all had to be sharp. It was a hot day and I considered just going out in shirtsleeves and stuffing the rod into my pants. But whenever I did that I always forgot it was there when I sat down.
Besides I liked to look sharp on collection day.
The second I stepped out of the lobby of my building, a memory hit me. And when I say it “hit me,” that’s underplaying it. The damn thing knocked me back into high school.
I was standing in an alley off Barbarossa, a block from the school. My best friend Tommy Vitelli was there. He had an aluminum baseball bat and was whacking the brick wall of the building I was leaning on like he was Reggie Jackson or something.
“Watch it, Tommy!” I said, shielding my eyes from the chips of brick flying off the wall. There was no apology of course but he stopped his assault on the building. His black wavy hair framed brown eyes that bored into you like a drill press. People were scared of Tommy’s eyes. I knew I could push him more than most since he trusted me. There were limits even I couldn’t go past though.
“You comin’ or what?” he said.
“No, I ain’t coming. What’s the point of beating up Kevin Peters? It ain’t gonna get you no reputation.”
Tommy spun and poked the bat toward my face. “I ain’t gonna beat him up.”
I pushed off the wall. “Don’t be a dope, Tommy.”
“He ratted me out.” Tommy whacked the head of the bat into his hand.
“So what? You got a little detention. It ain’t worth this.”
“It’s the principle.”
“Bull,” I said. “I know what you’re trying to do and it ain’t gonna work.”
He paced away from me and started whacking the opposite building.
“We’re sixteen, Tommy. We got no privileges. You do this and Mr. Colletto ain’t gonna cover it up. He’ll let the cops arrest you and try you as an adult and he’ll let you rot in jail for the rest of your life.”
Tommy looked at me, his eyes so intense I swear I saw smoke coming off of them.
“You comin’?” He shouted.
“No,” I shouted back.
And he stormed out of the alley.
When the memory ended, I was in the eight hundred block of Danvers, just below Ninth. That was a third of the way through my circuit. Panicked, I patted my coat pocket where I kept the collection money. There was a stack of envelopes in there. Ducking into a doorway, I took them out and counted them. It was the right amount. Somehow, I’d been making my collections while my mind was back in high school.
How the hell does that happen? I guessed I’d been doing this a long time. My “clients” generally paid on time and they never gave me any trouble. So maybe it had come down to a routine that I could do without thinking. But the vivid nature of the memories bugged me. It was like I was there.
I went on to the next place, a burger joint run by Argentinian immigrants, who obviously had a connection back in their home country. They always had great beef. I took their envelope and ordered a burger and fries. I paid up front and left a tip from my personal money—always kept scrupulously separate from the collection money—that amounted to half the total in their envelope.
Hey, it makes sense in my world.
As I was sitting at their counter the next one walloped me. It was the morning after the first memory and I was outside the school. I saw Tommy wandering on the sidewalk next to the concrete steps of the building. He was wearing the same clothes.
“So how did it go with Kevin?” I figured I’d have heard about it if Tommy had gone ahead with his intentions.
“Uh, uh,” said Tommy. Then I looked at him. His eyes were red and unfocused. A little drool hung out of the side of his mouth.
“What the…Tommy, what’s the matter?” No response.
Tommy drank a little but he didn’t do drugs. He always said he didn’t want to lose his edge, so I didn’t think that was it. But the red in his eyes scared me. It wasn’t natural. I grabbed his shoulders and shook him a little.
“Tommy, you with me?”
“Uh, uh.”
I hesitated. Taking him into the school nurse would have been ratting him out. She wouldn’t have believed he didn’t do drugs. And that would have affected my plans for the future. Mr. Colletto didn’t like rats. I couldn’t leave him on the street, though.
I’d decided to walk him over to the hospital and leave him in the emergency room when the school nurse burst out of the entrance, flanked by a couple of nuns. She ran up to Tommy, pushing me out of the way. One of the nuns, Sister Maria, a battleship of a woman, grabbed me by the upper arm and pulled me away.
“What did you do to him Vincent?” she said.
“I didn’t do nothing. I just found him.”
“I know what kind of boy you are. You…”
“Sister Maria,” said the nurse. “Never mind him. We have to get this boy into my office and call an ambulance.”
Sister Maria glared at me but let go of arm. “It’s after nine o’clock. You’re late for class.” Then she spun around and helped the nurse guide Tommy up the stairs.
I followed and it was only then that I noticed Kevin Peters standing by the door. He was staring at Tommy, chewing his lip.
“We’re gonna talk later,” I said softly as I passed him.
“Get some lasagna tonight,” he said.
And suddenly I was back on Danvers again, coming up on Fifteenth Street. That was almost at the end of my route. I counted my envelopes again and the total was right. Now I was really fr
eaked out. Not only because the memory seemed real, but because unlike the first memory, it didn’t jibe with what happened. Kevin never told me to get lasagna. Why would he do that? Plus, despite all my intentions, I never did talk with him that day. In fact, I doubted that I’d said ten words to him since high school.
I continued my route. Everybody paid and nobody gave me lip. Some of them considered our “protection” to be part of their overhead and they treated me like any other business partner. Days like that usually put me in a good mood, but not today.
I left the Vesuvius Market on the corner of Twentieth and Danvers, my last stop. Looking up, I saw Tommy across the street, sitting in his usual spot. The doctors back then said he must have had some kind of aneurism, but they didn’t really know.
I crossed Danvers and walked up to Tommy. “How you doin’ Tommy?”
“Uh… uh.”
“What the hell happened to you, man?” That, of course, was more to myself than to Tommy and it seemed the answer was close, hanging just out of my reach.
“Uh… uh.”
I got my wallet from my back pocket and slid two twenties out of it. I put them into his breast pocket.
“Why don’t you stay in the Squire tonight, Tommy? And get something to eat.” Then I gave his shoulder a squeeze and walked away, knowing he’d wander by the Squire later and Eddie, the clerk there, would find the money and take care of him. We had an arrangement.
Something told me to look up and I saw a figure down the street, staring at me. I recognized him. He was one of the Russians, a short skinny guy with a multi-colored ski cap over long red hair. He looked surprised that I’d made him and walked away from me. I watched to make sure that when he turned the corner he was heading back toward Brook Avenue, which marked the boundary of the Russians’ territory.
* * *
“You eat?” said Jerry my Lieutenant, as he watched old Vito counting out my cut of the collection money. We were in the back room of Ragusa’s.
“Nah, but I’m in the mood for lasagna, so I think I’ll go to Carmine’s.” I said.
Kzine Issue 16 Page 2