by Scott Rhine
“Don’t worry.” Richards said, trying to break the tension. “This ship isn’t important because it is better than any other. It is important because it is theirs. Now comes the real mission. We are going to engage the enemy fleet.” Silence greeted him.
“Are you kidding” Serena finally said. Franklin answered her.
“No, it makes sense. Get them to believe they are being betrayed and they might take out our enemy for us. At the least they might decide to stay out of the conflict. The only problem being…” He paused. “that we will be blown out of the sky.”
“Is he right, Rich?” Serena asked.
“Yes and no. We’re going to engage a single vessel that has broken off from the main fleet. With luck we will be able to draw it toward one of the enemy cities and maneuver so that it engages with their defense network. Then we retreat and let them fight it out.”
“Odds of success?”
“Projections give us a 70% chance of successfully engaging the ship without betraying our origins.”
“Odds of surviving?”
“One in fifty.”
“A 2% chance of surviving and you don’t call that a suicide mission?”
“No I do not. We have our orders. If you don’t like them I suggest you take it up with command… after we return.” The squad eyed each other but no one spoke. “We’ll be in range in a few hours.” Rich left.
Chapter 6
Zane woke feeling like a giant hand was crushing his skull. The pain was more than he could bear and he moaned despite himself. He heard a man’s voice speaking nearby, deep and resonant.
“He’s conscious. There is no way he should be conscious right now. Pulan gave him enough tranquilizer to put down a man three times his size. He must be in agony.”
“Does it matter?” A woman’s voice replied. “He tried to blow up the Moving Finger, tried to kill all three of us.” Zane heard another noise, like a throat clearing but at the same time quite unlike it. “Or seventeen of us, whatever. We should space them and get back to the Fleet.”
“I will not kill an unconscious, unarmed man.”
“You had no problem shooting him. Just finish the job.”
“You’ve changed Bella. The Fleet has changed you.” The voice somehow held accusation and regret together. “What about you? Do you have an opinion?” The man was answered by a voice that sounded muffled.
“We do not. He lives or he dies. Neither choice seems to impact the functionality of our collective.”
“Well I don’t want to hear him moaning anymore so unless someone has a problem I’m going to knock him out again.” Zane heard footsteps and felt a sting in his arm. In moments darkness claimed him.
The voices were gone when he awakened, as was the pain. Zane tried to move and found himself bound fast to a bed. He debated trying to break the straps and decided to wait. He was in enemy hands but at least one of them was inclined to keep him alive. Trying to break out now might change that equation.
His squad had failed. Zane knew it wasn’t his fault but he still felt responsible. Their attack had evaporated in the face of the ship’s defensive weapons. The small craft had not even fired back at them at first, taking their time to fire precise shots at their weapons and engines.
Once the enemy had disabled the ship, Zane and the rest of his crew had taken positions around the entrance, determined not to go down without a fight. Rich died in the initial blast, the hatch smashing him into the far wall as they blew it in. There was a long pause then and then a woman had appeared in the doorway. She was as large as Jeffrey had been but moved like lightning. She rushed forward and slammed her massive arm into Zane, her bulk throwing him to one side. The impact didn’t slow her down and she moved out of his line of view. He heard a sickening crunch though. Zane tried to rise and felt a blast of an energy weapon hit him from the side. His eyes swam and though he fought to remain conscious he failed.
The CO was dead, Zane was certain. He was pretty sure at least some of the rest of the team was dead as well, probably all of them. Their identities had been compromised so the mission was a failure. At this point Zane’s main concern was why he was still alive. He assumed they would torture him for information.
He opened his eyes and looked around. The room was empty except for a small creature sitting in the corner. The thing was amorphous and its skin seemed rough but undifferentiated. It noticed his movement though and it reared back, appearing to stretch like taffy. Zane thought it would strike but it slammed itself against a bulkhead, causing a low tremor. It did this several more times before sliding toward the doorway.
In short order a man walked into the doorway. He had dark skin like the CO but his hair was silver and clearly artificial. Zane felt an instinctive respect for the man, so like Richards had been. He wore no uniform but at his side was a firearm of some kind.
“You’re awake. Good. I have a few questions for you.” The man said, his voice even and calm.
“I’ll tell you nothing.” Zane replied.
“I don’t doubt that. You probably don’t know anything worth telling me anyway, but I’m going to ask regardless. Do you have a name?”
“Zane.”
“There we go, Zane. You’ve already told me something I didn’t know. I’m Omar, It’s nice to meet you.” Zane felt chagrin. He had little experience with speaking and his programmers had not thought it a necessary skill. “I’ve read a few files about your side in this war that we were able to liberate from our new ally’s mainframe. Zane means you’re a Z class soldier, some kind of manufactured superman. Is that right?” Zane said nothing.
“No matter. What concerns me is that you aren’t human.”
“I’m human.” Zane replied indignantly. The man smiled softly and shook his head.
“No, you really aren’t. You’re close, well closer than some other beings I’ve met over the years. You’re definitely closer to human than my pal Pulan over there.” The creature wriggled at the sound of its name but did not move from its perch in the corner of the room. “The people who made you were human and they made you in their image. You though, you’re a construct, a machine made to kill other machines.”
“I am human. I bleed. I die.”
“True, all of that is true. I’ve seen you bleed. I’ve seen several of the others in your team fight and die for each other. That’s why I’m fascinated by you. A people with the technology to make you could have done so much more. They could have made you with better parts, with more durability. They didn’t though. Was it because they were afraid of you? Afraid that their creations would rise up and destroy them?”
“We fight for our creators so that they do not have to. We protect them from the enemy that seeks to do them harm.”
“Ah, yes. The Enemy.” The man smiled again. “That’s what they call you as well… the Enemy. Have you ever met one of them?”
“I have killed them in combat.”
“I don’t doubt that. You’ve likely killed a lot of them. Did you feel anything when you killed them? Pride? Pity?”
“I did my duty.”
“Duty. You did what you were created to do, right? One cannot fault a soldier for being a soldier. One cannot blame a killer for killing. What if I told you that the people you were killing were your creators? Would you feel something then?” Zane blanched at the thought for a moment. Then a rising anger flushed his face. He strained at his bonds and screamed at his captor.
“That’s not true! They are the enemy. You are trying to confuse me.”
“You’re right of course. They aren’t your creators. They are machines just like you. Your creators would never be caught dead on a battlefield. No, your creators are hidden away somewhere safe, likely playing tiddlywinks while you and your brothers die for their cause.
“That’s what gets me the most. You’ll die for your masters and the other side will die for their masters. We know that to be true because your entire system is littered with the remains of that co
nflict. There is barely a rock out there that doesn’t bear scorch marks, nary a point I could place my sensors that would not have a body floating in the void of space. My question to you is, what is the point of it all? Why do you fight?”
Zane waited for the man to continue but he did not. Instead he pulled himself to the other side of the room and took a bottle of liquid out of a cabinet. The man took a long swallow and stared at Zane.
Zane didn’t know what to say to the man, whose eyes contained something he did not recognize. He felt trapped by them, more than the bonds which held him to the table. There was an emotion there, behind those eyes, that reminded him of Betty’s face when he told her of Jeff’s death. It made no sense to Zane but it forced him to look away.
“What do you expect me to say?” Zane said at last from behind clenched teeth, a pleading in his voice that he had not intended. He wished his CO were here to answer this man’s questions. This was not the combat he was designed for. There was a long pause before the man spoke again.
“I expect nothing. I’m going to go now. If you try to escape, this little guy” he motioned to the amorphous creature by the door. “will warn me before you get one arm free. If you want to talk, just tell him and he’ll let me know. It’s been real interesting meeting you, Zane.”
The man, Omar, left Zane alone with his thoughts. Zane almost wished he had not. His mind was awash with conflicting thoughts. His imprinting left him with no doubt about his place in the world. He was there to fight for the great cause. This certainty had kept him from questioning suicidal orders from his CO. It had kept him from considering Franklin’s theory that their masters were long dead. It had been an armor which he had long thought was impenetrable. Why then, Zane thought to himself, did he now feel a sliver of doubt? Why did the pity in Omar’s eyes trouble him so much?
Zane was not aware of the passage of time. He had no idea how long he had been a prisoner but he suspected it had been several days. Several times he saw a second creature like the first come bounding in and relieve the other of its guard duty. Once he could have sworn he saw one the size of a man hovering over him, its features only vaguely human and shifting constantly. His training kept him from calling out in fear and he felt the telltale sting of a needle. When he awoke again the creature was gone, only the silent sentinel in the corner watching him with its eyeless intensity.
The time wore on him. Left alone with his thoughts he was able to relive his short life moment by moment. At first he only reviewed the combat, seeking to improve and correct for actions that cost lives or delayed completion of the mission. Eventually he ran out of these and his mind, blindly seeking for something to occupy it, began to examine the faces he had known. First his kin, the thousands of men just like himself. He recalled some he had known for more than a day, those with memorable scars. He had not spoken to them but he could recall the Z class with one ear, the other missing a finger. They had been good soldiers.
Running out of those, he tried to recall the faces of his team, Franklin, Betty, Serena and Jeff. Jeff’s face was hard to recall as it was always conjoined with the image of his head exploding. Zane realized that Jeff was the first person with a name he had seen killed. It bothered him more than it should. He had barely known the man.
Then he started to remember other faces, the men and women on the battlefields who opposed him. He could recall only three or four different types, repeating patterns of bodies. Their faces looked so human in retrospect, so similar to the others he had known. It seemed odd to him that he had not noticed at the time. They had been the enemy, faceless, only a target whose position and movement needed to be analyzed.
Finally when he had run out of faces he recalled his captor. The man did not have the look of a soldier. He was as large as Zane but his features were softer, informed by experiences Zane could only guess at. His skin reminded Zane of his last CO, Richards. Where there had been cold certainty in the officer’s eyes though, there was something else in Omar’s orbs. They seemed deeper somehow, in a way that Zane kept circling but could not grasp.
In the end his mind would give up on that question and return to the present. Every feature of the room seemed burned into his retinas, every detail examined for its strategic value. He ran through alternatives for escape, finding points where lighting would increase his ability to target while reducing his opponents. Even this could only occupy him for a time. Zane felt mind slipping and knew that if he was a captive for much longer it might collapse entirely.
After his thoughts had run through all of these options a hundred times he heard voices entering the room. He opened his eyes, profoundly relieved that something, anything was happening. Omar floated into the room, followed by the large woman he had seen only as a blur that killed his comrades. They anchored themselves as they spoke, their bodies hung at odd angles to each other like beings long used to a lack of gravity.
“I still think it’s a bad idea Omar.” The woman said.
“I know Bella, you would have me kill this unarmed man and dump his body in space.”
“It’s not a man Omar. You’ve read the reports. It’s a killing machine. It doesn’t have a soul.”
“Don’t be too sure about that.” Omar replied. “Zane, we have to talk.”
“I have nothing to say to you.” The words sounded false to Zane even as he spoke them. Inside he was elated to have anything to break up the tedium.
“Then just listen. We’ve identified the location where your orders come from. We are headed there now.”
“You have decided to aid the enemy then, to end the war?” Zane felt despair crush down on him like a weight.
“You don’t understand. Where we are going is where all of the orders come from. Commands for both sides in this insane conflict originate from a single colony ship orbiting the fourth planet in the system.”
“That’s impossible.”
“It may be difficult to believe but it is the truth. The communications systems in the Fleet are far more advanced than your, as is our decryption. We have traced back the orders being given both sides to this single ship. As the closest Fleet ship, we have been granted the pleasure of boarding and gaining control of this ship for the Fleet.”
“What are you going to do?”
“Haven’t decided yet. I was hoping to get your assistance in making that decision.”
“Why would I help you?”
“I’ve got a couple of reasons. If I am unable to resolve the situation peacefully the rest of the Fleet is going to blow that ship out of the sky. Neither side will get any more orders then. Our captains will use the ensuing collapse in both power structures to gather what we need and leave the system. That’s the first reason you should help.
“Second, if you assist us, we will grant you your freedom, you and the rest of your team will be free to return to your endless fighting if that is what you choose.” Zane stared at the man for a long moment.
“What do you mean, the rest of my team?”
“We captured two others when we boarded your ship. One keeps threatening our lives and the other keeps trying to engage Pulan in an attempt to get him to release his restraints. Our intelligence indicates they serve subordinate positions in your squad and will respond favorably to orders from a Z class soldier. If you agree to work with us to resolve the situation, we believe you can get them to cooperate as well.”
Zane considered his options. It was almost impossible to believe he could meet the creators. If what Omar was saying was true then once on the ship he might be able to end the war by killing the enemy at its heart. Then he and the others could be free to live out their lives. It was a gamble but he knew the alternative was death so there was little to risk.
“What do you need?”
“We need quick and dirty access to the systems onboard the station. We don’t have a computer expert and it will take too much time to go back to the main fleet to get one. They just won’t wait that long. I was barely able to convince
them that this plan could work at all. Once inside the station, we need a way to force their hands, convince them to give up the fight and work with us.”
“The first my squad can do, if the survivors are who I think they are. I don’t know how you expect me to force their hands though. They are the creators.”
“I think your presence there might give us an edge. Call it intuition.”
“And this intuition will make you trust us?”
“Hell no.” The woman replied, speaking to Zane for the first time. “We’ll trust the bombs we have implanted at the top of your spine. One false move and I’ll launch your head into orbit.”
“Easy, Bella” Omar held up a hand to silence his crewman. “Zane, we don’t want to hurt you. You are a victim of circumstance. I don’t hold a soldier accountable for the orders he follows. I hold the one who gives those orders responsible. I want to understand why so much of this system’s resources have been dedicated to war on such a scale. It’s unlike anything I’ve seen before.” Zane tried to take a moment to consider his options but they were pretty much nonexistent. He had to play along if he anted any chance of getting his team out alive.
“Ok, let’s do it.”
The implant was a soft nodule at the back of his neck. The creature that implanted it warned him that it was sensitive to impacts and that attempting to remove it in normal atmosphere would result in detonation. Nevertheless, Zane couldn’t help but rub it as he was released from his restraints. He was given clothing, not his uniform but something similar. Then he was led down a short hall to the room where his compatriots were being held.
“Zane, is that you?” Serena’s voice seemed softer, broken. “Thought it was just the two of us left. Hey Franklin, wake up! Zane’s here.”
“’mpossible.” Mumbled the short man. “Zane’s dead.”
“Not as dead as you might think.” The dwarf turned his head, his movements hindered by his restraints.