by Dan Decker
I moved carefully from the suit. I took a step and nearly fell over.
“That first step after you get out is always a doozy, which is strange, because when you first get inside you feel like you’re still in your own skin. It takes your body time to adjust to not wearing the suit, kind of like how it might feel after you went rollerblading or skiing back on earth. Give it a few minutes and everything will get back to normal.”
22
I took my seat in the copilot’s chair right next to Roth, nervous about going towards the lurkers instead of away from them.
Anything is better than training with Jeffords, I just wish it didn’t mean I was heading into the fire.
“How far out is Camp Myers?” I asked.
“About five hundred miles.”
“We could go that far in our suits?”
“Yep. They’re basically mini spaceships. We would need to refuel. If Camp Myers is still there, that won’t be a problem, but if it’s not…” She left the thought unfinished.
“The suits run on fuel?”
“The propulsion system does, not the antigravity. That always works as long as there’s juice.” She flipped a switch. “Now be quiet, I have not flown a transport in years.”
I shut up and tried to make sense of the dashboard in front of me. I had been in the cockpit of an airplane back on earth—never to fly it myself, but just with a friend who had a pilot’s license—and this looked simpler than that. Roth and I both had dashboards in front of us that were identical. There were switches, levers, and buttons, but the main part of the console was taken up by a large touchscreen.
I watched as Roth used hers as easily as I might have a laptop computer back on earth, flipping so fast through various screens that I had no comprehension of what she was doing.
Roth touched her ear and was suddenly talking again in that silent, invisible bubble.
The conversation lasted for several minutes before she touched her ear again and turned to me. “The battle at Camp Myers has gone poorly. We must hurry if we are going to accomplish our mission.”
“And what exactly was that?”
“It’s classified. Don’t ask again.” She looked at me. “Seriously, don’t.”
I sighed and settled down in my seat as she engaged the ship’s engines. We gently lifted into the air with her subtle touch. My experience with the suit had been exhilarating, but I preferred this method of travel. Roth kept low to the ground and headed in the same northwest direction I had seen the lurkers go.
A few minutes later, I recognized the mountain that Jeffords took us to climb and was glad that I was in a ship heading away from this place, even if it meant we were heading towards a battle with a classified mission.
Using gear that I’ve only trained on for a few minutes.
We made good time as the ground sped by underneath us. The consul touchscreen in front of me showed the same information as Roth’s, and if my read of it was correct, we were going over six hundred kilometers an hour.
I was surprised at how easily Roth was able to navigate, considering how close we flew to the ground.
“The ship has shields,” she said as if reading my mind when we got a little close to a hill, “not enough for us to withstand heavy fire, but enough that we can make haste today without being worried too much about stuff on the ground.”
I cleared my throat and refused to make eye contact as I peeled my white-knuckled hands off the armrests and hoped that Roth had not noticed. I had never been exactly comfortable on airplanes back on earth and this was a more intense experience than that. The ground sped by at an alarming rate, and Roth was so casual about the way she flew, that I was concerned we might run into a mountain before she knew what she was doing.
“I don’t see much vegetation here,” I said to get my mind off of things, “is that true of the whole planet?”
“We are in a desert. There is vegetation, it’s just in unlikely places.”
“Like down a ravine?”
“Exactly. There are gigantic rain forests on this planet, perhaps one day you might return and see them because they are worth the trip, it makes the redwoods look like something children made. The trees are thousands of feet tall and hundreds of feet in diameter. Our scientists believe them to be tens of thousands of years old.”
I wanted to know more, but I had another important question on my mind.
“Are the grenlings sentient?”
“Who knows? I have wondered myself. When we originally took control of this planet, we believed it to be uninhabited and mostly barren. The rain forests are the exception rather than the rule, most of this planet is covered with desert. There are a few seas, but they are small. So are the lakes, they all look like ponds next to the Great Lakes. There is nothing even approaching a network of oceans. The grenlings live in ravines and usually come out at night. It wasn’t until after we had already taken up residence that we realized they were here.”
“They wear armor.”
“That is a mystery nobody has solved. We have never seen them make it—nobody’s ever really payed much attention to them—but it would appear that they are more intelligent than we give them credit for.”
“How many are there?”
“I have no idea.”
“Are there any other sentient races here?”
“Not that we’ve found.”
I settled back and avoided asking any more questions because we were heading towards a mountain range, I wanted to make sure she was focused on navigating through it.
When we were a mile out and she still had not turned to the left or right, I knew she intended to go through.
She looked over at me. “Buckle up.”
After I put on the seatbelt, I also grabbed onto the sides of the chair.
The mountains came quick and soon loomed in front of us, and for the first time I saw vegetation out in the open rather than just down the ravine.
At first it looked like the lower part of the mountains were covered with trees similar to what I might find back on earth, but as we got closer, I recognized they were different. We moved too fast for me to discern the particular details, but the structure appeared intricate.
“Jeffords told me that summer is much hotter, is that true?” I asked, forgetting my resolve to not ask questions while she dealt with the mountain range.
“Yeah, enough questions. Hold on, this is gonna get dicey, time to put it on autopilot.”
I nearly swallowed my tongue and tried not to think about what we were doing as we headed straight into the mountain range without slowing in the slightest.
Mountains zoomed by on either side. Roth grabbed her armrests, letting the ship’s autopilot do all the hard work.
I was glad to know we weren’t relying on her reflexes, but I wasn’t sure that I had much more confidence in the ship’s computer. Even though they had remarkable technology, I had not yet seen the ship’s navigational capabilities and I was getting a first-hand look at what they could do while my life was on the line.
We zoomed by a rockface that looked like it was no more than a foot away. The slightest error would send us careening to our deaths. The ship continued at the same speed as if it was nothing.
It adjusted, moving closer to the rockface.
Roth’s brow furrowed.
“What are you concentrating on?” I asked.
“Quiet. I’m trying to keep my stomach from upheaving.”
I was surprised by her blunt honesty, especially since she had gone to such a great effort to cultivate an image that was at odds with showing weakness. She looked just as pale as I felt.
I shook my head and kept my eyes forward, hoping we would soon be through the mountain range so we could relax.
Relax?
We’re headed into battle.
The ship shifted every moment, turning slightly to the right or the left, at one point, we had a steep climb. I could have sworn that we flew up a cliff with just inches to spare
between us and the rockface and then just like a roller coaster that hit the top of an arch, we crested and went back down the other side.
“We normally don’t use it like this!” Roth’s voice was high-pitched, and while I would not have called it a scream, it was something close.
I shook my head and felt bile rising in the back of my throat, which I somehow managed to swallow. I closed my eyes for a moment of respite before opening them again in time to see us hurtling towards another cliff, this one taller than the last one we had gone over like a roller coaster. At the last moment, we banked hard to the right, and I could’ve sworn I felt the bottom of the shuttle dragging on the mountain. I thought of the shields Roth had mentioned and shook my head, hoping we’d somehow make it out of this alive.
The twists and turns lasted for several long minutes after that, but it seemed like we were through the worst.
I sighed in relief when I saw a clear path up ahead.
It was not long before we were out. I resumed normal breathing, starting with several deep breaths to get the oxygen flowing.
The ship leveled out and resumed its course as I looked over at Roth to see her unclenching her hands from her seat. She moved them to the console and typed something in.
“I’m sending us down to fifty feet.”
“How does this thing avoid obstacles? Like trees and small hills?”
“Small trees aren’t a problem, we just go right through.”
I looked over and saw she was serious. “How many times have you done this?”
“This is the first.”
“Seems you know what to expect.”
“We were heading towards a mountain range, and I had told the ship to stay below two hundred feet, kinda saw it coming.”
I looked back over my shoulder, expecting to see the mountains behind us, but, of course, I just saw the hold of the transport ship. The suits had remained in place, not even moving an inch out of place or twisting to either side.
There were several brief moments while we both reoriented, she seemed as lost in her thoughts as I was in mine.
“We have another one of those coming up?”
“We have some small hills, but nothing like that. It should be relatively smooth sailing from here until right before we get there.”
“Famous last words.”
Roth grunted. “Indeed, considering where we are going.”
Before we had gone into the mountains, I had a list of questions I wanted to ask Roth, now all of them were gone. There was only one question in my mind now. The question that had been there since I had arrived.
Where is my family?
I considered asking, but my instincts told me I needed to shy away from it, at least for now.
Asking if she had ever connected up with anybody from her former life was probably just as taboo as talking about before.
“One of the things I neglected to go over when we were using the suits was how to use the weapons.” Roth looked over at me. “I did this on purpose. You should focus on surviving, rather than fighting. Our mission should be relatively quick, don’t ask what we’re doing,” she said, apparently noticing the look on my face, “it is classified. The suit will help you survive while you provide me with support. It will give you the means and the ability to fight a lurker in hand-to-hand combat, so I’m not gonna give you access to the weapons just yet. The suit’s shield should be adequate. It will keep most of the lurker’s weapons at bay. If a ship hits you, you’re dead, of course, so look out for those.”
“Why not show me how to use the weapons? If things are as bad as you say, it seems like you will need all the help you can get.”
“Yes, but I don’t want you making mistakes and killing innocent lives or destroying things that are better left untouched.” She turned and gave me a severe look. “I want you to focus on one thing, surviving. Not fighting.”
“This is just like what Jeffords did to me with the boots.” This was something I never would’ve said to Jeffords, and even though I was challenging her authority in a way, Roth did not take it as such. She appeared a little more open to suggestion than Jeffords had been, so it was a calculated risk on my part to bring it up.
“Yes, I remember you mentioning that, didn’t you say he somehow deactivated your boots?”
“They would only work at certain times.”
“I’ve never heard of that before,” Roth said to herself as if she were thinking of something else, she opened her mouth as if she was gonna say something but then apparently thought better of it and shut it again.
“Are you telling me that what Jeffords did was not officially part of the sanctioned training program? He made it seem as if he did it all the time.”
“Perhaps he did, but it never got back to me. I’m telling you I’ve never heard of anybody doing that before. Maybe it was all just in your head.”
“I watched him bring up a holographic display on his watch and disable our boots.” I gave her a searching look. “I did not almost die in the ravine solely because I didn’t know how to activate the boots.” I thought about explaining how Jeffords had left me to figure that out on my own, but I was dealing with enough at the moment. “It was because he disabled the boots, and he didn’t enable them until I was nearly at the bottom, apparently thinking I would die.”
“Amazing.” Roth shook her head. “Just simply amazing. I don’t know how he managed to do it. I frankly have no idea. It’s amazing you survived at all.”
“I can’t tell you how many different times I tried to get my anti-grav boots to work during the battle with the grenlings, but they never did. They should’ve worked, right?”
“They should have.”
“Is there a way to figure it out?”
“The man is dead. I put him into the ground myself. I think you need to get past this.”
I couldn’t resist. “Was it a part of the training program to have us jump into the ravine without teaching us first how to use the anti-grav boots?”
Roth arched an eyebrow as she hesitated. “No, that is not how the training is supposed to happen.” She glanced over at me. “But to be honest, it’s probably a good thing he did do that to you. If I had not heard about what Jeffords had done and how you had responded, I might have just left you back there in camp to fend for yourself, instead of thinking you might be useful to me on our mission.”
I was taken aback by this comment and didn’t quite know how to respond, so I sat in silence.
Eventually, Roth looked over. “Jeffords was hard on you, no question. He did things he shouldn’t have done. I heard about how he sent you to the brig, accusing you of killing a man. There was a full autopsy done, it was completed just before the grenlings attacked. That recruit died of natural causes.
“A heart attack, in fact. If I were to venture a guess, I would say it was most likely brought on by the fact Jeffords was doing things like having you guys jump into ravines without teaching you how to use your anti-grav boots.”
She paused as if thinking carefully about what she was going to say next. “But you should be grateful for the training Jeffords sent you through. It woke you up to the truth about this world, this universe. This is not a peaceful place like earth. We are in a violent environment where you could die as easily walking down the street.”
I did my best to keep my face from showing the cauldron of emotions that boiled underneath me, and perhaps I succeeded because Roth didn’t say anything more about that.
On the one hand, I could see what she was saying about how Jeffords’ unorthodox way of training had been beneficial, forcing me to learn things in a way that was different than was expected from the other new recruits.
But on the other hand…
I forced it all away.
I must remain focused on finding my family. Even if that means I leave some questions unanswered in the wake of Jeffords’ death.
I thought of one more, and despite my resolve to leave the matter alone, I foun
d that I could not shake this one. I had to know the truth.
“Did you know that Jeffords was a serial killer back on earth?”
Roth shot me a smile. “Who wasn’t?”
I stared at her in stunned silence.
“Oh, come on, I’m joking. Yes, we knew he had that certain proclivity, but there has been research done to show that the makeup of the brain had a lot to do with that activity. We made sure that Jeffords didn’t have the same type of brain he had back on earth.”
“In other words, you improved him. You improved a serial killer.”
“I guess you could put it like that if you wanted, but I think you need to ask yourself some hard questions about why Jeffords’ had the tendencies he had back on earth.”
“And all that research is mitigated by the fact that you had to put him down like a dog, right?”
“I’m not saying that it is or isn’t. That’s above my pay grade and frankly, my experience. All I’m saying is we have the technology to understand things about the brain that we did not over there. Do we know everything? No. Do we know a lot more? Yes. One of those things was understanding some of what made Jeffords a serial killer, not everything. For every man like Jeffords, there are others we gave second chances to who have turned out to be exemplary soldiers. She gave me a long glance. “Not because they were proficient killers, but because they were decent people who had lost the genetic lottery back on earth.”
I wasn’t convinced.
“And so you change their brains, hoping to capitalize on the good parts while negating the bad.”
I said this last bit as carefully and unemotionally as I could, but my tone must have shone through because Roth gave me a roguish smile.
“I know you were a lawyer. I mean, come on, can’t one cutthroat cut another cutthroat some slack?”
She smiled to show she was joking, and I smiled back to show that I got it, but deep inside, I did not like this at all. I was relieved to learn that some of what Jeffords had done was not sanctioned by the overall organization. I also could not blame Roth for being pragmatic and taking advantage of what Jeffords had done to further her own needs.