Green World

by B. V. Larson

  Gathering up my customary two plates of chow and adding one more because I was hungry, I dug in with a happy sigh. Carlos showed up before I’d finished my first plate. He had wet hair, but it wasn’t from sweat or from the sea—he’d died when we’d almost made it to the surface.

  Grimacing, I let him sit down to eat beside me.

  “Hey buddy,” he said, “I want to tell you there’s no hard feelings from me over dying down there.”

  “Yeah?”

  “That’s right. I thought for sure you were going blow me up with Kivi’s bombs, but you just had me play rabbit with them. A dick-move for sure, but acceptable under the circumstances. I would have survived, actually, if that thing hadn’t hooked me later with its fishing line.”

  “Hehe yeah, that was funny.”

  Carlos ate his grub for a few moments, but then he started talking again. With Carlos, that was as certain and unwelcome as waking up alone with a morning boner.

  “Say, since we’re buds again, I was wondering if you could do me a favor.”

  Here it comes. “How’s that?”

  “I need a signature. A scribble will do, really.”

  “On what?” I asked warily.

  He showed me a roll of computer paper. “On this discharge notice. I’m quitting.”

  “Ah come on, now. I thought you didn’t have any hard feelings?”

  “Oh noooo, I’m feeling fine. I’m the belle of the ball here on Green World.”

  I looked it over. It was an actual request to discontinue service. I couldn’t believe it. “I could sign this, but you’ll need more people up the line.”

  “I know that.”

  “Jeez, Carlos… come on. You don’t really want to quit, do you?”

  He sighed. “It’s not just this. It’s a lot of things. I’ve been doing some thinking.”

  That was a bad thing for any man to do, but in the legions, it was possibly the worst thing that could happen to any soldier. Our lives, after all, were abnormal and downright crazy. Anyone who could accept dying all the time had to be a little nuts.

  “Look,” I said, “I’ll sign this later, when the campaign is over, if you still want out.”

  “Yeah? All right. I guess I can’t argue with that. They won’t fly me home or anything until this is over.”

  “Right. Besides, my handwriting is about as bad as my singing,” I said.

  Carlos immediately perked up. “What? You mean you sing like a serial killer? What does that even sound like?”

  We laughed, and then we ate together quietly. I didn’t argue with him about wanting to leave the service. We’d all thought about it. I was kind of surprised that getting eaten by one oversized sea monster had finally done the trick, but why not? What would make me quit someday, assuming I wasn’t permed first? It was a mystery to be pondered.

  Later on, I was yawning on my bunk, and someone small and shapely came to bug me.

  “Kivi? What is it, girl? I’m pretty bushed.”

  “I’m glad we made it back home,” she said.

  “Yeah, I am too. Now, if you’re not in the mood to climb into my bunk, I’d thank you to find someone else to talk to.”

  She ignored this and walked into my tent anyway. It was a single, about three meters square. That was high-living when you were in the field with the legions, even for a centurion.

  “Um…” she said, “have you heard about Carlos? He’s talking about quitting.”

  “Oh yeah, he told me. We’ll throw him a party or something.”

  A small foot thumped into my ribs. I growled and came halfway out of my bunk. Kivi skipped away deftly.

  “Sorry… I’m upset.”

  “What? You mean about Carlos? Who are you kidding? You haven’t given him the time of day for a year or three.”

  “Yes… I know. I feel bad about that now. And I feel bad about giving him bombs and blowing him up today.”

  I yawned uncontrollably. “Can this wait until morning?”

  “No.”

  Sighing, I sat up on one elbow. “I need a drink.”

  She had one, as I suspected. We shared it and winced. It wasn’t the good stuff. It was brown, and it smelled like varnish. That’s about the best I could say for it.

  Still, it got the job done. I was soon dozing again with my arm tossed over my face.

  I felt Kivi hovering near. She wasn’t getting the hint.

  Now, a man like me wanted to either get some tail or some shuteye at night. I couldn’t do both, usually. Right now, Kivi was breaking my rules by refusing to allow me to have either one.

  Finally, I removed my arm and stared up at her. “What?”

  “You’ve got to do something, James.”

  “Like what?”

  “I don’t know… you tricked him into joining legion Varus all those years ago, didn’t you?”

  “That’s just a rumor.” The truth was, of course, that I had tricked him into joining. I’d talked up the legion because I kind of hated him when I first met him.

  That thought gave me a pang. I sighed. “All right, all right,” I said. “I’ll fix it. I’ll fix it tomorrow.”

  “If you can do that, I’ll warm your bed for the whole trip back.”

  Now, at long last, she had my attention. I sat up, and my eyebrows were lifted as high as they could go. “Really?”

  “Really.”

  “Just for old Carlos? What about Sargon? Isn’t he still your—?”

  She made a rude noise with her lips. “No way. I’m tired of him. I was tired of him before Edge World.”

  I shrugged. “Okay, I’ll see what I can do. How about a little… incentive?”

  I reached for her, but she danced away again. “No. Get him to erase that discharge paper, then we’ll talk.”

  I flopped back on my bunk, and she finally left me in peace. Naturally, I had no idea at all how I was going to change Carlos’ mind. I’d just wanted her to go away.

  Sighing contentedly, my mind blanked out, and I fell sound asleep.

  -47-

  Only the dead could’ve slept harder than I did that night, and I should know. If I’d been given half a chance, I would have slept in until noon, but the universe had different plans for me, which kicked in just before dawn.

  The sky turned pink before the sun came up over Green World, just the way it did back on Earth. The sea, however, was slate black—and that’s what caused the ruckus among the more alert members of our legion. About a kilometer out from the shore of the island, in every direction at once, the water started… churning.

  The black water turned white, like a big crasher was coming toward the beach, but these disturbances were way too far out from shore. This ominous behavior spooked our noncom sentries, and they sounded the alarm.

  The first I became aware of it was when a whooping siren began going off. As my mind and body were as well-trained as a psychologist’s pet rat, I found myself responding without thought. I sat up on my bunk and began pulling on boots before my eyes were open.

  “McGill? McGill!”

  A familiar female voice was talking out of my tapper. I pretty much knew who it had to be, so I mumbled my greetings in return.

  “Morning, Tribune. What seems to be the trouble?”

  Galina looked upset. She was, in fact, freaked out. “Look at your bloody tapper, James! Are you sleeping? Are you seriously sleeping through a predawn raid?”

  “Huh?”

  Blinking and squinting, I managed to use my bleary vision well enough to make out the churning water. It ringed the island in a rippling pattern.

  “That’s weird…” I said.

  “You don’t recognize it? Is this your pet, that thing you found out there on the bottom of the sea?”

  “I don’t rightly know. I never saw it get near the surface. Although… you know, I think it did follow us up into the shallows at the end.”

  “That wasn’t in your report.”

  “No, probably not. It wasn’t a confir
med sighting or anything. But I am sure that this bubbling water-trick can’t be our prankster sea monster. He wasn’t big enough to encircle our entire island. Not by a longshot.”

  “James, did it ever occur to you that there could be more than one of these things? That after you led it right up here to our island, it might have gone off swimming back down to monster-town? Maybe it spent the night gathering up its friends for an attack.”

  “Huh…” I said, chewing that over. The truth was her idea hadn’t ever occurred to me. I’d never thought of it at all.

  “You’re useless. Get your unit down to the north beach. You’re being deployed there with the rest of Graves’ cohort. Turov out.”

  That was it, she was gone. She didn’t give me a chance to make kissy-faces at the screen or anything. That was Galina for you, she was all over me back on Earth between deployments, but out on an alien planet it was like she didn’t know me at all.

  Yawning and stretching, I marched out of my tent and found a ring of scared-looking officers and noncoms. Most of my unit had been revived by now.

  “What are we going to do, sir?” Barton asked me. “Is it that thing coming up out of the water?”

  “I doubt it. Just grab your gear and head for the north beach. That goes for everyone who’s back to life by now, grab your stuff and move out!”

  They all began to scramble. Within ten minutes, or fifteen tops, we were trotting for the north beach. That particular path took us right up and over the high point of our island—which was only about a hundred meters above sea level.

  Still, it was enough to give us the lay of the land. Out to the east, the west—and due north—the sea was bubbling.

  “It’s positively boiling out there, Centurion,” Harris said. “Wouldn’t it be better if we set up right here, on this central high ground? Leeson’s 88s could command the whole beach from here.”

  “They probably could—but that’s not where we’ve been posted.”

  Grumbling, Harris gave up and fell back to harangue his heavies. They were lagging behind due to their bigger loads. Even with exoskeletal help, an extra hundred kilos of gear took its toll.

  Soon enough, we reached the beach in question. It was rocky, like all the beaches on this godforsaken lump of dirt we’d been stationed on. At least there was a modicum of cover to be had between the boulders.

  Not being a total idiot, despite the sage opinion of countless dipshits in my legion, I lined up my troops about fifty paces from the shoreline. There was decent cover here, and we could hit anything on the beach without getting any closer to the water.

  Off to my right and left, more units rolled up and set up camp. We were spaced about a hundred paces apart, just out of shouting distance. There was a stiff wind coming up from the sea, but I could see Manfred’s troops flipping us off, even if I couldn’t hear their actual insults.

  “That squatty troglodyte,” Barton complained to me. “He’s always belittling our unit.”

  “What? Manfred? Nah, he means well. He’s a dick, sure… but he’s a friend of mine.”

  “That’s not surprising, sir.”

  I glanced at her reproachfully, and she straightened up. “Sorry, sir. That was an unprofessional comment.”

  Laughing, I waved for her to take her lights to the most forward boulders. She was a good sort, even if she didn’t like Manfred and his antics.

  Leeson hustled up next to me a moment later. His men had been in the rear of the formation, as always. Made up of muscle-bound weaponeers with heavy kits and all the specialist nerds in the unit, his platoon was always last in line.

  “Sir! I want to set up about a hundred meters back, on that rise over there.”

  I squinted in the direction he indicated, but I shook my head. “Nope. Take the hill right behind us.”

  “Seriously? That’s inferior ground, Centurion. If you let me take the top of that hill with my 88s, I’ll—”

  “The answer is no. Manfred is already setting up on that spot. You should have walked faster if you wanted your choice of ground.”

  Grumbling, he stalked off and began setting up where I’d directed him to. I knew he’d do a pro job, so I didn’t micromanage. Instead, I searched for a comfortable spot to lounge and took off my helmet to get a little sun. The local star had risen up out of the sea to the east, and it was warming up already. After having spent so long trudging over the bottom of this ocean, I was really enjoying a clean beach. The air was fresh, the wind was up, and the crashing surf was kind of mesmerizing.

  I’ll never admit it, but I might have nodded off over the next ten minutes or so that followed.

  “Centurion! McGill, wake up! Something’s happening!”

  Someone was shaking me. I looked up to see it was Veteran Moller.

  Her words didn’t worry me all that much, but the look on her face did. Moller was a big woman, and by big I mean she could arm-wrestle plenty of men on an even footing. She was built like a fireplug, and she acted like it, too.

  “What’s…?” I began, but I didn’t finish my thought. Looking out to sea, I saw the bubbling region had changed. Instead of a continuous circle of bubbles, a force wall was now in evidence.

  Rising up out of the water in a great arc that completely encircled the island, a shimmering dome was forming. It came up from the water itself, and it kind of looked like water.

  “What the hell is that, McGill?” Harris demanded, as if I had a clue.

  “I don’t know. Looks like a wall of water.”

  “Water with a hard-on, maybe.”

  We watched and gawked in amazement. I’ve seen puff-crete go up in an unnatural fashion, and I’d seen personal shielding and the like—but this was different. It was a translucent dome of what looked like solid water.

  “Could these aliens have some kind of control over the properties of water?” asked a voice behind me.

  I turned to see it was Natasha. She was fresh out of the revival machine, and she’d only just gotten down to the beach to join our little party.

  “You know what that thing is?” I asked.

  She was scanning it, using her larger, backpack computer. It had serious power and lots of sensors and stuff I couldn’t even identify, much less operate.

  “It’s water. A solid form of water, but not ice. I think… remember, James, when I told you about hot ice? It’s reading something like that. High density, high temperature… Very solid and semi-transparent.”

  “Uh…” I said, staring out to sea. “It seems to keep going up and up, and it’s curving, kind of. Do you think it will form a solid dome over us?”

  “That’s what it looks like. It will likely be very difficult to penetrate.”

  “You don’t say?”

  Intrigued, I left cover and walked over to Sargon. After a bit of rank-pulling, I took his belcher off him, raised it to my shoulder and tightened it down to the narrowest beam I could. Then, I held the firing stud down for about three seconds.

  “You’re gonna overheat it, sir!”

  I ignored him. I’d been a weaponeer for years, and I knew just how far over specs you could push one of these babies. I pushed it to that point—and a little bit further.

  Out at sea, my beam struck the wall of hot-ice, or whatever the hell it was, and drew a line of billowing steam across it. When I let go of the firing stud at last, however, there hadn’t been much effect.

  The water-wall showed a streak where I’d burned it, as if a fingernail had scarred the surface of a bowl of gelatin. Just as soon as I stopped beaming, however, the scar melted away. After a few moments, the water-wall was as smooth as before.

  “Huh…” I said. “Looks like we’re being sealed in. I wonder what their next trick will be.”

  Only Natasha and I seemed intrigued and curious. Everyone else in the unit looked like they wanted to shit themselves. I thought about razzing them for being chickens, but I didn’t want to lower morale any further.

  -48-

  After the w
ater-dome thingie was complete, having encapsulated us and trapped us on the island, we hunkered down and waited for whatever was coming next.

  Command chat was going crazy in my headset, and it was beginning to give me a headache. Every officer on the island seemed to be freaking out.

  “This is nothing,” I told them all when I couldn’t take any more whining. “You should have been down there at the bottom of the sea with one of these clowns playing fisherman with you. Now, that was scary.”

  “Not helpful, Centurion McGill,” Graves complained. “This is your CO speaking, people. We need two cohorts on the beach, and one in the center with the star-falls. So far, I don’t see the center cohort in position yet.”

  “Star-falls?” I said out loud, but without keying the mic. That was damned good news. I didn’t even know we had any heavy artillery on this godforsaken rock.

  “The enemy dome has completely encircled the island at a range of about one to two kilometers out. You might notice that the waves have stopped crashing on the beach. This indicates the barrier goes down to the bottom, which is estimated to be five hundred meters deep or more.”

  “Cool…” I said, nodding in appreciation. These aliens were serious and above all competent. I liked that in an enemy. No legion man liked to waste his time with amateurs.

  Graves kept talking and issuing orders. The troop arrangements and general chatter went on and on for a good twenty minutes before I turned down the volume.

  Meanwhile, out at sea, nothing much was happening. I was beginning to get bored.

  Just when I considered falling asleep for a quick nap, another siren went off, and I heard a rising level of panic in the voices in my helmet. Stifling a yawn, I opened my eyes and looked out to sea again.

  There, on the glassy green-black water, something truly significant had begun. The water was bubbling again—but this time it was happening in the region between the translucent dome and the beach.