by SD Tanner
“Nothing really. We send out observation pods or radio signals to relay images back to us. It’s a fancy term that means frack all.”
Ark Three wasn’t randomly created or a freak of nature, he came from the best of stock. At over six foot four, with a classically handsome face and eyes that reminded him of his grandfather, he cut a striking and recognizable figure wherever he went. Usually his good looks and position in the Guild afforded him respect he had yet to earn, but sometimes it played against him. After his morning jaunt with Mariana to visit the prison, rumors had spread like wildfire about him and the stunning alien. Although she lived on the Ark Command ship, even Commander Casey had heard about his infatuation with the beautiful humanoid. After talking with her, they’d decided it was best to get him away from Earth, so she’d ordered the battle team back into space. Once aboard, Ark Three had refused to go into stasis, choosing instead to stay awake supposedly to learn about the ship he would eventually command.
Living inside of a spaceship offered little reason or opportunity for vanities so Ark Three, along with everyone else, had shaved his hair so close to his scalp that he might as well have been bald. Screwing up his face, filling it with an unhappy expression, he scratched at the growth on his unshaved chin. “I want to go back to the planet with the birds.”
It seemed he was determined to stir up trouble. The automated pod containing the virus was well ahead of them, destined to contaminate the planet. Even if they travelled by the faster attack ships there was no way they could beat the pod to the punch.
Sighing inwardly, he hoped Ark Three knew what he was doing, but suspected he didn’t. “Why?”
“I want to see if the virus targeting the enemy DNA worked.”
“Why?”
Turning his head and giving him a sidelong look, he replied almost petulantly, “What if the virus failed?”
His eyes were green on green, so he knew Ark Three couldn’t see his frustration when he rolled them. He already knew he wasn’t worried about whether the virus had failed, but was more concerned it hadn’t. Refraining from letting out the deep sigh that was growing inside of his chest, he replied, “The medical engineers don’t make those kinds of mistakes.”
Not bothering to hide his own irritable response, Ark Three rolled his eyes and sighed deeply. “We should check it out anyway. I’m surprised Ark Command haven’t ordered us to.”
Commander Casey had already asked him to check the results of the virus, but he’d argued that Ark Three was already so angry that it might tip him over the edge, leading him to do something he could regret. Although on the surface Casey might appear to have about as much maternal instinct as a spider eating its young, beneath her steeliness she was still a woman. Ark Three was one of her Navigators, so she’d relented, telling him to take him somewhere safe until he calmed down.
Shaking his head, he replied, “Any battle team can check the planet. Casey will send another one.”
Ark Three was used to getting his own way and now was no exception. Being on the cusp of adulthood, sometimes his face looked boyish and at other times stern. Now his bottom lip protruded in a sulky grimace, reminding him of his naughty two-year old self. “Why can’t we go? You said I was the commander of my battleship so I say we go.”
He wasn’t the commander of any ship until he cleared him, but he’d known Ark Three since his first breath, and once he got an idea in his head, he rarely left it alone no matter how stupid it was. Glancing at the Bombardiers manning their stations, he leaned closer to him.
Lowering his voice, he asked, “What are you trying to do?”
“What do you mean?”
“You know what I mean. You can’t do anything in CaliTech without everyone knowing your business. You were seen with Mariana and that renegade leader.”
“I can’t talk to people now?”
“You’re playing with fire. Be very sure you know how to follow through.”
Sounding surprised, Ark Three asked, “What’s that supposed to mean?”
“You have two choices. Either you comply with the Guild one hundred percent or you go up against it one hundred percent. There’s no middle ground when it comes to them.”
“Why would I go up against them?”
He wanted to say the Guild was the most corrupt organization he’d seen in his two hundred odd years of being alive, but instead he held his tongue. It wasn’t that he was worried about going to war with them, only it wasn’t his battle to lead. Any fight to take them down would demand a sure-footed leader, not one that had been coerced by a trusted mentor. This wasn’t something he should influence, either Ark Three would come to the same conclusion or he wouldn’t.
Narrowing his eyes slightly, he said, “You’re asking dangerous questions.”
Twisting in the command chair to face him, he replied angrily, “And that’s the point, Tank. What kind of leadership forbids questions? We’re sentient for a reason. Free will is our shared birthright. No one has the right to take that away from us.”
Seeing his grandfather’s clarity of mind and his grandmother’s spark, he smiled at him fondly. Ark Three was just the right mix of both of them.
“What are you smirking at?” He asked irritably. “I’m not a joke, Tank.”
“No, you’re not. It’s just that you remind me of your grandparents, Ark and Lexie.”
“I don’t know what my grandfather would have made of this.”
His grandfather had been a master strategist who said little while doing a lot. Dunk and Ark had been quite the team, playing off against one another until eventually one had called the game to an end. Ark and Lexie had died in space of a disease that no one else had caught, leaving the Bombardiers suspicious of its source. He suspected that Dunk had infected them, but it wasn’t anything he could prove. Before she’d died, Lexie made him promise to stay alive to protect the generations she knew would follow her. Ark Three might have a destiny, but so did he. Just as he’d once protected his grandmother, he would guard Ark Three with his life.
“Your grandfather would have analyzed the problem and then worked out what to do.”
“What in the hell do you think I’m trying to do?”
Ark Three might have his grandfather’s genes, but he was a long way from being the man he needed to become. When he’d first met his grandfather he’d been a mature man, but Ark Three was still full of the folly of youth. Failing to hide his agenda, he was making public to anyone who cared to watch that he was unhappy with the status quo. If he kept asking questions and challenging Dunk Two without a plan, he would die in much the same way his ancestors had. Trying to keep the young man safe from himself wasn’t proving to be easy.
“It’s a long trip. You should go into stasis.”
“If I go into stasis then you might not go to the planet.”
Shaking his head, he sighed deeply. “Why would I do that? It’ll only give you one more thing to whine about.” Overhearing his loud remark, the Bombardiers around them chuckled.
After staring at him for a few moments, Ark Three launched himself to his feet. “Alright, but I better wake up orbiting that planet.”
Once Ark Three had disappeared through the slit in the wall, he muttered, “Kids.” While his Bombardiers laughed, he ordered, “Set course for that damned planet.”
Running itself, repairing and collecting power as it needed to, there wasn’t much to do onboard a living ship. Whenever he was within range, he’d always stay in close contact with Ark Command, partly to keep an eye on the politics, but also to talk with Commander Casey. She was still chasing him for a closer relationship and he was continuing to resist her, although he had to admit he was enjoying her dogged persistence. He liked his women tough and she wasn’t one to shy away from a challenge.
Once they were far from the prying eyes of Ark Command, and before they drew closer to the planet, another ship joined them. Pushing himself along the tubes that led to the docking bay, he used his magnetic boots to lo
ck himself onto the surface. The ship had sent a small one-person cruiser to theirs and it was parked in the open space.
Another suited and armored soldier climbed out of the ship. Meeting next to the closed door on the docking bay, they shared a handgrip. Looking much the same as one another, the Bombardier gave him a tight grin. “How goes it, brother?”
“Not good. They’ve developed a virus to wipe out any species with too much enemy DNA.”
“Have they used it?”
“Yeah, on a planet in sector Eight FC.”
“Is that where you’re going now?”
“Yeah, the pup wants to see what it did.”
“How’s he growing?”
“Almost full size.”
“And?”
“He could go either way.”
After climbing back into his small cruiser, the Bombardier gave him a single nod. “Stay strange, Tank, but don’t be a stranger.”
The stupidest thing Dunk had ever done was murder Ark and Lexie. There was no reason to kill them. Ark had never openly challenged his rule, following his orders to explore space. After they’d died, the Bombardiers had wanted to attack Earth, but there hadn’t been enough of them. No one in CaliTech or the Guild knew it, but Dunk and his mad clones were accidentally building the very army they feared the most. One day there would be enough of them to take on the Navigators and then all hell would break loose. It was a long-term plan, but when you lived for hundreds of years, you could afford to wait. Where Lexie had asked him to keep her children safe, Ark had told him to take control of the Guild. They were his last orders and he intended to fulfil them, but the Bombardiers would only follow a descendant of Ark. It remained to be seen if Ark Three would be that leader, but he was becoming more hopeful by the day.
CHAPTER SIXTEEN:
Death Leads the Way
(Ark Three)
Staying in motion had always helped him work through his feelings, so being nagged back into stasis had annoyed him. He needed time to think and being doped into a coma only added to his frustration. Sometimes Tank could be a pain in the ass.
Still irritated with him, he barked, “C’mon! Let’s get it done.”
Although Tank’s face usually looked blank, even he could see his sour expression as he swung himself into the cockpit on the attack ship. “Some of us haven’t had a month long nap.”
“And whose fault it that?”
“Relax, will ya? Nothing happened while you were snoozing.”
According to Tank, the automated pod with the virus had landed on the planet a few days earlier, so to say nothing had happened wasn’t exactly true. While he glared at the back of his mentor’s helmet, the assault ship obediently dropped from the docking bay and through the atmosphere. Inwardly he was cursing himself for not having arrived in time to stop the virus. Considering he was supposed to share command of the Guild, he seemed to have shockingly little say about what it did. The Guild had always been Dunk’s show and he suspected he’d never listened to anyone. In the world that Dunk had built, he didn’t even own his name, and Dunk Two was doing things whether he agreed or not.
Screwing up his face in barely restrained disgust, he couldn’t take his usual joy in plummeting towards a planet. It always felt as if he were flying out of control, but today he just wanted to land and see what damage the virus had done. Flying fast and only twenty yards above the surface, the attack ship zipped left and right, jogging up and down to avoid small inclines.
“I want to see the ones living next to the lake,” he said irritably.
Lace was flying with Bombardier Four-Two and Cardiff was with Bombardier One-Zero-One. They were all connected to the communications grid and he heard Cardiff mutter, “Somebody got out of the wrong side of the stasis pod today.”
“Shut up, Cardiff,” he snapped. “This is serious business.”
“Why are you so bent out of shape about this? It’s not as if we sent the virus here.”
He couldn’t divorce himself from their actions as cleanly as she could. They’d found the planet. They’d told the Guild about it. They’d kidnapped one of the creatures and handed it over to the medical team. If the medics had never been able to analyze the creature then they wouldn’t have known how much enemy DNA it had. His squad might not have infected the planet, but they knew what the Guild would do, so responsibility for the fate of the species was theirs.
“We are all responsible for what the Guild do.”
“I don’t know about that, Ark. The Guild isn’t a democracy. Nobody voted for you or the Dunks.”
“And whose fault is that? The Guild only have control because people like you spinelessly handed it over to them.”
Sounding equally annoyed, she replied, “How the hell is that my fault? I’m only one person. If anyone can do anything about this then it’s you. Man up and quit dumping your shit on me.”
Unable to find a winning argument against hers, he muttered, “Shut up and focus on the mission.”
Cardiff wasn’t fooled by his sullen reply. “You lost.”
She wasn’t right about that. The only losers today were the birds. They might have been a primitive society, but who knew what they were destined to become. No longer willing to hide from the truth, he was determined to witness firsthand what the Guild were doing in his and Dunk Three’s name. Neither of them should hide from the truth. It was the only way they’d learn wrong from right.
The tall wall of the mountain was in front of him. Banking sharply, he felt himself pressed against the back of his seat as the small ship pulled towards the reddish colored sky. Just as they had months earlier, the ship skimmed across the top of the mountain until it opened onto the wide lake in its center. During their first visit, the birds had been moving around the water and their small huts. The huts were still there, but what looked like bundles of branches were scattered around them.
Guessing what they were, his stomach sank and a sharp ring began to echo through his ears. “Land next to the larger group of huts.”
Tank ordered the attack ship to land, and it dropped to the ground, stepping forward to regain its balance. Brownish grey bundles of stick shaped limbs lay in crumpled piles on the shores and near the huts. It was obvious that the birds were dead. His stomach churned with the indigestible goo from being in stasis, making him wish he hadn’t eaten a ration pack before he’d left. Pushing the clear screen above his head, he climbed out of the ship, landing heavily onto the sandy ground.
During their first visit, they didn’t land at the small village, so they hadn’t been able to study it. The trees he’d only seen from the air were much like the ones on Earth, only browner and with less leaves. Beneath his feet, small tufts of green grass were poking through the dry land. A small breeze rippled across the lake and through his earpiece, he heard the dry rustle of the near dead leaves. Now covered in corpses, the land had lost one of the few sign of life it had ever had, leaving it desolate and empty.
Walking to the first bundle of sticks, it had clearly once been a bird, but now its bones were covered with a dry leathery hide. “What did the virus do to them?”
Tank was on his haunches, running his hand along the tumble of bony remains. The flesh of the creatures appeared to have dissolved, leaving dry skin and grey colored bones. Lifting his armored hand, Tank held up a head that was covered in a brown hide with holes for the mouth, nostrils and eye sockets. Pulling away the skin, he let it fall against what was left of the body. The grey bone in Tank’s hand was shaped the same as a human skull. They might have been on an alien planet far away from Earth, but they were genetically related to the birds.
Still holding it at eye level, Tank muttered, “Dammit.”
Exploding with anger, he asked, “Is that all you can say?” Spinning on his heel, he stared across the once peaceful village at the bundles of remains. “We’ve slaughtered them for something they couldn’t change.”
Before Tank could speak, Cardiff called, “I’ve got a live one
.”
Moving past Tank, he joined Cardiff next to one of the small brown huts. Shaped like a teepee, the hut was only eight feet tall and a body was lying half inside of its entrance. The bird’s skin was already turning a darkened brown, drying out while it was still alive. Hearing small mewling sounds, he pulled his AI unit from his belt.
Unsure of what to say, he blurted, “I’m sorry.”
“Help.”
Looking along the length of its prone body, parts of its flesh were bubbling. Fragile blisters filled with its body fluids were rising above the darkening skin, then bursting and melting into the dry ground beneath it. As each blister was born and lost, bones were showing through the flesh as it slowly dissolved. Soon all that would be left of the creature was dry leathery skin and grey bones.
Unable to bear witness while its life fluids drained uselessly into the ground, all he could do was stare at its almost human face. “I…I can’t help you.”
“Luki?”
Lightly touching its cheek, he hoped to convey all of the sorrow and deep regret he was feeling.
“Luki?”
Thinking perhaps it was a name and not a word, he asked, “Do you mean the one we…I took?”
Sounding more like a sigh, the creature whispered, “Yes.”
“On our planet.”
Moaning pitifully, more of the creature’s flesh melted away from its body. Pulling his Burner from his belt, he held it up to its eyes.
“I can end this.”
“Yes.”
Sitting onto the ground, he pulled its head onto his thigh, cradling it against his bent chest. “Is there anything you need me to do?”
“Go to water.”
As he placed the barrel against the side of its head, he said, “This will never happen again. That is my solemn promise to you.”
His bullet ripped through the skull he knew was human beneath the alien face. When he finally looked up again, the three Bombardiers and two Navigators were standing in a half circle watching him. The creature was dead, killed by his own hand twice. First he’d allowed CaliTech to infect it and then he’d shot it.