by Greg Keyes
When he did manage to get up, he saw that more fighting was going on near the transports, but he couldn’t make out the details. Nishimura was no longer in sight, but she’d left another corpse behind her—the jabber who had stabbed him.
He glanced at Chitto, who looked a little shaken. “You got it together?” he asked.
“Yeah,” she said. “Sorry.”
“Don’t be sorry,” he told her. “Just keep your head. See that brick building up there? Move up. I’ll cover you.”
She was about halfway there when a mag blast speared toward her, narrowly missing her shoulder and cutting a sapling in half. He saw the jabber and began firing at it. It was about twenty meters away, so his first shot missed. His second bullet connected before the trooper crouched down behind a tree. Chitto made it to the building and fired at it from two meters away. He saw chips fly from a nearby oak.
No wonder she had been issued a shotgun. Chitto had terrible aim.
The jabber stood up again, and he shot it twice more. It staggered back, and then Amar heard a burst from an assault rifle. The trooper shuddered and went down.
Amar saw Dux about ten meters off to his right, giving him a thumb’s up.
In a few more minutes it was over. There had only been eight jabbers to begin with, and most had been armed with stun lances. They hadn’t expected heavy resistance, and probably no resistance at all, not from a group this small and impoverished.
He gradually sorted out what had happened as DeLao looked over his wound and the rest tried to sort some semblance of order into the panicked settlers.
Toby, DeLao, and Lena had reached the rendezvous first and found it occupied. They didn’t know they had walked inside the ADVENT perimeter and had been surprised pretty much the way he and Chitto had, only there had been no Nishimura to pull their asses out of the fire. Thomas, Dux, and Nishimura arrived next, and had been working out a strategy when he and Chitto showed up.
“Took a ding out of your scapula,” DeLao told him. “Nothing that’ll kill you right away.”
Dux was in worse shape. At some point in the final moments of the battle, he had taken a glancing hit on his gut. He still had his armor, and it had saved his life, but bits of it had vaporized and blown through one of his lungs. He was bearing up for the moment, but it was the sort of wound that would definitely not get better on its own or with the resources they had. They now had another reason to find Sam’s XCOM facility.
“Mister.”
He glanced up to find a boy of perhaps seven years looking at him. He was thin and had a couple of gaps in his teeth.
“Yes?”
“Thank you for what you done.”
“It’s okay,” he said.
The boy continued to stand there.
“Are y’all going to stay with us?” he asked.
Amar looked around. “No,” he said. “We can’t. We have something we have to do a long way from here.”
“Well, can I come with you then?”
“I bet your mom and dad wouldn’t want that,” Amar said.
“They ain’t got no say in the matter,” the boy replied. “They got took last year.”
Amar swore silently and then swayed to his feet. “Do you guys have a leader?” he asked.
“I reckon that would be Mr. Deloach over there,” the boy told him.
Deloach was thirty-something. He had a mane of dirty blond hair and arms that looked as if they had been made of wire and rubber.
“You’re Deloach?” Amar asked.
“Yes, sir,” Deloach said. “We’re awful grateful for what you’ve done here.”
“That’s great,” he said. “But you need to get these people—these kids—to one of the settlements. It’s not safe out here.”
“Don’t much care for the settlements,” the man said. “Can’t hear myself think.”
“A boy just told me his parents were taken last year,” Amar persisted. “Where was that?”
“Down in Atchafalaya Basin,” he said.
“Another contagion zone.”
“I ain’t lettin’ no damn aliens tell me where I can and cannot live,” Deloach snapped.
“I understand that,” Amar said, starting to heat up. “I just killed two of their troopers. You think I’m on their side? But understand, when they find you out here, they do not take you to a settlement. They do not take you to a city. They take you, and no one ever sees you again. Ever.”
“I got news for you,” Deloach said. “The settlements ain’t safe, either.”
“It’s better than being out here,” Amar said. He turned away, disgusted, and nearly ran into Lena, who was standing there with tears running down her face.
“It’s real, isn’t it?” she said. “Everything you’ve been saying.”
“You think?” he said, and brushed by her.
* * *
None of the vehicles operated after the flood. The other pickup had a broken axle, and the van was likewise totaled. The others had managed to salvage some of the supplies and weapons, but once again they were on foot. Fortunately, according to Sam, they could probably walk it in two days. He was right, but they were two very long, hot days of biting flies, mosquitoes, and leeches. They saw a cottonmouth big enough to eat a cat. A big cat. Everyone else seemed pretty impressed, but Amar had grown up with cobras.
ADVENT patrols grew more frequent as they approached the Gulf of Mexico, so they stayed adjacent to the road rather than on it when they could.
Dux couldn’t walk by the end of the first day, so they built a litter and took turns carrying him. Amar noticed that Lena took a turn like everyone else.
When she was done, he walked up beside her.
“Hey,” he said.
“KB,” she said. She hesitated and then plunged on.
“I’m sorry about the other night,” she said. “I wouldn’t have … I pulled the trigger by accident when you hit me.”
“That’s fine,” he said. “I never met a pretty girl who didn’t try to kill me at some point.”
She fingered her mud-streaked hair and glanced at her filthy clothes.
“That was supposed to be a joke,” he said.
“The part about me being pretty, or about girls trying to kill you?” she asked.
“Never mind,” he said. “It’s just something I used to say.”
“Anyway,” she said. “I’m sorry.” She looked up at him, and her green eyes caught him. He held her gaze for what felt like too long.
He finally looked down, feeling embarrassed.
“In your position, I probably would have done the same thing,” he said.
“You came up to me, just now,” she said. “Did you have something to say?”
“Yeah,” he said. “I wanted to tell you that for someone who grew up in a city, you’re hanging in there pretty well. You’re kind of tough.”
“If you could be inside of my skin for a while, you wouldn’t think so,” she said. “But thanks.”
* * *
On the evening of the second day, they reached the settlement of Sunflower. Toby and Nishimura went in to see if it was safe, and they were all in by dusk. What passed for a doctor there said he couldn’t do much more for Dux than make him more comfortable.
And there was Lena. Amar found her sitting near a patch of bare dirt, where some girls were skipping rope. He mentally braced himself and then sat down beside her. She had washed up and traded her clothes for a pair of brown pants and a stained blue shirt.
“Why did you stow away back in Helena?” he asked her. “Why didn’t you just stay there or go back to Gulf City?”
She didn’t look at him, and for a while she didn’t say anything.
“I had to know what my sister died for,” she said. “I wanted to understand. I still do.”
He nodded. “Okay,” he said. “Do you?”
“I don’t know.”
“Then you don’t,” he said, as gently as he could. “And you can’t come any farther
with us.”
“Why not?”
“Right now, if ADVENT picks you up, you can’t tell them anything all that important,” he said. “In another day, that will change.”
“And you’ll have to what—make sure I can’t talk?”
He sighed. “Something like that.”
“I see.” She sounded cold. He didn’t blame her.
“Just make it easy on yourself,” he said. “Stay here. They’ll take care of you until you figure it all out.”
* * *
But the next morning, she was there, stubbornly lifting one end of Dux’s litter.
Sam frowned and glanced at Thomas, who shrugged. Amar expected an argument about it, but instead they started on.
About a kilometer down the road, however, things came to a head, when Sam drew his sidearm and pointed it at Lena.
“Okay,” he said. “Turn around and walk back the settlement. You’ll be fine. They’ll take care of you.”
Lena looked pale. Amar could see her lip quivering. But she didn’t move.
“Why here?” she asked. “Why did you let me leave the settlement with you? Is it because you wanted to be out of earshot of Sunflower when you shot me?”
“Nobody has to get shot,” Sam replied. “But you aren’t going another step with us.”
“But if I do?”
“I’ll do what I have to,” he replied.
Lena was about a meter to his right. Amar stepped to place himself between her and Sam.
“What the hell is this, KB?” Sam demanded.
“I’m not going to watch you kill an unarmed human,” he said. “And if you are who you say you are—and belong to the organization you say you do—you won’t do it.”
“You don’t understand,” he said. “If you knew what I was protecting—”
“It wouldn’t change anything,” Amar interrupted. “I still wouldn’t let you shoot her.”
“Put your gun away, Sam,” Thomas said. “That’s an order.”
“I don’t answer to you,” Sam replied.
“Today you do,” she said.
Amar kept his gaze locked on Sam’s. He felt strange, almost serene, and each breath seemed to go on for a century.
Sam lowered the gun and looked past him at Lena.
“I can’t promise anything once we get there, Lena,” he said. “The decision won’t be in my hands anymore.” He nodded his head toward Thomas. “Or theirs.”
“I understand,” she said.
“I really hope you do.”
* * *
Half an hour later they reached the densely vegetated banks of the Sabine River. Across the water the remains of an old oil refinery slept beneath a blanket of rust. The aliens had power sources that had rendered fossil fuels relatively useless for that purpose, although some petroleum was still used in manufacturing plastics and such.
Was this really where the XCOM base was? Hidden in this ruin? So close to the coastal cities? He could see three aircraft at the moment, although none were directly overhead. How could they possibly have avoided detection for twenty years?
Sam was talking to someone on his radio. It seemed that this was the place.
“Well?” Thomas said.
“In a moment,” Sam replied.
It was a long moment. Amar watched across the river, looking for a door to open, someone walking toward them….
A cormorant sitting on a stick in the water suddenly took wing. Amar was wondering what had startled the bird when he realized the stick was growing taller, and then he understood that it wasn’t a stick, but a pipe of some sort.
Then something large emerged, gunmetal gray, flange-shaped, and now the water was mounding, as if a whale was surfacing.
Or a submarine.
“Asu!” Nishimura gasped.
“What she said,” DeLao said.
“Ladies and gentlemen,” Sam said, “I give you the Elpis.”
Part II
The Elpis
“The mouse-deer may forget the trap, but
the trap will not forget the mouse-deer.”
–MALAY PROVERB
CHAPTER 7
THE ELPIS HAD old bones. The bulk of her dated to the first decade after World War II, nearly a hundred years ago, when diesel submarines were state of the art. But the atomic age was unfolding and as nuclear subs became the front line in underwater technology, the older vessels were gradually refitted or retired to shipyards, museums, and scrapheaps.
“It would have been easier to obtain a nuclear sub, actually,” Sam told them. He was obviously excited about and proud of the ship.
At the moment they were in a conference room, waiting to be debriefed, and Sam—always talkative—was now practically blabbering. It was possible he was in part trying to repair his mistake in threatening Lena. No one in the squad really trusted her, but Natives did not kill humans, and threatening to do so had lost him any goodwill he might have gained since conscripting them.
So now he was trying to impress them with the amazing place where they now found themselves, to show them that his attempts to protect it were justified or at least understandable.
Amar was impressed, but he wasn’t yet convinced.
However, Sam was still working on it.
“The thing about a nuclear sub,” he was saying, “is it emits neutrinos, and the aliens are very good at tracking neutrino sources. It doesn’t occur to them that anything dangerous to them could run on technology this old. But there’s more here than meets the eye….”
He didn’t finish the lecture, because the door opened, and Sam bounded to his feet. Thomas was close behind him.
The man in the doorway was on the frail side, nearly bald, with mere wisps of gray hair along the fringes of his skull. But behind his wire-rimmed glasses his eyes were lively and intelligent.
As he stepped into the room, he was followed by a much younger fellow with a shock of red hair and an expression that was probably meant to be neutral but which to Amar seemed somehow disapproving.
“Dr. Shen!” Thomas said. It was the most excited he thought he had ever seen her.
“You look familiar,” the old man said, studying her intently. His lips curled in a little smile. “Thomas, yes? Holly Thomas?”
“I’m flattered you remember me, sir,” she said.
“You were one of the Commander’s favorites,” he said. “Because you were one of our best. I’m so glad you’re still with us. Gladder still that you have joined us here on the Elpis.”
“I think it was only because I mentioned your name that Captain Thomas agreed to escort me here,” Sam said.
Shen’s features fell a bit as he surveyed the rest of the squad. “Sam, is it true that you are the only survivor of your expedition?”
“Yes, sir,” he said. “We were ambushed by ADVENT troopers. Captain Thomas and her squad saved my life and escorted me back to the Elpis.”
“How convenient that they were nearby,” the red-headed man said.
A look of irritation flashed across Thomas’s face, but she quickly mastered it.
“When Sam told me that you were still alive, sir, it seemed too good to be true.” She paused, looked at the floor, then raised her gaze again. “Sir, is the Commander …”
Shen shook his head. “There has never been any word of him, and I have searched, believe me. But there is also no conclusive proof that he is dead—so there is always hope, you know. Elpis.”
“Sir?”
Dr. Shen smiled.
“Do you remember the ancient Greek story of Pandora’s box? How she was given a chest but forbidden to open it? But of course she couldn’t resist, and when she finally broke the seals, all of the sorrows, disasters, diseases, and misfortunes that plague us now escaped. When she finally managed to close it, only one thing remained in the box: Elpis. Hope.” He waved his arms around the ship. “This is our Elpis. The Commander may be missing, but others have survived. I’ve spent many years trying to find them, to recove
r data, to gather new information. To rebuild XCOM. And I believe we are very near succeeding.”
He took a seat, and the red-headed man sat beside him.
“So, as the rest of you have no doubt gathered, my name is Shen, Raymond Shen. I had the honor of being chief engineer back in the old days. This is our ship’s captain, Ahti Laaksonen.”
“Good day, all,” Laaksonen said.
Sam made a round of introductions, and then Shen got down to business.
“Sam, what do you have to report?”
“Hold up,” Laaksonen interposed. “Sam, what have you told them already?”
“Only that I was looking for something in the old facility. But not what.”
“Then perhaps the three of us—Dr. Shen, you, myself—ought to review your findings before making them available to men and women we know very little about.” He nodded to Thomas. “No disrespect intended. But we must be very careful.”
Thomas’s expression was unreadable.
“As Dr. Shen wishes,” she said.
The old man looked them over. “Captain Thomas, it’s been a long time, but I have no doubts about you. Do you vouch for your people?”
Thomas nodded toward Lena. “Ms. Bishop is a civilian, sir. We found her in ADVENT custody and brought her along for her own protection. If you’re going to tell us anything classified, I suggest she be removed from the conversation.”
“Classified?” Laaksonen repeated in an icy tone. “The existence of this ship is classified. The survival of Dr. Shen is classified as well. She is now privy to any number of classified things. Is she from one of the cities? Did you at least have the sense to remove her chip?”
“It had already been removed,” Thomas said, “by locals in the Greenville settlement.”
“Dr. Shen—” Laaksonen began, but the older man cut him off.
“Young lady,” Shen told Lena, “I’m going to have you escorted to the Rathskeller or, if you prefer, the showers, if you would like to tidy up. The rest of you will remain. Captain Dixon and his squad would have been privy to this conversation, and I think you should know what they died for and what you fought for.”
A young woman with a sidearm stepped in from the hall and motioned for Lena to follow her.