XCOM 2- Resurrection

by Greg Keyes

  “Thank you, Doctor,” Lena said. “A shower would be nice.”

  When she was gone, Shen knitted his fingers and placed his elbows on the table.

  “Sam?” he said.

  Sam was trying to keep his expression neutral, but he couldn’t keep from smiling.

  “I found it, sir,” he said.

  Shen closed his eyes and expressed a deep sigh. “I had hoped,” he said. “Sam, this is good news.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “I feel I must still raise an objection—” Laaksonen began, but Shen shook his head.

  “In the first few weeks of the war,” he said, “we made some gains. It was clear that the alien technology was vastly superior to ours, and that to beat them we would have to understand it, come up to speed, and build our own version of it. We gathered scraps left from skirmishes fought with aliens as they abducted people. But we also managed to shoot down two of their aircraft. The first we found to be in excellent condition, but we were unable to maintain a position at its crash site long enough to study it. The second—and last—crashed during the final hours of the war, as our own systems were being compromised. The satellite data of its trajectory was destroyed at our command facility. I thought the information might have been backed up somewhere else. As it turns out, I was right. True, Sam?”

  “Yes,” Sam said. “I have the location. It’s in a very remote spot, far from any of the New Cities. Chances are good that it’s still there.”

  Shen swept his gaze around the table. “You understand what this would mean, I hope. I have managed to survive for this long because my base is mobile. But it isn’t sufficient. If I had access to an alien ship, if we could get it flying again …”

  “That’s a lot of ifs,” Thomas remarked.

  “Indeed,” the doctor replied. “Even if we can’t repair it, we would still have access to their technology in a setting that will allow us the time to study and hopefully reproduce it. I once had my qualms about this; frankly, in some respects I still do. I was once afraid that if we used their means we would become too much like them. I still feel that way about their biotech, to some extent. But the past twenty years have convinced me that we cannot defeat them with minor raids here and there or by hacking their propaganda. It may further our cause, yes. But sooner or later, we must fight—go to war—to regain our world. This we simply cannot do with the weapons and materials available to us. Finding that ship is a huge step in achieving the capabilities we require.”

  “So that’s where we’re headed next?” Thomas asked. “The downed ship?”

  “Not quite,” Shen said, with a sparkle in his eye. “There is a stop we must make along the way.”

  * * *

  Amar hit the showers after the meeting, his head more than slightly awhirl, but the hot water—hot water!—settled him back down. The blue shirt and ivory pants provided to him were soft and clean, and although part of him was dog-tired, he was also hungry enough to eat a live cobra head-first.

  He hadn’t any idea how the submarine had been laid out originally, but he was willing to bet this one had been significantly remodeled. The lighting was modern, and while there were no windows or portholes or whatever ships had, there were LED panels at intervals that were obviously tied to cameras outside. He stopped for a moment to wonder at the pale blue water through which they were moving, at the silvery clouds of fish fleeing their approach.

  He reflected that the Elpis was indeed amazing, on its own terms, but it was like a stone knife in a world dominated by nuclear weapons.

  But even a stone knife was deadly in the right hands.

  The Rathskeller was on the upper of two decks and was very much like a pub. It was small—the ship was around ninety-five meters long, but it was only eight wide—and currently nearly fully occupied, largely by his squad. His choices of drink were beer, water, juice, hot tea, or coffee. He chose the beer and was happy to discover that, while it was bit skunky, it was actually beer, and it was cold. Dinner was a choice of salt cod, tofu, or lentils, pasta or rice, green beans or cabbage, all served from a buffet station by a bespectacled little bearded man who spoke very little English and none of Amar’s other tongues.

  The tofu looked best, and it was surprisingly good, covered in a red chili, lime, and fish sauce. He sat across from Lena, who was alone at a small table, picking at the lentils. She looked clean; her hair was combed and she had changed from the settlement clothing in which he’d last seen her into a green T-shirt and gray pants.

  “Better than squirrel?” he asked.

  She shrugged.

  “The tofu is good,” he said. “It’s made from beans, not animals.”

  “I’ll remember that,” she said. Then she put down her fork and looked at him directly. He noticed her green eyes had flecks of gold in them.

  “Thank you,” she said. “I can honestly say no one has ever stood between me and a gun before. I was really quite … overwhelmed.”

  “Sam was never going to shoot you,” he said. “I just had to make him understand that.”

  He was uncomfortable with her earnest gaze and turned his own to his food.

  “You’re a good man,” she said.

  It felt surprisingly good to hear her say that—perhaps in part because it was so unexpected—but probably more because he hadn’t realized that he cared what her opinion of him was.

  Yet he did, and he felt like he should respond to her.

  “My father once told me he had only one goal in raising me,” he said. “It wasn’t for me to be rich or powerful or even brave, but to be good.”

  “He must be proud, then,” she said.

  “I think he would be disappointed,” Amar said. “I don’t know—can’t know—because he went out one day to hunt, and he never came back. I was ten, and I swore then I would join the resistance as soon as they would take me.”

  Her expression shifted, became more melancholy and something else he couldn’t pin down.

  “I’m sorry to hear about your father,” she said. “But your reaction, I can understand that.”

  “But the thing is I didn’t join the Natives to fight for an ideal or to help people. I joined because I wanted to avenge him by killing aliens—to kill in the name of my father, the man who never hurt anyone and never would, except to protect his family. He lived a life of grace and peace, and I know in my heart he died that way.”

  He realized he had never said any of this out loud to anyone before. He wasn’t sure why he was doing it now. Maybe it was because she was a non-com. If he brought this up with Nishimura or Dux, they would probably think he was whinging. Everyone who did what they did had issues, but you were expected not to bother other people with yours.

  Now she looked puzzled.

  “Then … you don’t believe in this cause that you fight for?” she asked.

  “That was then,” he said. “Before I met these guys. Thomas, Rider …” he trailed off. “Now I’ve seen some of what ADVENT does with my own eyes. I know we’re doing what we have to. But I’ve seen people die. And I’ve killed. The ADVENT soldiers—they aren’t human. But they look like they might be part human, some kind of bioengineered hybrid. I don’t know what’s in those suits, if they’re human or robots or something else. Do they feel anything? Do they miss their comrades when I kill them? I don’t know these things.”

  She took a drink of her beer. “This is confusing for me. You know that.”

  “I understand,” he said.

  “I’m not sure you do,” she said. “I had cancer. I was eighteen years old, and my life was over. Gene therapy saved me. How am I not supposed to be grateful for that? And all of the things you’re saying—your father wanting you to be good, you with your moral dilemma—that’s not how we … how people in the New Cities think of you. You’re the barbarians pounding at the gate, hackers trying to ruin the good life. When people go missing, you’re the ones they blame. And up until now, I didn’t have any doubts about any of that. But if it
’s all a lie … Where are they all going? Upward of a thousand people went missing in Gulf City last year. If you guys aren’t doing it, then who is?”

  “I think the answer is obvious,” he said. “I’ve seen some of the ADVENT facilities, spied on them, set up monitoring equipment to count the faces of those who arrive and those who leave. Only none of them ever leave. And we don’t know what they do there. At least, I don’t. Maybe Dr. Shen does.”

  She took a few more bites, looking thoughtful.

  “Thomas told Shen ADVENT was holding me,” she said. “You told me I was captured by smugglers.”

  “That’s right,” he said. “The guys in the bar probably drugged you. Then they took you up to their hideaway to remove your chip. That’s what we think, anyway. But then an ADVENT patrol came across them. The black market guys were all dead when we got there. You were alive.”

  “So the troopers found me there,” she mused. “Do you think they would have taken me off to one of those facilities you’re talking about? To do whatever they do?”

  “What do you think?” he asked.

  She sighed and put her hand to her brow. “Why didn’t you tell me about this before?”

  He shrugged. “At first I didn’t want to frighten you. After that, well, you wouldn’t have believed us, would you?”

  “I guess not,” she admitted.

  “So what now? First all you wanted to do was get away from us. Then you were willing to risk death to tag along. What’s your next act?”

  She was silent for a moment.

  “There is something I didn’t tell you,” she said. “My sister wasn’t the first person I lost. My mother disappeared three years ago. She went to the Atlantic Seaboard, and I never saw her again. She was supposed to have been killed during a dissident attack. But in her case, I never saw the body.” She looked at him frankly. “Maybe she’s still out there. Maybe if I’m with you guys I can at least find out the truth.”

  “Maybe,” he said. “Like Shen said, we can always hope. And if you’re joining us, that’s a better reason than revenge. But it’s still not enough.”

  “It will have to do for now,” she said.

  CHAPTER 8

  THE ELPIS HAD a crew of seventy-two, including Amar’s squad, which made the ship feel rather small at times. Amar had never been much for small spaces, so he tried to quell his claustrophobia and fill his time learning more about XCOM, its history, the plans they were making.

  Each Native cell had its own quirks, and these people were no different, except they had a deeper connection to the real thing. Sure, Thomas had been with XCOM, but her experience was almost exclusively military.

  Their cell had coordinated with others in times past. They had sabotaged railways, looted food stockpiles, rescued more groups like the people in Oakdale than he cared to think about, because that only reminded him of the ones they didn’t manage to protect—the empty camps, the occasional mass graves they came across.

  But there had only been the vaguest idea of a bigger plan. It was hard to organize.

  They had their Morse code network and various ways of hiding information inside of what was ostensibly entertainment radio. Some cells had managed to hack into jabber propaganda and contradict it, but he wasn’t sure how much good that did. Lena wasn’t stupid, but she’d still been convinced the aliens were well intentioned, despite the occasional dissident broadcast claiming the contrary.

  XCOM had been far more than a military organization. They had built infrastructure, done research and development, sought sources of funding and managed those funds to best advantage.

  And in the end, they had failed. The governments that underwrote them lost faith in their ability to hold the aliens at bay—much less beat them—and folded. And that was very much how things still stood, with each region ruled by puppet regimes of collaborators.

  But it didn’t take a genius to understand that Shen had found funding somewhere, and that didn’t just show in the ship itself. The Elpis carried a research lab in her bow.

  Which is where he met the other Dr. Shen.

  He guessed she was in early thirties. She had her father’s onyx hair and a quiet intensity. She was never still, always tinkering with a widget, running computations, tuning the ship’s engines. Not the sort of person who would drop everything to give you a tour. But she didn’t mind talking as she went about her seemingly endless tasks. And she spoke Mandarin as well as English, which was nice to hear after all this time.

  But most of the time it almost seemed like she was talking to herself, even when answering a question. As if he wasn’t really quite there. She almost never stopped what she was doing to make eye contact.

  He asked her about the ship’s weapons once, and she made a dismissive little clicking sound.

  “Yes, we have the deck guns,” she said, “and we did retain minor torpedo capability, although what we bear is much smaller and deadlier than this ship originally carried. I’m standing where the forward torpedo batteries were. The fact is, the ship isn’t at all about fighting. It’s about hiding. If they ever really know where we are, they won’t come within torpedo or gun range. They will torch us from the sky.

  “So what have we been working on? Buffers to reduce engine sound. Filters to minimize the exhaust from burning diesel. The hull is wired with a stealth system that passes sixty percent of low-level energy emissions—like radar—around us rather than bouncing them back. We’re not transparent, but we are translucent.

  “But the number one thing that keeps us safe is that the enemy doesn’t know we exist. So, weapons? We are already carrying more than we need.”

  The rest of the crew were standoffish at first, especially the soldiers, who consciously or unconsciously resented them for taking the places of their friends and comrades, and especially resented that Thomas was now the ranking officer.

  But the fact was that despite having better armor and better weapons, what remained of Elpis’s soldiers were on the green side, some having never seen any combat at all. Thomas dealt with that—and with the general boredom and restlessness that seemed inevitable on a voyage like this—by holding training sessions in close combat. When they surfaced, they went topside and took target practice and worked on basic tactics and communication.

  Thomas had a style of command that got its results not from fear and intimidation, but rather from making you not want to let her down, and she was good at seeing the personalities of a squad and putting the right people together.

  Usually. She had been right about Rider. Chitto, Amar still wasn’t sure about. She had guts, and she had saved his life probably, back in the flood—but she couldn’t hit the sub if she put the muzzle of her weapon against it, and she too often tended to act on her own, without consulting with anyone, including her partner.

  Like the time she’d let Lena get the shotgun.

  After the first week, Lena asked if she could participate in the drills, and Thomas put her in.

  One day, after training, Thomas called Amar up to where she stood on the bow. Her fading blonde hair was in its usual long braid, but the strip above her forehead that she usually kept shaved was growing back in a bit.

  “What’s up, Chief?” he asked.

  “Just checking in,” she said.

  “What do you mean?” he asked.

  She fidgeted with her half-ear. “You know me,” she said. “I’m not much on sharing and all that. But I know you took losing Rider hard.”

  “I’m fine, Chief,” he said. “I’m doing my job okay, right?”

  “Sure,” she said. “Better than okay. But you used be … well, funny. Made jokes, told stories, poked fun at people. Now I rarely see you smile.”

  “You don’t do any of that stuff, Chief,” he said. “At least not much.”

  “True,” she said. “But I never did. It’s not in my nature.” She sighed and looked out to sea. “We all have switches in us,” she said. “To do what we do, sometimes we have to turn those swi
tches off. But we also have to learn to turn them back on. You’re not just a soldier to me, KB. You’re my soldier.”

  “I appreciate that, Chief,” he said.

  He remembered his talk with Lena, his assumption that any complaint he made to his squad mates would be seen as a sign of weakness. Maybe he had undersold them—after all, they were the closest thing he had to a family.

  “What I’m saying,” Thomas went on, “is if you need to talk to someone, do it. I don’t mean me. I’m terrible at this stuff.”

  “Okay, Chief,” he said. “Is that all?”

  “Not quite,” she said. “I’d like you to start leading some exercises.”

  That came from a blind direction.

  “Why me?” he asked.

  “Because I see potential in you,” she replied. “I think one day you’ll make a fine squad leader. Why do you think I stuck you with Chitto? With any of the others, you would just follow their leads. With her, you have to learn to command.”

  So that was why. He knew there had to be something. But command?

  “Begging your pardon, Chief,” he said, “I don’t think I’m the leader type.”

  “Exactly,” she said. “If you thought so, you wouldn’t be.”

  She clapped him on the shoulder and walked back toward the hatch, leaving him to wonder whether she was serious, kidding, or had just passed along a koan for him to contemplate.

  * * *

  The Elpis plowed along, on the sea and under it. They made much faster time on top of the water, averaging about eighteen or twenty kilometers an hour. Underwater, it was more like four.

  As the trip wore on and they left inhabited lands farther behind, they spent more time on the surface, especially after dark.

  One such night Amar lay on his back and watched the slow wheel of the stars, wondering at their beauty. The sea was calm, and the air was decidedly chilly.

  He was remembering that some people believed the souls of the dead became stars. It seemed like a nice thought. If it were so, which would Rider be? The faint red one there, or the brash, actinic one near the horizon?