by Rick Partlow
“Ginger,” Pops ordered, “blow up the curio cabinet. One round.”
The sound of the weapon discharging inside the hollowed-out tree trunk was painful, an echoing sonic boom hitting me deep in my chest and sinuses. The display case exploded into shrapnel and only the armor of the Helta soldiers kept it from reaching any of us. The soldiers flinched and ducked, and so did Strawbridge and the others, but I made myself stand as unmoving as the Prime Facilitator.
“Think about what that’ll to do you even through your armor,” I suggested to the soldiers. “And put down your fucking guns before you have to find out the hard way.”
I have to give Caan-Fan-To credit. He could have shit his pants and hid in a corner, could have lost his cool and started screaming at everyone, but he stayed calm.
“Deputy Facilitator,” he said, his voice steady and deep, “I gave my promise that these people would be safe here until the Council heard their case. Take your soldiers and your anger and outrage and save them for the meeting tomorrow. Or do you think these dozen humans are going to take over the planet before then?”
The second in command of the Helta government was shaken, but her self-righteous anger overcame her fear and she straightened, glaring at Caan-Fan-To.
“I will be there in the morning,” she assured him. “And when we meet, I will be challenging you for the leadership of our people. Enjoy your last night as the prime.”
She spun on her heel and left, passing through the line of armored Delta troops. The Helta soldiers hesitated, then filed out behind her.
“They didn’t drop their weapons,” Ginger said, sounding disappointed.
“Major Clanton,” Strawbridge ground out, her eyes like sighting lasers fixed on my chest, “you have overstepped your authority.”
“Yes, ma’am,” I acknowledged. “It’s what I do best.”
Chapter Eleven
As I said, he Helta did not believe in safety railings. OSHA would have a field day on this planet, writing tickets for every violation in their books and some they probably hadn’t even thought of. I leaned against the rough, gnarled wood of the exterior wall and stared up at strange stars, trying not to think about how narrow the catwalk was.
One bad step and fifty feet later, it would all be over and I wouldn’t have to worry about living a couple hundred years. It wasn’t a bad analogy for our current situation. The door beside me slid open and my hand moved automatically to the Glock 9mm holstered at my side, but I knew it wouldn’t be a threat, not coming from that direction.
“Good evening, Andy,” Jack Patel said.
The dim, greenish glow of the chemical lights above the door threw the doctor’s face into sharp relief, his dark eyes nearly invisible.
“Hey Doc.” I nodded a greeting, letting my fingertips fall away from the the Glock’s grip. “What you doing up this late?”
“My circadian rhythms are totally screwed,” he confessed, raising his hands as if surrendering to the inevitable.
“Can’t you prescribe yourself a sleeping pill?”
“I don’t take any medication unless it’s absolutely necessary.”
I stared at him, speechless for a moment.
“Aren’t you the guy who stuck an untested alien chemical into my arm in the hope it would make me live forever?”
“Well, that was different,” he insisted. “That was orders. And it won’t make you live forever. You’d have to get another dose at some point, maybe another hundred years, or you’ll start aging again.” He shrugged. “Of course, it’s my opinion we’ll have improved on it fairly soon.”
“You think so?” I asked him, unable to keep the skeptical note out of my voice.
“Oh, yes,” he said, as if it was self-evident. “Helta medical and biological science is not that far advanced from ours, really. They have the foundations to go much further, but it’s as if they were….” He shook his head. “I don’t know, it’s like maybe like someone dumped a bunch of technology on them and they sorted through it and used what was there but haven’t improved on it at all.”
I grunted. It wasn’t the first time I’d heard something like that, but I wasn’t sure Patel was cleared for the discussion I wanted to have about it.
“What about you, Andy? You watching the stars because you’re afraid to take a sleeping pill?”
“Oh, hell no,” I assured him. “I’ve taken them for years. Couldn’t sleep through a single night without one. I’m on guard duty.” I patted the holstered pistol. “I’d be in armor except I left my suit on the shuttle so I could be all nice and non-threatening while we were talking to the Helta politicians.”
He snorted a laugh.
“Yes, someone told me you blew up a shrine to the Prime Facilitator’s ancestors or something.”
“Hey!” I protested. “I didn’t know it was important. It looked like a curio cabinet with trinkets in it or something. Anyway, it got the message across. We didn’t have to kill anyone, and we got this nice guest house to sleep in instead of a cell, so I’d call it a win.”
He didn’t say anything, but I thought I heard another snicker under his breath.
“It’s very beautiful here, isn’t it?”
I followed his gaze out across the moonlit forest, up to the frosting of stars. In the distance, I could just see the glow of a snow-capped mountain.
“It is,” I acknowledged. “And the lucky bastards have three habitable planets right here in the system, just waiting for them.”
Something called out in the night, a sound I didn’t recognize.
“Is that an owl?” Patel wondered, cocking his head to the side in case he heard the call again.
“Don’t see any reason why it couldn’t be,” I allowed. “After all, as far as we know, every living world we’ve seen was seeded with transplanted Earth life. Maybe adjusted for conditions, tweaked in a lab somewhere by these Elders the Helta and the Tevynians keep going on about, but it started out as something from Earth and fairly recently in a geological sense.”
“It’s amazing.” Patel waved a hand out at everything around us. “To think of the time and effort and the sheer power it would take to terraform all these worlds. Can you imagine? Throwing forces like that around for what? A biology experiment? Just to see what happened?”
“Or a social experiment,” I suggested. “For pretty much the same reason.”
“Well, that’s a bit more disturbing,” he said, a tremor in his voice.
“How so?”
“Well, look, Andy, doing the one, just spreading life through the galaxy because you want to make living worlds from dead ones, that’s a lofty ideal. It’s almost godlike.” Patel shook his head. “But playing with conscious, thinking beings because you want to see how entertaining it is when they start beating each other’s brains out…well, that’s when the Elders start sounding less like gods and more like Nazis.”
“Thank you all to hell for that cheerful thought on this dark and scary night, Doc.”
“Not at all.” I thought I saw a mischievous smile cross his boyish face. “So, is Captain…sorry, I mean Colonel Nieves still back at the shuttle?”
“Yeah, she stayed there with the flight crew.” And a few HK M27s, just in case. “We didn’t want to leave our ride unguarded. We don’t know how this council meeting is going to go tomorrow. We might have to leave in a hurry.”
“That would be a bad thing, I suppose.”
“Well, we’d be all on our own with a grand total of four starships, assuming things are going well with the ones they’re putting together back home, with the Tevynians out there, conquering star systems left and right. So yeah, it would be bad.”
“There may be those at home who wouldn’t see the Tevynians coming out on top as such a worst-case scenario,” he said. I gaped at him, wide-eyed, and he smiled. “Not me. But I have colleagues around the world, you know, and many back in my parents’ homeland. There are many Indians who see the Elders and the Helta and all this as confirmati
on that the Vedic scriptures are true. There are others who consider the Tevynians to be one of the lost tribes of Israel, or simply our long-lost brothers and sisters who deserve our support in a war against strange-looking aliens.”
“Then they’re fucking idiots,” I declared. “They Tevynians will roll right into the Solar System and call it their own, then kill any human who gets in their way without any more compunction than they’ve had about killing Helta.”
“You’re preaching to the choir, my friend. These are the times of legend, when everything changes. People are not always rational in their reaction to the works of God.”
“You see God in all this, Doc?” I asked him. “Because I thought a second ago you were calling the Elders gods.”
“If you believe God created everything in the universe, then He created the Elders, too,” Patel pointed out. “And if they were part of His plan, then so is this. Faith is the substance of things hoped for,” he quoted to me, “the evidence of things not seen. I wouldn’t give up my faith simply because God has allowed me to see more than those before me.”
“And what if God just turns out to be a large-scale version of the Elders? Just playing with the universe because He wants to see what happens?”
“If God is not all good, then He is not God. Surely your father must have taught you that.”
“Dad kind of had the inverse view of that. If God says it’s good, then it’s good and it’s you that’s wrong for disagreeing.”
“I suppose that’s one way of looking at it. But tell me this, Andy Clanton. If it was not God who put you and me and Julie Nieves and Michael Olivera and Daniel Gatlin on the Selene at exactly the time the Helta showed up in our system, right when we needed to be, then it was one heck of a coincidence. Wasn’t it?”
I couldn’t think of anything smart, or even smartass, to say to that, so I said nothing.
“I think I may try to sleep again.” He nodded to me. “Good night, Andy.”
I stared into the sky and wondered if anything was staring back.
***
“Hey, boss man.”
Something kicked at my right boot and I came awake instantly, grabbing for the Glock on the floor beside me, my hand closing on the grip before I remembered where I was. I’d fallen asleep in my clothes, exhausted enough that even the sleeping bag we’d brought from the shuttle felt comfortable on the bare, wood floor.
Light streamed in from gaps in the outside wall that weren’t really gaps. There were spaces between the trunks that made up the walls, but they were filled with something translucent that let in the sunshine. I squinted against the morning rays and wondered how long the nights were here, because it didn’t feel like I’d gotten more than four hours of sleep.
Pops was standing over me, in fatigues. We’d instituted fifty percent security last night, which meant half the team was in armor at all times. I’d taken first watch outside the door because it wouldn’t have been fair to them to not do my share.
“What is it?” I asked, pushing myself to my feet.
“Breakfast,” he said. “Or the Helta equivalent. Apparently, the grand potentate or whatever the fuck he’s called is coming to eat a meal with us and Joon-Pah has assured Deputy Secretary Strawbridge that it’s somehow sacred. Or something. Either way, she wants you there.”
I looked around for a bathroom, then remembered where we were. The Helta did their business on a tiny platform hanging out over a compost pit dug into the ground, and when I’d had to use it last night, I’d nearly fallen right out the door. But nature called so I’d have to risk it.
“Where’s breakfast going to be?” I asked. “In here or back at the Teddy Bear Picnic White House?”
“Neither.” Pops grinned. “Apparently the breakfast tradition here is al fresco.”
I didn’t like the sound of that.
I was right.
The elevated walkway we’d taken from the landing pad wound another few miles around the forest, and whenever there was a natural clearing, it widened into something useful, a platform supporting a storage building or some sort of public service facility like a medical clinic, or a small-scale production plant fabricating…whatever they bought and sold here.
We ran into other Helta for the first time on the walkway, though from a distance. Helta soldiers blocked the intersections wherever we passed, keeping the aliens away until we were well down the path, their lasers raised across their chests in silent threat. The Helta civilians stared at us, their ears flat against their skulls, hair standing up at the crest of their heads, shooing their children behind them.
I hadn’t seen Helta children before, but they were, I have to admit, incredibly cute. Picture a black bear cub crossed with a Capuchin monkey and dressed in something like a cassock off a medieval Catholic priest and you’d have the typical Helta toddler. I don’t think the kids understood the significance of the funny-looking, hairless apes, because they seemed to be more fascinated by the soldiers and their lasers.
I was still pondering whether they’d let me adopt one when we came to the stairs. I call them stairs, but that is, perhaps, overstating the case. It was more a ramp, a yard wide and heading upward at close to a forty-five-degree angle another twenty or thirty yards to a platform higher than the treetops, overlooking the forest and the city nestled into it. And we were supposed to walk up it, with no handrails and a sheer drop to certain death on either side.
“What the fuck?” I said, turning back to Pops, who was in his armor, leading the rest of the team. His visor was up and he was grinning at me. “I mean, seriously, what the fuck?”
“Their ancestors were bears,” he reasoned. “They climb trees and shit.”
“And my ancestors were apes,” I reminded him. “All sorts of tree-climbing and I still hate this shit.”
“Andy,” Patel said from the middle of the line of armored Delta operators, “I don’t believe I can do this.”
“It’s okay, Doc,” I assured him. “Walk behind one of the security team, keep your hand wrapped around the casualty handle on their backpack and close your eyes. They can’t fall over, the computer control system won’t let them.”
“The casualty handle?” Patel repeated, a blank look on his face.
“The big handle at the center of the backpack,” Pops told him. “It’s so if one of us goes down, another trooper can grab him with one hand and drag him to safety.”
“Just hold on tight, Doc,” Ginger, the operator walking just in front of Patel, told him, grinning. “I won’t let you fall.”
“You wanna grab my handle, sir?” Pops asked me, obviously amused.
“Where’s Strawbridge?” I asked, looking around.
“I think she’s already up there.” Pops nodded toward the top of the platform. We couldn’t see it from this angle.
Shit. If Strawbridge made it up this thing by herself, then I have to.
“Follow me, you Army pukes,” I said, heading up the ramp.
One good, stiff breeze, that’s all it would have taken to send me over the side, or at least that was what it felt like. I kept my eyes on my feet and concentrated on getting a good, solid step on the rough, ridged pattern of the ramp. I did not look at the trees or the sky and definitely not at the ground below. And I tried really hard not to think how much worse it was going to be coming down.
“Good morning, Major Clanton,” Strawbridge said as I came over the edge of the ramp onto the platform, suppressing a sigh of relief. “I trust you slept well.”
“Like a baby,” I assured her. “Every three hours I woke up screaming and pissing myself.”
Joon-Pah, Caan-Fan-To, and his aide Vandas-Gol were already there, along with a few other Helta in formal dress and a handful of soldiers guarding the approaches from below. They were all gathered around a central…table, I guess? It was an outdoor version of the one I’d seen in Caan-Fan-To’s official residence, though this one was raised on wooden pylons that seemed to grow out of the platform. Bowl-shape
d depressions were spaced every few feet, each of them filled with a different sort of food, some obviously fruits, others various sorts of vegetables or grains.
“No bacon,” Pops commented drily. “How can you have breakfast without bacon?”
“Don’t antagonize our hosts, Pops,” I warned him. “Otherwise you won’t be allowed to stand up and eat with your fingers a hundred feet off the ground, in the cold, while bears stare at you.”
“I hope our accommodations were comfortable enough for you,” Caan-Fan-To was saying around a mouthful of some sort of citrus fruit, juice from it spraying everywhere. I tried not to stare, but apparently the Helta had no compunctions about talking with their mouth full nor chewing with their mouth open. It was a little like feeding time at the zoo, if the bears wore suits and tried to talk to you while they stuffed their face.
“I’m in the Marine Corps,” I told him, reaching a little hesitantly for what looked like a mutant carrot. “We can sleep anywhere, including the back of a moving truck that’s being shot at.”
“I believe there must be a problem with your translation software,” Caan-Fan-To said, pausing with a slice of fruit halfway to his juice-stained mouth. “You just said you were with a band of soldiers who fight on the water?”
Pops laughed and it quickly spread among the rest of the Delta team until I scowled them into submission.
“That’s complicated, sir,” I said, trying a bite of the vegetable. It was soft and salty and I decided it wasn’t too bad, whatever it was called. “Up until recently, a major part of any military on our world has been a navy of ships that travel across the ocean. The Marines are soldiers who are stationed on those ships.” Which was way simplifying it, but I didn’t want to spend an hour on inter-service rivalry with the Helta.
“Ah, I see,” the Helta said, making a gesture of affirmation. “So, when you went into space, you took the traditions of the Navy from the water and the Marines for your ground forces on your spaceships?”
I glared at Pops when he began laughing again.