Bringing Stella Home

by Joe Vasicek

  James nodded and lifted his gun, pointing it at the targets across the room. He held the rifle awkwardly in his hands, and fired without pressing the butt of his gun against his shoulder. As a result, the recoil threw him back a good half meter, and the shots went wild, ricocheting toward the ceiling where they vaporized with a muted sizzle.

  “Ow!” he shouted, his face immediately turning beet red.

  Danica drew in a silent breath and shook her head. This is going to take a lot of work.

  * * * * *

  Few things gave the boy without a name more pleasure than the feel of a warm, smoking gun in his hands.

  He ducked behind two parallel rows of old, corroded barrels, keeping to the left as he ran through the training course with the four platoon brothers in his squad. At the first gap, he stopped, crouched, and spun around the corner, eyes immediately locking onto the target. In less time than it took to think, he fired. Bullet holes peppered the human-shaped silhouette, all falling within the third ring from the center.

  We are getting better, he thought to himself. A smile came to his lips.

  His squadmates had caught up with him, ducking below the long parallel rows of barrels as they ran. Alarms blared above them, and a digital clock ticked down the seconds in the corner of his visor display. The boy scurried ahead to the next gap, blasting three more targets. One of them shone a laser at him, but the beam passed well over his head.

  Adrenaline surged through the boy’s veins, rousing him to action. Blood flowed to his groin as he gasped for breath. He shuddered in rapture as the gun recoiled against his shoulder, bullets screaming in sweet, explosive release.

  About halfway through the training course, those of the Many always felt it—a sexual impulse that transformed their exercise from rote action into pure ecstasy. The boy didn’t know what it was or where it came from, but that hardly mattered. All he knew was that whatever it was, he wanted more of it.

  An unbidden memory flashed into his mind, pulling him out of the training for a split second. A spaceport, orbiting a rocky gray moon. Old, water-stained corridors, dimly lit. The pungent smell of incense. A voluptuous woman in a dark red dress, leading him through a dingy bead curtain. A dark room, empty except for a queen-sized bed and a three legged table. Stains on the sheets, cash on the table.

  More than any particular impression, however, he remembered a feeling of deep shame. A forgotten face came to his mind: old and stern, with a neatly trimmed beard. Though the man radiated harshness and discipline, something about his face screamed of familiarity. The boy ducked behind an obstacle and tried to recall the man’s name, but no matter how hard he tried, he couldn’t quite remember.

  Lasers flew over his head; the targets were rolling out from the gaps into the main corridor, firing at them. The boy dropped to his stomach and brought his gun to bear, making himself as small as possible. With rapid precision, he picked out the targets to the left, focusing on the ones that were armed. As his squadmates joined him, the targets went down two and three at a time, lasers swinging wide.

  Their teamwork was flawless. Within less than fifteen seconds, the remaining thirty-seven targets were all down. The right side of his visor display showed that his squadmates had received only a handful of glancing blows on their arms. In real combat, the wounds would not be critical. With their RPV shields active, the shots wouldn’t have even gotten through.

  The boy grasped the muzzle of his gun, still hot, and smiled.

  * * * * *

  James dropped to his knees and pointed his laser-paintball rifle down the dim, narrow corridor of the Tajji Flame. His chest heaved with exertion against the artificial gravity, set to 150 percent of standard for the shipwide training exercises. Ahead of him, Mikhail crouched and motioned for the others to get down.

  “Shields up,” he told his squad. “Any minute now. Get ready to fall back.”

  James sighed. “We tried that last time. It didn’t work.”

  “Shh!”

  James rolled his eyes. What was the point of repeating the same mistakes, time and again? The walls all around them were splattered with paint from the previous rounds—blue for the first, green for the second, red for the third, and in a few minutes they’d be splattered with a bright coat of yellow. Their armor, too, was splattered—James’s more than all of them put together. Cleaning all of this was going to be a pain and a half, but James tried not to think of that now, not while—

  The blast door hissed and parted. Two small, round objects rolled through before the door was completely open.

  “Grenade!” shouted Mikhail.

  James buried his face in his elbow just as the grenades exploded with a small puffing noise. The edges of his arm flared with brilliant light, shining bright red through his eyelids. A moment later, paintballs sliced through the air and splattered on the walls and floor. His squadmates started shouting, and James lifted his head and dropped to the floor, firing wildly with his gun.

  “Fall back!” Mikhail shouted. “Fall back!”

  James blinked and stared through the doorway. Fuzzy silhouettes gradually gave way to more solid forms. Half a dozen red dots of laser light danced along the walls on either side as Maria’s squad advanced.

  Not this time, James thought to himself, rising to his feet.

  With a loud cry, he ran straight at the other squad, firing. “Come on!” he shouted to his other squadmates. “We can take ‘em!” Downrange, someone cried out in pain, while the silhouettes slunk against the walls, falling back before him.

  As James ran screaming down the corridor, the red points of laser-light leaped from the walls and converged on his chest. The mock RPV shield on his wrist began to blink.

  “Fall back, kid,” Mikhail shouted from far behind. “You’re going to blow!”

  James was too busy to listen, however. He zig-zagged as he charged, firing indiscriminately at everything he saw. I can get them before my shield blows, he told himself. If only—

  His gun suddenly locked up, refusing to fire. He dropped to his stomach and checked the magazine—still full—but noticed that the light on his wrist had stopped blinking.

  “McCoy is down,” came Ilya’s voice over the shipwide intercom. “So are Yeubanks and Ladroga.”

  “What?” shouted a young woman. One of the dark shapes rose from the shadows, not ten yards from where James lay on the floor. “How?”

  “Killed in the blast from McCoy’s shield,” said Ilya.

  “Wait,” said James, “what do you mean I’m dead?”

  “Your shield blew, kid,” said Ilya. “Get down and let the exercise continue.”

  “But I was under fire for less than five seconds!”

  “With four heavy assault rifles pumping lead slugs into you at five hundred rounds per minute,” came Ilya’s voice. “Now shut up and get down.”

  “No, you listen to me!” James shouted. He slipped off his helmet and rose to his feet. “I swear, Ilya, you’ve got the game rigged. Why don’t you come down from the bridge and—”

  Something powerful struck him in the back. An instant later, he slammed face-first into the wall.

  “Ow!” he cried, turning around to see what had struck him. Before he could react, one of Maria’s soldiers raised a gun and pointed it at his chest.

  The paintballs pelted his armor at point blank range. Each blow was enough to knock the wind out of him. He gasped for breath and bounced around on the floor as the shots made a bright yellow dot in the center of his chest.

  “You’re dead,” said the soldier. “Now shut up and move aside.”

  James slumped to the ground as his whole body started to ache. He clenched his fists and tried to pull himself up, but found he didn’t have the strength in the extra gravity. Further down, Ladroga and Yeubanks had their helmets off and were glowering at him.

  “Worthless kid,” said Yeubanks, spitting on the floor. She helped Ladroga to his feet, and together they walked away, leaving him to lie pathetically on
the floor.

  * * * * *

  Something was wrong. The boy without a name didn’t know what it was, but it resonated clearly through the hearts of his platoon brothers. The rhythmic march down the corridor did little to comfort them, in spite of the perfect unity of their step. They felt no security in their togetherness—only a vague, unshakable feeling of impending danger.

  Voche led them in a direction they had never gone. The hall went down a level on a gradual incline, air ducts and pipes running unexposed along the ceiling next to cold, green lights.

  At the end of the hallway, they came to a freight door. It seemed ordinary enough—aged metal surface, chipping paint, early signs of corrosion—but somehow the boy knew otherwise. Something dangerous was behind that door—something monstrous.

  “Halt,” said Voche.

  The platoon instantly came to a stop. The boy’s knees began to tremble.

  “Take positions!”

  In spite of their growing fear, the reflexes from training quickly took over. Like a well-oiled machine, the boy ran to the front of the line with a dozen others and crouched down, about fifteen meters from the door.

  He stared straight ahead, arms shaking, knees trembling. In spite of the cool air, his palms were sweaty, making his hands feel slippery. The chamber suddenly seemed to darken, while the air grew unbearably stale. His breathing came short and ragged as his heart pounded in his chest.

  Voche stepped in front of them. “This,” he said, “is more than a door.” He knocked casually on the corroded surface; at the low thumping noise, several of them flinched. “It is a barrier between you and the enemy. You must always keep that in mind. Whenever you come to a barrier like this, know that the enemy is waiting for you.”

  The boy drew in a sharp breath. The instant Voche paused, the fear they all shared multiplied tenfold. It was as if something invisible, something untouchable, had reached out through the door and stabbed him in the chest.

  “When you storm a ship,” continued Voche, “you must not underestimate the enemy’s forces.”

  A feeling of weakness swept over them—of powerlessness, as if an unseen monster had blinded their eyes and turned their muscles to pudding. In that moment, the boy felt alone and vulnerable, naked in a nightmare.

  “Make no mistake about it,” said Voche, his voice rising. “Death lies on the other side of that door. Will it be yours, or will it be the enemy’s?”

  A collective shudder passed through them all. The boy’s eyes widened and he gasped for breath. In an instant, his fear and terror dropped out from underneath him, leaving him devoid of feeling.

  It was almost as if he had died.

  “Are you ready?” Voche shouted, his voice filling the chamber.

  Life came to the boy’s limbs again—life and urgency. His muscles trembled with focused anticipation as every part of his being focused on the door. Like a cornered animal, he made ready to fight to the death.

  “Attack!”

  At that instant, the door slid open. Time froze, and the boy became hyper-aware of his surroundings—the rust in the walls, the three-quarter inch gaps in the floor grating, the sweat on his brow and in his palms. In that instant, he could feel the presence of each of his platoon brothers individually, clearer than ever before.

  One of them was missing.

  In the instant before the guns erupted, the boy saw clearly what lay on the other side of the door. His nameless platoon brother lay in a rapidly swelling pool of fresh blood, naked and face upward on the floor. His skull had been cracked open, his single remaining eye staring up at the ceiling from a bloody socket. Blood gushed outward from a hole in his chest.

  Behind the body, half a dozen men stood with guns in their hands.

  The entire hallway exploded with the sound of gunfire. Bullets flew like a meteor shower, shredding the bodies of the men on the other side. They twitched like marionettes, jolted as if by invisible strings from some unseen hand above them. Blood and gore sprayed from their ruptured bodies, splattering the walls and floor.

  An instant later, the boy was on his feet, charging with his platoon brethren. They fired repeatedly into the dismembered corpses, blowing them to pieces, splattering their armor with blood and brains and flecks of bone and skin.

  Slowly, realization of their victory won over the animal frenzy. It was over. The monster was dead. The danger had passed—it would no longer threaten them.

  Nothing could threaten them. They were One.

  The boy lifted his head and whooped triumphantly at the top of his lungs. Together, several of his other platoon brothers followed suit. Their cries resonated through the chamber, drowning out all other noise.

  We will not be defeated. We will not be afraid. We will conquer.

  As the victory cry rose in volume, the boy’s eyes wandered to a dismembered hand that still held onto its gun. As his eyes passed over it, he realized that the gun was actually a piece of harmless plastic, stuck to the hand with thick gray tape. A disembodied head, scorched by plasma, had a gag still tied between the man’s teeth.

  The boy only noticed it with passing interest, however. He and his platoon brethren were too euphoric to care.

  We will conquer!

  Chapter 12

  Danica stepped briskly down the main corridor of her ship. The walls, she was pleased to note, had been cleaned of any trace of the training earlier in the week. The acrid smell of the cleanser still hung in the air, while further down, she heard the scraping of a brush and the sound of muttered curses.

  She turned the corner and stopped. Ensign McCoy was on his hands and knees, scrubbing the wall and floor. Ahead of him, the last ten meters of paint-splattered hallway stretched to the main airlock. Even though the training battle had been relatively light on this part of the ship, the ensign certainly had a good few hours of work ahead of him.

  “Stupid,” he muttered to himself, not yet aware of Danica’s presence. “Just because…stupid…”

  Danica indulged herself with a brief smile before folding her arms.

  “Ensign McCoy!” she boomed.

  The boy leaped to his feet and spun around. In his rush, he slipped on the wet floor and nearly tripped. His cheeks turned bright red as he steadied himself against the wall.

  “Captain!” he said. “I didn’t expect you to—”

  “Why haven’t you finished with this hallway yet, Ensign? I put you on cleanup duty three hours ago.”

  His eyes widened. “I—I’ve been working hard—really!”

  “I know you have,” said Danica. “You’ve done good work, too. But you need to be quicker—the rest of your team finished with their sections a long time ago.”

  “But you gave me more work than anyone,” James whined. “It’s not my fault!”

  Danica frowned and said nothing.

  “Besides,” James stammered, “I think the game is rigged. I’ve died more than anyone else—it’s just not fair.”

  “And exactly how do you think the simulations are rigged?”

  He drew in a sharp breath. “It’s just—I mean, every time someone points a laser at me, Ilya marks me dead, even when my RPV shields are up. Are those things so useless?” He shook his head and clenched his fists. “That little bastard just sits in his chair and watches us do all the heavy work, while he—”

  “That’s enough, Ensign.”

  “But Ilya, he—”

  “I personally review every training exercise in detail. Believe me, if Ilya was somehow stacking the odds against you, I would have seen it. He’s not.”

  James frowned, but kept silent.

  “The simple truth, Ensign, is that you’re no good as a soldier. Alone, you lack the skills to do any real damage, much less stay alive. What’s worse, you’re much too reckless to work as part of a team. You’re a maverick, Ensign—and a stupid, clumsy one at that.”

  James scowled. “I’m not clumsy.”

  Danica narrowed her eyes. James stared right back, the te
nsion visible in his face. For a moment, neither of them said anything. Then, careful to keep her face an unreadable mask, Danica opened her mouth.

  “Come with me.”

  She turned on her heel and walked briskly down the corridor. A few seconds later, she heard his footsteps clattering behind him.

  “Where are we going?” he asked.

  “Training exercises.”

  “Training?” he cried. “But I thought we’d—”

  “The others will not be participating.”

  “But—but what about cleaning the corridor? I thought you wanted me to—”

  “The corridor will still be there when you get back, Ensign. You’ll have time enough when we’re through.”

  James said nothing more. In a few moments, they entered the empty gymnasium, door hissing shut behind them. Danica keyed the access panel on the wall, and a cache of hand-to-hand weapons slid open for her to peruse.

  “What are we doing?” he asked. “Why did you bring me here?”

  “You need some one-on-one attention,” she said, picking out a long brown staff. “Catch.”

  Instead of catching it, James ducked. The staff hit his elbow and clattered on the ground.

  “Ouch!” he said. “What was that for?”

  “That staff is called a pujilion,” said Danica. “It’s a standard piece of training equipment for hand-to-hand combat.”

  He picked up the pole and stood up, examining it. It was perfectly straight, came up to about his shoulders, and was made of a firm yet spongy substance, like hardened foam.

  “What is this?”

  “It’s a super-dense elastic fiberfoam pole,” she said, “built to withstand heavy shear and yield to compression. Try jabbing it into the floor.”

  He did. The tip collapsed almost half a meter, startling him.

  “The pujilion is designed to minimize physical injury,” Danica continued. “Still, you’d better wear some protection for your knees and elbows. You’ll find them in the bin to the far left—you should probably pick up a helmet as well.”