by L Bowers
“What the hell is going on?” Standish said over the comms. “Who are you talking to, Goshawk?”
“Aspen,” I replied as I realized everything I said aloud could be heard over my throat mic. “Keep fighting. Have to win.”
“Ray?” Jones said. “You don’t sound too good. Where are you? Oh, I see you. Ray! Your leg, what happened?”
“I kicked ass too hard,” I replied. I didn’t know where the joke came from, or if it was any good, but I was glad it was that instead of the scream that wanted to come out.
“This isn’t right,” Kopf said. “There are too many, and I see more.”
“Are you saying we have incoming?” Standish asked at the same moment my good foot hit the ground. I hopped twice and flapped wings, going up.
“Yeah,” Kopf said. “We have a ton of incoming.”
“From where?” Standish asked.
“Everywhere,” Kopf replied.
“Ray,” Jones said in a calm voice. “I need you to turn around and go back to the ditch with the other Marines. Can you do that for me? Ray?”
“Yeah,” I replied. “I can do that.”
All thought of showing my squad what a non-aug Marine with a Lenashal could do was long gone. All I could do was keep moving and push back on the mountain of pain threatening to crush me. If not for Aspen’s cool energy coursing through me, I would have succumbed. Instead, I hit the ground and spun as I hopped. It took a few beats of Aspen’s wings to propel me in the right direction before I could leave the ground.
A familiar voice screamed. I looked up. When did I look down? The Marine, the beautiful one, was screaming. Two stags had locked up their horns with her rifle and were pushing her back. The Marines next to her were too busy fighting off other trouble to help.
Aspen’s wings beat, and I left the ground. A stag ran at the ravine and jumped. It cleared the ditch and landed easily on the opposite side. My pain-addled mind couldn’t figure out what it was doing. Is it retreating?
My eyes went wide as realization dawned. The machine turned around. I beat Aspen’s wings as hard as I could. The stag jumped again. I reached the edge of the ravine. The stag reached the Marine. I screamed as I dropped onto the stags pushing her with my talons slicing. She grunted as she was hit from behind.
Stunning ice blue eyes went wide. Her mouth opened, and red exploded from her lips. As the stags in front of her fell, she was pushed forward.
I roared. I caught her with one arm and kept her from falling. With the other, I reached behind and decapitated the machine. My damaged leg took my weight and I fell. Her momentum and weight carried me backward. Jarring pain shot through my torso from my broken ribs. Crippling pain caused my legs to jerk violently. Heart-wrenching pain broke me as a drop of blood fell from her perfect lips and landed on my cheek.
Her mouth moved, but I couldn’t hear her over the screams. A smile spread over her blood-stained face, then it happened like they said it would in books. The light left her eyes and changed them from the stunning ice blue to dull and cold. Her weight seemed to triple as she went slack on top of me.
Someone pulled her off me. My screams grew louder, and more desperate. I rose onto my one good leg. I had to get away. I couldn’t stay there. Death inhabited that ditch, and I couldn’t watch it claim another.
I scrambled up the side of the ravine on two hands and one leg. Once I was up, I stood. The weight I put on my leg hurt, but I deserved it. I let her down. I let her die. I failed her, Standish, Kopf, the Marines we came to save, and Jones.
My last scream hitched in my throat. “Jones,” I said. “Angela!”
No reply came.
“No!” I shouted.
The broken thing inside me shattered. Pain, both physical and mental, took up the space he used to occupy. The pain gave way to something else. Something primal and stronger than pain.
“Angela,” I said as everything took on a greenish hue. “Angela!” I shouted as the thing in me became clear. Rage burned through every inch of me, and filled me with hate and self-loathing. “Jones!” I roared.
The green in my vision exploded outward. A ball of swirling greenish-blue energy surrounded me. I threw my arms wide and my head back. A wordless roar left my lips as the green energy grew brighter. I continued to vent my rage at the universe as green filled the sphere. Green filled me to slam into my gut and violently fly from my mouth.
The green sphere exploded, and sent a wave of energy out in all directions. I slumped to the ground, and my roars became a pitiful sound as I wept.
“Help,” a frail voice said through the com piece in my ear.
My head snapped up. “Angela?”
9
UNKOWN
Kill the humans, commands said, foreign and distant, but I was able to push through them the farther I went from the nearest dragon heart. When I had been close, it wasn’t even a voice so much as a desire that I couldn’t fight. There had been one who never saw me, but I could have dropped on him and torn his head from his puny body. If I hadn’t resisted, I would have.
Instead, I focused on the part of me that had fought this all along, and I ran with my eight metallic spider legs. At times, I leaped over gaps in the stone ground, ducked through caves, and threw myself forward. At others, I slowed as my mind filled with fog, and my legs turned me around to return.
Go to hell, I thought to whatever force was out there trying to control me. I’m nobody’s bitch.
Crippling pain shot through all the parts of me that were still flesh as the metal reminded me that I was indeed its bitch. I struggled to breathe, although technically my body would be fine regardless. The metal in me was capable of movement and turned fluid when necessary, and seemed to move in whenever part of me wasn’t functioning properly. If my heart stopped, I wasn’t sure that would matter much. The metal would either form a new one or somehow perform the same function without one.
No, it wasn’t the need for oxygen that made me struggle, but the overwhelming feeling that I was being crushed by the metal that was both part of me and so very alien. Knowing that I had been back in my animal mind for some time, that I had been running with the herd, possibly even fighting those humans I so loved to watch. The humans who I believed had a stronger connection to me than my animal brethren would admit. As my breaths calmed, I blinked and walked along the nearest rock wall, then up to the ceiling at the exit of one of the many tunnels on this planet, and out onto a volcanic field.
Something was so incredibly familiar about this place. With its spread of gray rocks and fissures with steam rising up, the occasional pool of steaming, glowing red told me this was not a location my brethren visited often.
Had I been here before?
As I made my way down a hillside, I saw a creature flying in the distance. Wings of metal, a body of flesh—at least in part. Like myself. For some reason, that made it even more terrifying. There had been others back there. The snake woman who seemed so familiar, but who had gone out and not yet returned. The one like a cross between a bear and a tank, who seemed to be held in high regard among the robot animals. Another with an affection for the stags, as he called them.
I pushed myself back against a rock wall and felt it give, then turned and pushed, curious. To my surprise, it gave. That was nothing compared to what I found within, though. It wasn’t a tunnel like the others as I might have expected, but some sort of smooth, white stone. My mind found a word—marble. I couldn’t make sense of it since my brain felt like mashed potatoes, but that changed when I saw the two skeletons in the corner, out of the reach of light.
One was a child, wrapped in the arms of what I assumed to be the mother. It might have been a father, but the necklaces seemed feminine to me. They weren’t quite what I would expect from skeletons, based on the other flesh hybrids and the invading Marines I had seen. These had a certain rigidity to them, and the color was slightly blue, which didn’t fit what I would expect. Why? I couldn’t say.
What I knew for
sure, though, as I stared at the boy and his mom, was that nothing else mattered for those two but each other. All they wanted to do was survive, to be there for each other until the last second… and when they knew it was over, to hold each other. Dammit, that thought tore me up. In part, because it unscrambled my mind and threw memories at me that I hadn’t realized were up there.
A wife, pregnant and smiling as she caressed the bump of her belly. The two of us laughing and kissing. Me…a Marine like those below? No, not exactly, but wearing a uniform of sorts. Blue…and there on the uniform was a name: Bryant.
That was me! I had been a Chief Petty Officer. A Navy SEAL! Chief Bryant, they called me. Suddenly, my mind raced with images of my team, of charging through battlefields and fighting bugs, and blasting the shit out of those sons of bitches.
I turned and laughed as I remembered the excitement and the way those missions made me forget. Forget what, though? A memory came to me that I would as soon have forgotten about. The news of my wife’s death. My wife and child…gone. And there I was at war.
Here I was in another type of war, only somehow, I was fighting for the enemy! An enemy that had taken out my team when we arrived, and managed to take over our minds, too. I shook my head and felt moistness at my eyes. Only, when I went to wipe it away, I looked down at my finger to see the tear had a metallic gleam.
What was I, other than a monster? These memories had to hold me together, to give me strength to continue the mission. To get out there and take out my captors, and help the Marines get out of this hell alive.
A deep breath escaped my lips, and I ran my flesh hand along the marble. When I turned to see the corner beyond the woman and her child, I noticed a dim glow. I quickly followed it and turned the corner to see a scattering of metal. Bits of it laying all about, completely destroyed somehow, but clearly once it had been one of the animals. And there, glowing green but occasionally flashing red, was a translucent animal shaped like a small cat but with wings. It jolted at seeing me, then scrambled and clawed at the air to break free while going full red. But something held it in place.
I cautiously stepped closer, then crouched to see what it was. A small, round object. Metallic, maybe? Or a smooth rock?
I extended my metal hand and watched as the animal tried to scratch me but failed. To my surprise, my hand was pulled through it and to the round object. I skittered back, then stared in realization. It was a magnet!
Yes, the memory of fighting when I arrived on this planet came back, and I remembered using the magnets on our rifles to fight these spirit animals. Some had seemed like they wanted to help us, maybe, like they were warning us—and now I understood what they’d warned us about. Others were crazed and tried to attack us, to take our minds over and see us destroyed.
Mostly, though, it was the robotic animals that had been our enemy. I had to figure this puzzle out, to let the Marines know what was going on, and ensure they knew about the magnetic effect on these creatures.
I turned and ran from that strange chamber. When I emerged on the side of the hill, I tried to determine the best way back to the Marines. Would they listen to me, or fight until my dying breath? If they could kill me, that was.
Hell, either way I would win. I wanted to be done with this world, but certainly hoped I could at least get them the information they needed to win before meeting my maker. I figured out my path and went for it. As I scurried along cliffs and over hills, it was like I had made a “U” shape away from the dragon heart and back toward the Marine ship. Each hill passed was another few minutes of memories that I tried to push away—of my teammates and how we would spar, or the way one called Crystal would look at me with such affection.
More than once I wanted to laugh, but the insanity of my situation prevented it. I made great time, and then I was there and saw that man and woman again—only they were unconscious and lying on the ground.
I ran to them, leaned over the man and shook him, and told him about the magnets, but he wouldn’t wake. Then his eyes fluttered open and he stared in shock, and it all gushed out.
“I was one of you. I was a SEAL. Chief Bryant was my name—look me up. I don’t know how much time I have, but you need to listen. Magnets, if you have the magnetized suits and rifles like we did, you can use that to—”
BAM! Something hit me, and I wasn’t sure if it was the woman at his side who was moving, or something internal. Next thing I knew, though, I saw runes and static, and cursed as I tried to back away from them, to fight whatever was coming. Then, I lunged at them to strike.
The man cursed and fell back, while the woman caught me with the butt end of her rifle before shooting with a barrage of bullets that bounced off my metal hull. One lodged itself in my left shoulder, but metal moved through to take care of me and heal me.
Metal wanted me to fight, but the pain helped remind me of my lost wife and child, of all that had happened since, and of Crystal.
With those thoughts in mind and knowing what a fragile state I was in, I put my all into turning and fleeing. The last thing I wanted was to hurt these two, but I knew that if I stayed, I might not be able to maintain control of myself.
And as I ran, my worry proved true, because suddenly I stood in darkness and stared at a pack of robot animals and the cyborg-bear. They stared back at me. I wasn’t sure what I was doing there or where I was supposed to be.
My only thought was—kill the humans.
10
Goshawk
The first sensation I felt since everything went green was cool air rushing by my skin as it made a loud whistling sound. I had been woken by what appeared to be one of the SEALs—now a half-robot spider—shouting at me about magnets, then Jones attacked him with the help of her Lenashal. He started to attack back, but screamed and retreated to the hills.
I stared after him in confusion, while Jones aimed and shot as she tried to bring him down.
My stupor was interrupted by a high-pitched screech like an eagle letting out its battle cry. Amid the confusion, I blinked, cleared my head, then looked up to a clear view of the cloud-filled sky. There was a loud whoomph from my left and right. Turning my head, I saw a wing on my left twice as long as I was tall. It was an emerald green color that glowed with an internal illumination. A ribbon of green light trailed behind it. To my right was the same thing. Then I looked down. The ground was far below and getting farther by the second.
My hands also glowed the same brilliant green. I raised them, and saw the green coating down my forearms to the elbows. Long, dark green talons tipped each of my fingers.
“It is about time you’ve awoken,” Aspen thought to me.
“Where are we going?” I thought back.
“As soon as we ascended, there was a powerful compulsion from you to flee. I couldn’t fight it, and you didn’t respond. I am currently obeying your last wish.”
A cloud enveloped us in a light grey mist. A moment later, we burst free with wisps of the mist trailing from my body and wings. Before us a vast sea of cloud spread out, and covered everything except the tips of a mountain range in the far distance. The sun’s rays hit me and warmed me. I closed my eyes and let it infuse me.
Everything came back. The death of the Marine I was there to rescue. The sphere of energy that usually surrounded Aspen manifesting and surrounding me. Pain, both physical and emotional, caused me to break through. And now this, the transformation fully into the green.
My wings had been motionless since I heard them beat after coming to. The green ribbon continued to stream out, and acted as a propellant to push me up. I willed the ribbon to stop. For a split second, I hovered in the air. Then I closed my eyes and let myself fall backward. When I hit the clouds, I missed the sun’s warmth as if it had been gone for months. We broke through the thin layer of grey mist and I pulled my wings in tight. With them hugging me, there was less wind resistance. In a matter of seconds, I was falling at terminal velocity, but it wasn’t enough. I wanted more. A thought, or
a push of my will, and the green ribbons returned. This time they were curved, and matched my wings' embrace and close proximity to my body. I shot toward the ground at a terrible speed.
The army of machines came into view, and grew from specks to moving miniatures. A streak of black to my left caught my eyes. I looked, but couldn't quite make out what it was. There was a tail of dust a mile long behind it, which clued me in. The streak was a line of machines running toward my Marines.
My wings moved out enough to change my trajectory. The streak quickly became a gaggle of various machines. Some I recognized as the cat types, and a few of the ones that resembled elephants. There were far more new types, however. Some reminded me of bears, while others were so alien to me that I couldn’t think of an earthly analogue to compare them to.
It didn’t matter what they were. All that mattered was stopping them. To that end, I waited for the last possible second. With Aspen’s guidance, I was able to judge when. My wing snapped open and my body tilted back. The green ribbons trailing behind burned bright, and pushed me fast enough to break the sound barrier as I pulled out of the dive. The front ranks of the machines were hit by the donut of white caused by the move. The loud crack caused them all to lose their bearing. Machines ran into one another, and some of the larger ones trampled the smaller ones.
I swooped around in a wide arc as my enemy fought to regain control of themselves. When I hit the machines from the side, my talons split metal. My wings beat, and every downward motion caused them to slice through the machines, halving some and removing portions of others. In a few short seconds, the cavalry had been reduced to a sparking wreckage that was unable to join the fight.
The green ribbon pulsed, and I shot toward the main battle. I aimed for a part of the enemy forces empty of Marines. My feet hit the ground, and I spun to throw my wings out wide. Momentum carried me through three and a half circles. With my wings spread, I was a whirling dervish of destruction.