by C. R. Asay
“Right, Rose. Retha,” Justet said patiently. “The boss recognized this little charm thing.” He nodded toward my tags. “Said it was a key used by Rethans to activate their weaponry, so that they can invade Earth. And lookie here, you’ve been carrying it around on your tags since I’ve known ya.”
Alien invasion again? Oh please.
“I don’t know anything,” I blurted.
The smile dropped and Justet’s face seemed to flatten. He had a stake in finding out whatever his “boss” thought I knew about my pendant. Whether out of fear or for a pat on the head, I couldn’t tell. A jolt of energy ripped down my spine. I backed up a few steps. Justet followed.
“We’ve looked in your wall locker, Rose.”
“You what?” I whispered. I was beyond screwed. I felt violated.
“Yeah. That’s quite an obsession you have. I even learned a few things. But it’s more than just an obsession with Retha, isn’t it?”
“I swear, Lieutenant, I don’t know anything,” I persisted, only partially truthful. “You’ve been in my wall locker. You know as much as I do.”
“You zapped the hell out of me last night.” Justet moved closer. His lips pulled against his teeth. “You nearly took out my entire team with that damn plunger. You! You have a shitload of information about Retha and you’re carrying around a key to one of their weapons. Who the hell are you?”
“I’m just Rose. Specialist Rose.” I couldn’t believe I had resorted to pleading.
Attikin’s ass! A voice snarled with venom. Just Specialist Rose? Stupid child.
I jerked around, searching for the voice. It was almost like it had come from inside my head. My jacket caught on a shrub, and I stumbled on a rock, going to one knee. I breathed in and out through my nose, only partially aware that Justet had followed. I wanted to yell back at the voice, tell it to help instead of offering a lot of worthless advice. I squinted up at Justet.
He looked confused. Like I was the crazy one. And yet I wasn’t the one training a weapon on an unarmed comrade.
There was something about staring into the muzzle of a loaded rifle, with a killer at the other end, which obliterated my fear reflex. Anger reared inside my chest. Determination. Cold logic. Energy raced through my body. I felt a nod of approval from the location of the voice. I pushed myself unsteadily to my feet. Justet’s rifle followed.
“You know me, sir. You think I haven’t noticed you, watching me day in and day out? Think I haven’t seen you creeping around behind my back, checking my files, studying me for who knows what? You know me better than anyone. So tell me, Lieutenant, do I look like a threat to national security?”
Justet’s face contorted in thought. He adjusted his finger on the trigger and licked his lips. “So where’d you get this little key thing?”
My chest tightened at the thought of Dad pressing the small, poorly wrapped box into my hands. He said it came from my previous home, probably from my birth parents. There was solemnity in his eyes as I opened it. I remember touching it for the first time, letting the slick curve fit perfectly to my thumb. I’d felt an instant attachment, all the more meaningful these days because of Dad’s absence.
“It was just a gift,” I whispered, glancing to the left. The heels of my boots hung over the slope. My fingers found a spiky branch of the shrub and I clung tight. “From my dad.”
“From your dad?” Justet seemed to miss the gravity in my tone. “Where’d he get it?”
“If you can find him, you’re welcome to ask him,” I said bitterly. “I haven’t seen him in years.”
“That it? That all you know?”
“Yes, sir.”
Justet paused and then nodded. He dropped the rifle to his side and stepped back. With one hand he shoved my tags back into his pocket, then pulled out an old flip phone.
He pressed one button with his thumb and lifted it to his ear, his eyes on me. At that moment, I realized just how off-book these people were. No military walkies. It was hard enough believing that these men I’d worked with for years were willing to break the military code of conduct. It was even worse realizing they were operating under no code of conduct whatsoever.
“Hello?” Justet spoke into the phone. “Yeah, it’s me . . . No she doesn’t know anything, just said she got it from her dad . . . No, well she seems sincere. I scared the hell out of her so . . . Okay then . . . Yes, of course . . . No. I can handle it.”
Who was he talking to? Sanderford? Someone else I hadn’t identified?
Justet shifted uncomfortably, his eyes flicking from me to the rifle and back. The implication didn’t look very promising. “So you want me to . . . Of course . . . No, I don’t need Sanderford . . . Yes, ma’am . . . yes, ma’am. Of course. Will do.”
Justet took the phone from his ear and stared at it, his mouth partially open. Ma’am? That could only be . . . I cleared my throat, more from the sudden dryness than from an attempt to get his attention. Justet snapped the phone shut and shoved it in his pocket.
He licked his lips and adjusted his rifle. “I’m supposed to bring you back with me.”
“To the base?”
“Hell, no.” He shook his head. “I hate to say it, but things don’t sound good for you.”
“What doesn’t?” My breath caught.
“The boss wants to take care of you personally.”
“Take care, as in . . . ?” He was right. It didn’t sound good. “Oh, come on, sir!”
I couldn’t seem to react properly. I should be pleading for my life, or running headlong into the bushes, or even just feeling incapacitating fear and wetting myself. Instead, I saw myself from his perspective. My small head framed in the center of the rear sighting circle, the barrel sight stabbing upward into my throat. Hair fraying from my braid. One cheek bruised, eyes narrowed against the pulsing throb above my ear.
My face burned. I raised my hands. A shiver of energy raced up and down my spine. My hands hovered in front of me, trembling slightly. The open wound on my knuckle from punching Justet gaped a bright, dirt-coated red.
So volt him. The voice in my head instructed. Volt him, volt him, volt him.
Volt? The thought drew me upright. Could I do it? Conjure the electricity from last night? A slight tingling moved from my fingertips to the open skin.
Awesome. I could static shock him into submission.
“Who was on the phone?” I snapped, delaying the inevitable. “You called her ‘ma’am.’ Are you talking about the commander?”
“Shut up. It doesn’t matter.” Justet lifted his rifle, with some hesitation, to his shoulder.
“Tell me something, Justet.” My words sounded coarse and angry in my ears. I wasn’t going to cower here, waiting for him to take me to someone who’d blow my head off. I fixed him with an icy stare. “What do you know about Retha? You keep talking aliens, so I want to know what these Rethans want with seven small-town police officers and nine enlisted soldiers, missing from their homes or places of work over the last six years.”
“What are you talking about?” Justet dropped the muzzle of the rifle, genuinely curious.
“You heard me. Taken. Kidnapped. Abducted. Whatever you want to call it. Their places trashed, like in an explosion, and a single silver coin left at the scene stamped with the letters R-E-T-H-A.”
Justet’s eyebrows shot up. “Oh, the coins. Why’s this matter so much to you?”
“It matters.” I took a single step toward Justet and his rifle. I was going to find out what he knew, even if it killed me.
“You think they’re taking our people too?” Justet asked.
“What do you mean, ‘too’?” I narrowed my eyes.
“If they’re invading Earth with their weapons of mass destruction, it only makes sense that they’ve studied us first,” he mused, turning his back to me.
I’d done enough ride-alongs with Dad to know when someone was three-sheets-to-the-wind, or just plain raving mad. Justet was neither. I rubbed my eyes, looked at
Justet’s back, and glanced behind me. If I was going to run, now was the time. My hesitation cost me one of my alternatives. Justet rotated so rapidly that dirt kicked up around him like a billow of smoke. He flicked something shiny and silver toward me.
I ducked, covering my head with my arm as though the expected bullet was speeding toward me. The silver coin landed near my feet. The word RETHA, stamped across it in raised letters, shone in the sun. Shaking and breathless I plucked the coin from the dirt.
“Where’d you get this?” I turned the coin over, testing the weight and balance, checking for imperfections in the surface that might afford me some clue.
The one left at Dad’s crime scene had been squirrelled away by the police as evidence before vanishing with everything else, taken by a mysterious government agency called the DLA. I’d only gotten a small glimpse of it when they’d shown it to me, obscured in a plastic evidence bag. They’d asked if I knew anything about it. I hadn’t, at least not then. The image was imprinted in my mind. Someone was taking cops and soldiers and leaving this calling card. Why?
“They’re not all bad.” I looked up. Justet’s eyes were wide, and he nodded conspiratorially. “Some just want to help us prevent the invasion.”
It took all I had not to roll my eyes. Invasion? Aliens? It all sounded so . . . But then again, he had a coin. A RETHA coin, exactly like the one left at Dad’s crime scene. And he and his minions were planning something. Something that involved twenty-seven cans of stolen ammunition, and probably a lot more I didn’t know about.
“Justet! Where the hell are you?”
The voice floated toward us from the south, and I jumped. Stomping boots followed. A jolt of energy ripped down my spine and out into my extremities. Justet turned in the direction of Sanderford’s voice.
“Lieutenant!” Sanderford called again, closer this time. “I swear, if you’re stalling again, I’ll pop you myself.”
I didn’t so much dive for cover as panic for cover. Both feet tried to be the first to start running and tangled, driving me hard to my knees behind a large juniper shrub. The exquisite, zapping pain of voltage surged into my limbs from some bizarre, unknown source within my body.
The shrub graced the edge of the slope and I found myself sliding backward. I rolled twice, letting gravity help me along, and then scrambled to my feet. I was vaguely aware of shouting somewhere near the top of the hill. Two large, dusty strides carried me a good distance down. I changed direction on the third, taking me toward the outcropping of rock I’d noticed earlier.
An M-16 chattered a three round burst. My step turned into a leap and I rolled over the top of the rocks before falling to my knees on the other side, out of the line of fire.
I lay there for what seemed like an eternity, my breath a sharp wheeze in my ears. The tingling in my body did a rapid circuit, quivering into my fingertips and then racing into my torso and legs before making it back into my fingers. I held my hands away from my body, afraid that I might electrocute myself. I almost expected to see a thin, blue line of electricity jumping between my fingers like some weird, five-pronged stun gun. I shivered, biting down until my molars ached. The coin pressed a circular indentation into my palm. With trembling fingers I shoved the coin into my pocket.
The furious rise and fall of an argument floated from a short distance. I peered around the boulder. The sound waves were almost visible in the summer heat. A set of boots stomped closer. Moments later, a camouflaged body pushed through some shrubs fifty feet away. Sanderford stopped, his rifle loose against his shoulder.
Justet stumbled out of the bushes behind the Sergeant, batting ferociously at a branch when it snagged his shirt. I was struck with the odd sense of shifting power. I guess on a rogue mission such as this, military rank could feasibly go out the window.
Lieutenant Justet tried to stop, but slid a few inches down the slope before bumping into Sanderford. Sanderford threw him off with his shoulder, and Justet found a more level spot for his feet. He held his rifle by the pistol grip, aiming it pointlessly at the ground.
“The boss isn’t going to be happy you nearly killed her,” Justet said.
“This is Rose we’re talking about.” Sanderford examined my track on the ground in front of him, his eyebrows drawn. “She’s not going to lie down and let us do our thing. She tattles on us, and you can kiss your hundred grand goodbye. I guaran-damn-tee it. She’s better off in the ground.”
“There’s a footprint.” Lieutenant Justet’s voice was small. He waved a hand at the ground. “It’s a shame, really. About Rose. She’s a hell of a soldier.”
“A helluva pain in the ass, maybe. The boss is thinking too much about this. What’s so special about Rose anyway?”
Justet shrugged, his face troubled. Fine, dry dirt exploded around Sergeant Sanderford’s boots. Sanderford crouched, touched the ground, and looked up. I swear he was staring right at me. He narrowed his eyes and pulled the M-16 strap from his shoulder.
“Maybe you should hang back this time, L.T. I can’t imagine you’ve grown a pair since you were out here with her ten minutes ago. I’ll take care of it.”
“You mean kill her?”
“If that’s what it takes.” Sanderford stood, pulling the rifle casually to his shoulder.
Lieutenant Justet didn’t answer and I realized, with a certain amount of surprise, that I was feeling an unusual affection for his weakness. He remained stock still behind Sanderford, his rifle hanging at his side.
I let my breath out slowly. My hands trembled. I looked at my fists. Could I really kill Sergeant Sanderford? I tried to remember the mantra my drill sergeants put into my head. Kill one enemy, save a thousand friends. Sergeant Sanderford was an enemy—my enemy.
Kill Sergeant Sanderford.
A chilly calm swept my body. An odd sense of amusement lifted the corners of my mouth. I pictured the shocked look on his face as electricity from my fingers coursed over his body, blistering him with burns. I saw him fall to his knees, screaming as smoke poured from his eyes, his sandy hair scorching into black, smoldering curls. I saw myself laughing—
My stomach heaved. I pressed a fist to my mouth and breathed through my nose. The image repeated with different ghostly levels of clarity.
Was it better to be dead than a killer? My dad would say, “Defending yourself is a God-given right. Only you can decide if you can live with the consequences.”
Voltage, volted, volting.
Sanderford’s camouflage flashed through the branches of a nearby juniper. He crouched next to my boulder, examining the scuffmarks in the dirt. Almost within reaching distance.
My lips pulled against my teeth, every muscle stressed. With desperate swiftness, born of years of military training, I kicked out.
The bottom of my boot crushed into the side of Sanderford’s knee. His legs went out from under him and he landed on his side, catching himself with a hand, then an elbow. The rifle fired three bullets zinging against the boulder. Chips of rock flew everywhere as the bullets ricocheted off in other directions.
Sanderford swung the rifle toward me. I crabbed forward and crunched the toes of my boot against the back of his hand. The weapon flew from his fingers, banging and skittering out of reach, while the magazine ejected and flew in another direction.
Sanderford clutched his knee with one hand, groaning and swearing, while clawing his way toward his rifle. I clambered to get there first. Our fingers met on the trigger and the rifle fired a single shot. The blank burned past my cheek. Sound was lost behind the blast of the rifle, turning everything into a hollow echo on my left side.
The taste of metal filled my mouth, and a sizzle of energy escaped from my skin. Sanderford withdrew his hand with a bellowing cry, only to come at me an instant later and smash his fist into my ribs. I curled my body to protect my screaming side, at the same time backhanding Sanderford across his cheek with a blessed release of energy.
A zapping sound hissed through the air, raising the hai
r on my scalp. Sanderford’s head thumped to the ground. Dust covered one side of his face. He didn’t move. Blood leaked from his nose and ears.
My torso cramped. I tripped away from his body. Was he dead? Had I killed him? My knees shook, but I managed to get to my feet, pulling Sanderford’s rifle up as I stood.
Lieutenant Justet didn’t move except for the toe of his boot resting on the magazine from Sanderford’s rifle. He held the hand guard of his M-16 loosely in one hand. His expression was surprisingly neutral.
Justet raised his rifle a hair. I jerked my attention back to him and lifted my own rifle to point at his chest.
“Don’t do it, sir,” my voice rushed softly across the several feet separating us.
“There’s no ammo in that rifle.”
“You sure about that?” The bolt filled the chamber, telling me either that there was a round still in the chamber or that the bolt release had been hit. I was hoping for the former but was pretty certain it was the latter.
Justet tapped his toe on the magazine, probably wondering the same thing.
“Is he dead?” he asked.
“Don’t know. Don’t care.”
That wasn’t true. I did care. Quite a lot, in fact.
“How’d you do that?” His chin quivered.
“Do what?”
He pointed at Sanderford but then dropped his hand back to steady the rifle. “Last night, and that . . . that—”
“Where’re my tags?” I set the rifle to my shoulder and sighted down the barrel with both eyes.
“It’s more than my life’s worth to give ’em to you.”
My finger found the warmth of the trigger. All I needed to do was put the smallest amount of pressure on the little curve of metal and, if there was a round in the chamber, I could take my pendant and tags from his bleeding corpse.
So very easy. The slightest pressure.
A chatter of voices sounded from the direction Sanderford had come from. My mind cleared, like a wind blowing away a lethal fog bank. My finger lifted from the trigger. I gulped.