by A. J. Allan
5
“We will arrive in Los Angeles in fifteen minutes.”
The artificial female voice filled the cockpit as Lopez stirred awake. His album had looped back on itself and “Monster” was playing once more. On his left, Irons had her arms crossed and her eyes cast at a slight angle downward, clearly lost in thought. Over what? Going back up? Her uncle? Jordan? What are you thinking, Irons?
Such questions wouldn’t be asked here, though. To his right, Jordan continued reading his book in peace, oblivious to the computerized notice about their arrival into the Bob Hope Airport.
Suddenly, out of the corner of the window, Lopez saw two unmanned space vehicles soaring into space at extraordinary speeds. They moved by so fast that Lopez at first thought that he had imagined it.
“Did two USVs just take off?” Lopez asked the vessel.
“Affirmative. Two USVs have departed BUR.”
“What for? What’s the situation?”
But the ship remained silent. Lopez could only assume that the task of those ships went above his pay grade, which wasn’t that hard given his status as a private. Still, the launch of USVs was usually a known fact, whether for scouting remote areas of the galaxy, dispatching supplies to a colonized outpost, or just for delivering news through wormholes to other battleships. Lopez’s curiosity sat with him for a few minutes, but he quickly put it aside, knowing he could do nothing about it.
“Home sweet home,” Irons said. “First time in what, two years for you, Mav?”
“Four, actually,” he said.
“That long?”
“Work gets in the way.”
It wasn’t work. It was fear of seeing his grandparents. It was the fear of seeing them and their emotional reaction to his presence. His presence, but not his parents.
Because they were over 65 when Mass Media came into being, they did not have to go into a biopod. But his parents, instead of fighting, chose a life of VR. They hadn’t gone into a BP in the USA—they’d gone back to South America, though where, they hadn’t said. Lopez feared seeing his grandparents’ reaction to his freedom and their son’s restraints. He didn’t want to deal with it, not when he had his own burdens to bear.
Someday you’re going to have to see them again, though. Do you want them to go without you seeing them one more time? Do you?
They’ll be around in six months. When that time comes, I’ll make sure to say hi to them. And then I’ll head to Big Bear Mountain and decide if I want to keep living in the closet in this overly affluent and militarized world.
The ship settled down moments later. It always befuddled Lopez how now, when he went into Los Angeles, the sounds that greeted him were not that of honking cars on the highway, or skies so polluted that a mountain clearly visible one day could disappear the next without any obvious clouds in the sky. No, now, it was the sound of birds chirping. Of cats bellowing, creatures which had become more and more confident by the day in coming into the city. Only the occasional automatic vehicle drove by. Every so often, a helicopter, most likely of a wealthy person, would fly overhead, examining the once-great mecca of entertainment, now just a city with multiple office buildings that functioned as permanent homes for people who were once too poor to pay the electricity bill.
“You know what awaits us up on the ship, right?”
Irons’ question seemed intended to guide Lopez and Jordan toward a certain path. Lopez put on a smile and waited for Irons to continue.
“Crappy food three times a day, save for the occasional splurge and self-cooked meal. You guys can eat that shit, but I say we splurge one more time before we head up.”
“In-n-Out’s auto service?”
Both Lopez and Irons looked at Jordan in shock. The man who could barely speak in public, the man who spoke sparingly in one on one conversation, had an opinion he spoke out loud?
“You read my mind,” Irons said.
“The one time I break,” Jordan said with a smile that looked almost nervous to come out.
“Well, can never go wrong with a four-by-four, come on,” Irons said.
They made their way to the In-n-Out in North Hollywood, a drive of only a couple of miles that took less than ten minutes, an unthinkable speed less than two decades ago. Jordan’s eyes lit up, and Irons cracked jokes about making up for the weight she’d lose when she got to space, but Lopez could not shake the odd feeling of getting food from a restaurant that had no employees. He imagined he never would.
After eating, the Tesla U took them to LAX airport. For the first time in nearly a week, they saw more than just a random human passing by. In fact, LAX might have contained the greatest number of people outside a Mass Media warehouse on the West Coast. Though numerous machines handled most of the logistics and rocket launches, the UGM had to do something with its men, and it preferred to have a few at the base in case anything went haywire.
Their vehicle approached a gate that had once warned of “Authorized Personnel Only” from where aircraft took off, but now served as an entry point for all soldiers returning to base. It came to a stop as a soldier wielding an M-34 rifle—a relatively archaic gun by the current UGM’s standards, at least for space fleets, as it was the last manufactured gun to fire physical ammo—peered in the driver’s side window.
“Privates Lopez, Irons, and Jordan reporting for rendezvous with the Churchill, sir,” Lopez said.
The guard held up a small pad, so thin it looked like a hologram, and waited for the information to confirm. Through the backside of the display, Lopez could see the official military photos of himself and his two comrades appear on screen. Other text appeared that Lopez could not read, but he knew it likely signified their schedules.
“Cleared. Move.”
The Tesla U began moving as Private Lopez thanked the soldier who waved him in. The entire LAX complex came into view, and boy had it changed over the last couple of decades. The former terminal now acted as a de facto military base, a spot where soldiers could sleep while off from their guard duty shifts, monitor the nearby Mass Media buildings for any unusual activity, communicate with the Churchill and other battleships near Earth, and provide shelter during battles against enemies like the neagala. Los Angeles had avoided the worst of the bombings from the enemy, but the same could not be said for San Diego. Debris and, to a certain extent, radiation still permeated into the former entertainment capitol of the world.
The runways consisted of about two dozen shuttles which ran between the Churchill and Earth. The shuttles were old, rusted, and looked about two more flights away from breaking apart thousands of miles in the atmosphere. Lopez could disturbingly imagine without difficulty a rather awful death of either choking on oxygen, destroyed by radiation, or just aimlessly orbiting Earth for days before dying of starvation. And yet somehow, in the years since the first battleship had launched to orbit Earth, only five shuttles had not made it to their destination, and none in the last five years. It was a true military vessel—everything sucked, nothing worked to its full capacity, but it did just enough.
Instructions automatically sent to the Tesla U instructed the vehicle to go to Runway 12. Lopez peered his head out and saw one shuttle coming in for landing, but it could just as easily contain supplies for the troops on the ground as it could soldiers taking leave. That’s how he, Irons, and Jordan had arrived.
The vehicle parked about a dozen feet from their shuttle, the Madison.
“Looks like something from the 19th century,” Irons said.
“You know rockets came about in the middle of the 20th century,” Lopez taunted.
“I know what I said.”
The three strapped in, their seat belts a bit too loose for Lopez’s comfort. He didn’t have much say in the matter, though, since it wasn’t like he had a pilot to complain to. Plus, the journey would take less than 30 minutes to get to the Churchill.
“Liftoff in 5…4…3…2…1…”
The force of numerous g’s slammed into Lopez’s fa
ce, who still hadn’t gotten used to the sensation of lying on his back, feet above his head, as a shuttle lifted into space. Some things man probably wasn’t mean to do. But here we are, so just accept it if you can’t get used to it.
For the first few minutes, the force of extra gravity prevented Lopez from so much as moving his eyes, let alone shifting his head to look out the window. But when he finally got a free moment—in the very literal sense—he turned and gasped at the gorgeous blue planet beneath him. For all of the space travel humanity had done, for all the planets it had colonized on TRAPPIST-1 and the moon of Jupiter and Mars, for all the planets it had set its eyes on, nothing surpassed the deep blue sight that was Earth. And with the sun just coming around to their side of the planet, it provided a gorgeous duality of the brightened side of the planet and the dark side of Earth.
Lopez stared wistfully at Earth. For hundreds of thousands of years, if not forever, humans and Earth were one and the same in the mind. If someone’s life sucked, then their world sucked. But now, humanity had pulled itself free of the conditions of living on Earth. If their lives provided hardship, they no longer necessarily could say their world was awful. For Lopez, this had never meant quite so much as now, as a gay man in a society hell-bent on genetically eradicating LGBTQ from its ranks of military and economic elite.
His life may not have felt the most comfortable, but he had never felt such pride in being a resident of Earth as when he got to see it in all its beauty from outer space.
6
“Welcome home, boys!” Irons said, her voice loud and proud.
Even though it didn’t feel like home, Lopez had to admit the battleship was a sight to behold. They called it the Churchill after the famous U.K. Prime Minister during World War II. Massive wings, a gargantuan body, and a command deck that took it all in. Millions of people inhabited the several-mile-long vessel, a ship so large that probably a good third of its space was devoted to hyperloop-type transportation systems that could shift soldiers from one end to the other within a minute. It didn’t quite look like the majestic, gorgeous ships of Star Wars or Star Trek, but as a functioning beast in the sky, it held its own.
In the war against the neagala, she had held her own defending Earth. A few wayward bombers managed to break through and destroy San Diego, Mexico City, and Medellin, but the vast majority of the neagala’s forces remained in check and had to retreat after the Churchill blasted their main battleships to hell. Lopez, at the time, hadn’t yet made his way onto the ship, nor had neither any of the other privates.
In fact, the current Apocalypse Squad resembled something of a mishmash of fobbits, with everyone except their squad leader being green. Of course, the way some of the newer ones talked—Lake and Wallace especially—Lopez would have thought they had fought the neagala in hell, pissed on Satan himself, burned the place with a single match, and emerged as the sole heroes of the war.
They approached the underbelly of the ship and pulled in automatically to the loading dock. Lopez listened to the sounds of steam blowing, of engines lowering, of metal clamps coming in to secure the ship, of a bay door shutting to pressurize the cabin. A few moments later, someone shouted, “All clear!” and the doors to the ship opened.
Lopez, Irons, and Jordan all stretched after getting out of the ship. Lopez felt a crick in his neck and crunched it out with some head swivels. Irons appeared to do a little shimmy of a dance, but she swore it was stretching. Jordan pushed his hands forward with a groan.
“Welcome back, Privates Lopez, Irons, and Jordan,” one of the guards, a private with the name tag of Ellison said. “I have a message here that says you are to meet Lt. Andrews as soon as you can. He’s waiting for you in Sector 7, Level 4, Quarters 6.”
“Acknowledged,” Jordan said after a brief pause from Irons and Lopez.
The three departed for one of the hyperloops to take them to S7L4Q6, about two-thirds of the way down the body of the battleship. Jordan appeared to crack a smile, perhaps happy to be back in a comfortable environment, but upon seeing the long face of his girlfriend, he dropped the expression. Lopez knew Irons wouldn’t be saying anything on the ride over, at least not for now.
The hyperloop was something that Lopez easily got used to. It felt more like a horizontal elevator than it did a spaceship, and though the sensation of getting on an elevator—or a lift, as he would say around Irons—that did not move vertically was weird, it was certainly not painful or antagonizing. When he stepped into the hyperloop, he could just as easily get lost in his thoughts about his next leave spot as he could a battle drill that he and his fellow squad members had worked on.
The hyperloop took less than a minute, and it dropped them off three doors down from ASQ6. Jordan took the lead after Irons begged him to with her eyes, and he smiled, gently placing his hand on her shoulder. It was about the only time Lopez had seen him touch her in the past few days, but that was more on Irons than Lopez. He stood before the door, knocked twice, and stood at attention.
The door lifted open. Lt. Buck Andrews, a true veteran of the Neagala War, the lone survivor of the original Apocalypse Squad, the one who had killed the last neagala, stood before them. He bore a nasty scar over his left eye, wrinkles that made him look far older than his real age, and a personality that could best be described as closeted. Though he talked more than Jordan, Lopez felt the secrets and pain went deeper in Andrews than it did Jordan.
“At ease, soldiers. Come.”
The three walked in, nodding to the other three members of their squad already present. Michelle “Monster” Lake, a Canadian with short hair, tattoos down her arms, and strength that belied her 5’2 frame. She’d gotten her call sign when she knocked out a fellow soldier in boot camp, a man almost twice her size, who had mocked her too hard for her nationality.
Eric “Loose” Li, a South Korean with spiked hair—how he had managed to keep it like that, Lopez could never figure out, even when Li explained it to him as “a negotiation I made”—and a flair for the philosophical. If things got ugly, Li would be the one cracking jokes to stave off the madness and fright.
And Fred “Firestone” Kowalski, a native of Poland who was the kind of guy who would scream during warm-up weights like he had just gotten into a one-on-three battle with neagala. On his good days, Lopez described him as intense. On bad days, he was obnoxious and overbearing.
Together, the six of them, plus Lt. Andrews, made up the new Apocalypse Squad of the United Galactic Military, officially the SLS (Sea, Land, Space) Squad 7. As a unit, they were expected to handle infiltration, ground level operations, and the occasional space battle as the need arose.
“Alright privates, you know normally what would happen when we call these meetings.”
Lectures on how green we are. How we can never prepare enough. How much we suck.
“Today, however, I’m meeting because I bear bad news. To get right to the point, the UGM thinks it has grown too large for its britches. It wants to send about twenty percent of its forces down into the BPs for permanent hook up.”
Lopez gulped. Jordan’s face somehow hardened even further, as if from concrete to granite. Irons looked ready to curse out their leader. The rest of the squad looked furious.
“They are asking for volunteers. I bring this to your attention to give you the opportunity, if you so wish. They promise the best VR for the soldiers, and—”
“Bullshit,” Irons said.
All eyes shifted to the Australian. Lopez waited for the roar of disapproval to come from Lt. Andrews, but he remained silent.
“You know as well as I do that the VR they’re supplying is just like the rest. It’s goddamn VR, not a fucking steak. Come on, seriously? Uncle Buck?”
Now Lopez really bit his lip in nervous anticipation.
“Private Irons,” the lieutenant began. He paused, and then looked around the room. All eyes locked on him. “Anyone under the rank of captain is eligible for this, myself included. Even with what I’ve done,
it may not be enough. I don’t want to go into VR. I don’t want to get hooked up. I don’t want any of you to get hooked up. Some of you, I’ve known for most of your lives. Some of you, I’ve known less than two weeks. But I’ll make this clear. You are soldiers of the UGM first and foremost. You have chosen this life because you wanted to serve humanity. Should any of you be assigned to VR, you will accept the role with dignity and grace. I do not want to hear that any of my troops declined or made a scene because they were not happy with the choice. Do I make myself clear?”
“Yes sir,” everyone said in unison.
“I want to hear all of you say it individually.”
And with that, Lt. Andrews went up to each soldier, addressed them as troops, not humans, and asked them to possibly make an unnecessary sacrifice. He started with Lake and worked his way around the semi-circle. Everyone said yes without trouble.
Then he got to Irons. Lopez braced himself for push back.
“Private Irons,” the squad leader began. “Should the UGM ask you to go to a Mass Media warehouse and enter into a biopod for permanent hook up to VR, will you accept with the honor and grace of a soldier of Apocalypse Squad?”
Irons swallowed.
“Yes.”
She looked like she had so much more to say. But none of it came out. She’d used up her one chance to speak outside of military protocol.
“Thank you, soldier.”
She was the only one he had said that to.
“Private Lopez,” Lt. Andrews began, and then said the same thing as he had to Irons.
Life had a funny way of making an option that once seemed possibly appealing suddenly sound gross, Lopez thought. One day ago, he’d pondered going into Mass Media to escape the pressures of being closeted in the military, to be in a free existence without burdensome societal issues.
Now, with the UGM possibly forcing that onto him, it was the worst idea possible. It was one that would remove his freedom to decide what to do. Hilarious how the same outcome could have two opposite paths of emotion.