Absorbed in self-reflection, I lost track of time.
The whiskey bottle eventually lured me back. I refilled my glass and held out the bottle. “More?”
“Please.”
I poured Silky a generous measure, and as she raised the glass to her lips I intercepted it with mine, chinking glasses.
“Here’s to lost souls,” I declared.
“To damnation,” she replied.
I smiled at her. I realized this was the first time I’d ever felt warmth toward her, unconditionally glad of her company.
The feeling lasted about ten nanoseconds before my gaze was drawn south to her breasts, and I scowled. “Now put your frakking shirt back on.”
“Why?” she questioned angrily. “Does my gender offend you?”
I felt a blast of sudden shock from her empathy radiator fronds. “Oh,” she exclaimed. “Are you… experiencing lustful passions?”
Ignoring the increasingly irritating alien, I turned my attention inward, expecting to fend off dumb-veck remarks from my voices. But my ghosts were still in hiding.
I rolled my eyes at Silky instead. “Never gonna happen, Kurlei.” I pointed at her breasts. “They make you look too human. And you’re not. You never can be. Cover ’em up, and don’t let me see them again.”
The alien’s eyes radiated such anger as she clothed herself that she had no need for her tentacles. It was more than resentment: there was challenge there too. I’ll let you have your way this time, mister, she seemed to imply, but don’t imagine I’ll roll over so easily next time.
I took another slug of whiskey, hoping I could blame the liquor for putting the idea of Silky’s challenge into my head, but my sense of justice declared the alien innocent, and the alcohol didn’t even warm the coldness I felt inside. Frakk knows I’ve had a lifetime of people challenging me – men and women, humans and aliens – but none had come from a culture where challenge was the natural prelude to a grisly killing. I shuddered, imagining for a moment how terrifying marriage to Silky must have been.
Even though they were hiding, my ghosts would have heard all of this, felt my little burst of horror. I groaned, knowing I was looking forward to a sentence of years in which Sanaa would tease me about the prospect of marriage to this alien. You say you hate her, NJ, my late wife would taunt, but one day you’ll wake up beside her and know that you got married. She’ll have you in her clutches. It’s your destiny.
I let out a long, alcohol-rich breath.
Gods, how I hated aliens.
— CHAPTER 12 —
The incident with Silky festered for several days before being, if not forgotten, then shoved toward the back of my mind.
If you’re thinking this was an epiphany on my part – a late-in-the-day realization that we should all embrace the frakking alien inside us – then you clearly haven’t been paying attention.
The reality was that Silky’s sudden rehabilitation in my eyes was intimately connected to the arrival at my farm of some very bad people with some seriously badass weaponry.
Ever since those Revenge Squad vecks had ambushed us on the way back from town a year before, I had expected trouble to catch up with us sooner or later.
Frankly, trouble had turned up a lot later than I’d expected, not that I was complaining.
Trouble took the form of four rugged pickup trucks that had parked up half a mile away, just outside the farm’s sensor perimeter. Tarpaulins covered their rear cargo beds. As a rule, I don’t generally find canvas covers to be threatening, but I was clearly meant to imagine these covers could be pulled back at any moment to reveal heavy weapons pointed at my head.
I was inclined to take this implied threat seriously, because of the way the trucks were spread out, each parked side-on exactly one meter out from the farm’s sensor perimeter (or so my ghosts informed me).
I didn’t exactly have the kind of funding the Army would have to kit out a military base, but I put a lot of money into that sensor grid, and it needed serious kit to detect it.
The whole point of the grid was that if a gang tried to raid my farm while I slept at night, it would alert me and give me enough time to arm myself and kill the bastards – or at least take most of them with me.
But anyone who could see the grid…
They were letting me know I was an easy target for an outfit in their league.
I blew out a sigh, knowing things were about to get very ugly.
This bunch of jokers paying me a friendly visit had made no secret of their approach, arriving at midday in a cloud of dust that could be seen for miles. I’d been feeding my pigs when Silky had raced over to give me the alert.
We were both up atop the deck now. I had my SA-71 locked and loaded, and was wondering if I should upgrade to the GX-cannon while I still had the chance.
Silky had armed herself with a meat cleaver.
Now, that probably sounds like a strange choice of weaponry, but she’d grabbed what was to hand when she sensed we had visitors, and it was a toss-up between the cleaver and a butcher’s hook. You see, there’s a phase in a pig’s life-cycle that slots in between contented snuffling in the field, and being a sausage on your plate. Silky had been helping some of our animals to progress through that phase.
Like I said, I was debating bringing out the GX-cannon, or maybe upgrading Silky’s big blade to my SA-70 rifle. But the problem is, if you pick up a weapon before a fight, you have to be prepared to use it, and I had the feeling that even if I brought out the GX-cannon, we were already outgunned.
Besides, maybe the sight of this white alien with a meat cleaver would make these jokers laugh themselves to death.
While I was considering upgrading our weapons, eight people got out of the trucks. I say people, but they were a mix of races: a winged Gliesan, a couple of gnome-like Tallermans, and the balance humans. All were armed with stubby weapons that looked like shotguns from this distance.
I checked my carbine was set to semiauto bursts and waited to see what they would do.
Without warning, they all fired into the air.
For a moment, I thought they were just making noise to grab my attention, but they had fired munitions that split, and split again, until dozens of the little buggers were zigzagging through the air toward my position, like big bastard hornets.
“Should’ve fired first,” I growled as I tracked the incoming munitions with my carbine, and then let rip a stream of darts out of my railgun.
If you’re ex-military, you’ll know every detail of the SA-71 intimately, unless you are one of the little space rats whose idea of war was to float around in zero-g, pressing buttons for the war effort (I jest, of course, although it is a scientific fact that Navy starship personnel seem to have two modes: sitting down or floating).
If you aren’t, then I’d better explain a bit about my most intimate companion before we get into a really intense firefight.
Although your standard issue Legion Marine was usually called a rifleman – no matter what their plumbing or gender identity – the SA-71 did not have a rifled barrel, nor did it fire bullets. Instead, it fired a dart along charged rails arranged in a helix to give spin, and for a handheld weapon its ammo capacity was huge. Key to its popularity was what the tech-specs called a heatsink. Now, it’s true that with the massive amounts of electrical energy flashing across those rails, if the heatsink wasn’t there, the gun would melt in my arms. But what we particularly loved about the heatsink was the associated recoil dampener. I stitched the sky with a thousand darts, each one of them with enough momentum to pass through an unarmored body several miles away and barely slow down. But my shots gave such little recoil kick that I might just as well have been painting the sky with my finger. If the significance escapes you, try firing an SA-71 with the recoil dampening facility disabled.
But even the SA-71’s magic heatsink had its limits. I was blasting the enemy ordnance out of the sky but the recoil dampener was nearing thermal cutout. They kept on coming and e
ven my hellfire wasn’t enough. Several of these metal hornets got through and… stopped!
For a crazy moment, they hovered above our heads, just out of reach. Silky threw herself to the floor, but I merely tensed, because I’d been bred to wear combat armor, and that was what I was trained to do. The incoming munitions burst into life. Instead of delivering the deadly payload I had expected, each flashed up an image of a man’s head with a low and heavy brow devoid of eyebrows.
“Good afternoon, Mr. McCall,” said the man from several locations above my head. “Or would you prefer Sergeant Joshua?”
I scanned the figures outside my sensor perimeter. Sure enough, the man in the image was standing next to one of the trucks.
“My name is Volk,” he said. “I assure you these devices are meant only to facilitate communication without the need for lethal violence on either side. Killing people unnecessarily is bad for business. Nonetheless we must all acknowledge that, in the right circumstances, killing is unavoidable in the modern world which grows more dangerous by the day.”
“So everyone keeps telling me,” I replied into the air, remembering that Revenge Squad veck had said almost the same thing. “Let’s just assume that I’m impressed by your flying comms relay and move on. Make your point, and clear off.”
“Tut tut, Mr. McCall. Your reputation for a lack of social graces is famed throughout the region. Of more interest to me, is your more recent – and to many of your neighbors, unexpected – reputation as an excellent farmer. Bravo, Mr. McCall. Such excellence should be rewarded, don’t you think? In fact, I believe you should expand your operation. Significantly.”
Still cowering on the deck, Silky made a strange noise in her throat. Was she laughing at me? If I was about to get taken out because someone wanted to muscle in on my farm – given my useless performance on my own as a farmer – then I’d join her in the chortling department, once we reached hell.
“On the other hand,” said Volk, “it would be a terrible shame if all your hard work came to nothing. I find the unnecessary destruction of property even more distressing than unnecessary deaths.”
Volk lifted his hands – interesting because each of them lacked its little finger – and snapped his fingers, but he misjudged his timing because even before he did so, I heard the report of a light artillery piece coming from the hills to the east.
By the time the shell landed in the path about twenty meters short of my observation deck, I had corrected my assessment. I was a civilian now, and that meant there was no such thing as a light artillery piece as far as I was concerned.
I squared my jaw, not wanting to let them know that I was beaten, but I knew. As soon as the artillery opened up, I didn’t stand a chance.
Silky seemed to pick up my capitulation in her damned head fronds, and emanated… Well, I’m not exactly an expert on describing emotions, but she had stoic resolve in the mix, along with a sense of: we’re all going to die, so we may as well do it together. In any case, she was done cowering and stood beside me, her alien arm all squishy and warm next to mine.
“You have my attention,” I announced, “but my answer is the same as last time. I’m not interested.”
Volk frowned and spoke to the subordinate beside him, although he muted his words so I couldn’t hear. He turned back to me and said, “You are mistaken. My organization has no prior dealings with you.”
“I’m not a dongwad cadet,” I answered, angry that he treated me with enough respect to fire artillery at me, but not enough to act like I had a brain. “You’re that protection racket. Revenge Squad.”
“Revenge Squad.” Volk let the name ooze out of his mouth as if it were poisonous. “I assure you we are no friends of Revenge Squad.”
“Of course you’re not.” I tried to keep the sneer from my voice, but as I was facing imminent retirement of the permanent variety, I wasn’t sure why I should bother. “Let me see if I understand how this works. You bring along your pals to pay me a visit. You don’t pick your best mates for this trip, but the ugliest, the kind who would be refused service at the cheapest dockside love shack. Then you lob an artillery shell my way to emphasize your point. And then, in a day or two, as if by magic, Revenge Squad will appear at my door, telling me that if I pay them what they want, they can make you and your ugly friends go away. Am I right?”
Volk shrugged and his polite demeanor was gone. “You know how to fire a carbine properly, McCall, I’ll give you that much, but you’ve got drent-for-brains, and the way you shoot your mouth off at your betters is a frakking death wish. Did you have a bad war, NJ? Do you want the nightmares to stop? Is that really what you want? Now get this, old man, I don’t want your money, and as for Revenge Squad…” He shook his head, weighing his words. “Let’s say we are in the same industry, but operate different business models. Now are you going to shut your dumb mouth and listen, or do I need to shoot you like a dog?”
Where were my ghosts when I needed them? That acid feeling in my gut told me I was making a drellock of myself, because there was one thing in what Volk had said that made no sense to me whatsoever.
“What do you mean you don’t want money?”
“I told you,” he said, a little of his cordiality reasserting itself. “Your farm is successful. I wish you to expand. Think of it as a partnership.”
“And you don’t want to share my profits?”
“Now you are listening, Mr. McCall. Finally. My organization already has money. I’m not interested in yours. It’s your food I want. You are to be part of a hidden and independent food supply for my organization. Our price is not burdensome. Twenty-five percent of all your crops and meat products will be set aside for me. Your records will not mention my share, and a cover story will be constructed with forensic care to explain our occasional presence at your farm. And when I said we would invest in your farm to expand its operations, I meant what I said. Are you with us, Mr. McCall?”
Any temptation I might have felt to go along with these hoods was swept away by the revulsion coming off Silky in waves. If she wasn’t even contemplating caving in to their demands, what choice did I have? I would rather die than be shown up by her. It was just a shame that I would have to prove that so literally.
Independent food supply, mused Sanaa. That’s bad.
Oh, nice of you to show up eventually, I snapped.
I can think of many explanations, said the Sarge. None good. Perhaps they will stockpile food and then blow up the desalination plants. Price of food will rocket.
But the simplest explanation is to ready food stocks for an army, said Sanaa, completing the Sarge’s thought just like she used to mine. We’re gonna be part of the logistical supply chain, for the wrong frakking side.
They were right, of course. I should report this to my CDF captain.
Volk bared his teeth like a feral animal. “The problem with dealing with a PTSD nutjob like you, McCall, with your survivor’s guilt, and dead friends to talk to, is that your decision processes don’t fire properly. I give you four days. Four days for your alien friend who doesn’t seem to exist legally to talk sense into your fat head.”
“And if I refuse?” I said, as he began to turn back to his truck.
He hesitated, and then answered without looking back, his words hanging in the air all-around me. “Don’t embarrass yourself further, McCall. Even you can work that out.”
The gang drove off, the remaining airborne communication hornets speeding off to rendezvous with one of the trucks.
I fixed myself a drink and settled into the recliner. Silky helped herself to my liquor too, and I didn’t object. Figured it needed drinking up because you can’t take consumables with you to hell.
“Are you going to do what they want?” she asked after a pleasant few minutes of silence.
“Nope.”
“Unless they are much weaker than they appear. We can’t outfight them, NJ.”
“True.”
“Are you going to run?”
“I feel the same way, NJ. I have no wish to die, but we have nowhere else to go. They have backed us into a corner where I shall fight alongside you and die beside you.”
I threw Silky a dirty look, like she was being a frakking idiot. Which she was. “There’s no need for you to stick around, pal. I’ll get you some supplies and money, and you can go on your way. But for me, it’s different. This is my last redoubt, and here I stand. I’m not being brave, or holding onto some principle, it’s simply that without Sijambo Farm there will be nothing left of me. I’m too scared to lose myself in a city and feel myself disappear. And whenever I spend more than a few days at the CDF regiment, my living comrades seem to fade away, to be replaced by memories. Trust me, it’s easier this way.”
“No, NJ, you must not talk that way. You must convince yourself you can win, even if the odds say otherwise. I know you despise me. My opinion holds no weight with you. But, please, let your ghosts talk sense into the shriveled ball of drent that occupies the space between your ears where your brain should be. If you’re going to die, Marine, die well!”
The alien’s words unsettled me more than I expected. She was right, I suppose, about some of it. “First off, Silky, you can tone down the Marine hurrah pep talk, because it doesn’t sit well on you. Secondly, I don’t despise you. That bastard who threatened us was right about one thing. I do want the nightmares to stop. If you hadn’t shown your scrawny white ass a year ago, I’d be dead by now. I could feel myself fading from existence, but you… you gave me a purpose. For a while there, I felt alive. Thank you, friend.”
Silky had gotten so good at mimicking human body language that it was a shock to see all that fakery slide away when she looked at me in an unreadably alien manner. The dark pupils of her eyes expanded to inhumanly large dimensions that made her eyes seem to disappear beneath the black pits in which they were set. It was as well she went all alien on me, because it was the distraction I needed to avoid retching at the thought of the melodramatic emotional crap I’d just uttered.
After War Page 9