After War

by Tim C. Taylor

  The Human Legion was initially set up by Human Marine Corps deserters, and about the smartest thing they ever did was to broaden the meaning of the word human in their name to take advantage of this wider downtrodden meaning. At a stroke, the oppressed throughout the region could point to the human part of the Legion’s name and believe it referred to them, no matter how many legs, horns, or sets of genitalia they may have boasted.

  Aliens were proud to wear the name human, proud to fight and die for the Legion, even if they never encountered the kind of human whose ancestors were born on Earth.

  And with the wars over, at least for now, the Legion couldn’t very well say: ‘You know we widened the meaning of the name human? Well, we’ve changed our minds.’

  So now you have the confusing thing that my Tallerman friend Nolog-Ndacu was legally human, despite being half-gnome, half-bedrock – and all-angry if you ever told him he was not human.

  And then there are the people who live on Earth today. When I was posted there, they made it abundantly clear that they don’t regard freaks like me as human. But that’s fine, because they can stay far away on their precious home planet where they can choke on their own arrogance. In the five years I’d been on this planet I’d never seen one, only even heard of one Earthborn, that being the big boss who owned Volk. Mrs. Gregory.

  Out of that second car, though, emerged one human ex-Marine, one Tallerman, and two humans of short to medium height and slight build. They were too big for ship rats, far too small for Marines, and they lacked that chiseled coldness of the earliest human slave soldiers of Denisoff’s era.

  These humans were Earthborn.

  And that meant…

  It meant I was swarmed by a team of security guards who had crept upon me while I had been too engrossed in staring at the distant VIPs.

  I was spun around needlessly, shoved, shouted at constantly. I ignored it all. Either they would kill me or not. Nothing I could do would influence the outcome.

  When their searches revealed nothing threatening or suspicious upon me, they became insulting rather than threatening. And when I excused my behavior on the grounds that the instinct to check out the lie of the land was so completely ingrained within me that I could no more help that than breathe, they had no trouble believing me because I wasn’t making that up. They didn’t even bother to tell me that there were ten thousand veterans lined up to replace me etcetera etcetera, because they knew every single one of them would have the exact same instinct to scout out their environment.

  So they graciously agreed not to shoot me this time, but assured me that in the unlikely event that I would find the opportunity for a next time, then that would be different. They sent me on my way, but not before taking careful note of my ID and biometric details for my line manager to deal with.

  Doesn’t matter, I thought to myself as I put some distance from the parking garage. If there are Earthborn here, that senior VIP has to be Mrs. Gregory.

  In theory, the whole Revenge Squad operation here at Universal Agents was to bring down or distract Volk by corrupting his admin systems or discovering tax evasion or some such. (Although that official explanation didn’t entirely tally with the number of new recruits who wanted Volk dead for personal reasons). And the only reason we were doing that was to chip away in a bigger war against Gregory.

  If that really was the big boss back there in the parking lot, then this wasn’t a six-limbed situation, this was sixty limbs.

  I don’t know how many limbs the head of credit control had in his mind when I dropped by uninvited into his office, and in between a pile of other mundane drent that came out my mouth I mentioned that I’d seen two Earthborn walking around the building.

  There must have been at least six, because before he ordered me to clear out of his office and stop wasting his time, he told me to grab an early lunch and be ready at my desk in case he needed me later on.

  Grab your rest where you can because things are likely to get hot in short order. Roger that.

  I guessed I had opened my last spreadsheet for this operation.

  — CHAPTER 61 —

  I was crammed into a little office with Sanjay and two Spartan desks and I was wearing a damned cravat. I wasn’t even armed. The whole setup was ridiculous, but it still felt like the eve of battle.

  Everything around me was so unimportant that it looked colorless and paper thin, but I became hypersensitive to the glitter of reflected light and every unanticipated sound. The genetic engineers who built my ancestors could probably explain why I always felt that way in the wait before action. I had no idea, but Sanjay picked up on it too. His unconscious was forever making him glance around at threats that weren’t there.

  I liked Sanjay. I hoped I wouldn’t have to kill him. Anyway, my thoughts were more with Silky. Even though I wasn’t supposed to do so, I tried contacting her through the corporate messaging system. No joy.

  I kept telling myself that I didn’t know drent. I’d passed the intel across to a grown up. Now let the experts who were running the show handle this. If they needed a good pair of fists, they knew how to reach me.

  Hours passed. Crawling, nervous, tense yet empty.

  No flash bombs went off.

  No armor-clad cyborgs crashed into the room through the outside windows.

  And if a battery of GX-cannon set up on the top of a nearby office block and raked the building with X-ray munitions, I didn’t notice.

  I didn’t even receive a memo summarizing an after action review.

  And then my personal phone rang. “Fofana, it’s Cadman Rivero. Can we talk?”

  Rivero’s voice sounded uneven. Must be the encryption or some such. I glanced at Sanjay and had the impression that he was trying to listen in on every word. I switched my phone to security mode, which silenced Rivero’s voice and replaced his words with text representations.

  “Go ahead,” I told the Revenge Squad combat accountant.

  I need you for a conference call in ten minutes. Meet me in the comm cage. Room F1 37-G.

  I grinned. “I’m on my way.”

  — CHAPTER 62 —

  Rivero’s voice sounded false, said Efia.

  I came to a halt. Listen up, I told my ghosts. I’m halfway to Cadman’s rendezvous. Things are about to get interesting, very quickly. And you decide that now is the right time to start clouding my mind with doubts? Unbelievable.

  No, you listen up, barked the Sarge. We’ve been keeping radio silence so we could debate without disturbing you. But now we’ve come to a decision. I agree with Lance Corporal Jalloh. This rendezvous could be a trap.

  Because Rivero sounded ‘strange’?

  Yes, replied Efia. A false voice synthesized from recordings of the real one. A trap to lure you in.

  Or maybe our glorious combat accountant is nervous. Are you telling me you know for certain that what I heard was artificial?

  No, admitted the Sarge. But there is enough doubt.

  That doubt cuts both ways, Sergeant Fofana, said Sanaa. Rivero was pretty pissed off at NJ for forcing his hand. When I was alive my voice took on that same clipped tone when I was angry at him.

  I wanted Silky. I’d never liked operating on my own. Basic minimum effective team size is two. Everyone knows that.

  Time is ticking, said the Sarge. NJ, we can hear your thoughts firing before you do, so let’s not waste our time here. We already know you’re gonna meet with Rivero. We can’t stop you, but I think you need to do something first.

  Roger that, I agreed. He didn’t need to spell it out: I needed to find Silky.

  I tried calling her again on my personal phone. No reply.

  It doesn’t mean anything, Sanaa told me. There could be a hundred reasons why she can’t reply.

  Forget her, son, the Sarge told me. Your wife can take care of herself, and she wasn’t who we were thinking of. Your responsibility is to ensure this operation is a success, and in my experience, the side with the biggest guns tends to win
the argument.

  The Sarge was beginning to speak in riddles again, but I knew what he meant. I needed guns and boots on the ground. It would make me a few minutes late for the rendezvous, but I made a detour first.

  I needed to see Shahdi.

  — CHAPTER 63 —

  “Yes?” Shahdi grunted irritably from her desk.

  “There is a delivery for you at the junior staff entrance.”

  She looked up from the screen and frowned at me with enough intense irritation to kill the young and the frail. “I don’t understand. Why didn’t they message me?”

  I tried to look embarrassed. “If you saw what it is, you’d understand.”

  Shahdi showed no sign of recognizing the code phrase. The way she seemed to weigh up my news looked convincing even to me. “All right,” she said reluctantly. “But you’d better not be winding me up, or I’ll have you fired.”

  I put my palms out and gave a defensive shrug. “Easy, friend. I’m just passing on a message.”

  She followed me on my way out of her office. It was a larger space than mine, and divided up into cells by partition screens, but all of them gave a good view of a central walkway. Chikune was supposed to be in this office. I didn’t look for him but assuming he wasn’t in the restroom preening himself in front of a mirror, he should see the two of us together and realize the drent was about to start flying.

  The code phrase I had given Shahdi told her to assume our cover had been blown, and summon as much help she could with the largest guns they could carry.

  I broke into a jog to make my rendezvous with Cadman Rivero, hoping my detour didn’t mean I would be too late.

  — CHAPTER 64 —

  Room F1 37-G snuggled deep in the bowels of the building complex, which didn’t make sense, even though Rivero had described the room as a comm cage, a communication facility as secure as the techs could make against unwanted ears and outside interference. I’d used them myself in forward operating bases, but as I stepped through the blast door and into my rendezvous point, it felt more like a warship nerve center: the CIC, bridge, or ops room in the heart of the ship, shielded by less important compartments that would succumb to enemy fire first.

  Of course, as a lowly Marine NCO I had never been allowed inside such hallowed areas of a ship, but if I had, then I was sure they would look like room F1 37-G.

  To my left was a control center with vacant seats, and equipment consoles. To my right was a boardroom, centerpiece of which was an oval table in polished wood surrounded by expensive leather chairs. Farther in were shelves, equipment blocks, and more seating, with two more doors leading further inside what I was beginning to think of as a bunker.

  And sitting at the head of the boardroom table, in a chair with arms of exquisitely carved wood, was Cadman Rivero. He looked at me through pained eyes as if to say I was seriously too late. Then he gathered his strength and spoke.

  “No. Sudden. Moves.”

  Having said his piece, he slumped over the table revealing a bloodied gash to the back of his skull.

  I sprinted for one of the doors at the back. An armory would be good. So would medical supplies.

  I didn’t get far before Volk emerged from behind a bank of equipment and pointed an NJ-2 carbine my way.

  “You should listen to your Revenge Squad boss,” he said. “No sudden moves.”

  I came to an abrupt halt, noting the blood on the stock of his carbine. “Sorry, Wolfie, doing as I’m told isn’t my style.”

  “So I’ve read,” said a woman’s voice behind me.

  In many ways, the person who followed me into the bunker looked like the Mrs. Yannine Gregory I’d seen in her Revenge Squad file. She wore a jacket and skirt in the kind of purest blue that doesn’t occur in nature. I’m not one for fashion or the intricacies of tailoring, as I might have mentioned. Clothing is either on or off as far as I’m concerned, and little else matters, but I could see from the way her garment moved and shaped comfortably and elegantly that her clothes were expensively tailored. And, yes, her shoes looked impractical. She wielded a cream clutch bag just as menacingly as Volk did his carbine.

  That’s where the resemblance to her file ceased. She didn’t just look haggard, there was something off about the way she moved, the way she carried herself. Something inhuman.

  The photographs in her file had shown an attractive woman in her 30s, but the figure sauntering towards the boardroom table looked neither attractive nor could I guess an age. Mrs. Gregory’s skin tone was terribly stretched, worn and hanging, its elasticity long gone. It looked as if she’d been force-fed fit to burst and then starved. Repeat until – well, until she looked like this. I’d never seen anything like it.

  Once at the table she clicked her fingers. Volk obeyed his summons and tipped Cadman from his throne before kicking the combat accountant a safe distance across the floor. Meanwhile his mistress took sprays and cloths from her bag and sanitized the table and chair, dirtied by the bleeding Cadman, before sitting down in the throne.

  I heard one of the side doors open, but if anyone came through, they kept themselves hidden.

  “You are NJ McCall,” said the crime lord with the unlikely name. I couldn’t place her accent to a specific region of Earth, but like all Earthers her languid speech with its stretched vowels and lilting cadence spoke of privilege. “You were formerly Sergeant Ndeki Joshua, but you added the McCall surname when you were retired to this planet. You are part of a Revenge Squad operation that has infiltrated this idiot’s organization.”

  Volk looked poisoned daggers at his mistress. His body was supercharging for violence, his shoulders twitching, and the veins on the side of his head pumping with all the berserker juices feeding into his brain. I don’t think he liked being called an idiot.

  “Don’t look so put out, you moron,” Gregory sneered at him. “I lent you some of my best advisers but you run such a shoddy operation here that you harbor the enemy. Are you fit to run this outfit, Timberwolf, or do you need to be retired ahead of time?”

  Volk bit his lower lip. Hard. He didn’t seem to notice, but the way the blood bubbled down over his chin made him look a proper berserker now.

  I was so mesmerized by the charge of violent potential hanging heavily in the air that I didn’t notice the figure creeping up behind Volk until she was in position, ready to spring at the minor crime lord. My wife was displaying admirable skills of sneakiness, but she could do with a hand. Like a distraction, for example.

  “Hey, Volk, did you mention to your mistress that you and I have already met, and still you let me work for you?”

  My barb added a little growling to accompany the berserker’s scowl, but I think he was beyond the capacity for words by that stage.

  I pressed harder. “What about the artillery pieces I destroyed? We’re dangerous targets, solitary farmers. You should have picked on someone easier. Like you did when you burned down the Mowad family’s farm and murdered the family, except for the little girl you allowed to escape and tell her story.”

  Volk licked at the blood dripping down his chin. He drew some kind of sick strength from this. He cast his gaze upward as if in ecstasy.

  “You may have touched a raw nerve there, Mr. McCall,” said Gregory. “Volk! Show the nice man your hands.”

  He was swaying now, barely in control of his own body. But he slung his gun over his shoulder and held out his half-curled fists. The little fingers were missing and one of the neighboring fingers too.

  “I don’t think Volk is in a talkative mood, McCall, so let me explain. I took one finger for burning down the Mowad farm against my standing orders. And when I say I took, I mean I sat and watched as he cut his own finger off. I removed another for letting the witness escape. And a third finger for… Oh, I expect she’s here too isn’t she? The witness?”

  I kept myself completely calm and showed no reaction. I swear.

  “Oh, I can see she is here. How interesting.”

  I shrugged.
“Believe what you choose.”

  “I choose the truth, McCall. Your record says you were stationed on Earth, so you know perfectly well that my race is at least as enhanced as yours. It’s just that our improvements are less muscular. More cerebral. Your ancestors were bred to be plasma fodder, expendable soldiers tweaked to rut like rabbits in the fields so that your numbers were always replenished no matter how horrendous your casualty rates. While your ancestors fought and bred, mine improved themselves on a path to become one of the leading races in the galaxy. I can see your heart rate, your sweat level and content. The micro tremors in your voice. I know you are lying. I can read you like a book. And there’s something else, isn’t there? You don’t feel threatened because…”

  In desperation, I turned to the berserker who was teetering on the edge of sanity, and gambled on a hunch. “I’ve seen her face,” I shouted at him. “Holland Philby has her head stuffed and mounted on the wall. He glories in her death.”

  “You tire me,” said Mrs. Gregory, but Volk looked at me in horror. “Babbling lies about this Mowad girl won’t help you,” Gregory added. “Holland Philby is a degenerate man. Even if he did have a farm girl’s head on display, we’re neither surprised nor do we care.”

  “He tells me to spit on her.” I had Volk’s full attention now. “We are ordered to do that every day to her. To Michelle-Leanne Odeku.”

  Volk broke Mrs. Gregory’s hold.

  With his gun still shouldered, he came at me, drawing two serrated daggers.

  Which immediately clattered to the floor when he fell headfirst, his feet swept under him by Silky’s leg.

  Even before he smashed to the ground, I was reaching for his gun.

  “I’m sorry, you haven’t been introduced,” I said chirpily, punctuating my words by stomping down hard on Volk’s head while I covered Gregory with his gun. “This is another one of Volk’s employees.” I stomped down again, and the crunching noise made me sure Volk would be looking for a dentist soon. “She’s also my wife.”