After War

by Tim C. Taylor

  There was no cover unless I cowered behind Mez. I’d be dead already but Gregory seemed hampered partially by fatigue, but mostly by the need to gloat.

  Most of the time she had seemed aloof from the events going on around her. Now the mask slipped and the parasite inside her was thirsting for revenge. Against me.

  I bunched my muscles ready to leap, roll, and pray Gregory missed.

  “NJ!”

  The cry hit me just before 180 pounds of stretched white alien, closely followed by the retort of Gregory’s pistol. And then the floor.

  I rolled Silky off me.

  Horden’s Bones! She’d been hit. In the shoulder.

  “Just a nick,” she said. “I’ll be okay.”

  I wanted to evacuate her to somewhere safe, but everywhere was once more smoke, and the black clouds billowing from the smoke grenades were optimized to obscure vision. So I took her word that she would be okay, and was about to find Mrs. Gregory to have a few choice words with her, when a junior carbine emerged from the clouds, closely followed by a man I didn’t recognize wearing a business suit.

  I grabbed the barrel and yanked. As the man stumbled I punched him in the gut.

  It was only as he went down heavily that I wondered whether he was one of ours.

  But only for a moment. I didn’t have time to think, because although Silky didn’t look critical, she was bleeding badly enough that I had only room in my mind for one objective. Revenge.

  The ventilation system was rapidly thinning the smoke. A shape up ahead resolved suddenly into Mrs. Gregory ascending a rope ladder. She had kicked off her shoes but kept a tight grip on her bag.

  She was getting away.

  I readied my stolen carbine to make sure she didn’t.

  The rope jerked, throwing Gregory off so her bare feet were dangling, but she clung on desperately. Jo Littorane, with her four stubby legs and Shahdi, who made do with just the two, had leaped onto the rope and were scrambling after the mad woman. Jo lashed her tail against Gregory, but the human clung on doggedly.

  “Watch out!” I screamed when two guns appeared out of the portal Gregory was making for, pointing at my friends on the ladder.

  Before I could fire at them, two shots rang out from behind me and the two figures toppled out of the wall.

  “Get her!” I yelled in triumph. My fists were bunching, but I remembered my promise to Silky not to lash out with my fists. I forced myself to check over my wife instead.

  Hell, for a ‘nick’ she was losing a lot of blood.

  “I have her,” shouted Shahdi. I glanced up and saw she had a grip on Gregory’s ankle. The Earth woman was trying to kick free, but she was too weak to escape.

  I grinned. Go Shahdi!

  The young Marine girl was too strong for the Earthborn crime boss who was ultimately to blame for Shahdi’s innocence being blasted in fire and blood. Pull her down, I urged Shahdi. I hope she lands badly.

  But it was Shahdi who fell, Jo the Littorane too, clutching their heads in agony all the way down to the ground. Shahdi rolled in pain, but Jo lay still.

  What had Gregory called it? Psychic strike.

  I knew what needed to be done. I set my carbine’s stock against my shoulder and took careful aim at Mrs. Gregory. Her parasite was clearly in control from her angry red skin, to the bestial growl in her throat.

  I didn’t care.

  “You’re mine, veck. This one’s for Silky.”

  I put tension on the trigger and then…

  Nothing.

  “Die!” I screamed. But I could not pull the trigger.

  Gregory was hanging there, one arm looped through the rope and struggling to stay conscious, even though with one stretch of her arm she would be at the gap in the wall that would take her to safety. It was almost as if she were taunting me.

  Bahati, help me, I pleaded.

  She’s just a training target, my late wife told me in her most calming voice. Not a person. It’s not real. Just an exercise. Breathe easy.

  I did. I was readying for another shot but before I could try again, two goons reached down from the gap and scooped Gregory up in their arms. She glanced out into the fray and I shivered as the bloody glow from her alien eyes bore into mine.

  I could have sprayed a hail of railgun darts over the target area and ripped them all to shreds.

  I wanted to. I desperately needed to. But my body would not obey.

  The moment passed. Mrs. Gregory was hauled away and disappeared from sight.

  Wiping away tears of frustration with my itching hand, I turned to Silky.

  My gut froze to see so much blood. I cursed myself for wasting time failing to kill Gregory when my priority was dying at my feet.

  Then the moment was gone and I lost myself in my field trauma training. She screamed as I cut away the arm of her shirt and applied the Kurlei-spec med pack I found at her hip to the dart wound that had gouged out her shoulder.

  Suddenly I was face to face with Kurlei anatomy. Everything about her arm and shoulder looked subtly out. The muscles were essentially the same as humans’ but the insertion points of the muscle bellies were different places. The shoulder blades were a little wider and the shoulders placed a little lower and farther back. The differences were subtle, unsurprising since the humanoid body template was a common design for meeting similar evolutionary challenges that recurred across many planets. The skin was different. Colder, rubbery with slight scaling.

  All that I already knew.

  But as I applied the med pack, something occurred to me that was fresh. The way Silky’s blood flowed, the way it glued her clothing to her wound as the blood coagulated to form a protective crust. The pale red that pooled on the floor and quickly darkened to a sticky dark berry stain.

  I’d shot a lot of aliens, but never tried to patch one up before. It turned out they bled just like us.

  At least, the one on the floor in front of me did, and Silky was all I cared about.

  The fighting moved away as Revenge Squad pursued the fleeing enemy through the gap in the wall. I didn’t run to the sound of guns. What would be the point? Gregory was right. I was a combat stress basket case who couldn’t fire a gun anymore.

  Silky opened her eyes. I held her hand, pathetically glad to feel the warmth still pulsing through her palm.

  “I’ll be all right,” Silky whispered. She glanced meaningfully at Mez who was still there, unharmed and glancing around weighing up the change in her circumstances.

  “Forget Gregory,” Silky told me. “There’s your prize.”

  She was right, naturally. I gave Silky’s hand a gentle squeeze and then rose to my full height, looming over Mez like an eagle enfolding my prey in my wings. She acted nonchalantly, this dis-witness, but the flicker of fear at the corner of her eye spoke the truth.

  Mez was trained to notice things, and she noticed that I’d seen her fear.

  “I won’t tell what I know about you,” she said.

  I spread my arms and opened my hands that compared to hers were mechanized shovels. I could pull this little person’s spine apart with my bare hands and she knew it.

  “I mean it,” she said, but she sounded weak. “I have intelligence you want on Revenge Squad and I know why Gregory doesn’t want it made public.”

  “Tell me everything!” I roared.

  “I never promised to do that. Not everything. I can’t. I can help… but not everything.”

  “No holding back!” She shrank under my roar. “The alternative is a lot of pain first,” I reasoned. “And then you tell me anyway.”

  “If I tell, Mrs. Gregory’s punishment will be worse than anything you can do to me. And it won’t just be me who will suffer.”

  “I can believe that. But by the time I’m through, you will have forgotten who your friends and family are, and you won’t be able to think of Mrs. Gregory anymore. You will be too busy begging to die.”

  She gulped. Silky was hurt, Mrs. Gregory had escaped, and I was a usel
ess wreck who couldn’t squeeze a trigger when it really counted. I’m guessing Mez could see the rage and loathing that was filling me up fit to burst.

  She spread her arms out in supplication, looking like a priest in her long-sleeved robes that seemed to be made from folds of her own skin. Did she really believe pleading for mercy would help? “I yield,” she said. “I will tell you the plan the Cabal have for this planet, if you insist. But the knowledge can only haunt you.”

  “I’ll be the judge of that,” I told her.

  “Look out, NJ!”

  I was still trying to figure out what I was supposed to be looking out for when I was shoved aside by Nardok the Typist. He was brandishing a serrated blade which he proceeded to stab through Mez’s heart. Arms still out, she looked at me, her eyes wide and pleading.

  Nardok hauled his blade out and I stepped aside to avoid the worst of the blood splash as Mez pitched forward. Dead.

  I couldn’t believe what I’d just seen. I kept repeating the same word. Why?

  Nardok placed a calming hand on my shoulder. “Easy, NJ.”

  “But she had information. She was going to talk.”

  “Disinterested witnesses wear robes modeled on ancient monks,” Nardok explained, “but they aren’t as innocent or as pious as they look. Reckon I just saved your life.”

  I could only shake my head.

  “Don’t believe me, eh?” He rolled Mez’s corpse onto its back and drew back the voluminous sleeves with his blade. Concealed under her left wrist was a mechanism with three miniature darts. “Poisoned, I should think.”

  I believed him. We had trained in concealed weapons only two weeks earlier. I’d worn a similar weapon myself. I cautiously prodded the firing mechanism, which had a rubbery give to it. That was surprising. These devices went rigid when primed and ready to fire. It’s possible that she was on the verge of priming her weapon before killing me. I might also have been about to push her into taking her own life, rather than face torture. Suddenly there were far more maybes than I could cope with.

  “Don’t worry,” said Nardok. “I know what’s bothering you. But it’s all right. I hacked her update trigger. Her death release won’t fire. If she uploaded any memories you didn’t want to be heard, they will fade and die with her. You’re safe, NJ.”

  “Thanks.”

  “Any time.” For someone who had just killed a potential source of vital intelligence, Nardok was in high spirits.

  Better get used to it, I told myself. Nardok was a typist with a wicked sword and who wasn’t squeamish about using it. I was a deeply inadequate accountant who couldn’t fire a gun anymore, and whose reporting line went to an alien I was married to.

  This sure wasn’t the Marines anymore.

  — CHAPTER 71 —

  Denisoff hesitated, his cold stare fixed on the truck’s rear door.

  It’s you he’s waiting for, you dumb twonk, Bahati pointed out helpfully.

  I felt a sudden urge to salute him, then I thought better.

  When I first met Viktor Denisoff, I had hated him on sight. I’m wrong about a lot of things – people things especially – but rarely so wrong as with this man.

  After escaping from the burning headquarters of Universal Agents Inc., I hadn’t known whether Silky and I would be greeted as heroes or executed for gross incompetence. The answer to that question was still pending and involved – amongst many other expenses – the recruitment of new Revenge Squad lawyers, and of more agents to replace those killed and wounded. It wasn’t just our fate that hung in the balance. Holland Philby was rumored to be in deep disgrace over the debacle. Scuttlebutt said Philby was supposed to have made a show of retaliation against Volk to keep him off our backs, not go to war.

  I hadn’t been allowed back into the branch director’s sight, but apparently Denisoff had argued our case, and still carried enough influence for Philby to mutter something about how it would be a shame to waste the training budget he had lavished on me and Silky. And so when urgent reinforcements were needed on the other side of the world for Revenge Squad’s start-up in Port Zahir, we were the first to be volunteered.

  And I, with all the vocabulary and verbal dexterity of a spent shell casing, didn’t know how to express my gratitude.

  “I know,” Denisoff told me without meeting my gaze. “You don’t have to say anything.”

  He entered the truck, stared at me intensely for a few moments and then shook my hand.

  I felt the characteristic tingle in my palm that meant my subconscious had upped the gain on the nerves there. With my increased sensitivity, I felt the outline of the folded sheet of paper Denisoff had just palmed off on me.

  The man himself was back outside and addressing the occupants of the truck. “Listen up, members of ‘C’ Section, 2nd Tata-West Squad. You made me proud.”

  Cheers hoots and hollers erupted from all of us leaving Camp Prelude for Port Zahir.

  “I expect you to do the same for your new boss,” said Denisoff. “He’s a freak. Started off as a Marine, ended up as a Navy flight dolly, but I know Laban Caccamo and he’s a good man for all his deviant ways.”

  Denisoff fixed me again with a brief stare. “Trust him.”

  The direct message to me alone was over in an instant, and Denisoff spread his attention across everyone in the back of the truck and did something we’d all assumed was anatomically impossible. He smiled. “Now get the hell off my base.”

  I took a last look at Camp Prelude in the moment before the rear hatch clanged shut. I wouldn’t miss the place, but I realized I would miss some of the people there. I saw Imelda the Hardit with her Goat among the crowd seeing us off. Conduit the combat grocer was there too as were Xeene who I would have preferred to have with me at Port Zahir, an ex-Marine called Ploestachava, and Shahdi Mowad. Of the fifteen recruits I had joined with, they were the only three I was leaving behind. Four were with me in the truck, the others were dead or expelled. A dozen new raw recruits were among the motley crowd cheering and waving, but Mowad was no longer there. I glimpsed her hurrying back to her blockhouse, not prepared to wait until we had gone.

  I felt a pang of regret and knew it was my fault she couldn’t wait to see the back of us. The knowledge that I was leaving this young woman behind – presumably forever – had gouged a deeper hole from my heart than I’d thought possible. I knew I’d acted weird around her, but I couldn’t leave without telling her how seeing her grow into herself filled me with such pride.

  This morning, I’d ignored my ghosts and taken my brain’s critical faculties hostage so I could seek her out. I had no idea what to say, so in the end I said the only words possible: the wrong ones.

  I told her that if I’d had a son, I would want him to marry her. And if I’d had a daughter, I would want the same thing.

  Yeah, I cringed too.

  I was saved from my ruminations when my friend Sel-en-Sek, who was driving this leg of the journey, activated the engine and power thrummed through the eight-wheeler, go-anywhere, get-outta-my-way truck that was making a very passable impression of an armored personnel carrier.

  “Get ready for a new life on the ocean shore,” he said with relish. “Within a week I promise you’ll reek of fish and mud and motor oil, but most of all we’ll be as one with the glorious scum of this world who wash up in its most lawless ports. Brace yourselves, you land-thumpers, because I’m in a hurry to reach the sea.”

  I couldn’t see Sel-en-Sek because he was in the driver’s compartment, but I could imagine his face-splitting grin as he gunned the engine until our bodies shook.

  I glanced at the seat opposite, suddenly concerned for Silky. Doctor Battery had patched her shoulder properly and pronounced that Silky was nearly as tough as an Assault Marine, and would be fine so long as she gave her shoulder time to heal. The doctor had rounded on me saying she held me personally accountable for making sure Silky’s shoulder healed, and heaven help me if I didn’t hold true.

  I opened my mouth to
tell Sel-en-Sek to calm the ride for Silky’s sake, but Efia stopped me.

  Don’t, she said.

  I still fully don’t trust your alien companion, said the Sarge, but I can rely upon her toughness. She won’t thank you for mollycoddling.

  Nolog saved me by choosing that moment to discuss his feelings with the occupants of the truck.

  “We advance into the unknown, and for a Tallerman the unknown is not an easy thing to face. The thrill in the pit of my stomach that yearns for adventure is ever suffocated by the dread of not knowing what might be. But you lift that dread, my friends. You enable me to enjoy the thrill of excitement. Thank you.”

  Trust a frakking alien to capture what we were all thinking, I mused as I shifted Denisoff’s secret note to a pouch in my jacket.

  We threw hollers and whistles and applause at the Tallerman. He loved it so much his head span. Literally.

  Until the truck came to an abrupt halt.

  Now what? We’d made less than half a mile from Camp Prelude.

  “Someone’s coming,” said César.

  I didn’t trust the Wolf who wasn’t really a Wolf, but I did trust his hearing to be far sharper than mine. I drew a knife.

  The rear hatch opened and Shahdi Mowad jumped in, kitbag over her shoulder and her abandoned hex bike visible by the side of the track.

  “Looks like my transfer request came through just in time,” she said.

  “I’m surprised Philby let you come along,” I said.

  Worry flickered for a moment across Shahdi’s young face. “I don’t think he knows yet,” she replied. “I asked Denisoff instead.” Her eyes narrowed. “That’s not an enthusiastic welcome. Have you got a problem with me, old man?”

  We locked glances and I fought hard not to grin. “Yeah, your feet stink and you snore like a Hardit on heat, but I suppose we’ll just have to put up with you.”

  “That’s right,” she replied. “You will.”

  Everyone laughed. Everyone except Silky. My wife looked away when I glanced at her, but I didn’t need to see her face to read her feelings. Her head was a complex mix of joy, amusement, satisfaction, and a heavily fortified zone of wariness.