Focused Vanguard

by Yolanda Yasin

  It had belonged to his real mother, his only mother. He never knew her but Dad had told him she was pretty. Pretty and strong. He thought of her as he closed his eye and began to rub the cloth between his fingers, holding his fist over his heart as he so often did, trying to calm himself down.

  N8 had once asked Dad why his mother was not with him. Dad told him that she was very sick, and could not possibly raise him. N8 had another idea. It was because he was Ape, because he could not be a normal son who could make a mother proud. He squeezed his eye more tightly closed. He would have cried but he did not know how.

  Sniffling loudly, he opened his eyes to look back towards the short corridor leading back to the shuttle bay to see Lo standing in front of him, looking down at him with a blank expression. N8 looked like that, too. To him, it was… ugly.

  Lo signed, a faint furrowed brow breaking the monotony of his face.

  "You lied."

  N8 sighed and signed for him to shut up. N8 turned away from him and felt Lo sit down next to him. Then he felt Lo's hand on his shoulder plate. N8 turned back.

  "Mad at Dad?" Lo signed.

  "Which one?" N8 replied. There was his real dad, and there was Dad… Avery…Admiral Avery. He clapped his hand to his aching head again.

  "Sorry for fail," Lo added.

  N8's eye narrowed, remembering some of the reasons he was so angry lately. In one of the many icons of his left eye, N8 had received before departure a reply to his most recent application to be an Alliance officer. He had been denied. Again. And why?

  Because N8 was Ape; dumb, weird, a monster. He began shaking from anger, and resumed rubbing his piece of blanket. He fought to feel peace.

  "OK to be mad. N8 makes life more hard than OK." Lo signed.

  N8 had not seen Dad in a while, not since the war ended. Too many things to do. He shook his head. Lo was right. They sat there as N8's heart began to slow to beat at a normal speed.

  "Past is future," N8 finally signed, trying to say an Old Muslim phrase that Dad always used. He put the small fabric back in the pouch and pulled it closed. He would be OK.

  "Happy Birthday," Lo signed with an attempt at a smile that turned into a frown.

  N8 sat there, not knowing what to think or say. It was his birthday. How could he forget? He was… twenty-two years old. Though he could not quite grasp it even mentally, that's what he was mad about at first.

  How could Dad forget?

  N8 realized he was turning his circular, palm-sized—well, Earthling palm-sized—communicator over and over as it sat on top of his right wrist. He knew that Dad was a great leader and had a lot of jobs to do. But a call, a video, a text message would not take too much time, would it?

  N8 felt fear again. Maybe Dad was in trouble. What could he—

  No. N8 shook as he tried to control the mad and the sad and the fear in him. Everything was OK. Past is future, past is future, past is future.

  N8 relaxed, his bad feelings going away, then stiffened. He forgot Lo was still sitting next to him, staring at him. N8 tried to focus. Lo needed a good captain, an opti—opt—… happy captain. He could do this, he would do it. Today was a good day. Today was his birthday, a day to enjoy his life so far.

  Twenty-two years old and the leader of the Ape, the not wanted children from the bad choices of war.

  N8 felt mad again—not being mad was hard; really, really hard.

  Lo looked at him with those eyes of his. N8 focused.

  "Thank you." N8 finally signed, the two of them standing up.

  Lo nodded, put his hand on N8's shoulder plate again, then turned around and stomped back towards the shuttle bay.

  N8 stood alone in the engine room once again, but he did feel better, if only a little.

  Somehow, he would make his mother proud.

  "Happy Birthday to me," N8 signed to himself, so full of emotions he could not ever understand.

  Then he, too, walked back to the shuttle bay, where his crewmates greeted him and he sat himself back in his seat, pulling the crash webbing tight across his armor. He looked at Lo, who looked back and frowned trying to smile again, and then looked at his entire crew one by one.

  O, Rhyme, Hammer, Book, Luck and Laser. They had completed sixteen missions together. No casualties, few injuries. Even a… commendation, from… General Luta after their saving two hundred soldiers from a collapsed building after the battle on… Dunmarth. There was nothing they could not do together. N8 had a great crew, even if being their captain hurt his head all the time.

  To be with them was a good birthday gift, he decided.

  Chapter 3

  A high-pitched bing, bing pattern sounded through the shuttle, informing the crew that the landing protocol had begun. They sat in silence, drawing their large rifles from off their backs, checking the parts as the shuttle began to shudder, the landing bars deploying and the bay beginning to depressurize, causing high-pitched streams of cold air, opaque white in color, to surround the giant soldiers.

  N8 and his crew pulled a tight black mesh lying at the base of their necks up and over their ears and foreheads for basic protection. N8 also pulled armored gauntlets over his hands, taking care to avoid smashing his communicator. Holding his weapon in one hand, N8 grabbed a tumbling helmet from off the grated floor and handed it to Lo, who had dropped it. Then his crew all put on their helmets, letting the piece of armor pressurize against their chest plates. N8 wore no helmet—not to separate himself as the leader—but because his robot eye already did what the helmets could do. Except for providing air. N8 simply held his breath in his enormous lungs.

  The smoky streams of air became warmer and the crew lurched as the shuttle thudded onto the deck of Bunker 3.0's landing bay. As alarms sounded to warn that the landing ramp would be opening, potentially letting in the vacuum of space and no gravity, N8 signed to his crew and they all turned on their suits gravity generators. The steam continued to swirl about them, warmly touching N8's exposed face—then the ramp door slammed onto the gleaming chrome of the deck.

  N8 hesitated. They were exposed, the vacuum should have stopped the streams of air immediately, like usual. But they continued to hiss, N8 could still hear them. Strange, he decided, though he could not exactly place why.

  N8 signed for his crew to go, and they stampeded their way down the landing ramp, pulling their huge rifles to their hips as they moved fast out into the hangar bay. Their helmets shook furiously as they looked every which way, confused as N8 was as to why the steam had not stopped… That's why, N8 barely realized, more an emotion than a coherent thought.

  He stared back at the porthole through which they had entered—it was hard to see, but with perfect eyesight, the Ape could make out the faint blue of a force field. That meant air, and… gravity. The lights were on too, bouncing off the chrome of the hangar bay floor.

  N8 made a gesture and they all turned off their gravity generators. He exhaled his held breath and brought his rifle up to his shoulder. Something was wrong, but he could not place it—why could he not think! He signed for his crew to move toward the large gray door in the top left corner of the bay, the following noise echoing loudly in the clean empty space.

  The door swirled open and N8 stepped first inside the narrow, well-lit corridor, its length curving to the right. More gray doors lined the walls of the corridor. N8 signaled his crew and they broke off in pairs, the four duos slowly checking what lay just inside.

  As they slowly stepped their way down the curved corridor, finding nothing at first but maintenance closets and cleaning supplies, some doors began to lead to other corridors. N8 signaled, and his crew activated their helmets' communications, moving further apart through the bunker. N8 stared at the wall for a moment with his glowing blue eye and then his interface appeared, too. Lines of text superimposed over what he saw, it took a moment to refocus his attention on his surroundings.

  Two by two his crew split up, until he continued down the main corridor with Lo. His large blue eye s
tared to the right and a digital map appeared in his sight, showing him that they were headed straight for the lift to the living quarters of the strangely spotless bunker.

  Had not a massacre taken place here twenty years ago?

  N8 twitched his big eye and sent a line of text to his crew.

  "Strange. Low alert. Safe." N8 let his eye fix his spelling as it sent to his crew mates.

  "K." Was everyone's response, blipping across N8's vision.

  N8 and Lo finally reached the end of the corridor and Lo opened the lift. They stepped inside and the doors slid shut, the lift descending deeper into the bunker. Very strange. N8 looked at the map again.

  This lift had last been reported destroyed over twenty years ago by the Eradan attack.

  N8 felt something, a feeling in his heart, but he could not describe it.

  A skip, maybe?

  The lift stopped and the doors slid open again, now revealing another gray corridor that split in two at the end, one end curving left and other curving right. Time to split up. N8 signaled for Lo to take the right passage, and he began to walk towards the left, first checking a door in to his immediate left in the main corridor. It slid open with a hiss, revealing a gray room with a gray footlocker at the foot of a bed covered in gray sheets.

  N8 moved further into the room, seeing nothing else was in the room except a small, circular porthole where the jagged outline of the mountainous asteroid Bunker 3.0 sat on could be seen, sparkling stars in a dark sky just above the range. Nothing was in here. N8 felt frustrated. He was pretty sure he was not going to find the supplies in a bedroom, but not finding anything made his skin tingle.

  "Supplies?" N8 messaged his crew.

  "Not yet." Book, Rhyme, Laser and Luck responded.

  "Broken control board." Replied O and Hammer.

  "K." Sent N8, ending the chat. He thought O and Hammer's text was interesting. Why was that, again? While he was trying to remember, he turned around to walk back out of the room, and saw something small and blue sticking out from under the bed. He sat down on the bed, the old springs only squeaking a little bit. He reached down and grabbed the rectangular object, pulling it out and up onto the bed.

  It was a journal. N8 guessed, because it read on the front in gold letters, "Journal." He pulled the book open, layers of not exactly white paper lying inside. He flipped through a couple of pages until he saw a section where the pages had been torn out, strangely-shaped scraps of paper what remained. He wondered. Where had the pages gone? Who had taken them? Why were they important?

  A knock on the wall next to the door made N8 jump. He looked up to see Lo, his helmet removed, now tucked between his arm and torso, frowning at him. N8 frowned back. They both knew they were trying to smile, right? N8 hoped so. N8 closed the journal.

  "Something?" Lo signed, then pointed at the blue book.

  "No," N8 replied. It was true, he realized. The book, the journal, it was over twenty years old—whatever mystery it belonged to was long over.

  "You?" He asked Lo.

  "Nothing. Checked other way, too. Same." Lo seemed upset. N8 understood. He wanted to do a good job. He wanted to find the supplies. They all did. As Ape, they needed to prove themselves. They were tired of being viewed as inco—incomp—useless. That was why this emptiness was so frustrating. And so strange.

  N8 frowned a smile. He remembered now. Hammer and O had found the control room, the controls broken. That meant that the lights should not be working. Why were they working? His head began to hurt.

  N8 stood up from off the bed, the springs now making no sound as they moved very slowly back into place. One mystery at a time. They needed to find the supplies first. N8 turned to face Lo, heading back outside into the corridor.

  Once out in the corridor, a line of text flashed in N8's eye. It was from Laser and Luck.

  "N8, all, go 4. Something."

  N8 looked at Lo, who shook his head, putting his dark helmet back on. N8 accessed the map with his eye again, saw how to get to Level Four, and immediately followed the map back to the lift. As the lift shot upwards, N8 could feel Lo shaking beside him. It was good news. Hopefully it was the supplies, or something close.

  Back at Level One, N8 and Lo walked past the door to the hangar and headed to the other lift, which as they turned the corner went down with two others from their crew. N8 was not sure who, because they all looked the same in their huge, black armor. N8 and Lo waited for the lift to come back up and stepped inside once it settled in place.

  Lo pressed the button for Level Four and they descended rapidly until stopping at a floor bathed in bright blue light. Stepping onto the floor, they saw a large cone-shaped object sitting in front of them, energy pulsing blue in its many vents. The power generator.

  N8 wondered where on the level they were supposed to go, but then saw the rest of his crew standing together down the corridor, surrounding something on the floor. He and Lo jogged over, their weapons bouncing against their backs and legs. Two of his crew moved apart, letting them in the circle.

  "Look." Luck pointed, his fingers shaking with excitement.

  N8 looked down, and saw a large gray box full of small, furry creatures. Rodents. They were rats. Big, black, silver-haired rats. N8 paused. They were not moving, they just laid in the box side by side, stacked in columns. N8 looked at their toes. They were a strange green, tiny and curled. So were their noses. N8 stepped back.

  The rats were all dead. N8 realized they were dried like military food, which was worse. What could have done this, and why?

  Chapter 4

  Loud banging came from N8's right, and he and his crew jumped to see Luck pulling out a short, fat device from the closet to their right. A dehydrator. Now the shrunken rats made sense, but N8 still wondered. The bunker was empty; who or what was doing this? And were they still alive?

  Suddenly, the corridor went dark, the humming of the generator disappearing, the blue light gone. The Ape stumbled for a moment as they panicked, their helmets taking a moment to adjust, their hands fumbling with their weapons lights. Perfect eyesight was useless in the dark. N8 tried to think. What had happened?

  Suddenly the lights came back on as quickly as they had disappeared, the power generator humming again. Then the lights began to flicker. N8 looked down and noticed the box full of rats was gone. He looked at his crew, who were stomping the ground, moving in fear.

  N8 signaled his crew via the display on their visors to form up. They all moved to stand shoulder to shoulder, back to back, with N8 leading in the front. Fear grabbed at their chests as they huddled together. Fear of being watched by something unknown, though none of them could understand it, not by thought.

  N8's crew moved slowly into the dark corridor, the lights on their rifles providing minimal illumination. The lights above flickered strangely, odd whooshing and whirring noises coming from the walls. They suddenly stopped with a sharp click, only to start once more. The Ape squeezed closer together as they began to fear the walls themselves, the flashing lights hurting their eyes. N8 had to make a decision to keep his crew calm. The Ape instinct was beginning to overtake some of them.

  Moving in front of the group, N8 stepped to the right side of his huddled crew and grabbed Rhyme and Hammer by the back of their helmets, pulling them into his shoulders. Almost immediately, they stopped shaking and steadied their weapons. N8 could not have any of the group lose control. One Ape acting out of instinct was nearly impossible to tame. Two or more going wild… N8 did not want to think about it.

  Rhyme and Hammer signed their apologies which N8 waved off, taking his place at the head of the group. The crew moved into the large room that housed the power generator, which seemed to still be working normally, pulsing blue lights up its body, humming loud enough that N8 could not hear the stomping of his crew. N8 wondered. What was causing the lights to go crazy?

  As if an answer to N8's question, he caught a very slight glance of a small shadow darting behind the power generator. He ra
ised his hand up, signaling stop to his scared crew. Had he actually seen something? Signaling Lo and O to form up behind him, he softly stepped his way around the glowing generator, his rifle primed, the butt pressed against his armpit.

  Breathing slowly, N8 turned the corner he had seen the shadow disappear behind. Nothing was there in the blue lit corner. Maybe it had run out the other way around the generator. If so, it would have headed straight towards his crew.

  "See the thing?" He asked through text to his crew.

  "No." His crew responded.

  How strange. N8 must have imagined it. He was so sure that he had seen something, though. N8 thought as fast as he could what his crew should do next. They had just confirmed that the supply hoard of legend was not on Bunker 3.0. Technically, that was mission accomplished. Then strange things started happening. N8 felt it was time to move on to Bunker 6.2, his crew's next stop.

  "Head to ship," He signaled to his crew, who nodded, turning to head back toward the lift. As the doors slid open, N8 had Laser, Book, O and Luck take the first lift. The four squeezed their enormous armored bodies as tight as possible inside and then zipped up out of sight. Lo pressed the lift button and as quickly as it had gone it came back. The last four climbed in, their bodies uncomfortable in such a small space. With effort, N8 reached for the lift button and punched it, sending them rocketing upwards.

  Spilling out of the lift N8 signaled his crew to form up once more, taking the lead again. Turning towards the corridor leading to the hangar, N8 saw in the corner of his eye a dark shape moving. Whipping his head to look back down the corridor, the still flickering lights allowed him to make out a dark shape quickly moving around the curve of the hallway, out of sight once more. He had not imagined it! His curiosity strong, N8 signaled his crew to from up in front of him.