For a moment, sadness filled Carter's eyes—an old sadness, haunted and cold.
But then the young officer returned the salutes. "We leave today. Your training is over. Your war begins."
Chapter Twenty-Eight
Concrete Jungle
With one shoe, ragged and dusty, Maria entered the city of lost souls.
Mindao.
Home of the damned.
It seemed a place risen from hell.
She walked along hot asphalt streets, eyes wide. This seemed an alien world. A world of cement and metal. Of crackling electricity and buzzing lights.
There were no trees here. Mindao seemed as barren as Mister Weird's fields of poison. But this was another kind of life. The city itself seemed a jungle, growing, coiling, decaying, its own ecosystem, as mighty as the rainforests in the north.
Concrete buildings grew like trees, lined with balconies like branches. Their paint was peeling, rough like bark, and rivulets of rust dripped from barred windows like sap. Electric cables stretched across the narrow streets like vines, braiding together, all knotted and crackling. More electric cables bundled atop poles, hopelessly tangled, looking like some deranged spider's cobwebs or the cocoons of monsters.
Lower in the concrete jungle rose the underbrush. Huts. Thousands of huts. But these were not bamboo nipa huts with thatched roofs. Nothing like the bucolic dwellings of Maria's village. They were shanties, constructed haphazardly from scraps of plywood, sheets of corrugated iron, and tarpaulin. No two were alike. They were all crooked, rotting, some of them piled up three or four high. They balanced atop stilts like mad mushrooms on slender stems.
Finally there was the concrete forest floor. Garbage rolled in the wind, whipped around Maria's legs, and piled up in corners. It flowed down gutters, completely hiding the water. Train tracks carved through the slums like riverbeds, lined with shanties like reeds. Cars rattled down cracked asphalt like lumbering beasts on a hunt. Mopeds and rickshaws whipped back and forth like frightened prey. Jeepneys rattled everywhere—old military jeeps, given to the Bahayans, painted with psychedelic colors, scuttling like mad beetles.
Mindao—a jungle. An ecosystem.
And the people. So many people.
"I never knew so many people existed in the world," Maria whispered, head spinning.
They crowded every layer of the jungle. They peeked from windows and balconies, scrawny people with bare chests and sun-browned skin. They huddled inside the shanties, peering between rotting slats and sheets of tarpaulin. They lined the train tracks, thousands of squatters in rags, entire families, generations, bartering and begging. They clogged the streets. Thousands and thousands of them. Rushing back and forth. Begging. Dying.
Young people, clean and well-dressed, hurried to work, heels clacking. Orphans huddled on the roadsides, naked and filthy, crying and begging. Two toddlers hugged themselves on the road, leaning against the curb, as cars rushed by, splashing them with mud. A child sat on a concrete staircase outside a brothel, trying to get his younger brother to breathe again, both boys so skinny, so ravaged with disease. Schoolgirls skipped to school, dressed as little sailors, while naked children ran between barrels, chasing bugs. Some women sat in corners, sticking needles into their wrists, while others stood on street corners, dressed in fishnet stockings, miniskirts, and bruises.
Maria walked by a landfill, a towering mountain within the city, as large as the mountains back home. Garbage trucks trundled up the landfill and spilled their rancid treasures. Hundreds of scavengers raced toward the trucks, fished through the garbage, found chicken bones, rotting peels, scraps to eat. They were filthy, rummaging like animals, but humanity shone in their eyes. They returned to their homes—burrows on the landfill where they were born, lived, and died. Children lay on piles of trash, covered with flies. Young women cradled babies and swelling bellies. The landfill too was an ecosystem, feeding and sustaining its human parasites—just long enough for them to breed, and then devouring them, pulling them down into the rotting depths. Maria wondered how many generations had lived and died upon the trash heap.
Maria saw this all. The panoply of her people. Policeman and prostitutes, priests and madmen, urchins and orphans—a tapestry of human suffering.
But more than the squatters, or the trash people, or the starving orphans on the roadsides, it was the Earthlings who scared her.
Many Earthlings filled Mindao.
They were soldiers.
They sat in roadside kiosks, drinking beer. They guarded checkpoints, guns in hand, and patrolled the streets. They catcalled at passing women, and they kicked dogs, and they knelt to give food or coins to orphans. They beat a man, shouting "Kenny slit!" as his blood splattered the street. They pulled prostitutes into alleys, and one Earthling pulled a blanket over a homeless old man, and another fed a stray cat from a bottle. They were cruel and kind, old and young, men and women, and they too formed a panoply of humanity.
But they were all soldiers.
They all wore navy-blue battlesuits, the armored plates like muscles, the yellow visors like strange insect eyes.
They were all tall, standing head and shoulders above the local Bahayans, and even their women seemed a race of giants. At five feet tall, Maria was an inch or two taller than the average Bahayan woman. But she felt like a child whenever an Earthling walked by her.
"Hey, baby." An Earthling approached her, visor raised, beer bottle in hand. He whistled. "I bet you're sugary sweet under that filth. What say we take a shower and find out?"
His friends snorted and elbowed him. Maria hurried away.
"Slit-slut!" the soldier cried after her. He tossed his beer bottle, and it shattered by her feet. His friends laughed.
Maria walked along a roadway lined with kiosks of rusty corrugated steel. She noticed that some Earthling men were walking with Bahayan girls, their beefy arms slung around slender waists. The girls were dolled up, wearing high heels, miniskirts, too much makeup. Some were laughing. Some had sad eyes. Some had black eyes.
A jeepney rumbled by. The repurposed army jeep was painted with yellow sunflowers, garish rainbows, and dancing blue butterflies. It splashed Maria with mud. She kept walking. She stepped over an orphaned toddler sleeping in the gutter, and her heart broke. But she walked on, dazed, because she could not save them all, and there were millions here who needed saving. Girls in bruises and miniskirts, dying children on concrete staircases, toddlers huddling on the street as rickshaws raced by, girls addicted to drugs, and girls dying from STDs, and the thousands crawling across the trash heaps.
Mindao. City of refugees, of hunger, of freedom.
A city with no glowing orbs of light, no wise Santelmos to guide its hordes of humanity.
A city of Earth.
I am lost, Maria thought. And among the lost, I find my home. She walked the streets, hungry and hollow. I am home.
Chapter Twenty-Nine
The Goddess of Safe Return
On his last hour at Roma Station, Jon called home.
He stood by a porthole, gazing down at the blue planet, as the line rang.
Earth. It was so close. Right there outside.
This might be the last time I see it.
Finally home answered. His family appeared on the payphone's little monitor.
"Jon!" his mother cried.
"How are you, buddy?" his dad said, beaming.
Jon watched them on the grainy little screen, and for a moment he could not speak. All he could do was struggle not to cry. So many thoughts and feelings filled him. Memories of a loved childhood. Of his brother. Fear of the war ahead. Visions of his death, his parents grieving the loss of both sons. Past and present and future, all clogging his throat.
"Mom, Dad," he finally managed in a choked voice, and he told them.
That he was going to Bahay.
That he promised to stay safe.
That he promised to come back.
His parents wept, but then laughed through the
ir tears, told stupid jokes, struggled through the terror to keep their spirits up.
It was hard to say goodbye.
His mother wept, and even his dad shed tears. Jon had only seen him cry twice. Once when Paul died. And now.
"Goodbye," Jon said softly. "I'll call back soon. Once I'm there."
His parents nodded, unable to say more.
The call ended.
And Jon didn't know if he'd ever talk to them again.
He made another call.
He called Kaelyn.
After four rings, she appeared on screen. The same freckled face, wavy red hair, and mismatched eyes, one brown and one blue. His beautiful soprano. His muse. The girl Paul had wanted to marry, his high school sweetheart. The girl who sang in Symphonica, giving life to his music. Kaelyn Williams.
She grinned at him. "Jon!"
And he told her too.
And she wept.
"I'm going to get him, Kaelyn," he whispered, tears on his cheeks. "I'm going to find the bastard who killed Paul."
"You don't have to avenge him!" Kaelyn said. "You can come back. You don't have to fight. Don't go! Come home to me, Jon. You don't have to—"
"I do—"
"Jon!"
"Kaelyn, I have to. I have to. Goodbye. Goodbye…"
She wept, but she nodded, and she kissed the camera. And she could say no more.
The call ended.
And it was time to go.
* * * * *
The privates gathered in the hangar.
A thousand soldiers.
A full battalion.
From those at Roma Station, they had been chosen. They were the strongest. The toughest. The meanest.
Or perhaps just the most expendable. They were the soldiers chosen to kill or die.
Not everyone who graduated Roma was going to war today. All day, shuttles had been departing the space station, carrying privates to Earth and her colonies. They would serve in hangars, warehouses, checkpoints, or behind desks. They would guard mines on asteroids, defend starships, transport cargo among the worlds.
They would maintain the empire. But they would not fight.
But this battalion. These thousand soldiers. Jon and his brothers and sisters. They were going to war.
As Jon stood in his platoon, he glanced to his side. Clay Hagen was standing a few rows away. The beefy private gave him a cruel smile. Death shone in his wide-set eyes. He ran his finger across his neck.
"You're dead meat," he mouthed.
Of course they chose Clay, Jon thought, heart sinking. The bastard is crazy. Born for the jungle.
With any luck, Clay would get his head blown off on the first day. Jon would not celebrate such a death. But he wouldn't mourn either.
They entered shuttles, and for the first time in ten weeks, they left Roma Station.
Jon sat with his friends, gazing out the shuttle porthole. Roma Station became smaller and smaller, a metallic cylinder rolling around its axis, orbiting Earth.
The blue planet seemed so fragile from up here. The Western hemisphere faced Jon. He looked at America, his home. Just there, just outside the window—everyone he had ever known and loved. A delicate sphere wrapped in a thin blue blanket of air. Jon had never seen the entire planet like this, a full blue circle. He had never been so far from home. He gazed in silence, awed by how small the world really was, how beautiful and precious.
This humble blue planet, he thought. The center of an empire. And it's nothing more than a marble floating in the vast emptiness. It's so small.
"Only a century ago," Jon said softly, "Earth was burning, and alien fleets bombarded us, butchered us, brutalized us. Now from this world spreads an empire. The Human Commonwealth, the great civilization heroes built. From this shore of the cosmic ocean, we spread across the stars."
"Now we get to brutalize small worlds," Etty muttered.
George snorted. "Dude, nobody forced you to fight."
"Yeah, well, I happen to be a loyal friend," Etty said. "And I ain't letting you two dumbasses get yourselves killed."
"Shut up, both of you," Jon said. "Look."
He pointed to a porthole.
The entire squad crowded around.
"Well, would you look at that," George said, eyes widening in wonder. "Now that's a pretty sight."
Jon placed his hand on his friend's back. It was the first time since joining the army that George didn't seem miserable.
A starship floated ahead.
Not a shuttle. Not a crude space station. An actual interstellar warp-class starship.
"She's beautiful," Etty whispered, the starlight in her eyes.
She was shaped like a sailing ship of old, missing only the masts and sails. A figurehead thrust out from her prow, shaped like a golden goddess. Her hull was painted blue and white, and silver letters shone on the starboard side: HDFS ADIONA
"Adiona," Jon said. "The ancient Greek goddess of safe return."
"Ironic," Etty said. "Given that half of us will probably return in body bags."
"Exactly why we need Adiona's blessings," George said. "She is absolutely my favorite goddess."
Etty poked his belly. "Your favorite is the goddess of food."
George pushed her away. "You could use some food, pipsqueak. You weigh less than my left butt cheek."
"Dude, Manhattan weighs less than your left butt cheek," Etty said.
Jon rolled his eyes. "Goddammit, you two, must you ruin every moment?"
An airlock opened, and the shuttles entered the starship. They thumped down in a cavernous hangar.
The troops emerged. Jon looked around him with wide eyes. The hangar was vast. It probably spanned the entire lower deck of the Adiona.
The battalion formed rank—companies, platoons, squads, and finally fireteams. Jon joined his familiar fireteam. Him, Etty, and George. In this strange place, in this crazy war, his friends gave him comfort.
If I must fly with anyone to war, it's these people, Jon thought.
George had been his friend since childhood. But in just ten weeks, he and Etty had become just as close. Indeed, everyone in the platoon were like siblings to him now.
Well, maybe not Clay.
Lieutenant Carter was here too, standing at the head of the platoon. Jon looked at the officer, trying to catch his eye. But Carter stared ahead, face blank.
Finally, when everyone was getting restless, a door opened. A man entered the hangar, coming from deeper in the starship. He stepped onto a stage.
Only by sheer discipline did Jon not gasp.
"It's him!" Etty whispered. "It's actually him! Ensign Earth!"
"It's just an actor," George whispered.
"Both of you hush!" Jon said. Sergeant Lizzy was already glancing their way, and even with basic training over, she still carried her electric whip.
Ensign Earth—or at least, the actor playing the character—raised his chin and saluted. A screen behind him came to life, featuring a billowing flag of Earth. The planet itself was painted on his shield.
"Welcome, brave soldiers, to the Adiona!" said Ensign Earth. "This state-of-the-art starship will take you on your first journey across the gal—"
The handsome officer flickered, then vanished.
A sergeant cursed, stepped onto the stage, and kicked a projector. Ensign Earth returned in full holographic glory. A few soldiers had to stifle laughter, earning glares from their sergeants.
"So much for visits from celebrities," Jon muttered.
"… transport you all the way to Bahay!" the hologram continued. "First, our cutting-edge azoth crystals, embedded deep in Adiona's engines, will actually bend spacetime. The very fabric of the universe! Did you know? Only azoth, a crystal mined on a distant moon, can bend spacetime, making faster-than-light travel possible. Discovered in the twenty-first century, azoth crystals were embedded in engines during the First Alien War, when—"
"Hey, Jon!" Etty leaned toward him. "I had an idea for your song. Maybe inste
ad of horns, you can—"
"Etty, I'm trying to listen."
He returned his attention to the hologram.
"… and in a week, we'll reach our first wormhole!" Ensign Earth was saying. "Did you know there are over four hundred known wormholes in the Orion Arm of the Milky Way Galaxy? That's right! And did you know they're over a million years old? An ancient species built them long ago. The ancients are extinct, but thanks to their wormholes, we can travel to the most distant stars. With a combination of azoth crystal and wormholes, we will reach Bahay within—"
"Seriously, dude," Etty said. "You need a pan flute instead of horns. Just a single pan flute! I played one as a kid. Can I join your band?"
"Etty, hush!"
He tried to focus on the lecture. He knew a little about wormholes. As a child, he had studied plastic models of the Tree of Light, also known as Wormhole Road. This ancient transportation network spanned the galaxy. Even with warp drives, journeys between the stars could take months, even years. But reach a system with a wormhole, and you could travel anywhere instantly. Without them Bahay would be much too distant to fight, or even to care about. It was three-hundred light-years away, far outside Earth's dominion.
But it also happened to be near a wormhole.
Jon knew that Earth's leaders wanted to liberate Bahay, to kick out the Santelmo aliens and welcome the Bahayans into the Human Commonwealth. But there were more than ideals of unity at work here. So close to a wormhole, Bahay could become an important gateway to the distant stars, perhaps the most important planet in the empire. Bahay would give Earth a foothold in the depths.
Right now, Jon didn't really care about that. What was empire building to him?
All I care about is finding you, Ernesto, he thought. You killed my brother. So I will kill you.
"Dude?" Etty whispered. "You okay? You're shaking."
Jon forced a deep breath. "I'm fine. Yes, flutes. Good idea."
Ensign Earth ended his lecture with a proud salute. "Godspeed, soldiers of Earth. Now let's sing my favorite song: Earth's planetary anthem!"
The Earthling (Soldiers of Earthrise Book 1) Page 21