by Allen Ivers
Nora and Jensen were back to back, screaming taunts and threats at the nightmare swirling around them. Keira and Solomon picked their targets with care, both soaked from head to toe in the blood of their kills. Eden tended to a wound in Carmona’s arm as he directed fire at the alien surges, pushing back on the rising tide every time it swelled.
The aliens seemed happy to let them exhaust their munitions, testing and probing responses.
An alien lunged forward and snagged a Capital with a claw through the leg like a hook through a fish. They dragged him back before anyone could react, sucking the poor soul into the body of the horde. His screams were garbled and silenced by splashing liquid and crunching bones.
In a matter of seconds, the leading edge of the monstrosities had turned back toward the survivors, spitting a chittering roar that was somehow synchronized like a chorus of moist thrumming.
The horde was playing with its food.
Aaron keyed his throat mic, “Holmst, drop the cables now!”
“I drop the cables, they’ll yank the birds right out of the sky,” Holmst snapped back.
“Give ‘em air support!”
“We melted the barrels, Capital. The mission is scrubbed. If you want out of there, fall back now!”
Carmona dropped his rifle, drawing his sidearm to shoot down an advancing Drone. It crumpled at his feet.
Jensen dead checked the beast with the last few shots in his rifle. Empty, he grabbed the barrel and beat on the monster’s face with the rifle butt in a vain attempt to stop its death throes.
Aaron checked his magazine: nineteen shots. Make them count.
A drone rushed a distracted Jensen, too occupied with hammering on his current target.
Aaron shouldered his rifle.
Center of mass. Breathe out. Trigger. Aim small, miss small.
The shot clipped beneath the back of the skull, snapping whatever cords held the creature up. It crumpled like soiled laundry at Jensen’s feet, next to its cousin.
A few of the monsters turned and hissed at the threat from above, trying to reform their battle lines and present a shield for the back ranks. But the sheer size was too much, and Aaron had a view of too many vulnerable points, peppering his shots across the mob.
“Now!” Carmona called out, seizing the opportunity.
The survivors directed their fire at the far side of the ring, spraying whatever remaining munitions available into the distracted horde.
It was too much, too fast for the body to respond. The Capitals cleaved a break in the circle and staggered with their wounded toward the homestead’s interior caves. Whatever awaited couldn’t be worse than their current state.
Keira and Nora held the doorway, while Eden and the others lurched over the threshold, a trail of blood and shell casing behind them.
Before the Drones could push past their mounting dead, the Capitals slammed the blast door down.
Heroism accomplished. Time to run.
Aaron chucked his rifle aside and fumbled with his sidearm, firing random blasts into the assembly below him. Their attentions were split, but the horde was now advancing on Aaron, and he had the distinct disadvantage of being alone.
He stepped back away from the lip of the pit as the monsters clawed their way up the sides as though gravity were a just a stern suggestion.
Oh, he’d done it now.
“Holmst?” Aaron stuttered, “Cables? Maybe drop me a cable?”
Their claws dug long troughs in the lip of the pit, as the Jergad host heaved their skeletal frames over the edge. Somehow, some Drones were climbing on the backs of the others, their scythe arms sliding past each other and climbing up without injuring their comrades, a devil’s ladder of hissing blades.
Drones came up over the cliffside two or three at a time. His shots glanced off their skull-crests like arrows against a shield wall, sparking and chunking bits. He may as well be throwing firecrackers at a bulkhead.
The pistol slide slammed back one final time, resting open and leaking smoke, like an exhausted runner exhaling steam on a cold morning.
Aaron thumbed the magazine loose and fished in the pocket he knew was empty.
The ground cracked. Because of course it did.
Aaron felt his footing give way. He tucked into a ball and leaned to the side, rolling away from the grasping claws of the Drone that slashed the air behind him.
He didn’t look for the strikes, just scrambled madly away. He felt the blows hitting the earth behind him, jackhammering through the soft earth and tossing arcs of dirt into the sky.
In a bizarre moment of clarity, he felt the pressure first, before the surface tension of his uniform and flesh gave way and that scythe drove down into his thigh like an ice pick.
His scream was cut short as it hauled him backward, further tearing down his leg as it dragged him through the dirt toward a collection of thirsting maws. Aaron grabbed at his harness for something, anything.
His combat knife was a serrated utility tool most commonly used to start campfires and cut rope. But it was steel and pointy.
The creature rolled him over. A single angry face stared into and through him, its eyes a cool and pale blue, no iris to betray depth or focus. It breathed in his face -- stale and heavy -- with its guttural vibrato pushing the foul air over his face. The split jaw quivered, as if eager to feast but savoring the moment.
Aaron simply sat up and pushed the knife directly into the creature’s eye socket clean to the hilt. He felt it skip off of two separate somethings inside before finally stopping.
The creature huffed, as if considering how to respond.
And then, every muscle in his body seized, a shock grabbing hold of him and throwing him backward to the ground, like he’d just gripped hard with both hands on to the leads of an alternator.
His vision went black, then white, then black again in an epileptic surge of overwhelming intensity. The first thing he noticed was the tears falling down his face, a grief-stricken fall drenching his cheeks.
He gasped for air, sobbing without cause or reason. It was like he had been given everything he’d ever dreamed of, and shown it again destroyed and ruined by unseen hands. It was the kind of heartbreak that came coupled with heinous cruelty pitched downward on an innocent child or the grief of a widow standing over their beloved’s crumpled body.
It was more than simple sadness, but the absence of joy on the edge of memory, how recalling a time before the pain only magnified the suffering.
What was this feeling? Where did it come from?
And with that, the slain creature fell to the ground on top of him. He could hear something valuable crack, his muscles tightening in a futile attempt to protect his failing body, but he didn’t feel the pain that should accompany his undoubtedly fractured legs.
It was as though he had been blinded by a white-hot iron, silencing his nerves and stealing his voice. It drove blunted speartips behind his eyes, and with his last coherent thought, he presumed his skull had spilt its mealy load onto the dirt.
As he bled from his leg and cried into the clay, he waited for the cacophony of angry blows to follow, a syncopated succession of talons rending him to paste. He wrapped himself in his misery and sought solace only in that his end might be quick.
But it never came. They denied him that comfort.
The silence of the battleground and that haunting echo of the Howlers overhead was the only thing he could hear, as though the natives had given him his sentence, and had carried it out. And with their work done, they quit the field.
Aaron shivered under the body of the beast, as darkness finally claimed his sight. The last thing he saw was the Howler hanging in the sky above, unfurling a rescue he did not deserve before all vanished behind a blurry shroud.
He could feel the creature exhale one ragged sigh against the ground and deflating atop him. He closed his eyes, hoping to awake far from here where comfort was simply known by the absence of suffering.
Behind
his anguished tears and clenched eyelids, in that empty void carved in the stone of his memory, were two blue eyes, lidless and alien, staring back at him. He saw them, as much as they saw him, taking in his face with careful study.
Those eyes flitted back and forth, absorbing every detail, every blemish, every stain, every scar.
They could see him.
They knew him now. And they would make him know their pain.
Part 2
Paragon
9
Riley
He was damaged goods.
The money would have been better spent on fresh munitions, requisitioning equipment from the black market, or feeding the living. Aaron Havenes should have been consigned to a scrap heap, tossed unceremoniously into a grimy ditch, where he would mercifully perish before his festering wounds could take hold.
The man had served his purpose.
Unfortunately, a certain charity case in Administration had other intentions for the Hero of the Hour.
“We had to induce a coma,” the doctor said, with the infuriating calm of someone who dispensed with their human empathy decades ago.
Riley stared past the doctor in towards the surgical ward, where the third batch of surgeries was commencing. The surgical team would be wrist deep in their patient for the next six hours.
These doctors could be treating sick colonists or saving injured soldiers. Instead, they would spend their combined time and their extensive expertise patching up a man recruited solely for his ability to bleed.
Princess Talania had taken a special interest in Aaron. His story had spread through the colony like a particularly virulent plague.
The Capitals had rescued a single civilian farmer and his mouth had been left annoyingly unscathed. The man spoke endlessly of heroism – quite innocently and completely lacking in activist coaching, of course. He spun tales of a man standing against a force of nature, holding the proverbial flag high over rising flood waters.
Talania caught wind of that tall tale and spun up her considerable energies, hoisting Aaron up as a symbol to the people. She excelled at this: find emotional lightning rods, raise them up into the storm until they cease to draw the ire of Zeus, discard, repeat.
It was a talent, he had to admit, and one that could be bent to the needs of the people and the state; she regularly bent it for her own ends.
Riley supposed the Imperial Flag has long since lost its flavor for her. Not a patriot to anything other than herself. He should've let her take that bullet last week.
Now, now — that wouldn't be very nice, now would it?
As Riley watched valuable man-hours fritter away, Talania took in the doctor’s reports like a brown-nosing teacher’s pet. She scribbled notes on her ridiculous paper. Riley was certain she was busily composing some heinous public release that he would have to quash before it managed to leave the building.
The doctor was deep in the weeds, detailing the previous work that Riley couldn’t dream of understanding and certainly didn't waste the energy to try on.
“Nanofiber cords were successfully attached to the left intracapsular ligament, and arterial grafts made to the femoral artery, where the damage was most extensive.” The doctor explained in a patronizing tone that came packaged with advanced degrees and white coats, “Combined with the multiple tibial shaft fractures in both legs, and the sheer blood lost, he is lucky to be alive at all.”
Riley couldn’t control the scoff that huffed out of his nose. Lucky? He shouldn't be alive. It's improper. It's wasteful. How many citizens are these doctors not treating while they repair the leg of a Capital?
Talania resisted the urge to glare at him, blinking through her irritation, “What are we doing about the neurological damage?”
The doctor paused, “...We’re not quite certain what’s happening.”
A learned man of science – while dodging the actual phrasing – actually admitting to their own ignorance? What was this now? Riley’s eyes narrowed, and he declared a single curious sound, “What?”
More techno babble was his reward. “He is verifiably unresponsive,” the doctor assured, “but we have recorded increases in rapid eye movement, heart palpitations. And CT scans indicate spikes of activity in his amygdala.”
Talania could decipher it all, “He’s… dreaming?” She blurted.
“Vividly.” The break in the doctor’s tone intimated how impossible that result was, “But what images we’ve collected are gibberish.”
“Show me.” For some reason, Riley felt an itch behind his ears. He had to know what the Capital was seeing.
“Sir, most dreamers have unusual imagery. It takes months to parse out--”
“Just show me,” he snapped, fed up with the excuses.
The Doctor recoiled, and even Talania gave the Colonel a concerned eye. Every danger sense Riley had was firing, and he had to quiet them.
Pulling up his tablet, the Doctor was a few quick taps away from Aaron’s file. He projected the images up on to the wall.
Most dream studies had been relegated to the farcical fringe, a technological wonder used in the same field as astrology, palm readings and astral projection. It was a simple matter to duplicate electrical impulses through an analog brain and any neural network of sufficient complexity could reproduce visual images from the patterns. They proved fascinating for experimental psychologists and generated genuinely stirring artistic pieces.
This was not one of those.
The pictures glittering off the wall more resembled a technical error, blending chaotic flashes of pastel colors at a confusing rhythm, as though keeping a musical time that fluctuated at the whims of a senseless composer fueled only by a glass of water and a cocktail of off-brand stimulants.
“Safe to say this isn’t a glitch?” said Talania, asking the obvious question.
The Doctor shook his head, “We’ve run diagnostics backward and forward, and the data we collect is consistent. This is, as best we can tell, exactly what he’s seeing.”
It made Riley want to throw up. He turned his back on the wall, but to his dismay, the light was causing the whole room to flicker like a nightclub past midnight, “What can we gather from this?”
“Nothing conclusive.”
That wasn’t good enough. “What about the inconclusive things?” Riley said a bit more forcefully than he intended. “Any theories, wild guesses?”
Silence. Terrific.
“Fine,” Riley sighed, throwing a halfhearted glance at Talania, “Let me know if your expense account wakes up.”
He spun on the balls of his feet and marched out of the room. He couldn’t stand to be near the projector color-test display a moment longer. It was unsettling to be in the presence of, let alone study. Something about it gave him the chills, like a cross to a vampire. To the doctor’s credit, he did say it was gibberish. Aaron’s brain was likely to be slurry if subjected to that display for any extended period.
Riley had grown comfortable visiting the wounded in military care, but this was a civilian hospital. It was downright busy by comparison, but not because of their business.
There were likely three times as many tools and staff. Everyone walked the corridors like their occupation was the least pressing thing on their mind, or simply pushing past mental and physical exhaustion. The regularly sanitized floor squeaked against every fall of his boots.
Couple that grating metronome with the dull apocalyptic hum of suffering that seemed to be generated by the walls, and all Riley wanted was to see the sky again.
Holmst waited for Riley outside the observation room, maintaining a parade rest. He dropped into formation, following a step behind Riley as they passed the somber civilian staff.
They all gave Riley a wide berth, keeping a respectful distance, groups even parting with his approach. They knew his importance without having to be reminded.
Or maybe it was that look of murder and urgency that they simply wanted no part of.
Good.
&
nbsp; “My report is ready for you at your discretion,” Holmst said, like he was submitting himself for penance.
“You made the right call, Lieutenant,” Riley huffed. “Their role in all this is to bleed so your men don’t have to.” Riley flicked open his wrist computer, the projector beaming the holographic display to hover in front of his face. Despite the incorporeal nature of it all, subdermal implants in his fingertips allowed Riley to touch the image with his free hand and the implants would push back on him as though he were touching an actual screen.
He flicked through two news reports -- the Civil War was going predictably poorly for the scrappy Outlanders -- and called up Holmst’s report to peruse as they walked.
Holmst proffered the top of his head, as though expecting a blow from a drunken father. Riley would not give him the satisfaction or resolution of his shame.
“Capitals barricaded themselves in a meat locker,” Riley read aloud, “Oddly appropriate.”
Holmst nodded, “We didn’t even think to look for them on the first pass.”
“Bray is on-site?”
“And teams at the Wall are triaging the wounded before transferring them back home. I took the liberty of signing them off for two days R&R.”
Riley tightened up his jaw, “One day. After that, they’re to be returned to the duty roster. Be sure we pay Sergeant Bray a visit. They’re alive right now because of the work he put in.”
“They’re alive right now because of Aaron, sir.”
Riley shook his head. Even his aide had swallowed Talania's efficient propaganda. That woman's reach was far. But this wasn't worth the blood pressure. “The Capital did good work,” Riley conceded.
The two walked in silence for a long time, until they finally emerged from the hospital. The doors swung open and the fresh wind brushed his face like a kiss from the heavens, cool and calming. The claustrophobic halls full of sick and injured, the lack of urgency, and abundance of chattel combined to make for a singularly unpleasant experience.