The Blood Service

by Allen Ivers

  “You’re Master & Commander Local Allied Forces,” Aaron said, “You care about being popular?”

  “I care when they throw rocks at me, yeah. I think you would too, so don’t get haughty with me.”

  “So you sentence them to death?”

  Riley turned to face Aaron, leaning on the table, “No. I just don't really give a damn anymore."

  “Why?”

  There was the hook. Grab that and unravel him.

  “You tell me,” Riley said, “You’re an observant man.”

  Aaron considered his subject for a moment, a rookie leader painting a picture. Amateur.

  “You’re quite the Patriot,” Aaron supplied, “But that stops at the water’s edge. When things go right, you’ll take all the ribbons and awards, all the promotions they throw at you. When things go wrong, it’s because of the world. Never you. When it's time to do the right thing, the hard thing – no praise, no reward – you choke.”

  Riley seethed, his skin tightening and his eyes burning. It took every ounce of his will not to wring the life out of the little skull with his bare hands.

  “How demonic,” was all he said. “And if this were a normal place in a normal command, I wouldn’t blame you for that read.”

  “You think this is special?”

  Riley blinked, “You’re going to tell me it’s not? I had to draft up Capitals for God’s sake. This was a rather extreme situation.”

  “So fix it, Colonel,” Aaron said, almost begging, “You didn’t stay here and do all of this just to sit back and wash your hands of it. You did the right thing every step of the way."

  “Damn right I did,” Riley huffed, “And this is the thanks you give me?”

  "Why stop now?" Aaron asked, "Those are the people you swore to protect."

  "I still am," Riley assured, "The only way they'll let me."

  “You want to know what they'll let you do? You want to know?” Aaron said, shuffling on his knees, like he might edge up in his proverbial seat, “You get the credit.”

  Riley blinked a few times, “For what, exactly? Complete the thought.”

  “For the peace,” Aaron whispered, “The aliens aren’t coming to Vanguard. They never were. Put the gun down.”

  Riley pointed at the tectonic sensor behind him without even looking at it. Their Thumpers had been charting movement for hours, “Pierson Corridor scales don’t seem to agree with you. The Jergad are on the move and in force.”

  “You gave the order to abandon the Wall twelve hours ago. Do the math. The city should be an inch deep in blood by now,” Aaron said, cocking his head, “They’re moving, alright. But they’re not attacking.”

  Like a Dog at an electric fence. They were skirting edges, waiting to get punished for their hubris. And it wasn’t coming. And yet, they were staying their hand.

  Even Aaron’s handlers were exchanging weird looks.

  “It’s your name they’re shouting the streets.” Riley said, “I’m the one that killed their Governor.”

  “They’ll cheer for whoever we tell them to,” Aaron urged, “Bring them good news and they will erect monuments to you. You really think they’ll try you for murder when they can credit you with saving every – single – life?"

  The thought was tantalizing, his skin crackling and hair standing on end. He could almost taste it in the air, forcing him to swallow his pride lest it leap out of him. “And what will the Capital get? Hm?”

  Aaron hesitated for a moment, his face softening, “A quiet life. My freedom. No more killing.”

  “Had enough, eh?”

  Aaron could barely push the word past his lips, “…Yes.”

  With the scion of the peace by his side, he could come back to Vanguard a hero. He would have proven with his action that their long national nightmare had ended. The Jergad were not coming. It was well and truly over. They need not walk on a knife’s edge for a day longer. People could finally sleep.

  But those towers would be torn down, the monuments defaced, and his memory ripped apart the moment the Empire finally arrived.

  “No,” Riley stared at the Capital, “I’ll do you one better. I think our enemy is patient, and our people… complacent. I think they need the object lesson. It’s only a matter of time before the aliens decide to make their push and I'll be ready when they do. A close encounter with a Drone is a rather… singular moment for a person. Don’t you think?”

  Aaron’s jaw slackened, “You’re going to hang them out to dry… out of spite?”

  “Everything I’ve done has been to keep them safe. Everything you’ve done, too! You feel appreciated? You go out on to that field and your resumé says ‘bleed for the other guy.’ And when the mountain folk asked real nicely, you decided to bleed for them too. Has anybody on any side of this even so much as thanked you?” Riley thumped his chest, a bit harder than he meant to, “I did. I knew what I was asking from Day One. And I knew what I promised.”

  Make the sales pitch, right there.

  “Freedom, Aaron Havenes. It was a heavy cost for a heavy item. And it’s still on the table but let me crank it up a notch.”

  Riley took a knee in front of Aaron, pinching the man’s face between thumb and forefinger like he was inspecting his food, “You’re a helluva soldier. You should be one. Not just free. I could sponsor your commission in the Imperial Military. Serve with honor for a change, fight for something with meaning beyond yourself. Gain a family. So what do you say, one last time? Freedom… for a little obedience?”

  Aaron took a deep breath, and the guards squeezed on his arms, as if to say ‘try nothing.’ Not like the boy was in a position to do much of anything. Riley could dispatch his prisoner like he was swatting an insect. Aaron was no threat, and there was nothing hanging on decency.

  Riley had to get the statement he needed. A Capital could not have instigated a rebellion all on his own, with nothing but supposition and mythology.

  “Who told you to do this?” Riley asked, pointedly.

  “Do what?” Aaron blinked, “I surrendered myself. To get here. So you would come back.”

  “Think bigger,” Riley urged, “Who told you… to be you for the last few months?”

  Aaron glanced aside, like he was scanning through the video footage of his memories. Satisfied with what he found, he looked back up at Riley, “You know who.”

  “No,” Riley maintained, “Who told you to say that?”

  “They did.”

  Riley shook his head, “And we spent months trying to corroborate that with no success. I’ll ask again, Capital. A broken Wall, a destroyed Howler, and dozens of casualties -- not to mention your existing record -- all up in the air. Who told you to do it?”

  It was a small motion at first, like Aaron was having a seizure, but the rhythm was too even. A half second later Riley realized he was laughing.

  Aaron lifted his head, a big dumb smile across his face, “I’m sorry. I just got it. Sorry… I’ve had no food for a bit, I’m a little slow.”

  Riley stared daggers at the laughing Capital, a man chuckling in face of devastation. He was truly a madman.

  Aaron finally settled. “You think... Talania told me to. You think she saved my life all that while ago… and I owe her. You think she’s behind everything — the riots, my story—”

  “What I think happened is irrelevant, Capital.” Riley hissed, trying to force the train back onto the tracks by intimated threats and willpower alone. “I want to set down for the record what actually happened.”

  “Bullshit,” Aaron sneered, clearly having given up on politics and niceties “If you get me to finger Talania, suddenly your failures are one grand conspiracy starting at the very top. If it’s her, then you were set up to fail... and all the deaths tonight are on her head. Not yours. You’re absolved.”

  “Did she?”

  “No. You drove her right into me,” Aaron shrugged, “Sad to say.”

  “I can fabricate all the evidence I need, Capital.” R
iley was done with implications and covert action. “I don’t need you alive. Cooperate or die. Those are your choices.”

  “You think any court in this world or the next is going to be strengthened by the testimony of a convicted Capital?” Aaron jeered, almost daring his captors to do their worst. “Riley, even you seem to think I’m more important than I am. This whole thing…. is going to go the way it’s going to go, with or without me.”

  Well, that’s a damn shame.

  “Iron sulfide, when exposed to air, produces Hydrogen sulfide. Smells like rotten eggs. But you knew that already, didn’t you?”

  Aaron’s eyes darkened a bit, but Riley was on a roll.

  “It takes your eyes first, then your lungs rupture. In appropriate doses. We’ll be administering an inappropriate amount.”

  Aaron looked like he might snarl, a caged animal. “Am I taking somebody else’s spot? ‘Cause I wouldn’t want to impose.”

  It was almost a threat. Amusing.

  Riley drew his pistol, “I lied. You and your friends were never going to get your freedom.”

  “You say that like you’re disappointing me.”

  Riley pursed his lips, “Well, then…” Riley looked up at his men, “Prep a sled. You’re not going to want to drag this sack all the way to the Tailings Dam.”

  “Last chance, Riley,” Aaron pursed his lips, “Go back to Vanguard.”

  Riley shook his head, “Anybody else tired of his voice? Because I’m tired of his voice.”

  Wide beam, soft focus, full power. The pistol moaned to life, like it was waking from a long slumber.

  And Aaron just smiled, psychopathic, the dark round cheeks of a cat and its canary-eating face, “It doesn’t matter either way.”

  Riley’s eyes narrowed, “How’s that?”

  The ground shook under their feet and a fine powder fell from the ceiling like an industrial rain.

  Aaron’s eyes darkened and for a split second, Riley thought he saw a flash of blue cross the dry brown, “They’re not going to the City, Riley. I’m hooked into their network. They know exactly where I am. And they’re coming to me. Dead or alive, they know the only way to peace… is through you.”

  Riley tapped a comm code into his tablet, "Thor, authorization code Kilo Zebra Epsilon—"

  "You don't have to do this!" Aaron shouted. At Riley, at the crew in orbit. At everyone.

  Riley scoffed and squeezed the trigger -- and the ground rolled underneath him.

  The shot slid wide of Aaron’s head, scorching a spatter of carbon on the floor in a long trough. The building seemed to revolt against the attack, melting into a fluid and then a following sea, lashing against his ankles in unpredictable shoves as though it were fickle and abusive.

  His augments kicked in, tracking every conceivable detail. His officers held their arms wide as they tried to hold their balance, while Aaron had crumpled to the floor on his side.

  Cracks ran up the wall, drawing their charcoal fingers along the slate and concrete with a loose hand. Light bulbs hanging from the ceiling hummed to some alien frequency, as they tilted in unison to one side, like a line of chorus dancers.

  Far below them, amongst the sounds of crunching stone and creaking beams, he could make out the occasional chitter of busy little Drones carving up the terrain.

  And that’s when the floor fell away, as the building found the ground it founded upon had been removed.

  When Riley opened his eyes, he could hear water flowing. But that couldn’t be water...

  26

  Aaron

  A once sturdy structure weakened by the years had just been proverbially thrown down the stairs. An entire building kicked in the knee and brought to heel. The problem with that, is buildings don't like being dropped.

  Aaron awoke in a hallway, with bits of the cement draped over his back. The roof and upper floors were now propped on the support pillars, leaning the whole building to one side, like a hat settled onto a decapitated neck.

  He had punched right through the crumbling slate floor, slamming through two whole floors. The dust cloud hung about him like a fog. His shoulder screamed, and his head rung, but at this point, when didn't his head hurt?

  He expected the Queen and her cavalry to make a grand entrance, sure. Maybe one of her beasties would surge through a wall or reach up through the floor to snag a guard in a dramatic upheaval.

  But no -- we brought the building down to them.

  The gurgle of a heady stream or a lazy river snapped him to his senses. Somewhere below him at the edge of hearing, there was moving liquid.

  Strange, as the Apartments had their aquifer disconnected and the plumbing extracted to seal the building for prison habitation. What possible–

  The smell hit him like a knife up his nose. The Tailings. There were toxic chemicals flowing en masse into the lower levels, which would push right on up like a gas line of death. He could start taking shallow breaths, or he could be tasting the inside of his lungs in short order.

  A chitter at his back, the deep-throated croak of something large. He knew that sound all too well: the battlefield muttering of a two-ton hostile angry organic bulldozer.

  Time to put up or shut up -- were they friendly?

  The arm bone of its scythe brushed against his forearm, teasing, almost like it was stroking him, perhaps savoring a kill.

  Or was this subterranean demon petting him, cooing and shushing him? Though if it were trying to soothe his fears and pains, maybe doing it with a three-foot blade was the wrong way to do it.

  Aaron closed his eyes, welcoming whatever came next. It wasn’t like he had any say in the matter.

  There was a swift jerk on his wrists and the bindings slackened, his hands dropping to his sides. He felt the stiff blade nudge his side --

  Nudge. The force alone flipped him right over, bringing him face to face with the cosmic horror from his nightmares. Despite that bifurcated jawbone and the crushing teeth, the leathery mottled flesh and the blank hollow stare, he felt some comfort in its pure blue eye.

  Eye, singular, because the other had a vicious scar hollowing to a pit. A knife scar.

  His knife.

  Scar nudged him again, that strange purr rolling from somewhere deep in its throat.

  Get up.

  Aaron looked down at his feet, trying to direct focus down. His ankles were still bound too.

  It hooked its immense scythes on either side of the ankle locks, pinching them together and crushing the bindings like they were simply stale bread. The metal sang out with a soprano tone and was silenced as soon as it began.

  Scar stuck its scythe-finger out, holding the backside to his chest like he was some unit of measurement. It was nearly half the length of his body.

  And it took a short jerk from the alien before Aaron realized it was offering him a hand.

  Aaron had to override every single instinct in his body to stick his fingers inside the scythe’s bladed edge, hooking around the knuckle of the blade high above the natural serrations near the leathery knot at the joint.

  The bone felt porous and light, like it might be hollow. He remembered that stone he plucked from the mining rig all those months ago and it occurred to him that the bone had been more... fresh than he had thought then.

  The Jergad raised its arm, hefting him up from the floor like he was weightless, its impressive natural strength made for carving stone rendering his tiny frame meaningless.

  Aaron looked the monster from crested head to taloned toe, finally resting on that familiar blue eye -- the Queen’s eyes. “Maybe next time, your Highness, give me a heads up you’re about to drop a building I’m still inside!”

  “Shoot it! Shoot it!”

  The Jergad swooped around, presenting its skull fan to the voices. Gunfire rang out and Aaron hunkered low behind his protector, as shot skipped off the leathery hide and chunking the stone around them. The beastie croaked and chittered with the assault, taking fierce blows.

  An
inhuman cry came as one clean shot punched through the shield, impacting the wall behind Aaron, bits of blood and bone showering over him.

  Furious and pained, Scar gripped the floor with its taloned feet – scratching long lines in the concrete -- and drove forward. Aaron stumbled along behind it but there was no keeping pace with this runaway freight train as it barreled down the crumbling hallway. The ground dented underfoot, sinking -- and in some cases, collapsing -- under Scar's weight and aggression.

  The two Regulars at the end of the Hall had emptied their magazines in the vain notion that many bullets is what the situation required and not careful placement.

  Two tons of angry leather and blade slammed into them, tossing the first soldier to the side, as it had selected his friend for ruin. The sickening crunch and squelch implied the result had something in kind with paste.

  The surviving Regular fumbled the magazine into the well and dropped the bolt. The Jergad had left its vulnerable thorax exposed.

  The Capitals had been assigned the JP-36 assault rifle: antiquated and flawed. The Regular was shouldering something newer, more modern. But it looked similar enough.

  And the soldier was… preoccupied with his target.

  Aaron reached up from behind the Regular, lifting the rifle at the magwell. With his thumb, he depressed the release, sending the magazine flying free. It looked like he had half-heartedly tossed a rock at the Jergad’s rugged hide.

  One shot in the chamber and that was it -- which promptly went into the roof.

  Aaron dropped his boot into the Regular’s knee before shoving him to the ground. The rifle spin in the air, like it was wistfully searching for its owner. Aaron snatched it like a baton.

  The Jergad whirled about, looking for the commotion. It loomed over Aaron, even in its hunched position.

  It was an intimidating sight, Aaron and monster both menacing over the collapsed and quivering Regular. He couldn’t even muster the wherewithal to point at the Jergad, his hands shaking and horror in his eyes.

  He had likely seen the critters before, but nobody had ever been this close and come away without damage. And despite his fear, he couldn’t look away from Aaron — who stood with a genuine demon at his back — the prophet of peace. The man soaked in the impossibility before him.