Battle On The Marathon

by John Thornton

  Wind gusts smashed against us, and we jumped, or dipped, or flopped around. I could tell we were only about ten meters above the buildings, but what with the brown rain and the destroyed look of the buildings, I wondered why we had even come.

  “I see the sidewalls of the habitat. I will try to land us…” Kulm’s voice was cut off as the entire raft flipped over and rolled in the winds.

  Whatever had not been tied down, flew about. We all screamed, except for Radha, whose face I could see was set firmly as she quickly tried to adjust the propeller drive. It was no good, yet she remained steadfast at her task, trying to regain control of our flying raft.

  The top of some building snagged the raft as it was being blown about, and the inflatable materials ripped with a shriek.

  We tumbled out of the sky and crashed.

  The permalloy frame of the raft absorbed some of the impact, but if it had not been for the still-inflated parts serving as cushioning, we all would have been smashed to death. As it was, the raft rolled over and over as it struck down onto a small field. The frame shattered, coming apart at our welds. The steel collars snapped, and frame buckled. The inflatable parts completely shredded from the impact, but they lasted long enough for us to stop rolling. I ended up hanging upside down, belted to a section of the permalloy frame that had broken away from the rest. My leg, the same one that I had speared, got twisted badly in the wreckage, but while my knee bent sideways far more than was comfortable, my bones did not break. I did knock my head against something, and blood poured into my face from my nose.

  I unstrapped myself, and tried to shield my face from the rain. The brown fluids were mixing with my bleeding nose, and covering my chest with a strange concoction. The rain was not as concentrated as the brown toxins which had so corroded the suit down in the corridors, but it had the same smell, and where it touched my skin, it burned.

  “Carol? Carol! Help Carol!” I yelled as I untangled myself from the wreckage. “Carol, where are you?”

  “We have her!” Tudeng yelled. “This way! Everyone come to me!”

  Tudeng and Radha were hauling Carol between them, dragging some of the straps which they had used as restraints. They were heading toward the open doorway of a large building. Brilliant white floodlights were beaming out from there, and piercing the storm. That building was set right against the huge sidewall of the habitat.

  I stumbled over to a different clump of wreckage. I could hear someone trapped there. Matkaja was caught beneath some of the inflatable materials which had wound around her, and held down by the weight of the back-up raft’s canister. I pulled and heaved, and got her free. The two of us looked around, and then saw that the oceanographers were running after Tudeng and Radha.

  “Where is Kulm?” I yelled out.

  Matkaja spied the bow part of the wreckage, and together we ran toward that. Most of the permalloy supports had snapped off at the weak welds we had made, and the resulting jumble of rods were frightful. We found Kulm. The control joy stick, which he had labored over and wrested with on our flight, was still in his hands. His body was slumped over the console.

  “Get him up! We have to get out of this poison rain!” Matkaja ordered.

  I gently grabbed Kulm, but his body was limp. He flopped back onto me, and except for the grip he maintained on the joystick, his body felt flaccid. I saw his leg was badly broken with bones sticking out of his flesh and even through the pants he was wearing. There was some blood, but not much. Matkaja carefully unwrapped his fingers, and put his arm across his chest. She then cradled his legs tenderly while I lifted him by his shoulders. Kulm’s head dropped back and his glassy eyes looked at me. I smiled, but I knew something was terribly wrong.

  “They will have a hospital here, and medical automacubes!” I hollered out.

  Together we carried Kulm over to where the others were standing in the open doorway. Some people in uniforms were vigorously assisting the oceanographers to strip off their clothing. Another person, clad in that same kind of uniform, was holding a hose and blasting it all over my friends.

  As we got to the door and rushed inside, I yelled, “Medical emergency! Kulm needs medical attention now! Medical emergency! Hurry!”

  I did see a white automacube approach, but then some very rough and strong hands virtually tore my clothing off of me. I was stripped of everything: holster for the gimp, supplies, shirt, pants, belt, shoes, and even my undergarments were ripped from me. I saw that the clothing and materials was disintegrating as it hit the floor.

  “Do not struggle!” a woman commanded. “Let me take it off you!”

  “Help Kulm!” I insisted, but stopped fighting.

  “The doctor is seeing him. Keep your eyes open! You must be thoroughly flushed out, and all over.” The woman sternly commanded me.

  I was struck by a blast of freezing cold water. I began shivering, and that spray, it smelled of some chemicals, and maybe some kinds of herbs.

  “How is Kulm? Who is helping him?” I yelled.

  Someone else sheared off all my hair. My red locks of hair fell to the floor and were whisked away by the spray of water. I saw my brown hairs, and black hairs, from my friends, in that mix as well.

  “Who is helping Kulm?” I demanded. I grabbed the woman who was standing in the uniform. I noted her clothing was water repellant, and did not seem affected by the brown sludge. “Tell me what is happening!”

  The woman, who was an adult, shoved a tube into my mouth, and a wad of stuff oozed out. Her eyes were fierce, but in a determined manner, and not an angry one. “Swallow that all down. It is a decontaminant and detoxifier,” she said.

  “What?” I tried to say, but she covered my mouth and pinched shut my nose. Blood ran down from my nostrils. I nearly gagged, but swallowed. It did not taste so bad, but left a fruity or minty sort-of flavor in my throat.

  “Doctor 930 is working on him,” the woman said. She rudely pulled the tube out of my mouth, and released my nose. “Do you know how stupid that was?”

  “To swallow that junk?” I asked in bewilderment.

  She stared at me. “Do not be obtuse.”

  “What?” I asked. I looked closer at her uniform. It was some kind of armored suit, colored in grays, blues, blacks and whites in a blotchy pattern. “You told me to swallow it.”

  “Right. It is medicine, and you must listen to me,” she affirmed. “It was stupid to be out in the toxins. The tunnels under the town are still open, why not come that way?”

  “We came from…” I could not remember the name of that other island. “… from over the sea.”

  “What?” she was genuinely shocked. She turned to the others and said something about me and my friends.

  I tried to see what had happened to Kulm, but I could not see him anywhere. I saw Tudeng, Matkaja, and Radha getting bundled into white robes. They looked really different as they too had been shorn of all their hair. Spinning about, I saw that the door to the outside was closed, and then caught sight of Sylvia and Earle who also were now bald. They were just leaving through a side door. I heard one of the uniformed people say something about the information on the conservations slates was intact and being transferred. Looking down, I noted that all the water, hair, and scraps of clothing had been flushed away. At the side of the room, there was some kind of machine that another uniformed person was loading with our gimps and other tools. A flashing light lit up with the word “Cleansing” in bright yellow.

  “What about Kulm?” I yelled at the top of my lungs.

  “The girl without legs?” The woman who had forced me to swallow that stuff she called medicine turned back to me. “Or the one you carried in, with the severely broken leg? Was his name Kulm?”

  “What do you mean was? His name is Kulm!” I shrieked out. I pounded my fist out at her, but she caught it in her own hand.

  “Sorry, kiddo. That one died.” I looked at her, and noted her short brown hair and light hazel eyes. Her complexion was darker than mine, and
I am not sure why I even noticed that.

  “Not dead. No, he is not dead,” I stammered. “Not Kulm.”

  “Kiddo, it was bad. Traumatic injuries might have been healed, but he got way too much of that toxic stuff in him.” Surprisingly, she pulled me into an embrace. “Losing people is crappy business. I hate it, but that girl without legs made it to hospital.” Her strong hands patted me through the white robe. It strung, but felt comforting in an odd way. “Now head along with the others.” She patted my butt as I walked off.

  I turned around, “What is happening?”

  “Kiddo, you just met the last of the Hellcats, for what we are worth. Yeah, kiddo, my people are all that is left of Foreigner’s proud contribution to the MDF’s Operation Barnacle. We tried to scrape them away and now we are a navy without any ships,” she responded. I then realized her uniform was armored, and she had more weapons, grenades, and equipment stuck into place on her uniform than I imagined. “Foreigner is a loss, kiddo, a total loss. Now go get yourself treated.”

  “I told the people on that island, Andorja is the name. Water around it is clear. There are two hundred residents there. Can you send a boat or a runabout?” I asked, but I was getting light-headed, and feeling dizzy.

  “No ships to send. No shuttles in Foreigner. Those people are lost, just like Foreigner.” The woman actually looked like she was about to cry. “This war is a long way from over.”

  That was the last thing I recall before I passed out.

  4

  Attrition

  “Well Ryan, I am again back to making this journal or recording. Call it what you will. I missed for a while, looking at the date stamps on this record, but not that you would ever notice, not from where you are, right? The Major is keeping us all busy, as some things are not cooperating, and the big jump had to be put off yet again. There are ways of getting what we need, but they are not my favorite type of work. So, here I am reviewing what I have recorded for you.

  Yes, Kulm died in that crash in the town of Baltia. Foreigner was a graveyard for too many people. I found some old library records once and they showed how pretty that town was before all this happened. I forget just when I accessed those files, but Baltia was a beautiful place once, long ago, in a different world than I will ever know.

  I told you about how my friends died, a lot of them anyway, and that was when Foreigner was lost. I spent a long time in hospital, on the needle ship, in a decontamination ward. That was a sort-of twilight time for me. I never did get a straight answer on how long that actually was. The alien toxins I had inhaled, over those months on that island, and especially in our flight on the raft, had to be purged from my body. Back then, we only knew the old procedure to do that. The slow and tedious process of alternating hypobaric chambered sleep with hyperbaric pressure therapy. I know it might sound like all we did was lie around, sleep, eat, and rest, but I tell you, it was grueling. My body ached every single day for that entire time. My favorite foods tasted dreadful, and when I was awake, my mind was sluggish and foggy. I hate to admit it, but my concussion was probably mentally easier to deal with than that protracted decontamination.

  The worst part of all of that was the interrogations. I was put in that pressurized isolation chamber, and I could access the library, but was not allowed to contact my friends, parents, or others. I had one display, and limited controls over what I could observe, and no way to contact anyone. Oh sure, I could summon medical assistance, and that resulted in the white automacube adjusting whatever was needed, but it was not human interaction. I was sick, tired, in pain, and lonely.

  I am not sure how long it was after the decontamination started, when Colonel Gehlen first came to my room. He was very skinny, with a pinched face, and was older than dad, but by how much I could not tell. His complexion was as pasty as anyone I have ever seen, and his hair was thin, but slicked down so that it was flat against his head.

  “Cadet Kalju, I am Colonel Gehlen, and you will answer my questions completely, and thoroughly.” He spoke to me from beyond the clear permalloy barrier that kept me from leaving. He was standing near the window, with his voice from coming from the display near my bed. I could see his lips moving, but hearing his words from a different direction made for a strange sensation. It was not the strangest thing about Colonel Gehlen, not by far. “I need to understand what you went through. Who ordered you to go to Oceanography Station 16?”

  “Mister Fisher gave us our instructions.”

  “This is the same man who you claim was training you as some kind of militia? On what island was that located?” Colonel Gehlen asked. I noted his uniform was gray with black trim, and no equipment. No sidearm, no pouches for gear, but just a small minicomputer hooked onto his belt. It did not look right, as it broke up the sharp lines of his attire.

  “We were trained in Kansas, not in Foreigner.”

  “You should use the proper designations for locations, not those colloquial local slang expressions,” Colonel Gehlen scolded me. “Be more precise and quit wasting my time.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Now, you claim to have been on…” he recited my experiences, probably better than I remembered them. Well, maybe not better than I remembered them, but he had a chronology which sounded very precise. If I recall, he even had numbers and names for the people I saw die on that hydrofoil boat. With my memory loss, I did not doubt he was correct, and it sounded like he had spoken to the others. I wondered why he needed me to answer any questions.

  “… which leads us to your stay here. The medical staff tells me you will recover. After that…”

  I interrupted Colonel Gehlen. “How are the others? What is happening with Carol’s legs? Where are Radha, Matkaja, and Tudeng? I want to speak to them.”

  “They are not your concern,” Colonel Gehlen replied, with no concern in his voice. His pale gray eyes were as emotionless as his words. “As I was saying, when you are sufficiently recovered, you will be placed in one of the Marathon Defense Force units. That means…”

  “My family?” I asked. Tears were running down my face. “Can I at least talk to them?”

  “They are not authorized to speak to you. Now, refrain from interrupting. Your deployment into a new unit will…”

  I stopped listening, and was too weak to protest. He babbled on for quite a while, but I do not recall anything more about that first encounter with him. I had learned that I was cut off from my family, that I could not see my friends, and that I was going to be placed into some other type of unit, part of the Marathon Defense Force.

  Days dragged by, but I did get treatment. I also had another visitor, another person with the title of colonel. She was called Colonel Caldwell. She was just as bizarre as that other colonel, but in a different way. She had a fake friendliness that dripped with sugar so much the bees making honey in Kansas would have gotten sick from it. I first met her about the same time as Colonel Gehlen, I do not remember exactly who came in first.

  Colonel Caldwell’s smile was as phony as her compassion. It was plastered on her dark complexion, as she stood up next to the clear permalloy. On that arrival, I was in the small toileting room next to my bed. I heard her voice from my display. Honestly, at first I was so desperate for human companionship, I had hopes she would be someone I could like. It only took a few dozen words for me to see that would never happen.

  “Cadet Kalju? I have excellent news for you!” That was Colonel Caldwell’s initial greeting to me.

  “I am in here, ridding myself of bodily wastes, in the old-fashioned manner. Be out in a moment.”

  “Oh, just take your time. You have been through so much, but I am about to burst at the seams with the news I have for you. You will just adore it!”

  I came out, weak, dizzy, and tired. I climbed onto my bed and pulled up the covers. “Sorry, I was busy.”

  “A brave cadet like you does not need to apologize for being a bit under the weather, not at all. I am just so pleased that I was assigned to
get to meet and work with you. Oh, how brave you all were!” Colonel Caldwell said.

  I studied her face, and while her mouth turned in the right direction for a smile, it did not reach her light-brown eyes. I did not know what to say to her, and her forced cheerfulness was irritating to me. At the time, I thought maybe it was just because I was in decontamination, and recovering.