by Michael Ryan
“Maybe they’re really busy?”
“Maybe we won’t die today,” I said.
“Maybe. They probably won’t drop a massive bomb on their own lab.”
“We should still get out of here.”
“Seems prudent,” she said. “But aren’t you curious?”
“About what’s down there?”
“Yeah.”
“Not really,” I said. “Scientists. Lab equipment. Primates in cages being subjected to horrible experiments. A weaponized biological agent that will destroy all sentient life as we know it.”
“Maybe we should try to get inside,” she suggested.
“Instead of leaving?” It was an option that could provide intel to whoever came after us. Except that our mission parameters didn’t include destroying the lab. Command wanted to secure any research product the Teds had developed.
“You really think we’d reach the retrieval point?” Callie asked, revealing she’d arrived at the same conclusion I had.
“No.” I didn’t think there was going to be a retrieval. The overall mission was too important. Maybe as a diversion…
“I think it was always a fiction to maintain morale,” she said. “I figured this was a suicide mission the minute we were briefed. But sometimes…sometimes you play along because it’s the only thing that keeps you sane.”
“Our options are limited,” I agreed.
“We could de-suit, find some friendly natives, and live out our lives with the tribe.”
“Desertion doesn’t sound appealing.”
“We’re dead anyway.”
“Not yet,” I said.
“There’s going to be something major going down here soon. I mean, unless Command decides to drop a handful of HE-89s and turn the ridge into a crater.”
“I don’t think so,” I said. “They know if a lab exists, it’s going to be deep.”
“Okay, what, then? Command is sending an SDI company here right now? If that’s the case, the Teds will be countering. I suppose we could hide out and join our team.”
“We’d get attached to whatever unit shows up,” I said, agreeing with her assessment. “At least that way we’d have a shot at retrieval.”
“Or die doing something productive.”
“True,” I said. “But I’m thinking–”
“Always dangerous.”
“What if we try to get inside?” I asked.
“And?”
“And we could recon the installation and pass along intel when our troops show up. We could rendezvous with them, but do it from the inside.”
“How do you suggest we get inside? You don’t think they’ve left the door on this place unlocked, do you?”
“No,” I admitted. “Maybe you could hack the lock?”
“Doubtful, but we won’t know if we don’t try.” She paused. “So that’s the plan?”
“I didn’t say it was perfect.”
As soon as we examined the door, it was obvious that hacking our way in would be impossible. The interface was a closed system, and even if she could have found a way to communicate with it, there wasn’t time.
My screen lit up with warnings. A major force of Teds was mobilizing to meet the incoming SDI troops Command had fired into the upper atmosphere. The battle of a lifetime was about to take place in the front yard of the laboratory, and I was down to Gauss bolts, an EPL blade, and four sniper rounds.
At least Callie still had five MQ-14s. “I have a brilliant idea,” I said.
“Can’t wait to hear it.”
“We’re going to dig up one of those bombs.”
~~~
We blew the door and entered a long hallway with a decontamination chamber at the far end.
“It’s kind of freaky that nobody’s come after us,” Callie said. We made our way down the corridor, cleared the chamber, and she walked to an elevator and depressed the button on the wall beside it. “You don’t suppose the place is abandoned, do you?”
“Anything’s possible.” The door slid aside with a hiss. I ducked into the elevator and waved for her to follow.
“This is crazy,” she said. “We have no idea what the hell…”
“Nothing ventured…”
The door closed and the elevator descended. There were no buttons or interface screens, and after a moment of plummeting at near free-fall velocity, the drop slowed until the elevator floated to an almost imperceptible stop.
The door opened.
“We’re still alive,” Callie said. She stepped out and I followed her into an expansive room filled with lab equipment. She clutched my arm and pointed at the floor.
Corpses lay in dried lakes of rust-colored blood, their skin mottled and shriveled, their fingers twisted into talons, mouths distended in silent screams. We walked wordlessly through the lab while our systems inventoried the dead. I recognized that whatever had killed the workers had caused symptoms similar to those of the kifo-ukufa virus.
“There must have been an accident, Avery – some sort of outbreak.”
“No question,” I agreed. We were professional killers, battle-hardened vets of numerous skirmishes, but the sight of an entire compound of dead who’d suffered the tortures of the damned before expiring shook us.
“What should we do?” she asked.
“Beats me.”
“Our SDI have landed by now. Want to go join the fight?”
“Our light weapons won’t make any difference.”
“We could snipe from the cave,” she suggested.
“We’d be dead within seconds. It makes no sense to trade our lives for such a minimal gain.”
“We could aim for their officers.”
“That’d be a downward trade,” I said. “If we go that route, better to go for a sergeant who’s leading an offensive.” I paused and took another sweep of the lab. “Let’s collect evidence on the assumption our troops are going to win and a retrieval boat will actually show up. We’ll get a priority ride back up to the Amphoterus and wind up heroes.”
“Sure,” she said.
I assumed she was being sarcastic, but I didn’t want to ask.
“I’ll see if I can pull anything up. The power’s still on or the elevator wouldn’t have worked.” Callie tethered into a terminal and went to work on her projected keyboard.
It was obvious to me what had happened. The Teds had been cultivating something similar to the kifo-ukufa virus, possibly the same strain, and the sneaky killer had outwitted them. The bodies were in various states of decay, and my best guess from the least decomposed was that the most recent deaths had occurred no more than a week ago. Not that the timing mattered. The important thing from our mission perspective was that there’d be no captured scientists to take back to Command for interrogation.
Perhaps they were lucky to be dead.
I was confident there was evidence worth collecting, but I’d never taken advanced science courses and could only guess at what might be important. I reasoned that if our troops prevailed, we’d have people who knew what they were doing, and if not, it wouldn’t matter.
I went back to thinking about what we’d do if the Teds defeated our force.
It was a pointless exercise, but it passed the time.
~~~
“I’ve got enough,” Callie said.
“Enough what?”
“Enough evidence that the Teds were committing treaty violations and war crimes.”
“Seems like an impossible concept to me,” I replied.
“What?”
“War crimes. How can there be a crime in a war? This whole mess is a crime.”
“I hate it when you do that. You’re talking like a philosopher, not a soldier. We need to destroy this place in case our team loses.”
My tone hardened. “The mission was to collect everything, not destroy it.”
“I have incontrovertible evidence that the Teds were in the final stages of developing a weaponized virus. What more do we need?”
“Of the virus?”
“Yes.”
“Why?”
“Because it’s the mission.”
“I understood the mission to be collecting evidence and taking prisoners if possible. To discover what they were doing. To prove they’ve been violating treaties. There’s nobody alive to capture, and I’ve collected enough evidence to make a solid case.” Callie paced before stopping in front of me. “You seem to be saying Command wanted more. You think they wanted us to preserve the virus?”
“Yes,” I said. “I’m sure of it.”
“It’s a crime to possess something this…”
“Evil?”
“That’s the word. If that’s what they want, I’m not going to be part of it. Besides, if we preserve it and the Teds defeat our troops…”
“That would be a terrible outcome. But if they can hold the Teds off long enough for us to get to a retrieval boat–”
“Avery, I can send a burst with all the evidence. That’s enough. We don’t need to participate in this.” She gestured at the dead. “I can’t believe after your experience with Juliana you’re even considering it.”
“I’ve thought about that over and over. If I’d preserved the virus instead of destroying it, our side would have deployed it, and the war would be over. We wouldn’t be here. More importantly, you wouldn’t be here.”
“Millions, or billions, would be dead.”
“But not you.”
“Avery…”
“I’d kill every Ted in the universe to save you.”
“I don’t know what–”
“Don’t say anything. This is war. Trying to sanitize it is insane.”
“You’re talking about killing hundreds of millions of children, Avery. Newborns. Kids with their whole lives ahead of them.”
“If it means hundreds of millions of children in the future will grow up in peace, that could be a fair trade.”
“Avery, you’re sounding kind of nuts right now.”
“No, I’m thinking clearly. Callie, what’s the point of a war if not to ensure peace for the next generation?”
“I understand we want peace, but at what cost? A billion innocents, Avery? You really feel like you’re equipped to make that decision? Why? You’re playing god.”
“Imagine our children. Right now. Think about a future where you and I have a little freehold on a colony planet and our children don’t live in fear.”
“I want that, too. I really do. But…” She walked away from me and leaned against a stainless steel wall. Her armor, dirty and scarred, contrasted with the sterile environment. Even fully clad in shielding, I could tell from her body language that my suggestion was taking a huge emotional toll on her. To be responsible for killing an entire planet’s inhabitants isn’t the same as killing other soldiers, who’d signed up knowing how the game was played.
What kind of peace would it be if Callie became an emotional zombie as a result?
“Callie?”
“I’m imagining a vegetable garden on a small farm. I see chickens and maybe some rabbits. Our children study literature and science, and we play together in the sun. I can feel grass under my bare feet as I run after you on a spring evening. We make love. We’re happy. That’s the future I want, and I’m willing to fight a war to get it. But to do what you’re asking… Avery, how can I? How could I live with the monster I’d become if I did that?”
I hesitated to say anything. When I did, I had no choice but to agree with her. “You’re right. We’ll destroy everything and take only the electronic evidence.”
It was the first and last time I ever lied to her.
~~~
I surreptitiously collected virus samples. I stored vials in my gear while we piled corpses on mattresses, forming a crude funeral pyre. Callie went from room to room and flamed everything she could find until her fuel ran out. I torched the corpses and then expended the remainder of my fuel scorching every surface that might contain a trace of contamination.
When we were finished, I replaced my flamer in my cache and turned to her. “We should go.”
“I hope we did the right thing.”
“No second-guessing.” I led her through a dense fog of noxious smoke, grateful that the suit blocked my olfactory senses. The elevator door slid open and we stepped inside, lost in our thoughts.
We ascended to the surface without speaking. A flood of notifications hit us when we entered the upper cavern, alerting us that the battle outside was in a lull. Our gang was trying to figure out a way to breach the cavern defenses while the Ted troops around the ridge pounded them with everything they had.
Callie transmitted her data to Command.
I transferred two messages to her to send.
The first packet was a collection of evidence that would validate her report. The second packet I’d coded as Command Only. I’d written a brief report that summarized what I was carrying and that I’d kept that fact from my partner. I requested high-priority retrieval and an immediate conference with Command once we were aboard the Amphoterus.
Callie gave me a thumbs-up. “Why the–”
An earth-shattering blast interrupted her question.
“We need to get out of here, Callie,” I said.
“Agreed.”
“Follow me.” When we emerged from the cavern, our forces were bombing the ridge with HE mortars. Thick clouds of smoke, dust, and dirt filled the air. We ran lengthwise along the ridgeline with our camo activated. The Teds behind us were firing mortars and missiles five to ten clicks downrange. If any of them picked us up on their sensors, their first reaction would have been to assume an error, given our proximity and direction of travel. If their second reaction was to engage us, it would come too late. We found a small cave nearly a half click away and set up a sniper perch.
“What are we going to shoot?” Callie asked.
“I don’t know,” I admitted. “Maybe if the enemy advances downrange?”
“If that happens, we’re screwed.”
“Maybe not.” I suspected that Command would get my briefing, and retrieving us would become the mission’s new priority. But that was assuming everything aboard the Amphoterus was running according to protocol, an assumption I wasn’t willing to bet on in the middle of an engagement of this scale.
We remained locked down in our armor, motionless, hidden and ready to fire if a target presented itself.
I fixated on a red snake ten meters outside the cave mouth, hunting for its next meal while a war waged around it.
An hour passed.
The snake was successful.
I wondered what the small rodent it caught thought as it was suffocated.
My screen lit up with notifications. Ted reinforcements had arrived.
Three mechas advanced along a distant tree line and disappeared into the rainforest. A squadron of YC-15 attack-troop carrier heli-jets flew in from the west. The enemy was flanking our SDI troops while the dug-in Ted soldiers on the ridge above continued launching mortars at them.
Soon after the heli-jets landed to unload their cargo, a group of Guritain fighter jets flew over and dumped their payloads.
A flock of alien birds took to the sky.
The jungle burned.
CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN
Those who can make you believe absurdities, can make you commit atrocities.
~ Voltaire
Tedesconian Command Center
One Month prior to Guritain Arrival in the Biragon, Purvas
Senator Baalerton eyed Major Balestain with thinly disguised disdain. “The Biragon is a big hiding place, Major,” he said confidently.
“You’ve never worn a uniform, have you?” Major Balestain asked, his tone menacing.
“I don’t see what that has to do with anything.” The politician shuffled through a stack of papers and looked up from his desk. “Your proposal is rejected. Dismissed, Major.”
“I didn’t come here
to negotiate, Senator. You’d do best to understand that.”
Baalerton’s eyes narrowed. “Are you threatening me?”
Balestain shrugged. “I’m taking a unit into the Biragon. We’ll set up a field command three hundred kilometers from the facility. That leaves enough room for secrecy, but also gives us time for a reasonable response if required.”
“I’ve listened to your idea, and I’ve told you it’s not an option, Major,” the senator said firmly. “The matter is closed.”
“I don’t take orders from you,” Balestain growled.
The senator’s face colored, and he opened a comm line to General Bolfenter’s office. “We’ll see about that.”
A voice answered his transmission. “Office of the master general, Command Center. This is Corporal Calsberts. How can I help you?”
“Has the general arrived yet?” he asked.
“Not until tomorrow, Senator. Off-Earth starships have been behind for weeks. It’s been–”
The senator cut him off. “Have the general contact me the minute he walks in the door.”
“Yes, Senator.”
The senator stabbed the line off and regarded Balestain. “Major Balestain, I’m ordering you to wait. We’ll take this up with the general upon his return.”
“Negative.”
The senator stood and fixed Balestain with a hard stare. “You must have lost your mind. I wasn’t suggesting – I was ordering. Disobey a direct order and I’ll have you arrested.”
“Sit down, Senator.”
The senator opened a comm to his security detail.
“Senator,” a guardsman answered, “how can I help you, sir?”
“Send a security team to my office immediately. Major Balestain is under arrest for insubordination.”
“Belay that order,” the major warned. “I’m enforcing the Tedesconian Military Emergency Response Act, under article fourteen, Senator. I suggest you consider the consequences if you’re foolish enough to attempt an arrest.”
The penalty for interfering with the duties of a senior war committee member during a declared emergency was death.
“You have a quorum?” the senator asked, lowering himself into his chair.
“Of course,” the major said. “Have you ever taken me for being rash?”