Slate was right, we needed to end this now. Something rustled near the back of the room, and Slate fired a quick shot, killing the computer tablet on the wall, shutting the lights down. The helmets’ night vision sprang to life, and we covered the doorway so no one could get through. I stayed at the door while Slate headed toward the noise. I heard and saw three quick red pulse beams, and then silence.
“Slate?” I whispered into my mic.
“I got one, boss. Get the device and let’s do this thing once and for all.”
I moved to his location, seeing a Bhlat smaller than I expected. It was slender, and less ridged than the ones we’d encountered. I almost dropped the Deltra weapon when I realized what that meant. It was a female of their kind.
“Doesn’t matter,” Slate said, “just do it.” He was proving to be quite the robot, but that might have been what I needed right then.
Sliding the DNA sample stick from the back, I found a wound from the rifle, took a deep breath to stifle the wrongness of what I was doing, and jabbed it in. The device whirred to life again, following the same pattern as it had before.
“Make it snappy,” Slate called to me as we heard the door slide open.
What is idpewa here? a Bhlat asked into the darkness.
Slate fired a few rounds, and I heard two forms slump to the ground before the alarms raised again.
“What’s happening down there, Dean?” Mary’s voice came through my earpiece. I ignored it, not wanting to talk, mostly because I was holding my breath as I waited for the device to be ready to work.
“Dean, there are more coming!” Slate yelled.
“Come on, come on,” I said, and the icon glowed green. I hesitated, seeing the dead female Bhlat on the ground before me, and the door opened once again, laser fire blasting into the room at us. I nearly dropped the device; Slate grunted and ran across the room, shooting a volley of red death on the Bhlat.
Everything slowed for me for a split second. Laser fire inched around the room, Slate’s yells turned to slow-motion calls from the movies, and all there was on the moon was this device, and fifty living beings. I pressed the button, and time caught up.
“Thank God,” Slate said from twenty meters away. He was on the ground, green in my night vision. The Bhlat were all down, not a breath left in their alien bodies. I found, at that moment, that I wanted to know more about them: everything about their race, but I knew nothing, and I’d killed them without so much as the press of a touchscreen icon.
We’d been told they were evil, and that they would destroy us, but could we trust the hybrids or Deltra after all they’d done to us?
“Dean, what the hell is going on down there?” Mary asked again, this time not so cordially.
“Mary, we’re okay. It’s done.”
“What about Mae?” she asked.
I’d nearly forgotten about her. “Slate, are you okay?” I asked, moving to his slouched form.
He got up, dusting his uniform off. “I tripped on something, but no worse for the wear. Just a twisted ankle, and my arm’s still tender. We have to find Mae, and quickly.”
We entered the hall, stepping over the melted forms of the unarmored Bhlat, Slate hardly noticing them at all.
“I’ll go left, you go the way we came,” I said, taking the lead.
Slate’s large frame moved quickly down the hall as the sunken corridor lights flared red, alarms still blaring along the way. I tried to not look at the corpses spread around the floor. Some might have been children; most were unarmed.
“Mary, we’re searching for Mae. Is her ship still docked?” I asked.
“She’s still down there. Do you need assistance?” Mary asked through my earpiece.
We probably did, but the last thing I wanted was the doctor or my injured fiancée to be running around the outpost, looking for our missing hybrid.
“We got this. Whatever happens, don’t let that ship get away.”
“Affirmative,” came the stiff reply.
The outpost had wide corridors, probably enough room for three of the large aliens to walk side by side, and the ceilings were at least ten feet. The sound of a sliding door down the hall caused my heart to race, and I slowly moved toward it, firmly holding my rifle. The door was closed, and I stepped forward, letting it slide open as I moved to the side, trying to catch a glimpse of what was inside. It looked like a classroom of some sort, but I didn’t see anyone inside from that quick glance.
This time, I raised the rifle, moving through the entrance, spinning to the left and then to the right, before suddenly getting kicked in the knee as Mae came into view from the near corner of the room. My blaster went off, hitting the ground in a smoldering beam.
“Mae, listen,” I tried to say before getting kicked in the stomach. I was down on the ground in an instant, knee aching and breath torn from my lungs.
“No, you listen.” She kicked my gun away, stepping on my hand. It pinned my fingers and palm against the cold hard metal grate floor. “I came here to help you. To tell them you were all gone, dead in the war with the Kraski. This would have bought you a few years. You could have moved to Proxima. But you came here and killed them!”
Anger coursed through me. So she did know them and had left us to meet with them. It all sounded like lies over lies, and if there was a truth left in the story, it was so convoluted and buried, it would be almost impossible to uncover.
“Mae, I believe you,” I lied, hoping she would get off my pained hand. Her foot pressure lessened, and my training from Slate took over. I lifted her foot with all my strength, sending her small frame back a yard while I quickly got to my feet.
She wasn’t holding a weapon, probably not expecting a fight when she’d landed on the Bhlat outpost. We both eyed my rifle on the ground a few feet away, and when she lunged for it, I made my move. I swung my leg toward her body, connecting to her side, sending her sprawling away. She still managed to grip the barrel of the rifle, and while she tried to turn it around at me, I covered the distance and grabbed the rifle as well. We struggled with each other, her back on the ground, me bent over her.
Her injuries had healed nicely. “We found out your injuries at the base on Earth were fake. How did you do it? Hit yourself with a two-by-four?”
“It was the only way to ensure you guys left. I didn’t know where the base and ships were being held, and they would never tell a hybrid. I did it all for your kind. I did it for you.” The last words hung in the air as we struggled for the weapon. She tried to kick out, but Slate had taught me how to prevent that when grappling. The wind was starting to lessen from her sails.
“For me?” Realization came over me. “If you lied about Leslie and Terrance, and needed to find the base… then… it was you.” I couldn’t believe it. I fought in my mind, looking at the face of my close friend Mae, the woman who wore my dead wife’s expression as she started to cry. “You killed that guard Clendening and the other one in the garage.” Images of Clendening, sticky red blood soaked into his bed, and the bloated face of the woman hanging in the office nearly caused me to vomit on Mae right there.
“I had to. It was the only way for you to focus on them. I knew they were making a move to get off-planet. I knew everything that happened at that damned prison in Long Island.”
It all made sense. They just wanted to get to a ship to see if Kareem would take them in, and Mae used it against us, used our hatred of hybrids to fuel their capture, even though they wanted to get caught. They fed off each other, even if the pair hadn’t known it.
“You had to kill them in cold blood?” I asked.
“The ends justify the means. Just look around down the hall at all the innocent Bhlat you killed. Or the race of Kraski you ended to protect your own. We’ve both done terrible things, Dean, but I did them for you.”
She stopped struggling then, letting me take the rifle from her. She was right, but I still didn’t put those in the same category. I supposed it was a matter of perspective.
Mae looked so small on the floor as I raised the pulse rifle. She was far from helpless.
“You killed those guards to perpetuate our hatred, so we would follow them when they escaped?”
She nodded.
“And then made us think they assaulted you as they escaped? Did you have anything to do with them getting out?”
She nodded again. “They didn’t know it was me, though.”
“What were you doing here? For real? Why not just tell us you knew them, and that you could help us? Didn’t you trust us? Didn’t you trust me?” I asked. Her eyes welled up with tears.
“You wouldn’t have believed my story. I was turned by them years ago. I had so much anger, and nowhere to focus it. The Bhlat didn’t ask for much. They offered me a place with them when it was all over, but they really just wanted information. The Kraski were just a nuisance to them, but they were intrigued by their cloning ability, and we hybrids were something of a legend to them. At first, I thought they would dissect me, or throw me in a lab, but they treated me with respect and honor. It was the first time anyone had shown me respect, knowing I was the hybrid of a dying race and a human. The whole mission sparked their interest.” Mae slid over, sitting up so her back was against the wall.
“Go on,” I said, gun still raised.
“I hated the Kraski.”
They had wronged the hybrids, creating them to sacrifice themselves to convince humans to shut down the Deltra Shield, but there had to be more to the story.
“I feel like I’m missing something.”
“You are, babycakes,” she said, tears falling down her face. The pet name Janine had called me when we first started dating, but seemed to grow away from, hit me like a brick wall. Why had Janine’s phrase for me been uttered by Mae?
Looking at her curled up in the dim room, hair in her face, tears streaming down her cheeks, I suddenly understood. The pulse rifle fell from my hands, clanging on the ground. I knelt before the crying woman, my own eyes watering without control at that point.
“It’s you,” I said, hardly believing it.
She nodded.
“How?”
I was holding her wet face in my hand. “They were pissed at me for choosing you instead of that beefed-up military guy. They almost killed us both, but I convinced them I was right in choosing you. They let me stay with you that first year. You proposed, and it was so sweet. One day I went for a run, and they picked me up, told me I was being replaced, and that I was now named Mae. No one was to know. I met the other Janine, and they beat me when I wouldn’t cooperate by telling them intel on you. I guess they had enough, because they gave her my clothes and sent my replacement back to you.”
I slumped to the floor, looking at the real Janine sitting on the floor of an alien outpost so far away from home. The dream from the other day flashed in my mind, and I recalled that day. I remembered how strange Janine had been for a few months after that day, and how I’d let it go because she’d always seemed distant and brooding. Now it all made sense. I married another hybrid, lived with her for years. Watched her die. I had loved that woman too, and I honestly think a part of her had loved me, but Mae was the real one. The woman I’d met at the Boathouse in Central Park so long ago, drinking Scotch with me under the twinkle lights late into the night. Choosing me to help their cause over the other guy. My life would have been a lot simpler without that night. Maybe I’d be dead… maybe everyone would be.
It was too much to take as the alarms around us rang, red lights flashing from the hall. “How is this possible?” I asked, slumping beside her on the floor.
Could we go back to Earth like this? How would we explain it to the others? How would I explain it to Mary?
“Dean, I’m sorry it all worked out like this. You can’t imagine my thoughts when I saw you fly through that door on the vessel ship last year. It was a sign. It gave me renewed hope, and I kept telling myself that you would recognize me, that you would tell me you were in love with me still. But then you were with Mary, and I stepped back,” she said. I thought of all the times Mae seemed down, in a dark mood, and it made even more sense.
I held her hand, squeezing her fingers just like I used to do, and she rested her head on my shoulder. I almost laughed at the insanity of it all. The woman I’d fallen in love with that night, so many years ago, wasn’t the same woman I’d married and watched die. She was beside me on a remote outpost of an alien race we hardly even knew.
“Do the Bhlat know what happened?” I asked her.
“About the humans? I talked with them right as I got here, but they didn’t communicate it out yet, as far as I know. They didn’t have time.”
“We go to the ship, blast this place to smithereens, go home, and pray they don’t come for us.”
“I don’t think they will. It sounded like they were in the middle of a serious galactic battle out there, a long way away. They have a dozen outposts like this set up to ensure they keep the bloodlines intact, just in case.” Mae seemed to know a lot about them. I looked at her, and suddenly found it hard to believe I hadn’t known she was really Janine. My Janine.
“Are you ready?” I asked, getting to my feet.
“How is this going to work? Will they take me back?” She took my hand and got up.
“We’ll tell them what you told me. You were going to sacrifice yourself to go to their outpost to tell them there was no point in worrying about the humans. You knew we wouldn’t go for it, so when you saw the opportunity, you took it.” It seemed like the truth, at least the version she’d given me.
“And what about the other part?” The question came with a look I’d seen many times that first year with Janine. A cute, coy look.
I loved Mary, but this complicated things. Every bit of me knew I was going to marry her, but having my first real love nearby wasn’t going to make travelling in close quarters an easy task.
“We tell her. It’s only fair,” I said. She didn’t press me on my feelings, and I was thankful.
“Thank you, Dean.”
“For what?”
“Just for being you.” She moved to the door, and I was about to transmit to the ship that I had Mae with me, and we were coming back.
Mae took a step through the room’s exit and into the hallway, taking the time to turn toward me and give me a small grin. Then she fell to the ground. My brain didn’t understand what was happening until I saw the pulse rifle wound through her uniform, blood spilling down the metallic floor grates.
“No!” I yelled, grabbing my rifle from the ground.
“Target down. I repeat, target down.” Slate’s voice echoed from my earpiece and down the hall.
TWENTY-FOUR
“Nick, get your ass down here, stat,” I called into my earpiece as I ran into the hallway. Kneeling at Mae’s body, I checked for a pulse, and felt a light heartbeat.
“You okay, Dean?” Slate asked, setting a hand on my shoulder.
I swiped it off with an aggressive elbow. “You son of a bitch. You didn’t have to shoot her!”
“What are you talking about? That was our mission. I saw the target and took her down.”
I stood up, lifting my head to look up in the soldier’s eyes. Grabbing his collar, I pushed him against the wall, which normally would have been impossible, but he seemed to let me.
“It was your mission, not mine! I never asked for any of this. I’m an accountant from a small upstate New York city!” I shoved him a few more times, and he stood there, allowing the barrage of yells and abuse.
Nick came running down the hall, a panicked look showing even through his helmet’s face mask. It was one thing to green-beam down somewhere for the first time, but he walked into a place with melted aliens on the floors, a shot hybrid beside us, and me screaming at Slate.
He moved past us, going quickly into trained doctor mode, and opened Mae’s uniform up, seeing the gaping wound in her stomach. He checked her pulse and looked up with wide eyes.
“She had a pulse. Revive her!” I yelled at him now.
He shook his head. “There’s nothing I can do for this.” His eyes went from me to the deadly wound.
Mary’s voice came through my earpiece, and I couldn’t even comprehend the words. I was surrounded by death once again, and by all accounts, there was no one to blame but myself.
_____________
“I’m sorry, Dean.” Mary sat on the edge of the bunk where I lay curled under the blankets. Two days had passed since the outpost adventure, and I still felt like a mess. Slowly the fog was lifting, and like anything, I knew the pain would eventually dull and pile on top of the rest of my life’s memories, both good and bad.
I turned, looking her in the eyes. “Thank you.” I had told her everything that transpired between me and Mae. She went on the emotional rollercoaster alongside me, as I talked then, and I was so happy she understood. We shared a bond; we had both married a hybrid and were in very similar mental states about it. Only she had never felt like Bob was truly in love with her, especially after learning the truth of their motives.
“We’ve downloaded everything from their computer databases that we could. I imagine we’ll learn all we ever wanted to know about the Bhlat with it.” Mary slid her uniform off and slipped into the bed with me. Her body was cool against my warm, blanket-covered chest.
“All the explosives are in place. We can blast them and erase all the evidence we were here. I don’t see how they could track any of this back to us. Clare’s good to bring the Kraski ship back?” I asked. We’d discussed blowing it up with the rest of the outpost, and their ships, but decided it was a valuable resource we shouldn’t part with if possible.
Mary was face to face with me, her breath sweet and fresh as she spoke. “She is. Slate will go with her.”
At the mention of the soldier, I closed my eyes, seeing Mae fall to the ground. I couldn’t stop seeing it.
“That’s good. Probably for the best,” I said. “If we’re here, who’s setting the explosives off?”
The Survivors Box Set Page 41