by Mark Tufo
I thought I had a card; I was going to play it. “You come in here and I will blow these crates up and take us all with you.” That drew more than a few stares from those around me. I knit my eyebrows and shook my head from side to side to tell them it was a bluff, I don’t think they completely believed me.
“No!” he cried out so loud it sounded like a shriek. And not the kind where someone is begging for their life, which I was thinking would have been appropriate, but rather I heard his hope that I did not destroy something precious to him. Was the egg-like thing some sort of highly valued art-piece? Would it be like the Nazis in World War II destroying art they labeled as degenerate? War was fleeting, yet art was ageless. It never ceased to enrage me when I saw pictures of temporary victors, toppling statues or burning paintings. It was so short-sighted a reaction, and a real asshole move. How many countries and imaginary borders have come and gone while incredible sculptures, literature, and music have stood the test of time? And here I was threatening to do the same, a short-term solution that could take away something that may have existed for a hundred thousand years. I didn’t want to be that dick, but I would be. My life, the lives of those around me meant more than any inanimate object, no matter its esthetic value. And to be honest, I didn’t think they were that great. Look at me doing a one-eighty.
“It is unfortunate that you have decided to secure yourself in this room,” the voice outside said.
“I think it’s more unfortunate that I’ve got a murderous band of Progs trying to kill me.”
“This is our ship. It is you that are the murderous band! We just witnessed again your brutality with our fallen Three-Quarter Director Trull.”
“In fairness, that whole thing could easily have been a ruse. Perhaps he was sacrificing himself so that you had a chance to get free; looks like it worked. Who am I speaking with?” I asked, I didn’t really care, but the longer they stayed all bottled up here attempting to get to me, the easier it would be for my crew to contain and dispatch them.
“Did you touch the vessels?” The Prog voice nearly sighed from the question.
“The green egg-looking things? What are they?”
“Rodeeshians.”
“Let’s pretend I don’t know what that is.”
“That is like everything with you Humans. You are ignorant, under-evolved primates that have barely grasped the understanding of using tools.”
“If you had given us another million years or so before you showed up I’m sure we would have been a better match for you. Although all things considered, we have stolen two of your ships, destroyed three and sent you running back home, crying like little bitches.”
“Did you touch the vessel?” he asked, actively ignoring my response.
“What if I have?”
He did not get a chance to answer my question. Intense and sustained fire power was marching down the hallway. The troops had arrived and were busy pushing the Progs back. I didn’t know how many Progs were dying in that hallway, but it sounded like a lot. They were trying to hold their ground against heavier fire power and they were going to pay for that hubris with pounds and pounds of their flesh. It was long, tense minutes, but finally, the sound of gun fire moved steadily closer, meaning we were pushing them away.
“General Talbot?”
“Fields! That you?”
“You alright, sir?”
“I am now. The Progs?” I asked as I was getting some help pushing the table away.
“Full-on retreat, sir.”
I opened the doorway. Fields had more blood on him than any man still standing should.
“Not mine, sir.” I knew what that meant, those near to him had caught some fire.
“No quarter, Fields. Do you understand?”
He looked questioningly for a minute. “Yes, sir.”
“Hendel, Rhodes, can you get Webs to medical?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Um, sir, the best doctors on board are Progerian.” Fields felt the need to tell me.
I looked to Webs. If he got any paler he would disappear. “Fine, except for the medics. And I want them guarded, heavily.”
“Not sure how willing to work they’re going to be while we’re actively slaughtering their kind.”
“Slaughtering? This is war, Fields. They just broke out of prison and tried to assassinate me a-fucking-gain. I’m starting to take it a little personally. If you can’t get the job done, step down and I’ll get somebody who can.”
“I can do it, sir.”
“No surrender. I don’t want them put back in the hangar. They’ll just keep figuring something out until they succeed.”
“Understood, sir. Red team, blue team, you heard the man. Notify gold and green that the majority of the Progs are coming their way.”
“Yes sir,” I heard from one of his sergeants.
“Is the bridge secure?”
“Went on lock down the moment the alarm went off. Colonel Talbot is at the helm.”
“Engineering?”
“Same, sir.”
“Pender?”
“He’s in engineering.”
The key pieces were ours; that didn’t mean the Progs couldn’t still cause all sorts of problems, but they would be mitigated unless there were more surprises like the Rodeeshians laying around, whatever that entailed.
“Fields, there are containers in here the Progs called Rodeeshians, I need Pender or someone to study up and figure out what they are, priority one. The Progs were hot and bothered to get in here and were pretty concerned when I touched one.”
“They bombs, sir?” He looked over my shoulder to the container.
“Could be, but I don’t think so. I didn’t get much information. We have to assume they are volatile and the Progs could be headed to where there are other stores of them. I don’t want to be unpleasantly surprised when we find out what these things are; we’ll make that discovery on our own terms. For now, I want a squad protecting this door from the outside and someone monitoring a camera in this room at all times.”
“I’ll get it done, sir. Are you going to the bridge?”
“Fuck that. Someone trying to off me this many times pisses me off. I’m going to get my measure.”
“Is that the wisest decision, sir?”
“Of course it isn’t.” And with that, I went to follow red and blue team. Lane was fast on my heels.
“Before you say anything, sir, I’m not leaving your side. Your wife is my direct report and there’s no way I’m going back to her with you out in the field, so to speak.”
“Don’t get yourself killed,” I told her as I started to trot.
“I was going to say the same to you, sir.” The hallway was littered with dead Progs and rapidly expanding pools of blood and it wasn’t letting up the farther we went. They’d been riddled with enough bullets that if the speed and power of the projectile hadn’t killed them, the lead poisoning would have, eventually. I knew somewhere deep inside I should have felt more for the fallen, but I didn’t. No matter how deep I dived into that quagmire of a psyche, I could not come up with any fucks given. And at the surface? Well, that was just a white-hot burning lava of hatred and contempt for my enemy. They’d already taken so much and they still wanted more. There was no way to reason with them; no pact they would keep. The only way was to stop them, permanently.
I started running faster when I heard more than sporadic gun fire. The Progs must have come to a dead end or had decided that running wasn’t an option and were making a stand. Of course, when we got there, it was worse. Red team was pinned down in a huge corridor about fifty yards ahead of blue team and they both were in dire need of reinforcement. Somehow, the Progs had set up a trap so that when blue team had come to a juncture point, they were catching fire from both sides. Some were trying to get ahead to the relative safety of the red team defensive perimeter or go back the way we had come, but there were open lanes of death being dealt in that direction. It was a crossfire killing fie
ld.
“Lane get on the horn. Let them know deck eight, corridor twelve, junction forty-seven needs all the guns we can spare now.”
“On it, sir.”
“While she was radioing in the message, I got close to the wall and was creeping forward. I could tell she was trying to relay the information as quickly as possible before I got myself shot. Had to have been twenty or so Progs on the far side and they were all armed, some with their traditional blasters, others were struggling to work rifles they had confiscated in the battle. About all they could fit through the trigger guard was a claw, but that was enough. I’d not yet been spotted and just let loose. The rifle chirped in my hands as I had it on fully automatic fire. I’d like to say I was doing controlled bursts, like in my training. But missing was out of the question; there were just too many of them for me not to be effective.
I’d outright killed at least five and injured probably twice that number when my bolt popped open. I was reaching down onto my belt for a fresh magazine when I felt my shoulder being yanked hard. I was pulled away from the fray just as four bullets slammed into the wall where I had been.
“I don’t mean any disrespect, sir, but how have you stayed alive this long?” Lane asked even as I dropped the expended mag and was slamming in the fresh one.
“Good people around me,” I told her as I depressed the bolt catch. I’d hoped that maybe I had taken some wind out of their sails, but if anything, it had just caused them to redouble their efforts. Blue team members were being decimated and there was little we could do. Some Progs had adjusted their fields of fire to make sure I was ineffective. There was heavy gunfire and the Progs began to melt away as more troops came to the fire teams’ aid. Seems the Progs had maybe read a little on the colonial wars. The way to beat a better armed and larger opponent is to ambush them. Never meet them in an open field of battle.
“Colonel Talbot!” I hit the comm.
“Good to hear your voice, General.” The relief in my wife’s voice was palpable.
As much as I would have liked to take a moment and tell her something soothing, I didn’t have the time. “Seal off deck eight and bring the heat way down.”
“Seal off eight? We have troops heading your way.”
“Give them one minute, no more. I can’t afford to have suicidal Progerian hit squads running around the entire ship.”
“And the heat?”
“I’m hoping they suffer more in the cold than we do. Get us close to freezing.”
“Stay safe,” she said.
“Always,” I replied. I think I heard her scoff before I released the button. “Let’s see if we can help.” The carnage was gut churning as much as it was wrenching. Dead, dying, maimed, and wounded were strewn about the floor. Full grown men crying for their mothers, shrieks loud enough to pierce eardrums, the shallow, raspy breaths of those in their final moments. I walked around in almost a fugue state through the acrid smoke of spent bullets and burnt flesh, each step increasing my hatred for the enemy. If there hadn’t been people that needed tending to, I would have already headed out so my bullets could sooner drink of my revenge. The best I could offer was to stand guard as those more qualified did all they could to stem death’s cold embrace. I felt a sudden chill sweep past my shoulders; figured it was the Reaper come to collect his share; then I realized it was nothing quite that dramatic. Tracy had merely been following my orders and had shut down the heat. Definitely better than thinking Grim had given me a drive-by.
“Damn,” BT said as he came up with a fresh batch of Marines. He handed me a jacket as other Marines were handing them out as well. He had been looking at the results of the Prog ambush.
“I have never wanted something more dead than I do these Progs, all the damn Progs,” I spoke softly but there was a power behind those words. I was shivering, but not from the cold; it was from the chilling anger.
“We’re ready when you are, Talbot,” BT said with a stern look in his eye. “Been looking forward to this day.”
I don’t know if I’d been looking forward to the day, but now that it was here I wasn’t going to complain about it. These Progs were going to pay for the ones that had died on this journey, and somehow, I was going to make their race pay for all those that had died before us. Maybe doc could figure out a way to juice them up enough to keep them alive and then we could just keep killing them until I was either satisfied or insane.
“You’re doing that weird demented smile thing again,” BT said out of the side of his mouth.
“Despite the many men I’ve respected telling me, I don’t know why it has taken me so long to come to the conclusion that we can never coexist, at least not on equal terms. They’d let us live, I suppose, as third or fourth-class citizens–once you factor in the Genos and mutes. We might even come in after the Stryvers.”
I could see my breath and that of the men around me, I could tell who was calm and who was on the verge of hyperventilating.
“Colonel Talbot, have all units hold position. Do not engage unless forced to do so or I give the order. I’m going to let the cold sink into their bones a little more.”
“You sure it will work?”
“No idea, but they’ve evolved from the reptilian line, and they’ve kept this ship balmy. I’ve got to believe it’s going to be a little worse on them than us.”
“That whole cold-blooded thing is a myth,” BT said.
“Yeah? Ever see an alligator hanging around the North Pole? Never even saw one in Maine either, if I’m being honest. Plus, remember when the Genos and Progs were re-located? They had shit tons of options, and for the most part, they chose Florida and Arizona. I doubt they did it for the housing market.”
“Nobody likes a smart ass, Talbot,” he grumbled.
I should have been cold; some of my men were chattering, frost was forming on some of the outside walls. I felt like the anger burning inside of me was consuming whatever materials it could stumble upon, compassion, empathy, kindness, all raging in internal wildfires.
“How much longer?” BT was rubbing his arms.
“As soon as the outside temperature matches my heart.”
“Fuck Talbot, you’re scaring me a little bit.”
“Don’t worry, brother, it’s not directed at you.”
“Remember those things I said about beating you in the arena? How about we just forget about it.” Whether consciously or not, BT sidled away a few feet. It was when someone’s fingers had become so cold that they dropped their weapon, I figured we’d better get going or we were just as likely to become victims of hypothermia as we were casualties of war.
“Sir, we’d feel more comfortable if you weren’t leading the charge.” Lieutenant Lane said. Rhodes was next to her; he must have found his way back down.
“Webs?” I asked. He shook his head.
“I need to take my measure,” was all I told her as we moved out. It wasn’t long until we came across our first dead Prog, though I couldn’t tell if he’d expired because of the wounds to his body or the climate. My best guess was a combination of the two. First the one, and then another, then we started seeing them in twos and threes. So far all had other wounds, but some not fatal; the cold was working to our advantage.
“Mike, I can’t feel my face,” BT said as we kept walking.
I turned to look at the rest of my squad. Except for Rhodes, who looked like he could chew through cables, they were definitely suffering. I hit the comm.
“Colonel Talbot, now might be a good time to turn the heat back on.”
“We have a situation, General,” she responded.
I gritted my teeth because obviously, good news does not come on the heels of “we have a situation.” You’ll never hear someone say we have a situation–there is too much pizza, or we have a situation–they are giving free puppies away.
“I’m waiting,” I fairly growled.
“We’ve lost functional control of your deck.”
“To the Progs?” I ask
ed, wondering how they could have possibly done that and if that was the case, why didn't they crank the damn heat?
“No, completely.”
“Fine, we’ll deal with the Progs, and I’ll be up there soon.”
“Mike, General, we’re in the process of cutting open a passage now. Forget the Progerians; they’ll be dead soon enough. You don’t have much time until that deck is almost as cold as space. Get out of there, Mike.”
All of the Progerians dying was high up on my list of acceptable outcomes, me not being an active part of that, however, was not.
“Just let us know where the hole is–we’ll be there,” I told her.
“Sir, permission to speak freely,” Lt. Lane asked.
“I’m listening.”
“Sir, as a woman, I can tell that your wife, the Colonel, isn’t telling you everything.”
“Wait. So, you’re telling me that my wife is actively holding something back from me in an effort to either protect me or my delicate constitution? Well aware. My guess is that they have started the cutting process and are doing the math on how long it will take to get in here versus how long it will be until we freeze.”
“And?” BT asked.
“I hear they can do wonderful things with cryogenics patients these days,” I replied.
“Go to space they said; it will be fun, they said. See the stars, visit distant galaxies, broaden your horizons. Ain’t no one ever said shit about freezing to death.” He stormed a couple of steps off and briskly rubbed his shoulders.
I turned to the forty people with me. Some were showing the effects of the cold more than others, yet none were complaining about it. “Alright here’s the deal. For the moment, we’re trapped on this deck. The bridge is actively working toward getting us out of here, but I won’t lie, the odds they make it on time are slim.” The troops remained stoic, but there was some bewilderment and they were looking around to others for a small measure of comfort. Hearing about your probable demise from your commanding officer is not really a mood enhancer.