The following four years had, blessedly, been easier. At first, Marco had joined Addy and Lailani—his two closest friends—in training new recruits. The three corporals had been heroes to the young ones, the trio that had defeated the scum emperor himself. But after Lailani had left the basic training base, accepting a mysterious mission in the Oort Cloud, Marco too had requested a transfer. After a couple months of intense training, he had then spent three years as a computer analyst—querying databases, pulling reports, writing software, and trying to ignore the nightmares and echoing screams. The job had been easy; forgetting had been harder.
And now it all ends, Marco thought. Now we can be together again. Me. Addy. Lailani. He looked around him, still hoping—as he had been hoping all day—to see Lailani enter this room, to be discharged with them. All three had enlisted on the same day. All three should be discharged here together. Yet he hadn't seen Lailani in almost a year, not since their last Christmas break, and she had never revealed details of her mission.
You better be waiting for me back at the library, Lailani, he thought. I miss you.
In the heat, sweat, and suffocating crowd, the thought of seeing Lailani kept Marco going. He wanted to pull the little Filipina into his arms, to kiss her, to never let her go again. Five years ago, he had fallen madly in love with her. Now that they were leaving the army, he intended to marry her.
Finally, after what seemed like a whole other five years in this room, Marco and Addy reached the doorway at the back. It opened to reveal a lieutenant at a desk, bespectacled and balding despite his youth.
"Lieutenant, what the hell?" shouted a sergeant from the back of the line. "Hurry up!"
The officer looked over the crowd. "Wait your turn, soldier."
"Fuck that!" shouted the sergeant. "Half my cousins outrank you. You think you're somebody because of your butter bars?"
The lieutenant sighed and gave Marco and Addy an apologetic look. He called Marco in first.
"Come, soldier. You're up."
"Good luck, Poet!" Addy whispered, patting his bottom as he entered the room. Marco tried to ignore the snickering soldiers outside as he closed the door.
The lieutenant rifled through his papers. "Staff Sergeant Linden, yes?"
"Emery, sir," he said. "Marco Emery. Linden is that tall blond oaf outside the door."
The lieutenant cleared his throat, placed aside Addy's file, and lifted Marco's instead. He spent a moment looking through the papers, then paused. His eyes widened, and he looked up at Marco.
"You're him," the lieutenant said. "Marco Emery."
Marco nodded. "Yes, you got the right file this time."
The lieutenant's jaw nearly hit the tabletop. "You're Marco Emery."
"Last time I checked," Marco said, "though I'm starting to think I might be Linden after all."
"You fought the scum on Abaddon!" The lieutenant walked around the table, grabbed Marco's hand, and shook it. "You killed the scum emperor himself and blasted the damn buggers back into the Stone Age! Exterminated their entire empire. Damn good work, man."
Marco gently extricated his hand. He wasn't so sure he wanted to be congratulated for exterminating anything, let alone an entire species.
"Thank you, sir," he simply said. "Now, about my discharge papers—"
The lieutenant continued as if he hadn't heard. "If you ask me, we need to nuke all the damn aliens back into the Stone Age. The Guramis, the Silvans, the fucking Klurian blobs—blast 'em all. Space bugs, all of them. Only way we'll be safe, you know?" He patted Marco on the shoulder. "A man to my liking, you are! Proud to have met you. My brother fought at Abaddon. Flew a landing craft under heavy fire. I can't wait to tell him I shook your hand."
Marco cleared his throat, wishing the floor would swallow him. "The papers, sir?"
The lieutenant nodded. "Of course, of course." He stamped a few papers, gave Marco a quick salute—probably the only time a lieutenant had ever saluted a sergeant—then a pat on the shoulder.
And with that, Staff Sergeant Marco Emery became Marco Emery, civilian. With that, one life ended. With that, another life began.
He stepped out of the room. Addy was waiting there, a huge grin on her face.
"Move it, civilian," she said.
Marco looked at her. A tall warrior in olive fatigues. The woman who had fought with him against the alien invasion. Who had been fighting at his side since they had been eleven, since the scum had killed his mother and both her parents. A best friend. A soldier.
But can we ever go back? Marco thought. Can we ever be who we were?
"Hurry up!" shouted a soldier behind them.
With an elbow to Marco's ribs, Addy entered the room and closed the door.
Marco walked away slowly, feeling empty, feeling confused, not sure who he was now, who he could become, whether his old life—his childhood, his youth—still awaited him.
When Addy emerged from the lieutenant's office, she pulled Marco into a storage room on the base. They removed their uniforms and stuffed them into their duffel bags. Addy pulled on denim shorts and a Maple Leafs hockey jersey. Marco pulled on corduroy pants and a T-shirt featuring Einstein sticking out his tongue.
They stared at each other. For a moment, they were silent.
Then they burst out laughing.
"You look like a right nerd!" Addy said.
Marco rolled his eyes. "You look like a hockey hooligan."
"Good! I am a hockey hooligan!" She grabbed his arms. "Poet. It's over, Poet. It's over."
And suddenly she was crying. And Marco was crying too. And they embraced, tears falling, and for long moments they could say nothing.
"It's over," he finally whispered, holding her close. His best friend. His Addy.
She pulled back from him, sniffling, and mussed his hair.
"Stop being a crybaby, Poet. Come on." She took his hand in hers. "Let's go home."
They stepped out of the base. They wore civilian clothes. They held no weapons. A highway stretched before them through the desert, leading to a dusty horizon and beyond it the unknown.
* * * * *
They hitchhiked.
They hitchhiked across the desert, the sun beating down on them.
The HDF didn't pay its soldiers. They had no money. All they had were their thumbs.
They wore no more uniforms, held no more guns, and those drivers who often braked for soldiers roared by, covering them with clouds of dust. Finally a mustached old man stopped his truck, and Marco and Addy climbed into the back and sat among migrant workers. They rattled down the highway between the rocky plains and dunes toward yellow mountains.
They wandered through a strange city in a strange land, a place with no trees, where raw concrete buildings rose around them, where camels and donkeys fled from fighter jets that flew low in the sky. When a boy tried to mug them, Addy tossed a stone at him, and he fled. They bought street meat. They drank from a tap they found by a trough. They were on Earth but they were still so far from home.
They elbowed their way through a crowded airport, the ceiling fans doing little to alleviate the heat. When a few soldiers walked by, robed locals saluted them, and somebody cried out a blessing in a foreign tongue. Marco gazed at the soldiers walking by. To the crowds, they were warriors, defenders of the Earth. But Marco saw young boys and girls. Mere privates. Teenagers. Afraid. He looked away, and even Addy lost her smile and remained solemn for long moments.
They flew.
They flew over the desert, sea, and forest. They flew over the frozen wilderness of Greenland, heading home.
They did not fly in a suborbital carrier, a military rocket that could launch into Earth's orbit, then land anywhere on Earth within half an hour. They were no longer soldiers. They flew in a civilian atmospheric jet, its fuselage crammed with five hundred passengers. Civilians. Weary souls. Veterans.
Addy sat beside Marco, her knees pulled to her chest, her head against his shoulder. She was deep in slumber, snorin
g and drooling on him. Somehow, even in sleep, her elbow managed to keep jabbing his ribs.
Marco looked at her for a moment, then gazed out the window. The snowy land sprawled below, all piny mountains and sheets of snow and icy rivers. The wilderness of the world.
The mountains gave way to water, then land again, and he saw Toronto below.
The city's glory days were gone. Many of the old skyscrapers had fallen in the wars. Many people had died here. But today the city bustled with new life, home to three million people, a hive of highways and apartment blocks and factories pumping out smoke. City of metal, concrete, wood, and snow. City of memories. Of books. Of family. Home.
It was unusually cold for early November; snow was already falling. Marco and Addy stood on the wet roadside, thumbs raised. The cars roared by, splashing them with sludge, and the wind shrieked, lashing them with sleet. They shivered. They had no jackets, no money. The military had given them their plane tickets; the rest was down to hitchhiking.
"Fuck this shit," Addy said, breath frosting. "I preferred the desert."
Marco's teeth chattered. "Soon we'll be home in the library. Soon we'll sit with Dad by the fireplace, drinking hot cocoa."
Addy spat. Her spit froze. "Fuck that, I'm having a beer."
And maybe Lailani will be waiting for us, Marco thought, and that thought warmed him in the cold.
He hadn't seen Lailani in eleven months. He had barely seen her at all during the past three years, ever since she had accepted a secret mission in the Oort Cloud, two light-years away from Earth. He still thought about her every day. As he lay in bed at night, he imagined her by his side. He ached to hold her, to kiss her, to stroke her black hair, to laugh at the silly faces she made, to read her his short stories, to simply be happy with her. To feel right. He always felt right with Lailani in his arms.
Be here, he thought. Be here, Lailani.
A car finally stopped on the roadside, and the driver rolled down the window.
"Need a ride?" the young man asked.
Addy stepped toward the back door. "Thanks, man. We just got discharged. First day as civvies. We—"
"Fucking fascists!" The man spat out the window and drove off, spraying Marco and Addy with mud.
"Yeah, well, electric cars are for pussies!" Addy shouted after him, waving her fist.
Marco sighed and wiped sludge off him. "Actually, Addy, electric cars are responsible and protect the environment, and—"
"Don't make me punch you."
Finally another driver pulled over, and they crammed into the back of a van between carpet cleaning equipment.
An hour later, they hopped out outside the library.
After years of war and want, they were home.
Not for a Christmas visit. Not for just a few days of anxious silence before returning to the military. They were home, back at the library, forever.
Yearning to see his father, have a hot shower, and mostly sleep, Marco rushed toward the library door.
It was padlocked.
Marco froze and frowned.
"What the hell is this?" Addy said, yanking the chains around the door.
The wind moaned, spraying them with snow. Marco's heart sank. A piece of paper had been plastered to the door, soggy with snow. He could just make out a few of the words.
"It's closed," he said, throat tight. "They're tearing it down. They're building a condo tower here instead."
"What the fuck?" Addy tore the paper off the wall, stared at it, then ripped it to shreds. "Fuck this shit!" She tossed the shreds of paper into the wind, then pounded on the door. "Carl! Carl, open up, damn it! You in there?"
"Dad!" Marco shouted, but no reply came from within.
"Fuck, I'm pissed off, I haven't showered in three days, and I could eat a horse," Addy said.
"In short, your usual state," Marco said, dodging her punch.
They trudged through snow toward a window, brushed aside the ice, and peered inside. The library was dark, and when they stepped back and gazed toward the apartment above, they saw no light there either. Carl Emery, it seemed, no longer lived here.
"Why didn't Dad write me?" Marco said. The kindly librarian used to send Marco's base a letter every couple weeks, but Marco hadn't received any communication for over a month now, no word of the library closing.
Addy and Marco hurried into the convenience store across the street, the place where they had often bought sweets and rented movies during their youth. The same shopkeep still manned the cash register, a graying Korean man who, it seemed, stood at his post day and night, year after year, more dedicated than any guard in the HDF.
"Myung," Marco said, shivering. "How are you?"
The shopkeep looked up from his game of sudoku. "Marky! You're home. Welcome home. How goes bug killing business?"
Marco cringed inwardly. He had spent the past three years in the military at a desk, not killing space bugs, and preferred being remembered for his slick database queries than the number of aliens he had killed. But right now, he was too cold, hungry, and worried to explain any of that.
"Myung, what happened to the library? To my father?" The convenience store was warm, but suddenly Marco was shivering more than ever. "I just got back."
"And we're starving," Addy said. "Mind if I steal this bag of Hickory Chips? I'll pay you back later." She began to munch.
Myung's eyes darkened, and he placed down his sudoku book. "Oh, Marky . . . They never told you, did they? They just sent you back like this?"
Marco stepped closer and leaned over the counter. "Myung. Tell me."
The wind rattled the windows and the fluorescent lights flickered. Marco and Addy stood silently for long moments, listening to Myung speak of the government cutting funding to libraries, then selling the land to developers, of Carl Emery so consumed with stress that his heart failed. Of the old librarian recovering from his heart attack, only to suffer a stroke, to finally pass away three weeks later from a second heart attack in a hospital room. To be buried quietly, only two old friends in attendance.
"They never told us," Addy whispered. "Why didn't those sons of bitches in the army tell us? Why—"
"Because we were bouncing from base to base," Marco said softly. "Because of bureaucracy. And it doesn't matter to them. Because he's gone. He's gone, Addy. And we never got to say goodbye."
He lowered his head, and for the second day in a row, he shed tears.
"Myung," Addy said, voice hoarse. "Before Carl died, he was taking care of our dog. Sergeant Stumpy. Did . . ."
"I took the dog in myself," Myung said. "I fed him, walked him every day. But he grew sick. He passed away two weeks after Carl. Vet said it was just old age, but I know it was a broken heart."
Marco and Addy left the shop, silent.
They climbed the escape ladder in the alleyway, and Marco jiggered open the window to their apartment above the library. Once this small home had been full of light, of comfort, of love. Today it was cold, no heat in the vents, no power in the outlets, no water in the taps, no father in his rumpled vest sitting in his armchair, rising to greet them, hugging them close.
"We'll light a fire," Addy said.
She turned toward the fireplace, added a log, and worked in silence for long moments, but the fire wouldn't start. She cursed, slammed the log down, and stood still, shoulders tense, fists tightened. When Marco approached, he saw that she was crying.
"Addy—" he began.
"It's not fair," she said. "Why did he have to die? Just as we were getting out. Why do they just toss us out like this? Like we're trash. Like we didn't fight the scum. Like we didn't land on their planet light-years away. Like we didn't go underground and kill the bugs. Like we're not scarred. Like we're not hurt. Like we don't wake up with nightmares every night. Like we're old uniforms, just thrown away, too old for use." Her tears rolled. "What are we going to do, Poet?"
Marco wiped his eyes. "First, start this fire. Then sleep. Then figure things out tomorrow."
He knelt by the logs and got the fire started, earning an elbow from Addy.
"I warmed up the logs," she said. "Show-off." Her voice softened. "Marco, I'm sorry for your dad. Our dad. He was like a father to me too." She held his hand. "I love you."
They carried their mattresses from their bedrooms into the living room, laid them by the hearth, and lay down. Marco had not slept in thirty-something hours, but no sleep found him. In the fireplace, he kept seeing the flames of burning Abaddon, homeworld of the scum. In the shadows, he kept seeing the infested mines of Corpus. As the logs crackled, he kept hearing the clattering scum claws, and when a police siren sounded outside, Marco remembered the screams of his dying friends.
The thought struck him: I'm an orphan.
A shadow shifted beside him, and Marco tensed, instinctively reaching under his pillow for his gun, forgetting that he was no longer armed, and images of the scum flashed before him. But it was only Addy. She wriggled off her mattress and onto his.
"Make room," she mumbled, eyes closed, and nestled against him. Soon she was snoring and drooling on him again. And once more, her elbow was poking him.
Marco sighed and wrapped his arms around her. With Addy against him, he finally slept. But in his dreams, he was back in the mines of Corpus, riding the rusted mine carts, lost in darkness, traveling for hours, seeking a way out.
CHAPTER THREE
Ben-Ari stood in the Dome, the hub of humanity's might in the darkness, facing the most powerful man in space.
They hadn't even given her time to change her bloody uniform.
"Sir!" She pressed her heels together and saluted. "Captain Einav Ben-Ari, reporting for duty as requested, sir."
Earth Fire (Earthrise Book 4) Page 4