CROSS FIRE

by Fonda Lee

  “This is a Rii Galaxysweeper,” said Soldier Werth. “It’s the size of the largest asteroid in our solar system. Ironically, the Rii were the original colonizers; long before the advent of reliable light-plus travel and even longer before the modern eon of the Commonwealth, they were among the first zhree to leave Kreet for new star systems. Traveling in great generation ships, they founded a robust civilization, distant and independent of the homeworld.

  “Then, some millennia ago, their star system became uninhabitable when the orbit of one of its planets destabilized. The Rii constructed five enormous ships, which they intended to use to travel to new habitable worlds—but they were not successful. They’d been isolated from other zhree civilizations for so long that their terraforming technology was primitive, and the planets they found that could support life were already populated by early Commonwealth forces that refused to harbor them. Over time, the Rii became a nomadic race, relying not on planetary bases but on raiding and stealing to build upon their growing Galaxysweepers.”

  Soldier Werth paused, fins laid out in a scowl as he stared at the image of the enemy vessel with cold hostility in every eye. “There are currently thirty-six known Galaxysweepers, descendants of the original five. Each one is defended by fleets of warships and carries tens of millions of inhabitants, along with an intense historical grudge against the Commonwealth.”

  Werth touched the display again and the Galaxysweeper disappeared, only to be replaced by a projected image of two strange zhree, side by side. Donovan stared, unnerved and fascinated. The zhree on the left looked not dissimilar from the colonists Donovan had grown up around, but it had smaller, much darker eyes—an orange that was nearly red—and a flatter torso with hashed markings he’d never seen before. The one on the right, however, made Donovan’s armor crawl. It had fearsomely serrated battle armor like a Soldier, but it was a third larger—as tall as a human man. Instead of stripes, a mottled pattern covered its hull. It too had reddish eyes, and thick, bladed fins lay against its domed body. Donovan had always thought his own erze master was intimidating in appearance, but this creature dwarfed even Soldier Werth.

  “The Rii have only two erze: Stewards and Hunters.” Soldier Werth came around from the other side of the console and walked to where Donovan stood. “Stewards reside on and maintain the Galaxysweepers. Hunters travel on long-ranging warships that seek out populated worlds to conquer and occupy. Like us, the Rii require certain planetary conditions to brood and hatch their young. But it’s not in their culture to stay and establish permanent colonies; they believe it makes them vulnerable.

  “If they seize control of Earth, they’ll use it as a base from which to disrupt Commonwealth shipping corridors while they strip out all the technology and materials they can from the planet—the Towers themselves will be broken down and incorporated into the Galaxysweeper. They’ll hoard whatever they find valuable, including useful sentient creatures. A great many of them will brood here at the same time, and once the surge in hatchlings matures, they’ll move on.” Soldier Werth’s large amber eyes remained on Donovan. “But first they’ll make certain the Mur won’t be able to reoccupy the planet for a very long time.”

  Soldier Werth returned to the console and tapped it once more. The Rii Steward and Hunter vanished. This time Werth brought up the image of a blue-and-white globe, slowly revolving in space. “This was the planet Bithis, roughly a thousand years ago,” Soldier Werth said. “Icy and cold, but habitable, with temperate equatorial oceans and a Class Three native marine species. The Commonwealth maintained a small colony there as a scientific and military outpost. The Rii attacked it, occupied it for three hundred years, then abandoned it to press farther into Mur territory. When they left, they unleashed thermal neutrons over Bithis that destroyed the planet’s atmosphere, extinguishing life and making the surface uninhabitable.” The blue-and-white globe faded and was replaced with a cloudless, barren planet the color of chalk. “This is Bithis now.”

  Donovan’s disbelieving voice crawled out of a tight throat. “You’re saying that could happen to Earth?”

  “Bithis could be re-terraformed over a long time, at great cost to the homeworld. The native species on that planet, however—they are gone for good.” Soldier Werth shut off the projection. He came toward Donovan once more and stopped in front of him. “The High Speaker and Soldier Gur know full well that withdrawing Mur presence from Earth means abandoning it to possible conquest and destruction. But defending it would require more support from the overstretched Mur fleet, and the Homeworld Council is under too much political pressure to pull back from the frontier areas of the galaxy. They’ve made their decision.”

  Donovan searched for a place to sit down. Since the zhree didn’t use chairs, there were none. “You’re letting this happen.” His horror took a sharp turn into anger. “You’re going along with what Kreet tells you to do. You don’t care that Earth could be destroyed, and that billions of humans would die.”

  Soldier Werth’s reaction made Donovan understand that he’d never before seen his erze master truly angry. Werth’s armor crested across his hull so that he seemed to grow before Donovan’s eyes. His fins flattened with bladed fury, and his eyes lit into orbs of yellow fire.

  Donovan shrank back, filled with instinctive, cowering fear.

  “I was hatched on this planet. I have expended every effort to argue for its worth.” Soldier Werth’s musical voice was as cold as the ringing of glass chimes. “You attended the many discussions in which the erze zun explored every angle—including mandating the Hardening of humans—to convince Kreet to continue supporting Earth.”

  “I know.” Donovan’s exocel was pulled down low in submission. “I spoke without thinking. I’m sorry, zun.”

  Soldier Werth’s formidable battle armor fell slightly, but his fin movements remained harsh and reproving. “Ultimately, every erze must answer to the Mur Erzen. Administrator Seir and I and the rest of the erze zun have made our strongest arguments, but the greater interests of the Commonwealth must prevail. Only the continued strength of the Mur Erzen can blunt the aggression of the Rii. You understand now why the human evacuation plan is so important: Because it will save your species. And perhaps you also understand why your father was so invested in the erze system and the exo program. He was one of the most intelligent humans I ever knew. I believe he foresaw that when Earth’s existence was inevitably threatened, your species would survive only if it could leave the planet as willing partners in erze.”

  Donovan gulped back a lump in his throat.

  “Under normal circumstances,” Soldier Werth said, his fins straightening, “I would approve of your argument for erze unity. But these are not normal circumstances. It’s better to leave some erze mates than to lose them all. When the first wave of selections is announced, I will issue orders that all soldiers-in-erze offered evacuation must comply.”

  “Zun Werth,” Donovan protested, recovering enough to pull his stunned wits back together. “You’ll be forcing people to leave behind their family and friends.”

  Werth paced away but all of his eyes remained open so it seemed as if he was looking at Donovan over his shoulder. “I remember every exo I’ve chosen. I will have to abandon some whom I’ve known since they were hatchlings but who do not meet the criteria that Soldier Gur has imposed. It will be difficult, but I certainly do not intend to lose all the humans in this erze.”

  Werth stopped and came back to Donovan, who tensed in expectation of some further reprimand. Instead, Werth reached out two limbs and grasped Donovan’s arms with outstretched pincers in a firm gesture that struck Donovan as oddly human. “You are astute for such a young human, Donovan. You’re well-known and well-spoken within our erze, and have proven on more than one occasion that you can exert influence above your rank. You must help, not hinder, the evacuation process. It’s the only way to save humankind. Do you understand?”

  Donovan looked miserably into the alien eyes and nodded.
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br />   Everywhere Donovan looked, he saw the doomed. Men and women, old people and little kids, marked and unmarked. He imagined all of them gone, the streets empty, the buildings crumbling to dust, and the blue of the sky stripped away to nothing. Earth reduced to a barren wasteland devoid of life. In the six weeks following his conversation with Soldier Werth, he often awoke feeling as if a weight were sitting on his chest. Images of the Galaxysweeper and the Rii and ruined worlds danced in his mind.

  At other times, such as now, he couldn’t muster the energy to care about the fate of the world. All he wanted was to make it to the end of his shift and collapse. It was evening, but the half-light might as well have been dawn for all Donovan could tell anymore.

  Jet said, “I wish I could sleep like one of the zhree.”

  Donovan blinked hard, then kept running checks on the passing cars. “I think I’m almost there. I swear I actually fell asleep with my eyes open for a few seconds the other day.”

  “Two days,” said Jet. “We can make it two more days.”

  “That’s what we said eight days ago.” Their last scheduled break had been canceled.

  “Don’t burst my delusional bubble.”

  At a petroleum fueling station across the street, a teenage girl was filling up her car, glancing around nervously as she waited for the meter to climb. The predominantly erze-marked neighborhood Donovan and Jet were patrolling had suffered vandalism, drive-by shootings, break-ins, and attempted kidnappings. The residents had taken to posting their own block patrol of armed civilians, who were jumpy, untrained, and more often than not, just another thing for SecPac to be worried about. Not that Donovan could blame them for feeling as if they needed to take some initiative to protect themselves.

  The girl at the gas station hung up the nozzle. She was thin, with shoulder-length brown hair, and she wore a tank top and combat boots. For a second, as she crossed to the driver side of her car, she looked enough like Anya that despite his weariness, Donovan’s heart gave a painful lurch. He didn’t yearn constantly and hopelessly for Anya in the same way he used to, but he still longed for … something he couldn’t put his finger on. Something else. Regret lay heavy on him; their last parting had felt so wrong and it seemed unlikely he’d ever get a chance to set things right.

  A group of several hundred people paraded past, heading toward the Round with signs that read TAKE US WITH YOU and OUT OF EARTH IS OUT OF ERZE. It was the third such demonstration Donovan had seen this week. News of the zhree plan to evacuate a small population of Hardened humans had gone public and sent millions of cooperationists into an angry terror at being left behind by their allies in what might soon be anarchy. “You’ve got to give credit to DeGarmo for sticking to her talking points about ‘stable transition,’” Jet said, scanning the crowd as it passed. “But I think people aren’t buying it anymore.”

  Donovan was sure that if his father was still Prime Liaison, he too would be doing everything in his power to calm people and keep order, even if it meant concealing the truth. “People can’t live without any hope, Jet. Take that away and it’ll be chaos and anarchy.”

  “As opposed to the polite garden party going on right now,” Jet deadpanned.

  He had a point. The two of them had been sent from one crisis to another. After True Sapience set off a triple bombing in Phoenix that killed one hundred and fifty-three people, they’d spent a week in the SecPac satellite office in Arizona with only one change of uniform, sleeping on the conference room floor where twenty stripes were camped out in shifts when not digging through rubble for survivors or hunting the bombers, who were tracked to a Sapience hideout, cornered, and killed after a ten-hour standoff. They were supposed to get two days off duty when they returned to the Round, but that same afternoon, a SecPac officer was killed and four were injured in a street ambush, so they were sent back out that very evening.

  Donovan wasn’t close to Leander, the exo who’d been killed, but Thad knew him well and had been heartbroken when he heard the news. The death of an exo cast a terrible pall over SecPac. In the officer’s common room, voices were hushed and the bulletin board was covered with written tributes and photos. The sadness was tinged with foreboding. This was just the beginning. The violence would get worse, and they would get more tired and careless.

  Donovan and Jet had barely seen their own beds in weeks. The last time they’d seen Cass and Leon was five days ago, and only because both teams had been called in to a bomb scare at a shopping mall. Their housemates had been awake for two straight days. Cass was making inappropriate terrorism jokes to the mall staff and Leon had misplaced his sketchbook.

  The situation was unsustainable. Exhausted stripes were more likely to get killed or injured, or to make mistakes and hurt innocent civilians. There was a scandal in Round Four at the moment involving accidental shootings. Two more days, Donovan told himself, and yanked another hair from his forearm, as he’d taken to doing in order to stay awake.

  “Maybe working us into the ground is part of the plan to get us to accept evacuation.” Jet’s expression was obscured by the growing shadows. “Because this place is really starting to suck. This whole planet. If this is just a taste of what it’s going to be like after the zhree are gone and there’s no real government anymore, maybe it is better to get out while we can.”

  Donovan looked over at his partner. “So you’re going to take your spot, then?”

  Jet hesitated. “None of us has a spot yet, so it’s a moot point until they announce selections. I mean, we all know they only want the finest physical specimens of humanity.”

  “Which would rule you out.”

  “Which would mean I’d have to decide whether to abandon you.” Jet grinned at him, a badly missed sight these days. Then he returned his attention to the scans running on his screen and sighed. “I don’t know what I’m going to do,” he said, seriously this time. “We’ve been run so ragged that I haven’t had a proper chance to talk to my folks. Or to Vic.”

  Donovan was silent for a minute. When he spoke again, he heard something in his voice that he didn’t like at all: defeat. “You ever wonder if this is all hopeless? Trying to maintain order in what might be an apocalypse? Saving people who might not be able to be saved?”

  He’d told Jet what Soldier Werth had told him, about the Rii and what might happen to Earth in the long run once the Mur colonists left. Now his partner stared into the dusk pensively before shaking his head. “Commander Tate must know the truth. But she’s still bulling through it, setting an example and doing her duty. That’s what she expects of us.” He finished his scans and began walking back to the patrol skimmercar with long, determined strides. “We can’t change the fate of the world, Lesser D. We can only do our jobs until we can’t do them anymore.”

  They did get their break after all.

  The message Donovan received the next morning was simple. It arrived with a document security lock that could only be overridden via verification of his exocellular body signature, and stated, in part, You have been selected by your erze for planetary evacuation.

  Evacuation of humans whose safety is deemed a priority of the Mur Erzen Commonwealth will commence in concurrence with the planned drawdown of troops. Respond within ten days. All requests to be exempted from evacuation are subject to approval.

  The next message that flashed on Donovan’s screen was from Soldier Werth. It was brief. Soldiers-in-erze selected for evacuation are ordered to comply.

  The third and final message was from Commander Tate. SecPac officers who’d received first-round evacuation notices were granted the day off duty to inform their family members and discuss their decision with loved ones.

  Jet and Vic were trying to keep their voices down in the living room, but Donovan could still hear them from the kitchen. “Why is this a surprise to you?” Vic demanded. “You know my parents aren’t Hardened. I told you, I’m not going to leave them.”

  “But they’re erze orders.” Jet’s voice was tinge
d with desperation.

  “I don’t care,” Vic blurted. When she spoke again, Donovan could barely hear her. “I can’t go along with this, Jet, I can’t. My parents already lost Skye. I lost my twin brother. My family’s given up enough for me to be an exo and I’m not breaking us up.”

  “What about me?” Jet asked. “What about us?”

  “You should do what you think is right. And I know you think that means staying in erze.” Vic’s voice was wavering badly. “You shouldn’t be basing this decision on me. You can use the family petition to try to take your mom. It’s what I would do if I were you.”

  Donovan could hear his erze mate’s breathing and his heavy steps across the floor. “I can’t believe you’re using the end of the world as an excuse to break up with me.”

  “How can you say that?” Vic’s voice rose to a shout.

  Donovan had been mechanically rinsing dishes with as much noise as possible. He turned off the water and dried his hands, determined to leave the house and give his friends some more privacy, but at that moment, the front door opened and he heard Cass and Leon come in. Awkward greetings ensued in the living room, and then Jet and Vic took their argument outside.

  Cass and Leon came into the kitchen. “Who the hell are you?” Cass made her eyes go wide with mock surprise and threw her hands up. “Hey, Leon, did you know we had another housemate?” She flashed Donovan a teasing grin and gave him a tight hug. When they drew apart, Donovan saw that although Cass was smiling, her eyes were tired and a little puffy. “Jet and Vic sound like they’re having a hard time,” she said as she opened the fridge. “Makes me glad I wasn’t given the choice.”