CROSS FIRE

by Fonda Lee

  Thet’s fins stiffened in insult. “Yes, zun. As you say.”

  “No …” Donovan breathed, but there was nothing he could say or do. Jet turned on the spot, wide-eyed, as if searching for a way out of the room. He cast desperate glances at Werth and Tate, whose expressions were like granite.

  Soldier Gur fanned his fins and raised his voice. “I see that the Commonwealth can no longer rely on the loyalty or sound judgment of the colonial erze on this planet. The evacuation plans have already been disrupted; the defiance of the soldiers-in-erze is already spreading to other Hardened humans and these developments will only cause further problems.” Soldier Gur’s eyes opened and closed as he spun his gaze around to search out two of his senior Soldiers. “Grier, Gye, see to it that the human evacuation proceeds as planned and on schedule. Use whatever force you deem necessary. Don’t damage the ones that have been selected, but you may make it clear that other humans in the Round will be harmed if they do not fully cooperate.”

  Commander Tate’s face went rigid with horror. “You can’t …”

  “How many humans have had the neural fail-safe removed?” Gur stabbed a limb at Therrid, demanding an answer. “Any others besides this one?”

  “No.” Donovan managed to call out from his place on the floor with the Soldier’s pincers still clamped around the back of the neck. “Not yet.”

  Something in Donovan’s voice made Soldier Gur pause. Slowly, he approached Donovan, until they were eye to eye. The alien’s gaze gave a wary flicker. He gestured to the other Soldier to release the hold on Donovan’s neck. “You’re only a human.” Soldier Gur’s hum was quiet, almost kindly. “Not even a scientist or an administrator, just a soldier. You didn’t engineer this little act of defiance on your own. You had help from within the Towers. Who helped you?”

  Donovan rose to his feet, his gaze steady. “I did have help from within the Towers. My father was the Prime Liaison for sixteen years. No one believed more strongly in the partnership of humans and zhree than he did. But he suspected that one day that partnership would end, that you would betray us and we’d need to be able to fight on our own.”

  Soldier Gur stepped back, dissatisfied. The yellow gaze he laid on Donovan was curious and pitying. “There was never a partnership. You’re a Class Two species. You owe your continued existence to the Homeworld Council and the generous regard we zhree extend to other sentients.” Soldier Gur stepped back and gestured to his subordinates. “Take this aberrant human outside at once and destroy it.”

  Jet lunged. He nearly pulled off the unthinkable—getting a hold of a Soldier’s weapon—but zhree reflexes were too fast. Two Soldiers seized Jet and pinned him to the ground in seconds. Therrid gave a helpless, whistling cry as armored limbs clamped around Donovan’s arms from both sides and began to pull him away.

  For an instant, Donovan’s mind went white; armor sprang instantly from his nodes and began to furrow into rows of bladed edges. The Soldiers tightened their grip and Donovan felt the barrel of a weapon press against the base of his spine. “Don’t fight, human.” Gorm’s whispered suggestion was calm but indifferent, as if he didn’t care whether Donovan took it or not. “Consider what’s best for your erze mates.”

  Jet was struggling wildly on the ground, as bare-skinned as a squishy and bleeding where he’d cut himself against battle armor. “Do something!”

  It was unclear who Jet was screaming at, but suddenly, his partner’s panic calmed Donovan. He breathed again. Gorm was right; he couldn’t win an unarmed battle against half a dozen of Gur’s Soldiers. If he put on a dramatic show of human aggression, he’d only make things go worse for Jet and Commander Tate and his friends.

  Donovan lowered his armor and stopped resisting. Mechanically, he let himself be led toward the entrance of the briefing hall. Jet’s curses rose into frantic howls. The sound tore at Donovan. He looked over his shoulder and caught Commander Tate’s eye. Tate’s expression was unutterably bleak, but their exchange held something else: an understanding.

  He’d gotten the truth of the Rii threat out into the world. He’d set an example and proven Dr. Ghosh’s research. He’d passed vital information on to the human leaders of the country. It was all he could do, surely all that either of his parents could’ve ever expected of him. Tate would see to it that the exos who remained fought on, for Earth and for all humans.

  The Soldiers would make it quick.

  “No.”

  A single note in Mur, delivered in a familiar tone of command that carried clearly across the room. Soldier Werth’s eyes were piercing in their intensity. “That human is a member of my erze. If he’s to be destroyed, it will be on my orders. Not yours.”

  Two of Werth’s Soldiers near the door moved instantly to block it. Gur’s Soldiers battle-armored, fins flattening into blades, bodies bristling, and suddenly Donovan found himself in the center of a zhree standoff. Everyone in the room fell silent, even Jet, who lay on the ground, heaving for breath.

  Soldier Gur was taken aback, but only for a second. “You’ve lost the right to give orders here, Werth. If you directed the actions of these humans, then you’re a traitor to the Commonwealth. If you did not, then you’ve clearly lost control of them. Either way, you can no longer be trusted to make decisions as an erze zun.”

  “I didn’t lose control of the humans,” Soldier Werth said. “They lost confidence in me. Soldiers expect the erze zun to make decisions for the good of the erze. The entire erze.” Soldier Werth raised his voice and it rang out in the hall. “There will be no military withdrawal from Earth.”

  Soldier Gur’s fins flattened against his body in a furious glower. “You are speaking nonsense. The decision has been made. Most of your Soldiers have been removed to orbit and are awaiting interstellar transfer.”

  “I will recall them to Earth,” Soldier Werth said, “as soon as I have you and your Soldiers removed from command.” There was an immediate and dramatic convulsion of motion in the room. All of Werth’s Soldiers, who’d been standing subservient and resentful at the outer edges of the room, battle-armored at the same time and moved in unison, drawing weapons and encircling the smaller knot of homeworlders, who closed ranks at once around Gur.

  Soldier Gur’s eyes seemed to bulge from six directions on his body. “You’ve lost your mental faculties. This is the most out-of-erze behavior imaginable …” His voice vibrated without any of its usual composure. “You’re committing treason against the Commonwealth.”

  “You accused me of such before it was even true,” Soldier Werth replied. “It must be gratifying to have your assessment further confirmed.”

  “Administrator Seir!” Gur trilled, his infuriated voice hitting high notes. “Contact the High Speaker at once. Inform him that I am exercising my authority as a senior military adviser to the Homeworld Council in declaring Soldier Werth an exile of the Mur Erzen. Henceforth his markings connote no status or authority, no planet will harbor any member of his erze, his broods will find no sanctuary and have no place in the civilized galaxy.”

  Seir’s eyes opened and closed as his gaze swung between the two Soldiers, then swept decisively around the room. “They will have a place here on Earth.” Seir straightened his fins with an audible snap, appearing, for the first time in months, like the erze leader that Donovan’s father had answered to for years. “I will contact the High Speaker, but it will be to inform him that we are sending you and your Soldiers back to Kreet. Regrettably, the colonists of this planet cannot abide by the decision of the Homeworld Council to surrender Earth to the Rii. As a result, we can no longer be part of the Mur Erzen Commonwealth.”

  For the first time since his arrival on the planet, Soldier Gur seemed beyond speech. His armor kept thickening until his torso seemed swollen with compressed rage. All of his Soldiers had drawn their weapons and raised battle armor. Donovan found himself suddenly roughly shoved aside and ignored as the two contingents of zhree faced each other down.

  Gur’s multi-d
irectional gaze took in the situation: Werth’s Soldiers outnumbered his by more than two to one. For a minute, the old Soldier’s fins twitched and stuttered in indecisive outrage. Then his calculating pragmatism seemed to reassert itself and get the better of him. He wasn’t about to risk losing his most senior Soldiers to a bunch of unhinged colonials.

  Gur gestured for his retinue to lower their weapons and stand down. “I will return to Kreet,” he said, his voice slow and firm with reestablished control, “along with any from this planet who wish to join me. Consider it your last chance to remain in erze. After that, this planet will be cut off from the Commonwealth and you will have only yourselves to blame for your fate.”

  “Escort Soldier Gur and his erze members to the chambers belowground and see that they are comfortably confined there.” Werth’s Soldiers seemed all too enthusiastic to fall in around the homeworlders and nudge them toward the exit.

  Gur strode past Werth in his lopsided but firmly dignified manner, then paused and focused his gaze on the other Soldier. “You’ve made a terrible mistake. You know full well that you cannot win against the full might of a Rii Galaxysweeper. You’ve doomed your entire erze and many others.” He stabbed a limb in Donovan’s direction. “All this madness over a human?”

  “If you think this is about one human, then you haven’t been paying attention.” Soldier Werth gestured for his Soldiers to continue out the door. “Humans are strange creatures, Gur. Sometimes, they remind us what erze duty means.”

  Donovan, Jet, and Tate found themselves suddenly unhanded. They were too stunned to move from where they were in the room of remaining zhree. Jet climbed to his feet unsteadily with the disoriented look of someone waking from a nightmare. Donovan looked down to see that his hands were shaking.

  Administrator Seir stepped into the center of the room recently vacated by Gur. “How long will it take to recall the Soldiers from the orbital stations?” he asked Werth, as if this were a routine meeting of the zhree zun in an assembly room in the Towers, just like the ones Donovan had once attended.

  “Two to three days,” said Soldier Werth, “but as soon as we make any attempt to do so, the Rii will know that the withdrawal is not occurring as Gur negotiated. We’ll lose any advantage of surprise if we intend to retake the Towers before the Hunters reinforce their position.”

  “They’re not wasting time,” Builder Dor put in. “They’ve already appropriated our paverships to begin clearing land for expanded algae farms and sent drones to strip the human cities of refined hydrothermal ores.” The paverships Donovan had seen in the sky—that must be what Builder Dor was referring to. The Rii starting to make themselves at home.

  “What’s our best estimate as to how many Hunters are in the Towers?” Seir asked.

  “A typical Rii spore vessel has a capacity of approximately seven hundred and twenty,” Engineer Phee volunteered. “After accounting for casualties incurred during the invasion, we can estimate that a third of their remaining number have been transferred to Rounds One and Seventeen to begin the planetary takeover process, leaving roughly four hundred and ten Hunters in the Towers.”

  “How many Soldiers are there remaining in Round Three now?”

  “Three hundred,” Soldier Werth said. “As for the other occupied Rounds, there are another three hundred Soldiers in Round Twelve, four hundred and twenty each in Rounds Ten and Seventeen, and two hundred and ten in Round One. Taken together, not enough to mount a coordinated assault, even with the advantages of surprise and familiar terrain.” Soldier Werth paused, and for the first time, turned two of his yellow eyes on Commander Tate. “Commander, how many uninjured and combat-rated exo soldiers-in-erze are currently in Round Three?”

  Commander Tate met the erze master’s gaze. A tentative exchange seemed to occur between the Soldier and his most senior human-in-erze. “Twenty-six hundred, zun.”

  “And in the other Rounds?” Administrator Seir asked.

  “Not counting regional satellite offices, SecPac has between two and four thousand Hardened officers based in each Round, zun,” Tate said.

  For a few seconds, despite everything unprecedented that had transpired in the last five minutes, Donovan could feel the beat of hesitation stilling every fin in the reformed circle of zhree colonists—a shared sense of fear and danger, of solidarity and irrevocability in what they were about to do.

  “Nurse Therrid,” Administrator Seir said, “how long and difficult is the procedure to remove the exocel inhibition reflex in Hardened humans?”

  Nurse Therrid seemed dazed and bewildered by the fact that he was being addressed by the Administrator. “It’s a … precise sort of operation, but a fairly quick one, zun.”

  Administrator Seir considered this. “Nurse Thet,” he said. “I must ask that you forgo punishing this member of your erze so he can help to save the colony.”

  Nurse Thet regarded Therrid with some disdain, then dipped his fins. “Indeed.”

  “The High Speaker will be expecting an update from Gur prior to when the ships in orbit are scheduled to begin interstellar transfers.” Seir spoke again to Soldier Werth. “We can’t declare Earth independent of either the Commonwealth or the Rii until we regain control of all the Rounds. Five, perhaps six, days is as long as I dare delay contacting Kreet.”

  “Understood. My erze knows what’s at stake.” One of Werth’s fins swiveled slowly toward the humans in the room. In a low hum, “Some knew before I did.”

  Two Soldiers escorted Commander Tate and Jet back to the common hall, where a third of SecPac’s officers were currently confined under Gur’s orders. Soldier Wiest drove Donovan and Nurse Therrid back to the hospital. Donovan was so physically and emotionally drained that he fell asleep in the skimmercar ride and half-woke with the vague awareness of Therrid carrying him inside like a child.

  The next two days passed in a haze, mostly because he spent at least half the time sedated and in a therapy tank, one of the handful that had arrived from satellite offices and other Rounds. It seemed surreal and unaccountable to Donovan that he was even alive. Sanjay and other nurses-in-erze came and went, checking up on him and bringing him food, but for a while, he didn’t see Therrid or anyone else he knew. On the third day, he woke feeling considerably better and more clearheaded, and saw his partner sitting in a chair beside him, studying something on a screen.

  “Jet,” he croaked.

  “I’m starting to really hate this,” Jet said.

  “What?”

  “Sitting next to sickbeds in this damn hospital.” Jet put the screen down on a side table. “I’ve had enough of it to last the rest of my life.”

  Donovan lifted his head and pushed up onto his elbows. The pain and swelling in his shoulder that had been constant over the past several days was gone. The other injuries to his face and body remained only as patches of slightly thickened panotin under the shallow bath of curative liquid covering his body. His surroundings were weirdly incongruous: a typical rectangular hospital room but with the ovoid, faintly humming therapy tank in place of where a bed would be. “Am I dreaming?” he muttered, mostly to himself. “The world’s been turned upside down so many times already I can’t even tell anymore.”

  Jet averted his eyes. “I know what you mean. Every time I wake up, I think that maybe I hallucinated the worst parts.” He faced Donovan again, and because he knew Jet better than anyone, Donovan glimpsed the toll of the last several days—sorrow and anger and worry, and the still-fresh hurt and betrayal that he was responsible for—flashing into Jet’s eyes and straining his jawline.

  Donovan’s hand tightened around the lip of the therapy tank. “Jet,” he began. “I …”

  Jet grabbed the towel from the side table and handed it to Donovan. “Therrid needs that tank freed up. He wants everyone who comes out of the operation to spend an hour in one.”

  Donovan took the towel without meeting his erze mate’s gaze. Now was not the time, then. He ran the towel through his damp hair. “S
o they’re really doing it.”

  “Therrid’s trained about twelve other Nurses and they’ve been working nonstop. They’ve shared the procedure across the Nurse erze, and the ones in the other occupied Rounds are working as fast as they can too.” Jet held up the screen he’d been looking at, the corner of his mouth quirking up in a way that seemed almost like himself. “I told the cadre that you were the very first one to have it done, the original guinea pig. They were impressed; said that must’ve taken serious balls.” Jet shook his head in disbelief. “To think they don’t know the half of it.”

  “Have any of them been through the operation already?”

  “Fernando’s injured and has to wait. Maddie and Kamo went through it yesterday. Jong-Kyu’s scheduled for today. The Nurses have got it down cold. You’re in and out in less than an hour. Another hour of downtime in a tank, and you’re good to go. You know what the zhree are like when it comes to getting things done.”

  The door opened. Donovan broke into the first grin he’d worn in what felt like ages. Thad, still looking a little pale, but on his feet and in SecPac uniform, cast them his slow, familiar laid-back smile. “About time. There’s a line of people waiting for that tank.” He tossed a clean uniform in Donovan’s direction. “Briefing in three hours.”

  Donovan got out and dressed, grateful for clean clothes. He had no idea what had happened to his torn shirt and jeans, and he didn’t care. “What’s going on?” he asked as he, Thad, and Jet left the room. Thad hadn’t been kidding; there was a long line of chairs against the wall in the hospital corridor. The dozen or so exo soldiers-in-erze sitting in them looked impatient and nervous. A Nurse was walking down the row with a scanner and computing disc, checking each exo in turn, taking their temperature and vital signs and having them armor up and down. In a strange, ironic way, Donovan was reminded of the check-in process he’d gone through as a five-year-old, prior to being Hardened. That procedure had endowed them with armor; this one would allow them to use it in war.