Human Empire

by Tim C. Taylor

  Before Umarov could reply, Corporal Massi’s voice came over Springer’s earphones. “Hopper, you in position?”

  She rolled her eyes at Massi’s cunning insult while marveling that the corporal’s voice came from an unencrypted RF broadcast rather than the tight-beam microwave links she was used to. All this simple non-military equipment… it was like being a civilian, she supposed.

  “Hopper, respond!”

  “Sorry, Corporal. We’re ready.”

  “Spoiled your afternoon nap did I? Since you’ve obviously been asleep and getting your rest while the rest of us have been working hard, you and Old Father Time get to feed, water, and muck out the animals between here and base. Now get your flekking act together and shoot. Get to it!”

  “Acknowledged.”

  After signaling Umarov to start firing, she lay prone, tucked the stock of her SA-73 rifle tight against her shoulder and brought her eye to the sights.

  The SA-73 was a long-barreled weapon braced by a bipod support that was designed for long-distance sniper work, shooting high velocity intelligent rounds through a planetary atmosphere. Combine an SA-71 assault carbine with a skilled Marine in their AI-linked battlesuit and accurate close-quarters snapshots were effortless. With the SA-73, a skilled operator with the right firing position could place a micro-nuke through an exhaust pipe twenty klicks away.

  The mudsucker tribe was less than one klick distant. With her eye to the gunsight, the glare disappeared, and the targets looked so close that Springer had to fight the feeling that she could reach out and touch them. She adjusted the aim to play over the tribe, curious to see them one last time in their natural state. The animals had piled up a perimeter of muddy mounds that had baked in the sun until they became lookout posts for the sentries who sat on their haunches atop them. The creatures had two hemispherical eyes that grew out of the side of their heads like weapons pods. The sentries’ eyes constantly rotated independently of each other, which was freaky to behold. Feeling safe within the perimeter was a group of about a hundred adults and children mostly with their heads half-buried in the mud, which she presumed was their equivalent of grazing.

  She sighted one of the larger adults and squeezed the trigger.

  Nothing happened.

  Then her target’s eyes blinked rapidly

  “This rifle has no recoil at all,” said Umarov. “It’s like blowing bubbles, not shooting rounds.”

  “Yeah. It would be a beauty if it weren’t so frakking heavy.”

  Springer shot another mudsucker. Some of the group were looking around in confusion, not understanding what was happening.

  “Let’s make ourselves visible,” said Umarov.

  Springer lifted the SA-73 in both hands and broke cover. They hurried down the slope toward the mudsuckers, Springer adding her yells to Umarov’s blood curdling screams. They were soon drowned out by the shrieks of the mudsucker sentries.

  Just before the relatively firm ground gave way to mud, she went prone and sighted the animals again. Corporal Massi’s plan was working. The sentries were hooting and pointing in the direction of the two Marines. Parents were frantically unplugging children from the mud and throwing them on their backs before bounding away on all fours. The other adults were either already fleeing or bunching together to form a rearguard.

  One of the remaining adults caught Springer’s attention. It had a long white scar running along its downy back and was looking around thoughtfully, as if assessing the situation before deciding what to do.

  I’ll make it easy for you, thought Springer, and shot it.

  The animal clutched its shoulder and slumped to the ground with its eye turrets blinking furiously. But it didn’t lie still. With a great force of will, it raised itself and spat something from its mouth that it proceeded to plant deep within the mud before allowing itself to pass out.

  It was a bizarre sight. The act was so deliberate, so determined that it put her in mind of a dying soldier stretching out her final moments of life in order to activate a detonation sequence. It gave her the creeps. What was she doing here, anyway, shooting animals that had done her no harm?

  She sat upright. Below, the targets fled away from her position, straight into the crescent firing line of Crimson Squad Marines who blasted away until every mudsucker lay still.

  The two Legion Marines waited for the ceasefire order before advancing through the mud to pick up the unconscious animals.

  Springer made straight for the white-scarred beast who had acted so strangely.

  The creature possessed loose pallid-gray skin that oozed a waxy coating that dried in white patches under its skin folds. It would look ghoulish if not for the wide, permanent grin half-hidden under hugely muscular lips. Instead of teeth that tore and ground, theirs formed a lattice to filter tiny creatures from the mud.

  Springer turned her attention from the unconscious mudsucker to the fast-vanishing hole that this White Scar had drilled into the mud. Springer screwed her hand into the loam until her fingertips felt a hard-pebble-like object. She drew it out in a plop of flying mud, and wiped off the worst of the dirt before holding it in front of her face.

  “What is it?” asked Umarov. She glanced up and saw he had already retrieved three bodies slung over his shoulders. With the SA-73 also strapped to his back, she had no idea the Old Man could carry so much. He dropped one down for her to take.

  Springer mumbled her thanks while rotating the object in front of her eye. From a black base like toughened bark, grew a squat cylinder the color of dried blood.

  “I think it’s a nut,” she said.

  “Congratulations. Get rid of it.”

  Umarov slithered off to follow the line of Crimson Squad Marines carrying unconscious mudsuckers to the trucks.

  But Springer did not throw away the nut. A hot prickling behind the eyes persuaded her that it might be important. She remembered a story she’d read once about a magic bean and immediately felt stupid. She stuffed the nut into a belt pouch and bent down to gather up White Scar’s body.

  — Chapter 20 —

  “Takes me back to cadet days.”

  Springer grunted noncommittedly. Corporal Massi had been good to his word and set her and Umarov mucking out the trucks that would carry the mudsuckers back to the Marine base. They’d already sluiced down the compartments carrying the animals and were setting about replenishing food and water.

  Being given the worst assignments was sure like falling foul of an instructor before she became a Marine. But her life at Detroit was something she tried hard to bury. The training base had been obliterated, and its ruins overrun by Hardits. Worse still was the devastation of her dreams for a future with the carefree boy who had been the only one who’d ever tried to understand her.

  Before Umarov’s words, she’d managed to last the entire day without thinking about Arun.

  She sighed deeply and looked at the captives. There’s always someone worse off than me, she thought. But then she corrected herself; the animals would wake up in a few days and escape this nightmare. She never could.

  The animals keened pitifully to each other, their eye turrets blinking in confusion. This truck carried adults seated on a recessed bench, with their legs manacled to the deck and hands cuffed before them. Water beakers and a food bowl were secured atop a stand adjustable to be within reach of their mouths. They looked like captives readied for interrogation and then execution.

  One mudsucker made a choking noise. It sounded urgent. Umarov ignored the sound, but Springer couldn’t. Quickly identifying the origin of the disturbance, she rushed to the distressed mudsucker and wasn’t surprised to learn it was White Scar. The creature’s eyes were swiveling around at random, focused on nothing, except perhaps impending madness.

  “What’s the problem, pal?”

  Suddenly the animal’s eyes locked in position, focused on Springer. It retched deep within its throat. The retching took on a rhythmic pattern. Was it trying to communicate?
/>   Then it doubled over and vomited into its water beaker.

  “Great. You could’ve done that before we hosed down. Now I’ll have to do you again.”

  She couldn’t find it within herself to be angry. After all, she’d shot the poor bastard herself. Besides, the bowl seemed to have caught all the vomit.

  Springer unclipped the water bowl and was surprised to find it contained nothing more than a few bubbles.

  “All that performance and not a lot to show for it,” she said. “Not that I’m complaining. I’ll get you some fresh…”

  Springer’s words were forgotten as she watched the bubbles spawn, swirling within their water medium in complex patterns before budding into a bloom of yellow foam.

  “What the…?”

  The foam coalesced into a single bubble that popped, releasing a belching noise that sounded uncannily like words.

  “Help me!”

  “Umarov, come here!”

  “What is it?”

  “I think that skangat Furn is screwing with my head. He’s making me see things. Mad things.”

  Umarov put a hand on her shoulder. “He wouldn’t,” said the Marine in a calm voice. “Trust me. Now tell me what you saw.”

  “It’s what I heard that’s freaking me. That animal bleuked into the water and then the water asked me to help it. I mean in actual frakking words.”

  “Okay.”

  “No, it’s not okay. It’s… I don’t know what it is, but okay isn’t it.”

  Umarov waved his hand to get White Scar’s attention. The alien creature watched with its huge headlamp eyes as the Old Man gestured for the animal to repeat its performance.

  White Scar soon followed Umarov’s meaning. The mudsucker hacked up and coughed into the water beaker. The bubbles were followed by the yellow foam, flecked with green this time. Then a belched: “Help me!”

  Umarov didn’t hesitate. He bent over the water beaker and gurgled a message into it himself: “Are you a translator system?”

  The water in the beaker bubbled its reply without delay. “Of course I am, you dumb veck.”

  — Chapter 21 —

  Springer came to her senses first. Weird as the past few moments had been, she made herself believe this was really happening, because the alternative was so much worse.

  “You want help,” she said, trying to ignore the weirdness of holding a conversation with a beaker of water. “Help to do what exactly?”

  “The individual you call White Scar. She has critical information, and must be returned to her base in person to report it.”

  “What frakking base?” whispered Umarov, who seemed to be having even more trouble believing this than Springer.

  “And what about the others of her kind?” added Springer. “We’ve rounded up scores of other mudsuckers.” She glanced over at White Scar who was looking down at the deck, showing no indication that she knew this exchange was occurring. “Do the others need help too?”

  “The others understand the need for their sacrifice,” answered the beaker. “And will you shut up that annoying frakkwit? What is he, anyway,” pressed the beaker, “a half-Neanderthal Assault Marine with so much armor plating in his head that there’s no room left for the speech center of the brain?”

  Umarov scratched his head. “This thing… it isn’t talking like me. More like your vintage of Marine, Springer.”

  The water explained: “Members of the 599th Void Marine Regiment have been rounding up White Scar’s people and stuffing them full of disease vectors. Been doing it for a year now. Guess who I’ve learned your language from?”

  “Fair comment,” mumbled Umarov.

  “Oh, for frakk’s sake,” said the water. “Talking to you two twonks and translating for her at the same time is like swimming through mud. Give me a moment, will you?” If it didn’t sound so absurd, Springer would say that the water was holding a conversation with White Scar, given the way the mudsucker stared so intently at the beaker, making bursts of staccato grunts.

  The gurgling ceased. “Right,” said the water. “I’m in charge now. A liquid plenipotentiary.”

  “Okay,” said Springer. “Why should we help? How could we help?”

  “And less chatter,” urged Umarov. “We’re supposed to be meeting the rest for chow once we’ve fed the mudsuckers.”

  “Agreed,” said Springer. “And how is this… this animal able to operate a sophisticated translation system?”

  The water huffed. It was the most surreal experience of Springer’s life; the bubbles swirled clockwise around two loci in a manner that exactly captured eyes rolling in exasperation.

  “You two new humans are no different to all the rest. This mudsucker, as you call her, doesn’t just operate me. Her people designed and built me.”

  Whoah… All that banter last night about gremlins was now cast in a new light.

  “No, nuke that last comment,” said the water. “You are different because we need your help. Which is why she’s revealing herself. Then as soon as you’ve helped, you must forget all about her. Acting dumb is what keeps these people free.”

  “Why trust us?” said Umarov. He turned to Springer. “I don’t like this at all. If this thing is revealing its secret to us, it must mean it doesn’t think we’ll ever get a chance to betray it. I say we break that beaker and pretend we didn’t hear this.”

  “Oh, I wouldn’t do that if I were you,” said the water. “Here’s one reason for starters. Crimson Squad is taking White Scar’s people back to their base so that they can be infected by a bioweapon virus tailored to a species called the Froikebi that contributes some of the Navy personnel to the rebel 3rd Fleet.”

  “We know that,” lied Springer.

  “Really? Did you also know that disease vectors are already in place for most of the species in the 3rd Fleet? Humans included?”

  “We’re infected?” asked Springer. She’d seen others a chow time taking meds. Guess she no longer needed to know what they were for.

  “Yes, you are. And White Scar’s people have the genetic block to stop you being a carrier.”

  “Makes no difference,” said Umarov. “To avoid spreading the disease, we can simply fulfil our mission here and never return. That was always the most likely outcome. The mission is what’s important.”

  “Ah, yes, about that. Your mission. Your leaders are suspicious that they’re missing a key piece of Khallini’s defenses, so they sent you to investigate. They were right to do so. I know the Old Empire’s secret weapons. Let’s begin with the undetectable minefield that will blast your little flotilla into atoms… Unless, that is, White Scar’s people choose to disable it first. Do I have your attention now?”

  ——

  The strange artificial intelligence explained that the ‘nut’ had stored encrypted information about the Old Empire’s plans for the Khallini system and the weaknesses of their technology so that the mudsuckers could break it at will.

  If the Marines had searched the mudflats properly, they would have revealed the nut and its artificial nature. It was a risk White Scar’s people couldn’t afford to take, and so she had absorbed the information herself, encoding it within the pattern of her body. The nut was left with just her bio-signature.

  “This vulley-up is your responsibility,” insisted the AI, “which is why you need to fix it. If you hadn’t interfered, White Scar’s people would have discovered the device, and learned who had taken on the data. A rescue party would have retrieved White Scar and left a replacement volunteer in her place. You wouldn’t have known anything had happened.”

  “And now…?” asked Springer.

  “And now her people know nothing about White Scar’s predicament. The bio-warfare people at the Old Empire base need to check their subjects first to make sure they aren’t trying to use an individual already infected with one of the earlier viruses. And when you take White Scar to get her screening, the data encrypted inside her is going to flag up so many warning flags that he
r people’s secret will be broken forever.”

  “Threats I understand,” said Umarov, “but what’s to stop us giving you away the instant we’re back to safety?”

  “My people trust you. Well, not you two monkey breaths specifically. I like what your General McEwan says. It’s him we trust.”

  The mention of Arun flicked a switch on in Springer’s head.

  This alliance with the gremlins would go well, but only if she acted now to bring them on board.

  Her pre-cog ability had been nothing but a torture. All her visions recently had either concerned Arun’s future without her, or the sense that dark coils of self-loathing were crushing the goodness from her. This was different. She was useful once more.

  A sharp sense of urgency twisted Springer’s guts.

  “This is your chance,” she said, turning to direct her plea at White Scar. “You have kept your secret for countless generations, but you must always have known that one day the White Knights would find you out. Even now the Jotuns are looking for the cause behind all those previous mission failures. They don’t believe it’s bad luck. And the White Knights aren’t known for their mercy toward those who have deceived them. Now is your chance, and it is the only one your species will ever get. Don’t just help us here. Reveal yourselves! Rise up and join the Legion! Or would you rather cower in the shadows, never knowing when your time will run out?”

  “White Scar’s people will do what they can to help.”

  “Not good enough!” Only the silliness of the situation prevented Springer from slapping the beaker of water for its stupidity. “If the White Knight forces here destroy our flotilla, your hopes for freedom will die along with my comrades. We need your absolute commitment. One chance. That’s all you will ever get. Choose now!”

  The bubbles swirled silently before erupting into a froth. “We will seize this moment. As you say, it is our only chance.”