by B. V. Larson
I knew I should use her as a shield, but I couldn’t bring myself to do it—not while she was still conscious. Nodding to her, I staggered to my feet again.
“Let’s charge the group on the left,” I said to my team.
They looked at me in pain and horror, but we could all see the officers weren’t going to let us get out of this without fighting. They were herding the teams closer now, refusing to let us hide among our fallen.
“They must know how many shots we’ve fired,” Gwen said. “They must know we’ve still got live weapons.”
“Ha!” shouted Dalton. “I just nailed one of those bastards up on the rim. See him dancing around up there?”
I glanced at him. “Don’t screw us. We’ve almost won.”
“You’ve got to be sneaky about it—that’s all,” he said. “I’ve got two disruptors. One, I’m firing at the enemy. The other is held low. I angled it up—”
“Come on, let’s finish this,” I said.
The blue ring ate up Samson behind us. I might have heard him groan in helpless agony, but it could have come from any one of the teams.
We advanced steadily, firing with our fresher weapons. In the end, the enemy stood up and charged. I recognized them—they were almost human, like Shaw, but that twist to the lower wrist gave them away.
We beamed them down and turned to face the last team—but it was already over. They’d been too injured, perhaps, to crawl away from the blue zone. They’d been consumed and shocked into submission.
A cheer went up from above us. It was a strange cheer, filled with honking, hooting and even a few barking sounds.
But we knew what it was, and we stood proudly and straight as the deck went green. The pit then began rising up to rejoin the main deck far above.
=16=
We were allowed a full shift to recover from our injuries. God knows we needed it. We were bleeding internally, and at least half the eyeballs in my group had been blinded.
The healing efforts of the salves and liquids we applied in our private pod took longer than they ever had before. Only Dalton’s burns in the rock pit had taken longer to disappear completely.
After our health had improved, Shaw came to see us in our group’s pod.
“I can scarcely believe your crew won,” he told us.
“I’ll take that as a compliment, Lieutenant,” I said, making a point of calling him by his proper rank. I was still annoyed that he’d passed himself off as an Admiral when we’d first spoken. Such thoughts brought up new questions for me. What else had Shaw lied about?
“You’ll be expected to return to your duties at the start of the next shift,” he said, ignoring our injuries. “Do you have any objections?”
“No objections, just questions, sir,” I said. “Can you explain to me how you arranged to pick us up back on Earth? I mean, our governments must have been involved?”
“Since you have proven your dedication to the cause, this is a good time to reveal more information to you,” he said. “Our legal requirement is to find recruits on every planet who are worthy of serving aboard our ships. We asked for Earth’s cooperation, and your governments gave it to us.”
“But how did you get Earth to cooperate?”
He shrugged dismissively. “We showed them recordings of the enemy fleets. They saw Earth may well not survive this event. That was enough.”
It made sense to me, but I pressed for more. “When I called the Pentagon, they connected me to you directly. Were you on Earth or in space?”
“We gave them communications devices compatible with our ships. The largest governments of Earth were provided with them. If you’d called Moscow, Berlin or Washington—any of them would have connected you to me. They were involved long before you met up with one of our probes.”
“What probe?”
“The stone carrying the symbiotics. I believe you said you found it underwater?”
“Yes, right,” I said, remembering that night. “The bubbles and the light… why’d you make it attractive? To get someone to check it out?”
“Yes. The first test of many. The sym was designed to locate a brave, capable candidate. It found you because, among other things, you were a competent swimmer for a land-mammal. You were also a creature brave enough to risk his life when faced with the unknown.”
I nodded slowly. “Right… The bubbling was just to get a curious fool’s attention…”
“You were honored, not tricked!” Shaw barked.
“It seems like it was a little of both,” I said. “But never mind about that. Did you know that a friend of mine reached that probe first, and he was killed by it?”
Shaw shrugged like he couldn’t care less. “Another trial which you survived. The weak must be weeded out.”
“Right... So the sym got into my bloodstream, and it tried to make me angry enough to find others who carried syms and kill them.”
“Yes. We find it’s easier to clear out the dead wood while candidates are on their home planet. Survivors are gathered several weeks after the process begins. Only the best of them can be used to form a crew.”
“Samson said you really wanted me to be one of those survivors. He even shot Kim to keep her off me.”
“That’s right,” Shaw admitted. “I was in charge of Earth’s recruitment drive. Due to your primitive technological state, very few pilots were attracted by the probes. I wanted you to at least make the early cuts for this reason.”
I glanced at Gwen, who was eyeing Samson in shock. Apparently, she hadn’t known he’d killed Kim back on Earth.
“The female you mentioned,” Shaw said, “what was her name?”
“Kim,” I said.
“She was an accidental recruit. Normally, symbiotic hosts are too distracted to attempt mating. But you, Blake, you are an unusual case. You managed to pass on the sym infection to Kim sexually?”
I cleared my throat.
“There was blood at the scene too,” I said. “When our friend Jason died, we all touched him.”
“Ah,” Shaw said, nodding.
But Dalton was looking at me now. He eyed me and Gwen suspiciously. He’d been flirting with her steadily since we’d teamed up, but she’d always rebuffed him.
“So, you think you’re a big player with the ladies, is that it, Blake?” he asked. “Nailing girls back on Earth and in space? Your kind never quits, do they?”
Then he turned to Gwen and gave her a sour up-down glance. “Don’t think you’re fooling anyone, Missy. I’ve seen you look at him. Disgusting!”
Gwen huffed and looked embarrassed. She walked out of ship, insulted. I gave Dalton a frown, but he only gave me an unapologetic shrug in return.
Shaw watched us. “The mating habits of Earthers are uncommon,” he said. “Most wild Kher varieties have seasons. Your subspecies seems to mate at will.”
“Yes, I guess that’s true,” I admitted. “But you still haven’t told me how you managed to answer my call when I contacted the Pentagon.”
“Your government was informed of our intentions. They did not object as they could see one of our carriers in high orbit, and they were frightened by it. They participated in the search for candidates by maintaining a fiction about the stellar flux.”
“May I ask a question?” Dr. Chang asked warily.
“It seems that you already have,” Shaw pointed out.
Dr. Chang cleared his throat. “What causes a stellar flux, exactly?”
“The flux effect is an opening in space,” Shaw explained irritably. “Two points are briefly connected, and if there is no scatter, objects can come through. On Earth, when the luminescent cloud phenomenon occurred, you saw the point of origin of our probes. After they came through, the breach closed, and the skies returned to normal.”
“So…” Dr. Chang said thoughtfully. “That means the probes and your ships must be from quite a distance away. Somewhere with a nebula and a bright star cluster.”
“Correct. Now, however, I
’m through with this interrogation.”
He left, and we all looked after him thoughtfully.
All of us, that was, except for Samson. He thumped me on the back.
“Thanks a lot, Blake,” he said. “That was not cool.”
“What’s wrong?”
“You told Gwen that I killed Kim! She’s the only human woman on this ship. I’ve got no chance now.”
Dalton produced a dirty laugh. “Yeah, right-o. Like she was going to warm your knob, anyway. No lady wants an animal as far down the chain as you. She might as well shag an ape. My advice is to get used to your hand—”
Samson reached for him, but he skittered away, flashing his teeth at us.
The two of them chased one another for a time. I heard a commotion shortly afterward, and I didn’t feel the slightest temptation to intervene. Both of them deserved whatever they got from the other.
When they came back, Samson seemed oddly chastened. “Gwen, Leo,” he said, “I want to say something.”
He kept his eyes downcast while we listened.
“I’m sorry for killing your friend, Gwen. I wasn’t in my right mind.”
“I thought I killed you myself,” I told him. “Twice.”
Gwen’s lip trembled, but she didn’t break down. “I thought I killed you too, Leo. Good thing your head is so hard.”
I looked around the group. “We were all in the grip of our syms,” I said. “We have to forgive ourselves now, and each other. We can’t hold grudges over what happened. We won’t be able to function as a group if we do.”
Then, I proceeded to make all of them apologize to one another. Everyone but Dalton sounded sincere.
“Sorry all,” he said in a snotty tone.
It sounded almost as if he was sorry we were still alive, but I let it slide. It was probably the best I was going to get out of him.
After our moment of contrition, the group seemed a little more relaxed together.
“Dr. Chang,” I said, moving to his side. “You seem thoughtful and quiet.”
“I’ve been thinking about what Shaw said. I can see how it played out. Earth learned the truth, or at least some of the truth, and they promptly approved these abuses of their citizenry.”
“I suppose it was a small price to pay to keep a possibly hostile fleet happy,” I said. “But I’m not happy.”
“You wish it was someone else who’d been drafted into this?”
“Don’t you?”
He looked down and nodded.
“It’s always that way when a real war comes along,” I told him.
Gwen had come back into the room by then, and she looked at us both seriously. She crossed her arms under her breasts and frowned.
“This isn’t our war,” she said. “These aliens have no right to expect us to die for them against some other bunch of aliens we never heard of.”
“You have a point,” Dr. Chang said, “but then again, so do they. Perhaps we didn’t know we were within their territory. I gather that Earth has been kept like a wild preserve for centuries. Now, they’ve decided we’ve grown up enough to participate in their organization like full-fledged members.”
“They don’t respect us. They came with warships. They bullied our governments with the threat of attack—implicitly, if not explicitly.”
“Yes,” Chang agreed, “that’s probably true. But that’s how empires always behave. They’re our cousins, remember.”
“Huh…” I said. “Cousins… I thought we were the savage ones. Most of these people are pure carnivores. They’re mean—downright ruthless. I guess we were more civilized than we thought.”
Dr. Chang chuckled. “I may not go that far. For the last few decades we’ve been relatively humane with one another, true. There are no more cannibals and relatively few genocides, but that state of affairs has been very brief in duration. Perhaps the Kher, these mean-spirited people, can give us insight into our true natures.”
Gwen had returned while the doctor was talking, and she joined the conversation.
“What about his claim that we’re all related?” she asked in an accusatory tone. “Do you believe it?”
“Yes,” Dr. Chang said. “These creatures have a physiology that’s irrefutably similar to our own. Natural evolution would tend to produce creatures of far more variety.”
“You expected something like a duck-billed platypus?” she asked.
“That would make more sense,” Chang said. “Think of it, so many species are on this ship, all from different planets. Yet, they’re all of similar size? We’re almost all bipedal. Two eyes, one head. Why would such a common biological design evolve to dominance on a hundred worlds all at the same time? It’s like rolling a thousand dice and coming up with all sixes.”
Gwen shook her head. “The idea that we were seeded on Earth by some ancestor is a hard pill to swallow. I’ve never heard of such a theory.”
“I would suspect biologists would be the least surprised,” Chang said. “There are too many gaps in our evolutionary trail to make it complete. Take the eye, for example. There are no intermediary steps in the fossil record to—”
The floor went yellow then, and we all knew what that meant. I slammed my hands together, making a booming sound.
“All right nerds,” I said, “back to work! Rest time is over.”
As we marched back to Hammerhead, I thought about what I knew of human history. It was full of cruelty, unfair treatment and exploitation. It stood to reason that our distant cousins from the stars would be no less self-serving.
When we got our heavy fighter, Commander Tand was standing in the hatchway waiting for us.
“There you are, slothful beings,” he said. “Today is a critical day. Today, we’re stepping up your training schedule. Everyone to their stations!”
We looked at one another then trooped past him and boarded Hammerhead.
“Is this because we won the contest?” Samson asked.
“Yes, exactly. Victory is always rewarded in the Fleet.”
“What’s our reward, exactly?” Gwen asked warily.
Commander Tand looked at her, and his whiskers bristled.
“Today, we fly this ship! Today, you shall become true spacers!”
=17=
I was shocked. Sure, I’d piloted plenty of aircraft, but thus far, I hadn’t received a moment’s worth of flight instruction on this beast.
“Sir…” I began, “do you really think we’re ready?”
“Yes,” he said, drawing out the final ‘S’ sound into a hiss of what I took to be happiness. “I’ve been so bored with all these crews. You primates have shown promise, but I honestly didn’t expect you to be given this honor so soon. The CAG has stepped-up the master schedule significantly. Battle is coming, and our best crews must learn to fly!”
He seemed inordinately pleased about everything he’d said, but the rest of us were wide-eyed in alarm.
I wanted to ask him what he meant about a “master schedule” and why he thought it had been “stepped-up”, but there wasn’t time. He had us all humping around the ship, checking every reading and double-testing the seal on every hatch.
It was our pre-flight checklist. I knew it by heart already, but today, instead of finding it dull, my heart pounded in my chest.
Commander Tand climbed into the pilot’s chair, and he had me take the co-pilot’s seat. I wasn’t disappointed at all to see him take over the primary controls.
“The flight controls are very simple,” he said. “First, use your sym to access the virtual interface.”
I did as he said and signaled when I was fully connected. The sym was able to superimpose graphics in three dimensions by overlaying my natural vision. It was disconcerting to see things that you knew logically weren’t really there. Even more disturbing to me was the idea that my sym was interrupting the nerves connecting my eyeballs to my brain—but I’d gotten used to that idea over time, too.
“You start the engines with this
icon here,” Tand said, “then apply gentle touch-pressure to the contact points under your fingers. Notice how they’ll follow your hand wherever it goes, so you’ll be comfortable.”
He did these things as I watched. Outside, the ship began to rumble. Crews scrambled away from us on the deck, but it didn’t seem to send out a wave of exhaust and flame. Apparently, our propulsion system burned clean and was harmless to those moving around the hangar deck.
“Now,” Tand said, “you must engage your sym up-link!”
I did as he ordered. My senses were instantly overlaid by new imagery. Not only could I see through Hammerhead’s translucent hull, but I could see beyond the external hull of the carrier itself.
What a shock that was! We were in open space. Cranking my head around, I could see a blue orb with a smaller white one nearby. Could that be the Earth and the Moon? It had to be. Beyond that was a painfully bright yellow star.
“Is that our sun?” I asked. “We’re still in our home system?”
“Yes, Blake. Now shut up. I must give you a week’s instruction in three hours.”
“But don’t we have other pickups to make?” I asked. “Other planets to visit?”
“That’s been dropped for now. Fleet Command has decided to put us in the field with only half our recruitment and training finished, thank the stars!”
I could tell he was dying to get out there and fight whatever enemy we were supposed to face. I didn’t share his eagerness.
In my knowledge of military history, when a unit was deployed and sent to the front before its training was complete, that invariably meant the war was going badly.
“Pay attention!” Commander Tand demanded. “Your sym is providing you with enhanced perception. This is controlled by your mind as you interact as a single unit with your sym. You must master the new interface quickly.”
Breathing hard, I nodded.
“You may ‘look’ around you in any direction,” Tand explained. “Try to zoom in on your home planet now, please.”
I looked in that direction and squinted my eyes. The Earth didn’t get any closer.