by Weston Ochse
She nodded. “Can do. What are you going to do?”
“Visit an old friend.” Then I added, “For the last time.”
Life is pleasant. Death is peaceful. It’s the transition that’s troublesome.
Isaac Asimov
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
OLIVARES AND I consulted for a moment in the hallway. He wanted to take the squad to the main gates, where a refugee camp had been set up. They needed to know what was going on and that there wasn’t going to be any help coming from the fort. The sooner they started to evacuate south the better. As it was, they’d clog up the roads. Luckily, we still had a few tanks that could make new roads for us, their tracks almost as good as a road grader. By then I hoped Mr. Pink would be back in the saddle.
But I had other business. Something I wasn’t required to do, but something I felt needed to be done. And Thompson was none too happy with it.
Seriously, don’t come.
Seriously. I’m coming.
But you need to save yourself, get the others ready to go.
My EXO can run forty-two miles an hour for eight hours. We’re leaving at T-minus three hours. I have plenty of time.
Do you remember when we first met?
I do. You were a bright-eyed, wet-behind-the-ears kid who didn’t know which end of the gun to shoot with.
Well, that changed in a hurry, he said. Do you remember when you became Hero of the Mound?
Of course I did. I was the hero and Thompson had been the goat. He’d frozen, then fallen to the ground, unable to come to terms with the idea that he needed to stand and fight. And then I’d come in and stood over him, protecting him, killing enough aliens so that they’d eventually piled around me, almost covering the both of us. The official story had been that Thompson had slipped and was unable to stand. The real story was never discussed.
I remember.
You truly were a hero that day and despite trying not to, you end up being a hero at everything you do. That’s what I love about you.
My life is a constant exercise in two steps forward, one step back. I’m surprised I ever get anywhere.
I also love that you’re humble.
Nah, I just don’t like to talk about it.
Mason, if you care about me at all, then please don’t come and see me.
I stopped running, then stepped to the side of the road to let a few trucks pass.
Thompson, it was my decision that sealed your fate. I at least need to look you in the eye.
Don’t you get it? I have no eyes. I have no legs or arms. I’m not that bright-eyed wet-behind-the-ears kid. I’m a monster.
Don’t you think that’s a little harsh, kid?
I remember what you went through when you saw Michelle. Do you really want to go through that again? Do you really want to make me go through what Michelle went through?
But Michelle was different. She was my… then it dawned on me. There had been so many clues. Even before blowing the Hollywood Hive, Thompson had said to me, My fear of you not liking me was greater than my fear of dying. Then I’d gotten pissed at him and asked him whether he was capable of even feeling regular emotions like hatred, the desire for revenge, and love—the latter I’d asked because I wanted to be sure Michelle had felt what I’d thought she’d did. After the mind-jacking and his rescue of me by possessing the Cray, he’d asked, Mason, do you remember when you asked if I was capable of love? and I’d never responded. Finally he’d shown up as Olivares in my dream and asked me if I remembered the question I’d never answered. I hadn’t then, but it all came back to me now. My God, how long had he felt like this?
I want you to remember who I was, not who I am, he said.
Even as enraged as he’d made me, I’d never stopped loving Thompson as a fellow soldier. But only as a soldier. I closed my eyes and pictured him cowering beneath me as I fought the Cray to save both of our lives. Damned kid. A lump grew in my chest as I thought about how alone he must have felt with the impossibility of reciprocation.
Thompson, I never knew.
Of course you didn’t.
I opened my eyes and turned. I was close enough to see the building they used to house the HMIDs.
Okay then, I said.
Okay then what?
I’ll respect your wish and not come.
Thank you.
No, Thompson. Thank you for your service. You found your niche. I wasn’t always happy with how you did things, but they were always for the right reasons. You’re more of a hero than any of us. You not only sacrificed your ability to live a life like a normal person, but you also sacrificed your body.
The silence in my head lasted a good twenty seconds. Then, Thank you. Now go save yourselves and do what you do best.
Which is?
Kill. Kill them all. Kill them until there’s no more to be killed, then kill those who partnered with them. Kill, kill, and don’t stop killing until there’s not even a memory left of who they were.
I stared at the facility and flashed through our every engagement, from the first moment I laid eyes on the little drummer boy from the US Army Band until now. What a kid. What a damned good kid. I blinked away tears and then nodded. I replied with a single word, “WILCO.”
Then I moved on.
I gaze-flicked to view Olivares’s feed but was locked out. I then switched to Earl’s. They were at the front gate. Evidently Olivares had just informed the thousands who were camping outside the fence about the threat. Fists shook as curses and epithets were hurled. Someone even threw rocks, which bounced harmlessly off the EXOs. Even more were terrified, hugging each other, staring fearfully towards the sky, as if it might rain down upon them at any moment. They hadn’t been allowed into the camp because of resources. But it had soon become apparent that OMBRA couldn’t have refugees dying on its doorstep, so they were provided with just enough subsistence to keep them alive. Now even that was gone. I felt for them, but they needed to use this opportunity to save themselves.
“Hero Four, this is Hero Prime. Is Merlin with you?”
Earl turned to face the spidertank that stood behind them. The metal blister was in place giving the machine a menacing cyclopean appearance. I gaze-flicked to my squad directory and saw that his call sign had been added by the techs. I switched to a private line and asked, “How’s it working, Merlin?”
“A little claustrophobic and jittery when it moves, but otherwise it’s like being in a video game.”
An image of Thompson interposed on my memory of Merlin—blonde hair, thin features, wide goofy smile. He waved at me and I realized that this was Thompson’s way of saying goodbye. He’d put the image there. I didn’t know what to do or say, so I shook the image away.
I cleared my throat before I asked Merlin, “Do you have full visual?”
“They have me wearing something called Oculus Rift. Headset used by gamers to put them in a virtual environment. Made me dizzy at first, but I think I got the hang of it.” He paused. “Ben, are meteors really going to rain down from space?”
“It’s what we’re being told.”
“My people have very traditional beliefs, you know? They’d see this as the end times… like it was something we did wrong and deserved.”
“And is that what you think?” I asked.
He grunted, then said, “Part of me does. Can’t help it. But another part of me knows that some damned aliens came and picked a fight with us. We’ve been losing so far, and just when it seems we can take it to them, they show us how strong they really are. Meteors? Damn.”
I signed off, took one last look at the HMID facility, then spent the next ninety minutes assisting where I could. I was especially useful using my power-assisted strength to lift things into place. The first planes had already left, as had most of the trucks. It actually seemed as if everyone was going to get evacuated.
At least until the refugees attacked five trucks carrying women and children. The battle was short. Only the drivers had been armed. No one
had thought about needing guards. Then the women and children were made to disembark and the refugees began firing on each other. Five trucks wouldn’t make a dent in their numbers. Out of spite, those who couldn’t get on the trucks turned their weapons on the tires. Now everyone was stuck out by Painted Rocks and Olivares was asking me to come help.
When I got there I saw what an unmitigated disaster it was. Where once it had been possible for some to escape, now it seemed as if none could. Olivares took Coops, Stranz and Chance to disarm the troublemakers while Ohirra and I assessed. Earl, Pearl and Charlemagne stood between the two groups, trying to ensure the safety of the women and children.
The refugees numbered in the thousands. I was trying to count them when I realized that there was an easier way. I gaze-flicked my HUD and had it provide me a full target profile on my surroundings. The targets were in two distinct groups. The group on the left representing the refugees numbered four thousand eight hundred and ninety. The group on my right numbered one hundred and sixty. One hundred and sixty wives, daughters and sons of the soldiers of OMBRA. Yet among the refugees there were also children. Using my HUD targeting software to distinguish by size, it showed me one thousand three hundred and fourteen targets below five foot five. Even with a twenty five percent error rate that number was extraordinary.
Then I remembered. I asked Ohirra, “I thought we’d established that the women and children were to take the C-130s and the scientists were to take the trucks.”
“Mr. Pink countermanded.”
“Of course he did. And did he give a reason?”
“He didn’t.”
“I wish he was here to see what he caused.”
Ohirra paused, then said, “He’s right over there.”
I followed her gaze and noted a sleek red EXO racing towards us.
“Ah, so he got fitted for a suit. Isn’t that special.”
I noted that his EXO was the exact size of mine, which meant it was the newer model. I wondered what sort of modifications he had that we didn’t.
“To answer your question, Lt. Mason,” Mr. Pink said over coms, “we have to leave in thirty mikes. We have two birds waiting to take us.”
My eyes narrowed. “Wait? Thirty minutes? That’s not enough time to—”
“No, it’s not.” He waved a hand to the thousands clamoring for help. “And there’s no way we can save them. There’re just too many.”
With the trucks destroyed, it would be almost impossible to save those still awaiting evacuation on the fort. We couldn’t even get half to safety before the meteors hit. But as illogical as it seemed, I felt I had to do something. There must be a way to do it...
“What if we use our EXOs to carry flatbeds full of people? We can make good time, especially if they’re loaded with women and children. With enough of us, the weight would be negligible.”
“You don’t understand, Mason. This is it. We have to go.”
I glanced wildly at the refugees and the families of all the soldiers. We couldn’t possibly leave them.
“Listen, Mr. Pink, we have to—”
He shouted, “It cannot be!” Pink positioned his EXO in front of me so he could look into my eyes. I saw the pain in them as he said, “The moment we received word of the bombardment, I knew they were dead. When you saw me, when that asshole Reynolds was trying to co-opt my equipment, I wasn’t at my best. I just never thought this would be the ’Crealiacs next step. They’d ignored us. I’d come to feel comfortable in our position. The Cray couldn’t reach us. The vine and the spore couldn’t get to us. The ’Crealiacs seemed to have all but forgotten us. Everyone was just waiting for the other shoe to drop—the identification of the alien race they were fighting—and I never once posited that that shoe would be so damned big and devastating.”
I understood everything he said and it made perfect sense, but I couldn’t let go of the possibility. Even if we saved some. “But there must be a way.”
“We have a window of time. A brief shot at surviving so that we can link up with the Kron. Yes, we’ve been in contact with the new race. They want us to do something for them.”
Of course OMBRA had been in contact and I didn’t know it. I’d expect nothing else.
“These people have to save themselves. There’s nothing we can do.”
Mr. Pink stepped away, then announced over the command channel for all EXOs to form up on him. Hero Squad questioned the order on private coms to me, but I bid them follow the order. When everyone was formed up, I gestured to Mr. Pink for a moment. He nodded his assent.
I stepped forward, turned up my speaker volume to maximum, then addressed the crowd.
“We’re going to fight them. We’re going to kill them. We’re going to make them pay.”
As expected, my words were responded to with silence. They didn’t care about the war. All they wanted to was to survive. “You have one chance to save yourself, and that is to run. Run like you’ve never run before. Run like the devil himself is after you.” I pointed towards Barstow and put a growl into my voice. “But know this. I’d rather die a human than live a coward. You need to work together. The strong must help the weak. The big must help the small. Each human you leave behind is a stain on your soul and a mark that can’t ever be removed. Now run. All of you. Run!”
They murmured amongst themselves, looking at each other, confused, angry, terrified.
I stepped forward and shouted. “Run. Now. Go!” Then I fired my minigun into the air.
And like a herd of gazelles on the Serengeti Plain, they ran. All of them. And by God, they were helping each other. My heart grew as I saw a man I’d seen shouting angry insults at the women and children grab two kids and carry them like sacks of grain. I wasn’t sure if they were going to make it, chances were they would all die, but for that one moment, for that one precious moment in time, I was again proud of the human race.
I turned and rejoined the platoon.
“Not exactly a St. Cripsin’s Day speech,” Mr. Pink said.
“Been there. Done that. Got the T-shirt.”
Then we, too, broke into a run, all of us, moving as swiftly as the slowest EXO towards the airfield, salvation, and some yet-to-be-defined revenge.
Do you remember the good old days when we thought aliens and UFOs were something funny? My father laughed at My Favorite Martian on television. I even laughed at Robbie the Robot in Lost in Space, although he wasn’t really an alien. But Mork from Ork and Alf were. Do you think maybe this was intentional? Do you ever wonder if we really did have alien spaceships at Roswell and that we knew how terrible aliens were, but the governments of the world didn’t want to scare us so they gave us funny aliens?
Conspiracy Theory Talk Radio,
Night Stalker Monologue #1819
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
TWELVE OF US loaded onto two C-130s whose holds had been cleared to make space for the EXOs, cases of ammunition, and parachutes. There was enough room for six of us per bird, but because of the spidertank, there was only five on my bird and seven on the second bird. I climbed into the first aircraft and was joined by Stranz, Earl, Pearl, Charlemagne, and Merlin. It was a tricky thing tying down the spidertank, but we just managed. The second aircraft held Coops, Chance, Ohirra, Olivares, Mr. Pink, and two other EXOs which my directory told me were Jackson and Liebl. They both wore the same gleaming red battle suits that Pink wore, so my guess was that they were some sort of protective detail. I tried to access their internal status matrix but was locked out. Interesting.
I sought a private channel with Mr. Pink. “Where are we going?” When I didn’t receive an answer, I added, “I need to prepare my squad. To do that I need to know where we’re headed and what we’re going to do.”
“Give me a minute.”
I couldn’t help roll my eyes. I’d had the rest of the squad plug in for charging, so I did the same. I keyed into our squad channel and listened for a moment. It was a good thing I did. Evidently Charlemagne was having a meltd
own.
“I can’t believe that there was nothing we could have done to help them,” he said, his accent heavy with grief. “All those people. We have hours yet. We could’ve at least gotten some to safety, no?”
“And how would you choose?” Earl asked, his voice a dead monotone. “Would it be the children first? And then who? Would you choose the girls, or make it fifty-fifty boys and girls? What about races? Would you choose equal number of white and black and Hispanic and Asian? But if you did that, it would be discriminating against the whites because they make up more than seventy percent of the children, and by being fair, you fail to realize there’s an ethnic and numerated division among the children that must be realized.”
“Easy, kid,” Stranz said.
Charlemagne sobbed for a moment, then asked, “Are you that desensitized, Obelix?” He used the kid’s original call sign.
“I’m just being logical.”
“Doesn’t the fact that they’re going to die make you feel anything?” Charlemagne pressed.
“The world is almost dead. The population is almost gone. People die all the time. And now you want me to feel bad for those folks? I don’t even know who they are.”
“Then what are you fighting for?” Stranz asked.
“Same thing everyone else is fighting for,” Earl responded.
“Sex, drugs and rock and roll,” Pearl added.
Silence.
I’d met soldiers like Earl and Pearl before. Their disassociation was a defense mechanism to keep them from going insane. What had she said earlier? “This planet’s dead anyway. The problem is that no one has told it so it doesn’t know to roll over.” I remembered their origin story. They’d been in Park City, Utah when the invasion hit. They’d been stuck and played nothing but video games until they’d been forced to leave because they’d run out of food.
“It’s called emotional numbing,” I said, breaking the silence. “It’s a form of disassociation. It’s a protective mechanism that keeps you from going bat shit crazy, Earl.”