Battle of Earth

by Chloe Garner

  Dinner made him think of lunch.

  Olivia.

  A car slid forward along the curb and stopped, and she rolled down her window.

  “Bridgette told me that you’d be here,” she said as Troy came out into the wet. When had it started raining?

  “You are a sight for sore eyes,” he said. She licked her lips, smothering a smile.

  “That bad?”

  “Worse than I can even tell you,” he said.

  “Let me buy you dinner and you can tell me about it,” she said.

  He winced, just crushing under everything and more susceptible to grief, loss, pain.

  “You’re sure?” he asked.

  She nodded.

  “Yeah. I’m sure.”

  He sighed, unexpectedly relieved, jogging down the steps toward her car.

  “She’s making me get a driver,” he said as he went around to the passenger side and got in.

  “Thought they put you in charge,” Olivia said and he shook his head.

  “Yeah, that’s what they told me, too,” he answered, unable to contain the grin as he looked over at her. He wasn’t supposed to be happy. Wasn’t supposed to be energized, just seeing her.

  He was tired, and he was grim, but he just felt light.

  “You’re going to do it?” she asked, not looking at him. It was almost coy. Was it coy?

  “She’s not giving me any alternative,” he said. “I get the feeling she’ll just lock me in my office until I come around, if I try to fight with her.”

  “Conrad says she’s awesome,” she said, her voice playful with the word awesome. Conrad had said a lot more than that.

  “I miss the lab,” Troy answered, more honesty there than he’d intended. She nodded.

  “The lab misses you,” she agreed, glancing at him.

  She was wearing lipstick. Dark red. She had this light complexion that made dark lipstick work, but it wasn’t the color she wore at work.

  What color did she wear at work?

  He’d known that, once, but it had been a long time ago.

  Just gloss, he thought.

  Just gloss.

  “You look nice,” he said. She shook her head.

  “Don’t do that,” she said.

  “Do what?”

  “The Troy Rutger charm,” she said. “I fell for it once. I’m not falling for it again.”

  He grinned, looking out the windshield as the wipers went past, streaking streetlights orange across the glass.

  “Are you kidding? You were the only one who never did fall for it.”

  “Then what did I fall for?” she asked, her voice deep. Introspective? Or an invitation?

  He looked at her, but she was face-forward.

  Coy.

  It had to be coy.

  “Where do you want to go?” she asked.

  “What time is it?” he answered.

  “Almost nine,” she said, and he winced. The day was just gone. Used to be, nine wasn’t that late. He’d have gone out dancing at ten or eleven, headed in to work at ten, worked until eight and done it all over again.

  He just wanted to go home.

  Fry a big cut of meat in a pan and eat it and fall into bed asleep.

  But she wouldn’t go home with him.

  She wouldn’t and he knew it. She never had, for one, but for two, he deserved it. He didn’t deserve her to roll up to a curb on a rainy night after one of the worst days of his life, much less go home with him and sit cozy on a couch, close, just him and just her.

  “Cal’s?” he asked.

  “Okay,” she said. OSI had cleared opening the gate again; people were coming and going, if much, much slower as armed security officers checked everyone in each vehicle. They put a flashlight to the passenger window and stepped back, saluting. Troy returned it, then put his head back against the headrest as he left the base for the first time in two days.

  “Feels like a month,” he said.

  “What?” Olivia asked.

  “Since I’ve been home.”

  “Oh,” she said.

  “You want to talk about what happened?” he asked, feeling tired again.

  “You’re going to have to be more specific than that,” she said.

  “On the other side of the jump,” he said.

  “Ah.”

  “Cassie with her magic marble and a house full of foreign terrestrials.”

  “And Jesse and Cassie,” Olivia said. “Didn’t see that one coming.”

  “Didn’t you?” Troy asked. “He told me that he was in love with her.”

  “Was this before or after you slept with her?” Olivia asked.

  Troy swallowed.

  He’d opened the door.

  He could hardly expect her to start anywhere else.

  “I don’t know if he knew, or not,” Troy said. “He knows everything else, but he didn’t know she was back until Chicago, I don’t think… I don’t know.”

  He felt her looking at him, and he rolled his head to the side. She checked the stoplight then looked at him again.

  “She said I’m in love with you,” she said. He nodded.

  “I heard it.”

  “I’m not,” she said.

  He closed his eyes and let his head rest center again.

  “Okay.”

  “I mean it, Troy,” she said.

  “I believe you,” he said. “I really, truly do. And if you just want to try being friends or something… I understand. And I appreciate a friend, right now.”

  She snorted, exasperated.

  “What?” he asked, looking at her again.

  “That’s it?” she asked. “She says I’m in love with you, I say I’m not, and you’re just going to be fine with being friends?”

  He frowned.

  “I’m confused,” he said. “Isn’t that what you just said?”

  “Did it really mean that little to you, did I really mean that little to you, that you’d just let it go like that? After what she said?”

  “You said…” Troy said, sitting up again and looking at her, bewildered. The light changed and she glared out at the road as she rolled forward again.

  “Hold the phone,” he said. “I’ve been trying to get you to talk to me for months, and you slap me when you see me going by, and she tells you that you’re in love with me, and… but you’re not, you tell me, and… What do you expect me to do, Olivia?”

  “Fight for it, if it matters,” she said.

  He found himself just breathing.

  It was too much.

  It was just all too much.

  The euphoria, silly, giddy, chemical euphoria at just seeing her, and then…

  “I love you,” he said. “I said it before, I meant it before. Nothing has changed for me since. I still love you. But I screwed up.”

  “Apparently you didn’t,” she said, her voice bitter.

  “I didn’t say that,” he said. “I screwed up.”

  “She said it wasn’t your fault. That she made you.”

  What the hell was he supposed to do with that?

  Which gun would he like to shoot himself with?

  The one where he said that the woman he’d cheated on with was right and he hadn’t done anything wrong? Or the one where he said she was wrong and he’d cheated on purpose?

  He put his hand across his forehead, drawing a slow breath.

  “I’ve been in love with her since we were teenagers,” he said. “And I think that she loved me, too, but… It’s Cassie and it’s the portal program, and…” He shook his head, not looking at Olivia. “The first time was before you. Before you ever said anything. And I don’t think it ever meant anything to her. The second time, I was with you, and I don’t care what she says about it, it shouldn’t have happened.”

  “No,” she said. “It shouldn’t have.”

  He was half a second away from asking if she just wanted to drop him off at his apartment when she spoke again.

  “But I believe her.�
��

  He looked over.

  Hesitated.

  “Look, not to look a gift horse in the mouth, but… I was there. I knew what was going on.”

  She glanced at him.

  “Why didn’t you tell me, when it happened?” she asked. “Why did you wait so long?”

  He thought about it. Remembered the fog that had lasted… he didn’t even know how long it had lasted.

  “Sonofa…” he said. She nodded.

  “Angry as I was,” she said. “Angry as I was that you cheated, the part that…” she swallowed, “I never understood was how you could keep it from me. All that time, I thought we were happy, and then… And then it was all a lie. But it wasn’t.”

  He blinked.

  “She really did keep me from telling you,” he said. “Why?”

  Olivia shook her head.

  “I don’t know. But everything that happened after that… Chicago and Minan Gartal and Kable Telk… She knew, and she kept you from telling me. I believe her, that she… did something. Kept you from realizing what you were doing.”

  “I forgot you,” Troy said, the words out of his mouth before he realized they were true. Her grip on the steering wheel tightened, then she moved her hands, fingers delicately hanging from the spokes of the wheel.

  “You need to remember that she’s capable of that,” she said. “That both of them are. They’re dangerous.”

  “They’re dangerous, but they’re on our side,” Troy said.

  “Are you sure?” Olivia asked. “All the time?”

  If not for everything about the previous conversation, Troy would have sworn Cassie would never betray him.

  Ever.

  She looked over, giving him half a smile.

  “You said you don’t love me,” Troy said.

  Safer ground than thinking about Cassie like that, even if it did kind of pick a fight.

  “I don’t,” she said.

  “But you want me to fight for you,” he said. “Not take no for an answer?”

  She looked forward again.

  “I shouldn’t have to tell you to,” she said. “You should do it because you want to.”

  “Did you?” he asked.

  She looked over.

  “You’re the one who cheated,” she said derisively.

  “And now if maybe I didn’t?” he asked. “If it mattered that much?”

  She looked forward, pulling into the parking lot at Cal’s. She parked and stopped the car, undoing her seatbelt and turning to face him.

  “What happened, that time that you were gone?” she asked. “The one.”

  He nodded.

  He’d never known the planet’s name. It wasn’t the kind of place that worried about that kind of thing.

  “We both forgot everything,” he said. “Didn’t know who we were or how we got there.”

  Her face shifted, surprise.

  “What happened?”

  He didn’t want to tell her.

  Not everything.

  For one, because it was just going to make her angry again, but also because, right now, that story was just his and Cassie’s. Jesse had probably guessed the highlights, but the story was just this perfect bubble, existing outside of himself and his reality.

  “We made a life,” he said. “The two of us.”

  “You were together?” she asked.

  Oh, that was going to be a mistake. He knew it, and he said it anyway.

  “She was my wife.”

  Truth.

  Ragged, unforgiving truth.

  And it hurt.

  He could see how it hurt her, that he struggled so much at the idea of even having a single, committed girlfriend, and then he’d run off with Cassie and been able to take her as his wife that easily.

  “I learned a lot about myself,” he said.

  “Did you?” she asked. Jagged. Angry.

  He nodded.

  “I did. I learned that I could want that. If I were someone else.”

  “If you were someone else,” she said, eyebrows up, face twisting away as she tried to keep the collapse from showing.

  “I’m not the same person I was when… Before. Before you and I…”

  “Right,” she said after the silence stretched on a bit too long. He clenched his jaw, trying to keep it together. Stay on point.

  “I’m not who I was back then,” he said. “And now I know that that person is possible.”

  Her eyes came to him quickly, though her face remained away.

  “What are you saying?” she asked.

  “I don’t know what’s going to happen,” he said. “Hell, O, I just had the worst day of my entire life, sincerely. I just want to sit and eat dinner and be with someone who makes me feel like the world might not all fall apart, after all. But I want that to be you. And if you’re going to give me a sign that if I fight for it, it’s still out there?” He shrugged. “I want that.”

  “Cassie called me O,” she said. “You shouldn’t do that.”

  He closed his eyes, the weight of the day just descending again.

  “I’m sorry.”

  “Sometimes people call me Liv,” she said.

  “You like Liv?” he asked. The corner of her mouth came up and she brushed her hair back behind her ear.

  “I like Olivia,” she said. “But… Liv is okay.”

  He nodded.

  “Okay. Can we go in and eat? And maybe… just be okay, for a little bit?”

  She nodded, taking a bracing breath and reaching into the back seat for her purse.

  “Right,” she said. “You’re going to tell me about everything non-classified that happened today, and I am going to sit and listen until you don’t have anything else to say.”

  He laughed.

  “Then you’re going to have to carry the conversation,” he said. She opened her door and looked back.

  “You’ll figure it out,” she said, then grinned, sympathy, relief, a real friend. He leaned his head back against the head rest once more, then rubbed his hands through his hair and opened his door.

  *********

  It took a hard study of the planet. Its topography wasn’t particularly well-documented, so they had to make up a theory of plate tectonics to fill in some of the blanks, but they did eventually get a model that they both agreed was close enough. After that, it was a marvel to watch Cassie work. She had such training, with her role with the human military, and it was astonishing to Jesse just how much of that skill she brought to bear with her Palta capability. Precision and attention to detail with a clear, focused objective in front of her. It was like watching a battering ram go through loose soil. Nothing stood in her way and nothing distracted her from what she was trying to accomplish.

  And then it was done.

  She just needed him to fill in the tools.

  Global manipulation was hit-or-miss, in the best of cases, and to be doing it with sketchy models that they’d had to invent all on their own? Jesse sat back from her work and shook his head, surprised most that he was certain it was going to work.

  She sat on the bed, arms pressed against her chest, shivering, perhaps one of the most effective geniuses he’d ever met.

  “You’re killing each other,” he said.

  “One step at a time,” she answered.

  “I’m not going to let it happen,” he said. “She’s getting weaker, and I have a plan.”

  “Don’t you dare,” she warned, her voice intended to be threatening, but the imminent onset of siren control making her warning more of a whisper.

  “Cassie,” he said evenly. “She’s endangered, but you’re one of two. I’m not letting her kill you.”

  “She’s not going to kill me,” Cassie said. “I’m going to save her.”

  “She’s got nowhere to go,” Jesse said. “She’s realized the concept of self-identity. I don’t know that she could even go back, if I got her out into water.”

  “Let me fix it,” Cassie said, her lips beginning
to blue.

  “Stop fighting her,” Jesse answered. “Let her through. And let me worry about her.”

  “I mean it, Palta,” she whispered, shuddering once more, then laying still.

  He went to the design once more, checking over it as the siren gained awareness. He looked back at her.

  She was watching him. Her eyes had never been that direct, before.

  “Have you figured out what you’re going to do about my people?” she asked.

  “You have that little time left, do you?” he answered.

  “We fail,” she said, her voice a breath, but her eyes still focused.

  “No one’s going to like it,” he said. “Cassie got that right. I’m going to prioritize you, the sirens, over every other potentially living creature on that entire planet, and I’m going to do it because of how you made me feel, as a child. You can call that whatever you want, but that’s what I’m about to do.”

  Cassie’s head dropped.

  “We fail.”

  He went to stand next to her.

  “I have equipment to arrange, and I get the feeling you aren’t going to make it for many more point-to-point transfers. She was right about those, too, wasn’t she? They’re tearing you up.”

  “There is no water in between,” the creature said, looking up at him with haggard eyes. He nodded.

  “Don’t let her die, just because you don’t know how to hold on,” he said. “When the time comes, let go.”

  “There is no water,” she said, and he nodded.

  “You won’t ever be what you were again,” he said.

  “I… came to save the rest,” she said.

  “I guessed that. I can put you in the shower, if you want, to keep you wet, but I won’t put you in the tub because it is possible to drown a Palta, if they don’t know what they’re doing.”

  Her eyes roved.

  “We always go home,” she said.

  He shook his head.

  “I’m not going to leave a home for you to go to. We’ll show you a new place, if you want it, but there won’t be a home anymore.”

  He helped her up off of the bed and in to the shower, turning it on cold enough to comfort the siren but not cold enough to cause any more metabolic damage to the Palta body she was in, then he got to work.

  He didn’t ask the resort for the things he needed, because that was just petty. And because he hoped he would never again need to destroy a planet. It was terrible work, but the mining and terraforming companies sold everything he needed, secondhand. He liked secondhand equipment, sometimes. Already had all of the bugs worked out.