The location was a tiny coastal village. There were thirty buildings that I could see from my perch on the ridgeline, twenty of them were homes. The long piers told me that this might once have been a fishing community, but whatever boats had docked there were now gone. One road ran down the center of town and there was a landing pad to the west. The landing pad looked too raw, too new.
Judging from the amount of debris on the road there must have been a hell of a panic when they abandoned this place. Maybe that’s where the boats had gone. Had they been used to transport the colonists to an evacuation center?
I imagined they’d scuttled them, rather than leave anything for the damned Shardie bastards.
I watched the town until nightfall but saw no evidence that anything alive was down there. Not a stray dog or cat, not a rat, and no birds. An hour after dark, I worked my way down the slope, pausing often, alert for some sign of movement, some indication that I had been spotted.
I kept my disruptor ready. One of the things we’d learned was that the Shardies were incredibly fast. I’d only have two milliseconds or less to react—just enough time to squeeze the trigger once, but that was all it would take.
The largest building was filled with cold, rusting machines and long metal tables. Here and there were slender knives and curving hooks on long handles. Fishing village for sure, I guessed.
I worked my way down the road, passing from one building to the next as swiftly and silently as I could. On the fifth building, a home, I found her.
I shifted sight to infrared and surveyed the room. The only heat source was her small body. The only sound her slow breathing. The only light a shaft of moonlight through the shutters.
I put a hand over the girl’s mouth and shook her gently. She struggled briefly and then went limp, her eyes wide in horror when she got a glimpse of me. “Sergeant Millikan, Fifth Marine,” I said softly. I doubted anyone could overhear, but you can never be too careful where the Shardies are concerned. “I’ve come for you,” I said, which while completely true, was not necessarily accurate.
“I didn’t think anyone would come,” she said in a rush. “Especially not something like you.” She seemed to accept my assurance that I was a marine, but not quite sure that I was a someone.
I took a good look at her: skinny, scraggly hair, and filthy, all of which would be expected from what she had been through. Her black hair was cut short, her nails broken—some bitten to the quick—and crusted with God-knows-what. She had a gash on the top of her head that might be pretty bad under the crust of scabby blood. She looked to be about fifteen, maybe a year or two more or as much less—too damn young to be in this situation, not that there was any other age that would be better.
A pair of muddy tan boots that looked three sizes too large for her sat by her side. Nearby was a smelly pile of fish entrails.
She caught my glance. “I fished last night,” she said. “By hand.” And ate it raw, I guessed. That was smart. A fire would attract attention.
“How long have you been here?” I asked. “How did you get here?”
“A week, I think,” she replied. “I was a mile up the coast before, but I came here after I used that ’phone.” She must have seen my puzzled expression. “A mile is about one and a half kilometers,” she explained.
“Archaic measure,” I recalled. A lot of the colonies went back to the old measures as a signal of their departure from Earth’s ways. Well, that experiment didn’t last long, did it?
But, a week? “Where were you before that?” It had been nearly six months since the Shardies arrived.
She shrugged. “Running, hiding, keeping away from them. I just kept going until I found the ’phone—back there,” she waved a hand in the general direction of the door.
I looked. It was an old unit, leaking battery acid and showing no power light. She must have drained it in that single cry for help. I left it there. Useless.
“Are you taking me away?” she asked when I returned.
That was a good question. Staying in the village wasn’t a good idea. The Shardies methodically erased all signs of human presence before they moved on, so it was only a matter of time before they destroyed this one. It could be next week, or within an hour. Or maybe they were too busy checking the debris and dealing with the effects of the multiple strikes. “Yes,” I said.
The girl quickly gathered her few belongings—the boots, a ship’s jacket with a Fourth Fleet emblem on the shoulder, a wicked knife with a serrated back, and the blanket she had been sleeping under—before we set out.
“My name’s Tashia,” she said softly.
“Call me Sergeant,” I replied.
I led her up the slope, following the same path I had taken in just in case they would follow our heat trail. Once we were on top I intended to stay to the rocks and touch the ground only where we couldn’t avoid it. That way we’d avoid leaving obvious signs of our passage. I knew we couldn’t escape detection completely, but there was no sense in making our trail easy either.
She began to lag behind after we’d covered barely ten kilometers and slumped to the ground at fifteen. “Sarge, I can’t go any further,” she sighed. “I’m so tired.”
I dug into my side pocket and pulled out one of my G-rations. “Eat this,” I ordered. The strong military stimulants probably wouldn’t do her weakened body any good, but the nutrients in the bar would provide her with the strength to last until daybreak.
Intelligence had force-fed me every speck of information about this world they could glean out of the colonists. In the very early days of the colony there had been a small mining operation on this plateau. The vein turned out to be shallow and petered out within a year or so, but not before producing enough coal to fuel the first few settlements. After the mine was abandoned all of the miners had moved on, leaving behind only those things they could not take with them—foundations and the mine shaft. Machinery, building materials, household goods, everything that could be moved was taken away.
I found the entrance to the shaft before the sky started to gray. I took us back deep enough that I couldn’t see the stars framed in the entrance. I flopped down with my back against the wall to face the way we’d come.
Tashia sat near my side, arms hugging her stick-thin legs against her chest. “I’m glad you came, Sarge,” she said. “I was so afraid nobody would. I just used that ’phone to let somebody know I was alive.”
“You said there were others. Tell me about them.”
She shook her head. “Dad died, I guess.” She said that in such a calm voice that I figured she’d already drained emotion from the memory. “Dad and I were out camping when everyone else went away. I guess we sort of got overlooked.”
I nodded. It could happen. Emergency evacuations are messy affairs at best, chaotic at worst. Easy to suppose the missing ones were on another boat, another vehicle. A few could get lost.
“We didn’t know where to go. We couldn’t find anyone. It was like they all ran away.” She was trembling as she recalled that frightening time. “Then the things came for us.”
“Things? What did they look like?” This was good information. A first-hand description might help someone.
She shook. “I . . . I didn’t get a really good look, but they were glowing, sort of. It was night and they moved so fast. They put me in a sort of box. It was so small I couldn’t stand up in it. Dark, too.”
“Did you hear anything, sense anything—a smell, an aroma, anything at all?”
She was silent for a long while. “No. I was so cold. They took my clothes so I had goosebumps all over.”
“Anything else?” I had to get as much information from her as I could in the time remaining. “How long were you in the box?”
She frowned. “Maybe a few days ’cause I got really, really thirsty. One day I woke up, the top of the box was opened a crack. I stuck my fingers in the crack and pried it open.
“I was in a white room with a lot of icicles, only they
weren’t ice at all. More like glass, you know?”
“Was there anything else in the room—somebody moving around, a machine, anything that you’d recognize?”
She thought a moment before replying. “A couple of other boxes and those weird icicles everywhere.”
“Go on, please. What did you do then?”
“I ran. I had to get out of the scary room away from the box. I found a pile of stuff from our camp—that’s where I got some clothes—then I ran away into the woods.”
“How did you hurt your head?” Her story sounded too bizarre. Were the boxes and the room figments of her imagination, or was she telling the truth?
Her hand darted to her head. “Oh, I guess I must have cut it on one of the icicles. It stings,” she added quickly, almost as an afterthought.
“Let me see,” I said. She leaned forward. The long gash ran from just above her left temple to the top of her skull. I could see little flecks of glass in the wound. “That looks like it had to hurt.”
“I guess it did, but I must have been too scared to notice,” she said. “Anyhow, I ran and ran until I found a place to hide. After that I kept running from one spot to the next at night, so the things wouldn’t find me. Then I found the ’phone and made the call. I prayed somebody might come. Somebody.” She was quiet for a long while after that. “You, Sarge,” she added in a small voice.
“The Shardies don’t usually let humans go,” I replied. “They make them into components, use human brains to help them win this war.”
Her mouth formed a small “O” of horror. “That’s what they were going to do to me?” she cried. “Oh, my God!”
“That’s why they sent me. We had to find out how you managed to escape and hear what you could tell us about the aliens. That’s why I’m here.”
“You must be really brave,” she yawned and stretched. “I don’t think I could do something like that.” She hugged my arm. “But I’m not scared now that you’re here. I know you’ll take care of me.”
“Get some sleep,” I said. “Just pick a spot.”
She dropped the blanket next to me. “You can share,” she suggested, offering me a corner.
“I don’t need sleep,” I replied. “I rest a different way.” No sense telling her that I could shut down the remaining organic component of my brain while the autonomic parts took care of surveillance and housekeeping. Better she remained ignorant of all the terrible things the surgeons did to me after the firefight. Better that she continue to think of me as a marine and leave it at that.
I’d been going continuously through the past fifty-eight hours and needed some rest time. The diversions of the missile strike, the escaping ships, and hundreds of pieces of sabot shred gave me, at most, thirty hours more, before I expected to be found. Sleep and rest would steal many of those hours, leaving me only a narrow bit of time to complete my mission.
Tashia had fallen asleep and was snuggled against my hip with one arm thrown across my waist. I could feel her soft breath against my left arm and her gentle movements as deep sleep relaxed tired muscles. At rest she looked so innocent, so peaceful, that one could easily imagine her snuggled in her own bed, dreaming of boys and dances, of family and friends, of loved pets and fond memories. But my imagination could only take me so far before brutal, ugly reality intruded.
I heard a faint, nearly indistinguishable sound and went instantly on alert. I was at the mine’s entrance in under two seconds and tuned every sense to hyper-alertness. There! Near the horizon was a golden glow in the early dawn light. It moved right to left, possibly tracing the path I had followed to reach the village. Were they tracing me or was their track merely happenstance?
If the former they would be here in a few hours. We had to move.
Tashia groaned when I lifted her, but didn’t wake as we left the mine. Her weight was negligible, less than a full combat pack, but more awkward to carry.
“What’s happening?” she whispered after we’d gone a few kilometers. “Where are we?”
“Running,” I replied. “I think we’re being followed.”
She stifled a cry, showing more wisdom than I expected. “The things,” she said. “They’re fast.”
“So am I,” I replied. “They gave me really strong legs.”
“What happened to you?” she asked. “I know you don’t look right. Are you a freak or something?”
It was a fair question. I was hardly dating material and I doubt that my own mother would recognize me like this. She would probably disown me if she did.
“Sort of like that,” I replied. “They had to rebuild me after the. . . . After it happened. It was touch and go. I almost died, they tell me. If I hadn’t given consent I would have, but they did ask me, and that was only after they told me my options. Live and be useful like this, or die. Some choice.”
“But you chose life,” she whispered and squeezed my neck. “I’m glad.”
“They gave me metal bones,” I continued. “Augmented my muscles, increased my metabolic rate, and did some fancy stuff to my head.” I laughed. “I can see in the dark and hear a pin drop a half kilometer away. My reaction time is five times that of a normal man’s and my endurance is practically unlimited. I could go a week without food or water if I had to, a month with water alone and no diminution strength either.”
“And the downside is?” she joked. “It sounds like you’ve been turned into a superman.”
“There’s the pain, for one thing,” I replied honestly. “It’s constant. I can’t laugh anymore, nor cry for that matter. Everything seems dead to me, no nuance or gradations. It’s like not caring any more, only I do care about things, like rescuing pretty little girls and helping the war effort.”
She didn’t reply, but I got another hug.
“Where did you say you got that jacket?” I asked casually. “There were no survivors of the Fourth Fleet.”
“It was Dad’s,” she said. “I don’t know where he got it. Maybe he was a veteran or something.”
“That’s a ship’s jacket, not something anyone would wear anywhere but on board. Do you know what happened to the Fourth?”
“N-n-no,” she whispered.
“The Shardies captured the ship and took prisoners,” I explained. “We found some of them on a captured ship, wired into the controls.” Then I added. “They weren’t dead. Not then.”
“But Dad wore it all the time. He didn’t tell me about his ship or the aliens or anything. I was just cold and wanted something to wear so I wouldn’t be so scared and cold and all.” She began sobbing. “I didn’t mean to do anything bad, Sarge.”
“I know, honey. I didn’t think you knew about the jacket. That’s why I told you.” Not the only reason, I added, to myself.
I checked the time. Twenty-two probable hours left, much less if they were really trailing us. Not much time either way.
“We’ve got to signal soon,” I said. “The target’s not far from here. Think you can walk for a while?” I set her down. I wasn’t tired from carrying her slight weight, but I did want to have both hands free should anything happen.
“Give me another of those candy bars and I think I could run there.” Her laughter was like tonic to my ears. It had been so long since I’d heard a young girl laugh, so long and so far back in my past that I had forgotten how wonderful it could sound.
I fished out two bars and threw her one. “They’re a little chewy without something to wash them down, but maybe we can find some water.”
We moved with the wind, moving as quickly as Tashia could manage in her condition, burning energy fast to reach the target in the shortest amount of time. I couldn’t move as quickly as I wanted, but had to match Tashia’s comparatively slow pace. With the augments in my legs and the hyperventilation of my lungs I could outrun a cheetah if I had to.
Even with the bar’s energy boost, she could probably outrun a house cat, if it was tired and old.
“Are you going to call the fleet?” she ask
ed. “How are they going to get us without the things knowing about it?”
“Fleet has ways of landing undetected,” I lied. “Stealth, charged ice, snowflake, and owl’s wing tech for the most part. The stuff is so good, the Shardies wouldn’t even know we were here.”
Her eyes grew wide. “I never heard about all that!”
“There’s a lot you wouldn’t know,” I said, as I started the timer buried in my abdomen. I stuffed three more G-rations into my mouth to provide the energy I needed for the high-speed signal burst. The SIGINT boys high above would be waiting for anything sparkling within a hundred kilometers of the target location, just in case I didn’t make it all the way.
“We are going away, aren’t we?” she said, panic rising in her voice as she nervously scanned the area. I checked. Whatever that golden glow had been it wasn’t detectable any more.
“There was a lot of debate about sending someone down here,” I said, as the timer activated the signaling process, storing the data I had collected, along with my conclusions for the burst. “Fleet thought you might be exactly what you said—a poor little survivor who managed to sneak away from the Shardies. On the other hand, they suspected that it might have been just a false signal to lure us into a trap.”
“But it wasn’t a trap,” Tashia said. “I really did use the ’phone. I really did run away from the things.”
“There’s the matter of the jacket.” That damned, cursed, incongruous jacket that had no reason to be on this or any other planet.
“No, I told you. It was Dad’s,” she cried. “You have to believe me!”
“Then Fleet wondered if there was the possibility that you might not be human any more: That the Shardies wanted to loose a new horror on us, with a new way of using humans.”
Tashia patted herself. “No, no. I’m me! Look at me. I’m as human as you, maybe more than you. Here,” she threw open her jacket to bare herself.
So It Begins (Defending The Future) Page 26