“Captain, I would suggest a diplomatic solution. If I’m forced to aid you in a combat situation, Drake will surely die from his injuries, along with yourself,” she said plainly.
“No pressure.” I whispered, staring back at Drake fighting for his life. I turned back around, stepping out to face the line of masked soldiers. I adjusted the tint of my visor so that they could see my face plainly.
A garbled female voice erupted in Russian. I glanced over my shoulder at Xena for translation, but before I could, she spoke again.
“Or do you understand the English tongue?” she asked.
“Yes, ma’am. English,” I answered quickly. The soldiers on both sides of her were beaming down their weapon sights at me. My heart was pounding. They’d likely never seen anything like us. The first thing I thought of was fear of the unknown. They might think it’s safer to execute us than to risk it.
“Knees, get on your knees!” the woman ordered. I immediately complied. She pushed forward, training her gun on Xena. “You!” she yelled at Xena, but she kept working on Drake.
“Hey, in the armor! Do you understand English?” she yelled at Xena.
“She does. She’s not refusing your order, but she’s performing lifesaving aid to our friend. He was severely injured,” I said.
“Injured?” The woman sidestepped to get a better look at Drake. She stopped next to me. I couldn’t see her face. The gas mask had two large holes around the eyes that were tinted black. Her head bobbed around while looking toward me. She curiously tapped her gun barrel against my visor lightly.
“Who the fuck are you people?” she demanded. I could hear the slight hint of a Russian accent.
“We’re from Titan,” I said. She backed away a step.
“Where?” She leaned forward.
“The planet Saturn, it’s moon. It’s called Titan,” I replied. She paused and glanced back at her comrades and said something in Russian. She tilted her head while looking me over.
“Hmm,” she said suspiciously.
“Take a look at my suit or the ship behind me. Have you ever seen anything like it?” I yanked my thumb over my shoulder.
“Slow! Slow movements!” She stabbed her rifle at me aggressively. The gesture apparently startled her.
“My apologies,” I said, showing her my palms.
“You can you fly that?” she asked, glancing up at the XU-97.
“I’m the pilot.”
“Why are you here?” she commanded, adjusting her grip on the gun.
“We’re an assault team, we’ve come to destroy the androids, for good,” I replied. She paused. I heard a chuckle from her that slowly erupted into laughter. The rest of her group joined in, amused at my response.
“Y-you’re off to a great start.” She shook her head, pointing her gun up at our ship. She pulled out a small, black handheld device. A red light emitted from it, similar to the robot’s in the rail cart. She poked the device toward me, waving it up and down my body. “Clear. Uncontaminated.”
She took a few steps forward, scanning Xena. “Uh-h. Nothing. Hmm.” She violently shook the device, scanning her again. She glanced back at the group. “This one isn’t giving me any reading.”
“What about the injured one?” A man with a thick Russian accent asked.
She scanned Drake. Her device beeped. “Yeah. Shit. He’s infected!” she yelled, snatching her gun toward Drake, marching closer.
“Infected? Wait. Hold on,” I showed her my palms, attempting to calm her. There had to be another way.
Xena stood in front of Drake. “I can’t allow you to do that.”
“Surely his infection can be remedied?” Xena suggested. The woman stepped around her and fired at Drake, but Xena lunged at her, smacking her rifle barrel upward as the projectile struck the ceiling.
“Get out of the way, bitch!” she ordered, focused on Drake.
“Do you want to die? Get away from the infected!” she yelled as the group hurried in on us, weapons drawn.
The woman panned around and noticed the dead creature that bit Drake. “See! There it is! Got a dead one over here! That’s what bit him,” she concluded.
“What can we do to help him?” I pleaded. She nodded toward the dead monster. “He’ll be one of those in a matter of hours. He’s fucking gone. Deal with it, or die with him,” she said plainly.
“No, no,” I whispered. She jammed the rifle into Xena’s face.
“Captain, your orders?” Xena asked. I knew she could wipe out the entire squad with a single word, all I had to do was make the call. I glared down the tunnel, then at Drake. I could hear his labored breathing and see his ghostly white complexion.
“If you don’t move, all of you will die,” the woman said. Judging by their uniforms, these people were connected to something larger, more than likely the resistance effort we’d been searching for. If we attacked them and managed to survive, what were Drake’s odds of survival, assuming he didn’t take a stray bullet? Not to mention, what might happen to our chances of finding Luther? These people understood what the virus was, but they didn’t have a cure. How would we construct one in two hours?
It didn’t make sense. There was no time. The intelligent, but less appealing option became apparent. I shook my head, glancing up at the ceiling. “Forgive me.” I whispered.
“Move, Xena.” I felt my eyes gloss over. I blinked rapidly.
“Captain...will you, repeat that order?” Xena asked, shielding Drake with her body.
“Get out of her way, Xena. That’s an order.” I closed my eyes. There was silence for a few moments, then I heard Xena’s footfall on the frozen soil. I clenched my fist as another shot was fired. A jolt ran through my body as the gunshot echoed down the tunnel. I opened my eyes to see Drake’s vitals update on my visor:
COLONEL RIVEN DRAKE
CONDITION: DECEASED
I fell forward, slamming my forearms into the ground. “No!” I turned my head toward Drake. His eyes were peeled wide open, sapped from all life. The once emerald green color had already begun to fade. Only minutes ago, they were filled with resolve, wonder, and hope.
I told myself the hard truth immediately. Drake was here to save his people and knew there was risk involved. I repeated it in my head. I knew what I was doing. There was only one way to move forward.
Drake was a soldier. He volunteered. He understood this was a possibility.
But he wasn’t ready.
“Drake.” I felt sick to my stomach. Despite my attempt to rationalize his demise as part of a soldier’s duty, I hadn’t convinced myself.
“Hey. Get the fuck up.” The Russian woman ordered me. I stood up slowly. I felt my right arm jerked behind my back as she zip-tied it tightly to the other hand.
“Vlad, seen anything like them before?” the woman asked her leader as he stepped forward.
“Never,” Vlad said. His head snapped around like a bird of prey, assessing every detail. He inspected Xena. “Any bite marks on either of you two?” he pointed.
“Negative,” Xena replied.
“No,” I said.
“Are these guns mounted to your arms?” Vlad asked Xena.
“Yes, they are,” Xena replied. Vlad and his troops raised their weapons at Xena.
“Take them off then, now! Then the armor and helmet!” Vlad shouted. I held my breath. If they saw her without her armor, they’d know what she was.
An android inside a human colony was not a good look.
“Very well. The entire process will take me twenty minutes to remove,” Xena said. I felt she was exaggerating the duration to our benefit.
“How long to remove just the guns?” the woman asked.
“Less than a minute,” Xena replied.
“Do it. We don’t have time for all that other shit. Hurry it up,” the female said, facing down the tunnel.
Vlad shook his head in disapproval. “Let’s go!” he yelled.
“As you wish.” Xena stripped the guns off he
r armored forearms. They clanked against the tracks on impact. Xena allowed Vlad and another soldier to bind her hands, not that it mattered.
“What about his body?” I asked, glaring at Drake.
“Huh? You want to bury him?” Vlad chuckled.
“Yes.”
“You’re not paying attention. No time, and you’ve got other worries,” he replied.
“I see respect for the dead is a forgotten honor. He was a soldier, fighting for humanity.” I stood up straight.
Vlad closed the distance quickly, he leaned into my ear. “Humanity? Shut up! Don’t say another word. Not another word unless you are asked a question!” he yelled. I stared him down, imagining where his eyes might have been through the tinted goggles.
I gulped as he spun me around and pushed me toward the cart. “Go!” he shouted. Despite putting little effort into the shove, he was surprisingly strong, knocking me back three steps.
One of the soldiers walked over to the rail cart, yanking out a metal flatbed tucked away in the undercarriage. It extended the cart’s length about two meters. “Should be enough room for us all. Get on.” Vlad hurried. We all piled onto the cart as the engine started and we slowly began to creep away. I trained my eyes on Drake as he drifted out of view while the woman sat beside me.
A secret text message flashed on my visor. It was from Xena:
CAPTAIN, AWAITING YOUR ORDERS...
A small hologram text pad appeared on my visor, allowing me to respond covertly. I used my pupils to guide the cursor:
“Hold,” I ordered. I wanted to see where they might take us. I felt a small sense of security that Xena was with me. She was my ace in the hole. If things went sour, she could take on a small army, even without her guns. The element of surprise wouldn’t last forever, though. Eventually, she’d be forced to remove her helmet and armor.
“So, you come all the way from Titan to save us? Now, after all this time?” the woman asked.
“Yes,” I replied.
“Fascinating,” she said. Vlad whispered something to her in his native tongue that I didn’t understand.
“Captain, he’s telling her not to speak with you,” Xena translated, relaying the information through my visor’s text. After a few minutes of riding on the cart, I could see a large spotlight beaming at us. A figure paced back and forth in front of it in silhouette.
“What was all the commotion?!” he shouted, cupping his hands around his mouth.
“UFO crash! Landed from Titan!” the woman beside me joked.
“What is Titan?” He furrowed his eyebrows and dropped his mouth. I’m sure both Xena and I stuck out like a sore thumb. As we approached, I noticed a massive minigun beside the spotlight on the far left. The barrel was poking through a hole on an otherwise solid metallic gate.
The gun barrel was about three meters long and about the diameter of a basketball. It reminded me of something that would fit on a tank or a large ground vehicle. I heard a hydraulic lift motor start as the gate begin to open right to left.
Within a few meters of the guard, the woman leaned toward him as we passed. “Heads up. I’ve got a maintenance and cleanup crew headed through to burn bodies and recover debris from our railcar drone. The bot had an alien encounter.” She nodded toward me.
We passed through the gate as several of the soldiers on the rail car waved at the gate guard casually. He didn’t wave back, staring at Xena and I with his mouth open.
The woman pulled off her mask. Her black, coarse hair fell in front of her face. She pushed it out of her view and behind her ears. “I’m Neona,” she said calmly. Her voice sounded much softer than before.
“Victoria,” I replied. I glanced at her through my peripheral. She was younger than I imagined, maybe early twenties, even late teens. She was beautiful. She had soft pale skin and her eyes were unusually large and sky blue, revealing a stone-cold calculative thinker past her years. There was a certain danger beyond her beauty and youth I imagined, like a freshly-sprouted Aconitum plant. She was vibrant, alluring, but deadly poisonous.
“Tough break with your friend. Sorry I had to do it,” she said softly. I felt my left hand shaking as I fought back a sniffle. I wanted to punch her in the teeth and put my arm around her at the same time. She was only doing her job, but Drake, he was my friend.
And I didn’t have many of those.
“I really am. I’m not just saying that. Every human that dies is a huge loss,” she added.
“Thanks,” I replied.
“The truth is, there isn’t another way to deal with it. He was infected by what we call the Mave. And burying them? That is a no-no.”
“Why?”
She narrowed her eyes at me. “You can shoot them in the head and slow the process, but they come back unless you burn or decapitate them. I’ve killed people I’ve cared about, so believe me when I say I have an understanding of this. I’ve been in your shoes.” She peered into the distance, flexing her jaw muscles. “Many times.”
“The androids have evolved their tactics, using viral infections,” Xena spoke up.
Neona shook her head. “You Titans don’t know shit, do you? The Mave is not the androids’ doing. It was created by humans. A rival faction that believes the androids are our saviors. They created this reconstructive nanobot virus.”
“What?” My eyes widened. One of the soldiers beside me began to snicker.
“You’ll find out soon enough. But understand, the old ones you’re here to destroy, they’re not the immediate threat to human survival. The Mave is. It blows my mind you know nothing about this. You’ve come all the way out here, spent all these resources to fight an enemy that hasn’t bothered us in decades?” Neona snapped toward me. With every word she spoke, I got the feeling we had less bargaining power.
“I don’t think there has been any communication between Titan and Earth,” I replied.
“Indeed. We were cautious to communicate with any resistance efforts in fear the messages might be intercepted and your location discovered,” Xena added.
“So, you just show up. Now?” She shrugged.
“Yes. I know, but now we—”
“None of this adds up. We respond to an explosion, then upon arrival we have a jet and debris blocking our tunnel transportation. That’s our survival. Our lifeline. Then, we see three people claiming to be from a moon we’ve heard nothing out of in decades. One of which, is infected. To top it off, your ship crashed. So, are you here to help us or make matters worse?” she posed.
I nodded in agreement. “It sounds crazy, I know.”
“We’re taking you somewhere so that a decision can be made about your claims, so sit tight,” she said.
“How much further?” I asked, glancing at Luther’s cryotube indicator on my visor. It was offset to my east. The cryotube range finder seemed to be glitching out. I noticed it bouncing from back and forth from four-hundred to eighty-five meters. That can’t be right. At least we were moving toward it.
She turned and narrowed her eyes at me. “I said, sit tight. We’re close.”
The railcar began to slow. Up ahead, I could see an indentation in the ice tunnel, like a subway stop. A group of people were huddled together in shadow waiting at a wooden dock that bordered the track. They were staring intently at us as we approached. The group of about thirty ranged from children to middle-aged, mostly females. They were wearing large fur clothes from head to toe that only revealed faces smeared with dirt and worry. Several of them began to do a headcount of our rail cart.
“Plus two!” someone yelled.
“Vlad!” A young woman screamed to the top of her lungs echoing down the tunnel. She ran over to the edge of the dock with her hands over her mouth. The no nonsense soldier stood up proud and removed his mask, making eye contact with her.
Vlad had stiff, dark brown pointy hair, with a military style high and tight. He looked about thirty and wasn’t particularly handsome. He had odd-looking, elf-like features. His ears were l
arge and almost pointy, and his nose was narrow and sharp, hooking downward. There was a high level of confidence and intelligence that emitted from his demeanor. His deep set brown eyes gave off an intense aura that was fortified behind his high cheekbones.
Vlad pulled off his gloves as we approached. I noticed his left forearm and hand were robotic. The lines and shape resembled that of an actual human skeleton hand, instead of a mechanical variation, and was black in color.
He edged close to the dock as the railcar came to a halt, but just before it did, he glared over at me. He gave me a scrutinizing gaze, looking me up and down while squinting. I stared back at him for four or five seconds, unwavering. He eventually glanced away, looking at the ground for a moment. In the brief deadlock, I got the sense he was hopeful we had something to offer despite his suspicions.
“Vlad!” the woman yelled. He shifted toward her. I felt a tug under my arm as I locked eyes with him. “Up.” Neona said, following Vlad with her eyes.
Neona guided me over toward the dock with Xena and another guard in tow. The remainder of soldiers rushed ahead, embracing their loved ones into their arms.
We proceeded past the small reunion. Some of the people took notice of us. Their eyes flashed briefly as they struggled to make sense of us, quickly turning their attention back to their loved ones.
One little girl away from the group wasn’t celebrating. She was no older than ten, peering down the tunnel. Her face was filled with sadness. I paused, imagining that one of her parents hadn’t returned from a previous mission. Neona noticed me staring at her. “Come.”
We pushed through a hole in the ice about two meters tall. It was a tunnel with a wooden path. On the curved white wall there were chalk drawings of people. Some of the art was better than others. Each portrait had a name above the art with a ‘last scene’ date beneath it. They were written Russian and English. A drawn box framed each art piece, separating them from the others.
“They almost never come back, not like they left anyway,” Neona mumbled. As we stepped down the tunnel for several minutes, I noticed the concentration of the missing persons’ artwork remained consistently bunched together. The further we proceeded, I observed many of the portraits had begun to fade. I wondered if their loved ones’ hope had dwindled along with it? Maybe reality was better to accept sooner than later in such grim circumstances.
The Legion and the Lioness Page 22