by Easton Royce
BOOM! Nathan barely saw the blast as the rocket zoomed past him. It clipped Shane's suit and threw her to the ground. Nathan watched in horror as she squirmed in the red dust.
But she hadn't been hit! The blast only blew her air regulator. Nathan could see the tube swinging free—pumping her oxygen into the thin, deadly Martian atmosphere. With the air sucked from her suit and lungs, it would only take seconds for her to die.
Dodging the bright yellow blasts crisscrossing before him, Nathan raced to her. Locking out his own life support, he freed his oxygen tube. He jammed it into the hole in Shane's helmet. Then, connected like Siamese twins, he hobbled with her behind a rock, praying that the Alien didn't have a clear shot at them. Otherwise, they'd both be dead.
Twenty yards away, Cooper was still in the best position for the battle. No matter where the thing tried to hide, Cooper found it in his digital gun sights and opened fire. Every bullet ricocheted off the creature's armor, but it was still affected by the blasts.
BANG! BANG! One shot threw the creature's shoulder back, another made it stumble. Now it was moving slower, almost hobbling. Cooper had weakened it! Finally, it stumbled behind a boulder where Cooper couldn't get a bead on it.
In the clear, Cooper hurried down to where Nathan and Damphousse huddled over Shane, frantically working on her suit. He'd seen her get hit and suspected the worst.
"She's dead, isn't she?" he heard himself say.
For an instant there was only static in reply. Then he heard her through his earpiece, loud and clear. "No such luck, Hawkes."
When Damphousse and Nathan stepped back, he could see the jury-rigged repairs to her regulator.
He wanted to say, Glad you're okay, or something like that. But he held back.
The Alien had stopped firing.
Nathan was the first to straighten up and take stock of their position. He took a good look at his targeting computer, found the creature's life signs, and took off after it, solo.
"West!" shouted Shane. "Get back here!"
But Nathan wasn't about to stop and argue.
With the platoon trying to catch up with him, Nathan tracked the Alien's unnatural life signs.
A single blast from extremely close range shook the boulder behind him. Nathan quickly took cover, then aimed at the thing, now just a few meters away. As the Alien began to raise its weapon, pointed right at Nathan, the others came around both sides of the rock, their M-190s trained on it.
To everyone's surprise, the Alien put its weapon down and simply crouched there on misshapen knees.
"I think it's trying to surrender," said Wang.
One by one they all lowered their weapons. Everyone, that is, but Nathan.
At this close range, Nathan wanted to just open fire on the creature, blasting it again and again and again. He knew he wouldn't be satisfied until its stinking hide was dead—as dead as the first one they had come across. It took all of his willpower to lower his weapon, but he did.
Back in the shadow of the ruined Alien craft, Damphousse knelt beside a single human body stretched out on its back.
In the dim light, it was hard to tell if the body was covered in blood, or in red Martian sand. But Cooper knew whose body it had to be.
Damphousse looked up sadly at her comrades. "Pags is dead."
Cooper found himself kneeling over Pags, staring into the blackened wound in his friend's chest, too angry to scream.
chapter 9
There was no lack of volunteers willing to guard the creature once they got back to the transport. In fact, more than half of their platoon kept their weapons raised, as if the thing might, at any moment, leap out of the corner and chew through all of them.
In the pressurized transport, with their helmets off, they found the creature's stench almost unbearable. They must have put a hole in its armor somewhere.
"It smells sulfuric," suggested Shane. The rotten-egg smell had them all breathing through their mouths.
"It must be a scout," mused Damphousse. "It was probably headed to Earth but didn't make it."
"I'll bet it sent a distress call," added Wang.
Shane agreed. "There'll definitely be more coming."
Cooper ventured closer to the Alien. They had tightly tied its talon hands together with heavy synth-rope. Now those angry-looking claws trembled. Perhaps from the temperature. Perhaps from fear.
Cooper put down his rifle weapon and raised his hands as he approached the creature, so it knew he wasn't going to hurt it—at least not then.
"Don't!" shouted Shane. "What if it carries some disease..."
"Vansen, you sound like the mother I never had," Cooper said as he continued his advance.
He took a good, close look at the thing. "That's a pretty thick armored flight suit. "
"Or one heck of an exoskeleton," suggested Wang.
The truth was, they knew so little about it, they couldn't tell what was flesh and what was clothing. Cooper saw something metallic clipped on to the strange finlike ridge in its chest.
He reached tentatively and pulled it off. The creature tried to lurch forward against its bonds, wailing in a hollow screech that echoed in the metal chamber.
"Maybe it's a key," offered Damphousse, looking at the thin metal bar, "or some sort of encoded information."
Cooper held it out in front of the creature. "What is this?" he demanded.
The creature struggled against its binds. Trying to remain cool, Cooper grabbed his handgun. As far as he was concerned, diplomacy was always best backed up with a gun to the head.
He jammed the gun against the side of the creature's helmet, right between two joints where a bullet was sure to get through.
" What is it?" Cooper demanded again.
The creature slowly turned and nodded toward Nathan.
"What?" asked Cooper, surprised. "What about him?" Maneuvering with the rope tying its hands, it aimed a long finger at the phototag hanging around Nathan's neck. Cooper looked at the small Alien device in his hand, then at the phototag.
"You mean... this... is that?"
The creature nodded, slowly.
"It nodded," Shane commented. "It knows some of our gestures."
"It knows about us," remarked Damphousse, "but we know nothing about it."
Wang took a look at the Alien device. "So it must be a picture of its family or something."
They all turned to the creature and tried to imagine this thing having a family. As monstrous as it was, and no matter what it had done to Pags, they couldn't help but begin to feel a touch of compassion for it.
Except Nathan. When he looked at it, all he could see was its blaster aimed at Kylen's head. Could it have been involved in the attack on Tellus? he wondered. Could it be pointing at his phototag because it recognized Kylen's face? No, he had no sympathy for this monster.
Shane took the Alien's photocell from Cooper and put it into the creature's bound claws. Its talons clutched it tightly.
"Maybe we ought to give it some water," Wang suggested.
Damphousse grabbed her canteen. "Right. That's probably one of the only things we have in common."
This was more than Nathan could stand. "What is wrong with all of you?" he shouted. "We're low on rations! And you're gonna waste water on that... that thing? No way!"
Nathan raised his M-190, pointing at the Alien's bead. The creature lurched against its ties, this time backward instead of forward, clearly terrified.
"This thing killed Pags!" Nathan screamed, as he tightened his finger on the trigger. "Who knows how many others it's killed."
Nathan knew that at this close range, he'd be able to blast the creature's head wide open, no matter how strong its body armor. But as much as he wanted to, he couldn't make himself pull the trigger. He didn't know why.
Unable to stand the smell in his nostrils or the fire in his head a moment longer, Nathan grabbed his helmet and stormed out the airlock.
When he was gone, Damphousse raised her canteen ag
ain. "Well, I'm giving it some water," she announced. "Any other objections?"
There was a brief silence.
"Go ahead," said Shane.
"Let's show it what it means to be human."
As Damphousse approached, the Alien turned to her, looking over the canteen curiously. Then it cocked its head. Beneath the armor was soft gray flesh, broken by three slits, like gills.
"That must be its mouth," said Wang, trying to hide his disgust.
It tilted its head further, leaning toward Damphousse and the nozzle of the canteen. She inserted the nozzle into one of the gills.
Slurp. Slurp. Damphousse could feel the weight of the canteen lighten as the thing sucked it dry in a matter of seconds.
The Alien sat still for a moment. Suddenly, it began to shake and lurch violently from side to side. Damphousse jumped back, unsure of what was happening. Cooper raised his weapon again. They all stared in horror as thick, green bile exploded from the creature's mouth. A phosphorescent slimy ooze, thick and putrid, poured down its black armor and onto the cabin floor.
The creature lurched just one more time. Its pained wails faded to a weak gurgle as its head fell forward and its hands went limp. The Marines stood silently staring at it, realizing that the only thing that these Aliens and humans had in common was death.
They dragged its body out and laid it next to Pags, whom they had carried all the way back from the crash site.
"Did we kill it?" Damphousse asked, "or did it kill itself?"
It was Walker, the youngest now that Pags was dead, who said, "I've never even seen a dead body before today."
"Don't worry," offered Cooper with his usual cynicism. "It won't be the last."
Nathan leaned down to examine the Alien one last time. He had wanted to kill it, but now its death held no satisfaction for him. Its claws still clutched the Alien card, he noticed. Nathan could see no picture in it, just a black square. But then, maybe the creature didn't see in white light. The picture could very well be an infrared or ultraviolet image. Whatever it was, it belonged to the creature. Nathan pulled the picture from the dead Alien's claws and secured it back onto the creature's chest.
Around them the carbon-dioxide wind howled like the voices of the dead, both human and Alien.
chapter 10
Arlington National Cemetery hadn't changed much in two hundred years. Somehow, there was always more room for the honored dead.
Dressed in their full military dress uniforms, the Marine unit now known as the 58th Space Cavalry Squadron stood at attention at Mike Pagodin's funeral.
Cooper stood there, feeling the tight collar chafe the gestation navel on the back of his neck. He wanted to say something to Pags's parents. But no words were good enough.
Nathan and Shane rose to fold the flag that was draped over Pags's coffin. They handed the flag to Pags's mother with a solemn, respectful nod.
They all felt responsible for Pags's death. Cooper because he should have been watching better. Shane because she was the one who'd led them to the Alien's ship. And Nathan because he was the one nearest to Pags when the deadly blast came.
Pags wasn't the first one to die in this war, but he was the first of the dead to come home. And in a war where the future seemed so bleak, each of the Marines wondered how they could go on without Pags's enthusiasm and boundless optimism.
As the coffin was gently lowered into the ground, a row of seven Marines fired off a twenty-one-gun salute into the glorious Earth sunset—a sunset that few of them might ever see again.
The war was real. Pags's death brought home to overy one of the new recruits that they weren't recruits anymore. They were full-fledged Marines, pilots who were about to launch themselves into an interstellar battle more violent and deadly than any Earth war had ever been.
Nathan, Shane, Cooper, Damphousse, Wang, and the rest of the Squadron stood in one of the immense hangars on Loxley Base. There was no more training to go through, no more drills to endure. Nothing was before them now but war.
"Today you have been assigned your SA-43 Endo/Exo-Atmospheric Attack Jets."
Sergeant Major Bougus's voice was commanding and firm but somehow not as powerful as it had been before. He seemed tired, weakened in some way. Like the Marine Corps itself. The rumor was that every Squadron sent out to battle had suffered major casualties. It was enough to make the hardiest of Marines begin to lose heart.
"Your current orders are to take forty-eight-hours' leave," Bougus proclaimed.
The order surprised them all.
"Sir, ship us out, sir!" Nathan shouted. Even as he stood there in the hangar, Nathan already felt he had left the Earth behind. His place was out there. If he couldn't be with Kylen, then at least he would die fighting the creatures who had murdered her.
"Sir," Shane asked, "why have we been on accelerated training if we're not going to be used, sir?"
Bougus strode forward as if he were about to get into Shane's face and ask her to drop and give him fifty. But instead he stopped short and hesitated. His eyes swept across each of them.
"Other than what you found on Mars, we have no idea what lies ahead," Bougus confessed to them. "We know basically nothing about the enemy—numbers, weapons, tactics." As he spoke, they could see the anger in him, the frustration rising in his voice. "That is why we have been losing—and losing badly—in every battle of this war."
He made eye contact with Nathan and then with Shane.
"Don't be in such a hurry," he advised them.
The meaning of his words cut clear to the bone.
"Go see your families. It could be for the last time."
The seasoned Marine eyed them, masking any emotions he might have had, then gave them a crisp salute.
They all returned the salute in perfect unity, just as Bougus had trained them to do—as a team.
Bougus dismissed them, and the two lines of Marines fell out of formation, back to being just individuals with only two days to make peace with the life they had led on Earth.
All the others had places to go. Cooper Hawkes had no family and no home to speak of. When the other members of his unit had dispersed, Cooper wandered around the hangar. The SA-43 Attack Jets around him were sleek and fast, aerodynamically designed for atmospheric battle, yet fitted with dozens of delicate thrusters to give them perfect maneuverability in deep space. The angle of their wings cut forward, and at the nose smaller wings jutted out, filled with micro-thrusters that helped give the pilot the sensation of aerodynamic flight even without the luxury of an atmosphere. The jet's flat wide nose made it look just like a hammerhead shark. They were aptly nicknamed "Hammerheads."
Cooper approached one of the Hammerheads, one with the insignia of the Angry Angels painted on its nose. McQueen knelt on the wing, leaning into the cockpit, preparing his fighter for battle. Cooper tried to imagine himself in a plane, tearing across empty space toward certain death. He tried to imagine himself taking his own Hammerhead into battle against a thousand enemy ships like the one he saw on Mars. His imagination couldn't take him that far.
Sure, he had been through hundreds of simulations. And although the simulators were reported to be identical to flying the real thing, there was one key element missing. You didn't die when your simulator blew up.
"I'll never get in one of those," Cooper announced to McQueen.
McQueen didn't turn to him.
"Ten of us Tanks were with the Tellus colony," McQueen said.
Cooper nodded. McQueen confirmed something he'd suspected all along. The man was far too cold, too distant, to be anything but a Tank. He wondered how many years McQueen had spent scraping through life and scavenging in dark alleys before winding up here, one of the most respected pilots in the Corps.
Cooper tried to imagine himself respected. He couldn't picture that either, so he thought of the Tanks who died at Tellus.
Then he thought of all the flesh-born humans who had taunted him and beat him all his life. Finally he thought of his
new comrades, who still didn't entirely trust him.
"I'm not going to die for them," Cooper said out loud.
McQueen turned to him.
"Then what would you die for?" he asked.
Cooper looked away. A wave of anger laced with sadness wove its way through him. He didn't know what was worth dying for. And that made him feel less than human.
chapter 11
Shane could have gone out to California to spend the time with her sisters. After all, it was just an hour mag-lev ride from Loxley, Alabama, even with the change in Dallas. But they had fought so bitterly before Shane left. She knew they didn't want to see her. To them Shane had become like a parent they had to grow away from. She had already said her good-byes to them months ago and had been through that pain. No need to open the wounds again now.
So naturally she said yes when Nathan invited her to see his family.
"I don't know if my folks even want to see me," Nathan told her. "I never told them I was joining the Corps."
Together they took a mag-lev under the American heartland, then a surface transport to a farmhouse nestled amid the green foothills of the Rocky Mountains.
It looked so perfect to Shane. It was everything she wished her childhood home could have been: peaceful and safe, surrounded by beauty and the ever-present aroma of roses and gardenias.
But to Nathan the sights and smells had a far different meaning. It wasn't the joy of childhood that filled him but the pain of all he had lost. He had dreamed of being an explorer, but instead he had turned into a soldier. He had dreamed of a life with Kylen, but now, he would probably only join her in death.
He looked at the tangle of woods where he used to play laser tag with his friends. That was back when blasters were just toys and wars were just exciting stories from long ago and far away.
The boy he had been was gone now, and yet he still had a hard time thinking of himself as a man. Especially now. Especially here.
The front door swung open. A boy stood in the doorway. For a strange moment, Nathan thought he saw himself standing there, fourteen and wide-eyed, filled with all the wonder of the universe.