by Easton Royce
It only took a moment for him to realize it was John, his youngest brother. It looked like he'd grown six inches in the months that Nathan had been away.
"Nathan?" said John, clearly thrown by the fact that Nathan was wearing a uniform. Then he turned and shouted into the house. "Mom! Dad! It's Nathan!"
Nathan and Shane took a step forward as his parents came out to greet them. John leaped into Nathan's arms for a hug, just as he had always done when he was younger. But Mr. and Mrs. West kept their distance.
There seemed such a gap between them now, filled with all the things that Nathan had never told them. Finally he crossed that distance, giving his mother a hug, his father a firm handshake.
"Mom, Dad," Nathan said. "This is my friend, Shane Vansen."
Shane grinned and shook their hands.
"It's a pleasure, Mr. and Mrs. West."
Mrs. West smiled halfheartedly. "Dinner's almost ready," she said, and turned to head back into the house, trying to hide the tears that were welling up in her eyes.
Nathan was unable to hold his father's gaze. He turned to John. "I was gonna give you a rock I pocketed on Mars, but they took it."
"Come on inside," Mr. West said. He gripped Nathan's shoulder, giving his son the same look he'd given him long ago when Nathan had told him about being accepted into the colonization program. A look of overwhelming worry.
"Neil, can't you find something else to watch?" Mrs. West wouldn't even look at the war reports anymore, which was hard to do since the TV took up an entire wall.
"Come on, Mom," said Neil, the middle brother, seventeen and also the spitting image of Nathan. "You can't pretend it's not happening."
"And anyway," John added, "it's on all eight hundred stations."
Mrs. West busied herself programming the oven. "I sincerely doubt that," she said.
With all the introductions made, Shane sat between John and Neil, feeling more comfortable there than with her own sisters. She envied Nathan his family, yet his own discomfort with them filled the air more strongly than the smell of his mother's cooking.
As for Nathan, he chose to keep his thoughts to himself as he watched the war reports beside Shane and his brothers. Even out here, hundreds of miles from the nearest military base, Nathan felt the war surround him.
On the TV screen, a reporter stationed at Vandenberg Air Force Base shouted above the roar of the wind and soaring fighters. Military personnel ran determinedly around her as she spoke of the mobilization and movements of the massive starcraft carriers in deep space.
"I heard the Alien fighters are made of an unknown metal," Neil said, turning down the volume, "and we can't harm them." The look on his face was a combination of excitement and terror. It sounded like he couldn't wait until he was old enough to fight himself.
Nathan turned to him, furious at the thought that it could only be a few short months before his little brother was swept into the war as well.
"We've only just started reverse-engineering the ship we found," he said. "So anything you've heard is just rumor."
Neil shook his head. "But Kylen's brother told us—" He stopped short. The tension in the room increased.
The reason was clear to everyone there, except of course for Shane.
Who's Kylen? Shane wondered. From the very beginning Nathan had never shared much about his personal life. She had always assumed it was because he had nothing much to share: a normal, happy family living in an uneventful part of the world. Only now did she realize there was much more to Nathan than she had given him credit for.
Nathan stood and left the room, but not before reflexively grabbing the phototag he always wore around his neck. It didn't take a gene surgeon to figure out that the girl in the picture must be Kylen. Shane wondered why her very name brought such ice to the room.
When Nathan was gone, Neil turned to Shane. "Anyway, he said that it doesn't seem like we can win."
On her other side, John leaned forward to see what Shane's response would be. After all, she and Nathan were their closest link to the war.
Shane did know something about the upcoming battle, enough to know there was far more hope than Neil thought.
She offered them a comforting smile. "Don't worry. This time out we'll beat them."
"How do you know?" John asked.
"Because," Shane said, "this time they're going up against the 127th—the Angry Angels. Those guys will knock the enemy into Andromeda."
John smiled broadly at the thought, but Neil could muster only a doubtful grin.
Mr. West had made himself scarce from the moment Nathan had arrived. Now Nathan found him on the back porch, staring out at the spectacular vista below.
Nathan let the screen door close loudly enough so his father would know he was there.
"Back during the time of the AI Wars," his father said, "I would stand here looking at these mountains, and they would comfort me, because somehow, deep down, I knew the war would never come here. That it would be fought in the cities, on the seas, and on the moon." His eyes changed as he scanned the mountain range, dark against the setting sun.
"But now as I look, I keep wondering how long until their ships come screaming over the mountains?"
"Just because they attacked us first, it doesn't mean they're going to win." Nathan forced a smile. "Do you remember your twentieth-century history? Second World War. Pearl Harbor."
"We knew the enemy then," his father said. "They had two eyes and five fingers. They breathed the same air and died of the same wounds."
Nathan watched his father try to force back his emotions. "If you had to sign up, Nathan, why couldn't you have waited until we knew more about the enemy?"
Nathan felt his own emotions rising. He pounded the railing. "I had no choice!" he insisted.
"You could have talked to me. I could have pulled some strings."
Nathan threw up his hands. "With whom? Dad, I was under contract to the colony project. It was either join the military, or spend the next seven years of my life retraining for a different colony mission that I might not even get assigned to."
"You could have gotten out of that contract, and you know it!" his father shouted. "But you just had to get into space at all costs, didn't you?"
Nathan tried to control his anger. "If it was the only way I could get to Tellus, then yes, I would get there at all costs."
Mr. West looked at Nathan's face, as if he didn't know his son anymore.
"You can't possibly think that Kylen is still alive, Nathan."
"They reported twenty-five survivors before contact was lost."
His father shook his head. "Those aren't odds worth dying for."
Nathan looked away. It always amazed him, the ability his father had to put doubt in him. He could tell his lather what he did on Mars, how he helped capture the first Alien, how crucial he had already been to the war effort. But his father would find a way to trivialize it and make Nathan feel even that had been a mistake.
"I'd give anything for the chance to fight with my father."
They both turned to see Shane stepping through the screen door. From the look on her face, Nathan could tell she had heard everything.
"I'll bet if he were alive," Shane continued, "he'd probably scream at me, too, for following in his footsteps and joining the Marines. He'd be so afraid for me, he might even forget to show me how proud he was." Nathan turned to his father. It hadn't occurred to him that pride might fit somewhere in his father's mix of emotions. Nonetheless, now that he was looking, Nathan could see it there.
"Your friend's smarter than both of us," Mr. West said. Then he went inside.
When he was gone, Shane looked at Nathan with more curiosity than she had looked at anything on Mars.
"You were supposed to go to Tellus?"
Nathan shrugged. "Ancient history."
"Not so ancient," she corrected him.
The moment was as uncomfortable as it could be between friends. For Shane, it didn't feel quit
e like a betrayal. But to find out so much about someone you thought you knew, so quickly...
"You must have loved her very much," she said abruptly.
Nathan threw her a sharp look, as if she had said something awful. "I still do."
"Sorry."
She reached out and took hold of the phototag. "You look perfect together. People who look that perfect together don't stay apart for very long."
Nathan allowed himself a small grin. "Are you jealous, Lieutenant Vansen?"
Shane thought about it. Was she really? She didn't think so. After all, Nathan was just a friend. Although her feelings for him were strong, they didn't go beyond friendship. If she was jealous of something, it wasn't of Kylen. It was of them both—of what they had together. Shane was afraid she might never feel that close to someone, ever.
She kept her voice light. "Nah. You're not my type."
Nathan laughed, and Shane couldn't tell whether it was a laugh of disappointment or relief. In truth, it was a little bit of both.
I want you to know something," she said. "When we get up there and beat these... monsters, I'll fly right beside you to Tellus and help you find her."
They weren't just words. She meant it and could tell that Nathan knew that—the same way she knew Nathan would follow her into battle and give his life if she gave the order.
chapter 12
AWOL. Racing away from Loxley, Alabama, at thirty miles a minute, Cooper Hawkes fought to put it all behind him. Who would know? Who would care if he deserted? He would never see any of their faces ever again. They'd probably all be dead soon, anyway.
Not him. No, he was a survivor. From the way it looked, the world would pretty soon be overrun by those foul-smelling Aliens. And if that were true, it would be every man for himself, struggling to get by, hiding in every crevice the Earth had to offer.
Cooper didn't know much about war, but he did know about survival. And he knew that, right now, survival meant staying far, far away from the cockpit of a fighter jet.
Yet even though deep down he knew that running was the best way to survive, something about leaving his Squadron behind tore him up inside.
Nathan, Shane, the others—why couldn't he forget them? Why couldn't he flush them from his mind the way he had done in the past—with anyone and anything that got too close? In Cooper's experience, the only emotions that were useful were fury and fear. They were the tools of survival—the emotions that Cooper was used to. But now a new feeling—regret—seemed to overpower everything else. And he couldn't figure out why.
The mag-lev train rocked and swayed down its dark, underground tunnel. But the tunnel was not as dimly lit as Cooper's future. Even at thirty miles a minute, Cooper Hawkes couldn't help but feel he was going nowhere fast.
Where could he go, anyway? There were people bent on killing him in Philadelphia. In fact, he had alienated himself from just about every major North American city. Perhaps, he thought, he could hop a transcontinental and start alienating Europe as well.
The deceleration light came on in the cabin, and the train began to slow in its vacuum tunnel.
"How much ya wanna bet they put us in the frontlines," said a voice across the train.
A dirty man with dirtier hair was eyeing him.
"What are you talking about?" Cooper asked.
The man unbuckled his seat belt and slid into the seat next to him. "I'm talking about us In-Vitros. They'll shove us right in the Aliens' sights to protect themselves," the man said.
The thought made Cooper's hands ball up into fists. Not because it was true. If there was one thing Cooper had learned in the Marines, it was that in the aviator's cavalry, there were no In-Vitros and no flesh-borns. There were only soldiers.
He looked at the dirty man beside him. "How did you know I was an In-Vitro?"
The guy grinned nastily. "You got the look. Tank eyes. "
Cooper turned away, but not before catching his own reflection in the dark glass. Tank eyes. Cold as tempered graphite. Empty as the space between galaxies. No mother, no father, no soul. The old taunt came back to him. Was it true then? Was his running away proof of some in-born emptiness?
The awful man beside him had Tank eyes too.
"Listen," the man whispered. "Me and a buddy, we got a sweet deal going up in Toronto, smuggling illegal implant chips. We could use a guy like you."
Cooper Hawkes sensed that this would be the most important decision he would ever make in his life. A golden platter was being laid before him. A life in Toronto, better than the life he had known before—or almost certain death in the cold reaches of space.
But the thought of his cavalry comrades kept kicking him in the stomach. And it wasn't just them he'd be deserting. It would be Pags as well.
Shane had once asked him if he had ever lost anyone. The truth was he had never had anyone to lose, until he saw that hole blasted in Pags's chest. He couldn't understand why it hurt so much to think about it, and yet in some strange way that hurt felt good. Because maybe it meant that there was something inside of him after all. Maybe there was a soul.
The mag-lev pulled to a smooth stop inside the Chicago terminal. Cooper grabbed the pathetic man beside him and pushed him up against the wall.
"The answer is no," he growled. "Now get out of my sight before I punch your Tank eyes out the back of your head."
Unaffected, uncaring, this pathetic specimen of a man-made flesh just said, "Suit yourself." He slid out of Cooper's grasp and strolled out the door.
Five minutes later, Cooper hopped on a mag-lev heading east.
Cemeteries held no particular fear for Cooper. The dead were dead. It was a simple fact.
Yet now, as he walked through the desolate hills of Arlington National Cemetery, a horrible, gut-wrenching sensation grew inside him. Each step he took over the neatly trimmed, moonlit grass made him feel worse.
Around him, identical white tombstones rose like blunt teeth, casting moonshadow across three centuries of unvisited graves. Even in that sea of stones, Cooper's sense of direction didn't fail him.
Soon he found himself kneeling over a fresh mound of dirt.
He glanced around as if someone might be watching. It was a foolish thought, since the only people around were six feet under the ground.
Cooper opened his mouth to say something, but it was a long time before any words came out. He wasn't in the habit of speaking to the dead and didn't quite know why he felt compelled to do it now. But he knew he had to. Wanted to.
"Pags," he began. "I wanted to say something when they buried you, but I didn't know what. Anyway, they don't let you say much at those things."
His vision became cloudy. The feeling he had been struggling to contain in his gut forced its way out. Something happened that was completely out of Cooper Hawkes's life experience.
He was crying.
Cooper wiped away a tear and chuckled slightly. "Look at me," he said to the grave. "Did you ever think you'd see me cry?"
He sat down on the mound of dirt. "You were the only guy who was ever okay to me, Pags. I wish somehow you could just... sorta... know how I feel."
He picked up a handful of earth, squeezing it in his fist. "Maybe right now you can. ..."
Cooper let the dirt sift through his fingers. "I wish I could know what you feel now," he said to the silent grave. "I thought I knew what it would be like, but seeing you lying there, all bloody... I don't know what I'm trying to say. I guess I'm scared, Pags."
It was an admission he'd never made even to himself. He looked up at the stars. They'd always seemed to be so far away. But now the heavens were too close for comfort.
"I wish I could know if anything was worth it." A flash in the sky caught his attention. Another flash followed, then another—not just in the sky but at the edge of the solar system. That was where the battle was taking place.
The explosions must have been massive to be seen on Earth. But there was no way for Cooper to know whether it was the Earth ships
or the Alien ships that were detonating in the sky.
That could be me up there, Cooper thought. The thought was terrible, yet it also gave him a sense of purpose and a strange sort of comfort. Because now, for the first time in his life, he began to feel part of something that was larger than himself.
In the West household dinner went cold and uneaten. It was that way around the world that night, as just about everyone on Earth sat glued to their TV screen, watching mankind's greatest stand against the approaching Alien forces.
With static popping and crackling through the satellite feed, the reporter on the USS Yorktown, Earth's largest starcraft carrier, fed news to an anxious world.
"We warn you," said the reporter, "that the images you are about to see are graphic."
Behind him, the blast-buckled corridors of the great ship were lined with bodies. Soot-covered medics struggled to move the wounded out of the corridor.
"The space carriers Nimitz and HMS Montgomery have been destroyed."
In the living room, the Wests and Shane sat in silence.
The video image changed to that of a space carrier, the Montgomery. The ship was shredded so badly it could have been made of paper. It was hard to tell if the spots floating by the wreckage were debris or bodies.
The image changed back to the Yorktown, where things seemed to have taken a turn for the worse. Screams and commotion filled the background. The now panicked reporter dodged a falling beam. "There's smoke, electrical flashes—you can hear metal buckling in the bowel of the carrier..."
BLAM! A blast threw the reporter off-screen. The camera fell over on its side, broadcasting a twisted view of the chaos aboard the ship.
There was a flash of static, and then another. Then the picture was gone completely. The screen was filled with nothing but screaming snow.
Nathan jumped up and headed out the door. Shane followed him outside.
In the western quadrant of the sky, the distant flashes faded away. A single fireball erupted and died.