He looks me in the eyes, and for a moment, I see hidden depths. Then he turns his head up, looking at the sky. “Them.”
24
I look up, expecting to see attack helicopters, or parachuting commandos or even pterodactyls. “All I see is blue sky.”
“Higher,” Vegas says.
I can only see a small portion of the sky, through a wavering window of thick leaves, but there is nothing visible between me and...oh, hell. “Military training and a sense of humor.”
When he says nothing, I turn toward him. He’s not smiling.
Not joking.
I look back up at the sky. “Huh.”
“Huh?” he says. “Really? That’s it?”
“I’ve got a few choice words locked and loaded, but I’m trying to cut back.” I notice that the others are getting too far ahead, and I start moving again. I don’t need a view of the blue sky to imagine the impossible. And instead of getting colorful, I find myself getting scientific. “The Drake Equation, written in 1961, which estimates the number of intelligent extraterrestrial civilizations that exist in our galaxy based on known data, predicts that, at best, there are a hundred and fifty alien species out there as smart, or smarter, than us. At worst, there are zero. Let’s meet in the middle and say there are seventy five intelligent species in our galaxy.”
“Okay,” he says, listening carefully while walking beside me.
“The nearest star to us is Alpha Centauri. It’s four point three seven light years away. That’s twenty-five point eight trillion miles. That’s a lot of empty space. Most of them would still be trapped within the confines of their own solar system. Like us. And to achieve some kind of interstellar travel—light speed, wormholes, whatever—a species would have to be incredibly advanced. I mean thousands of years ahead of us. Probably hundreds of thousands of years. Even if they could send some kind of craft to Earth, there is no way for anything biological to survive a light-speed journey. And anything slower than that would require countless generations of travel, without accident, upheaval or evolution, all with a single-minded ambition to reach a planet whose resources are abundant in the universe.”
“But not in the unique combination that makes a planet habitable.”
“We’ve now discovered nearly two thousand Earth-like planets,” I say.
“What happened to seventy five?”
“That’s intelligent civilizations, and the odds of life beginning at all, even on Earth, are effectively zero. Point is, life is rare. Maybe even one-of-a-kind rare. And interstellar travel is all but impossible.”
“And yet people like Stephen Hawking said that if we encountered alien life, it would likely be hostile.”
I slow to look at him. “You’re not as dumb as you look.”
“And you’re a lot more like them—” He motions to the others. “—than you’d like to admit.”
Thank you, Captain Intuitive.
He smiles again—smiles too often for someone who has been living here for a year. Then he gets serious. “If life is as rare as you say, you could also argue that it is valuable.”
There’s no fault in his logic. “You could say that.”
“And if other natural elements are as common as you say, they would be less valuable. So life might be the most valuable thing in the universe, which makes Earth a good place to visit.”
“Assuming that a civilization is advanced enough—” I hold up an index finger. “—to detect us. And don’t say radio waves, because they degrade over distance and become indistinguishable from background noise after a few light years.”
“So alien civilizations at Alpha Centauri aren’t watching Hitler at the Olympics?”
I smile, not because of the Hitler reference, but because it’s nice to meet someone who knows something about history.
“Let’s put it this way,” he says, “if the human race were hypothetically capable of interstellar travel and we discovered life on another planet, what would we do?”
I hate hypothetical questions. You might as well start with, ‘This will never happen, but...’
The answer to the question is easy, though, and it has nothing to do with technology or physics. “We would go there and conquer it. Two points for Stephen Hawking.”
“What do you know about the Mars colony?” he asks.
“A lot,” I say, “So why don’t you jump to the point.” I wasn’t always interested in space. I have Sig to thank for that. But I’ve spent the last two years dreaming of other worlds, to escape my own. The escape was always a fantasy, though. The human race will be extinct long before the solar system makes one complete revolution around the Milky Way, never mind developing the technology that would allow us to leave it.
“Give me the basics,” he says.
“In 2023, the Genesis colony landed on Mars, in the basin of the Jezero crater. It was a one-way trip, so no one expected to ever see them again, but no one ever thought we’d lose contact after a month. The Genesis rover transmitted data about soil composition and water content. It looked for evidence of microbial life for a few days after the colony went silent, but then a malfunction shut it—”
“Wrong.”
His sudden intrusion jolts me, and I have to fight the urge to slug him. Few things annoy me more than being interrupted. “Which part?”
“The Genesis rover is still operational.” He says this with such a serious tone that I know he’s not joking. And he believes what he’s saying. “Always has been. They just don’t want anyone to know what it found.”
“And the colonists?”
“Dead. There were redundancies on top of redundancies for communication, including the rover itself. If they were alive, we’d have heard from them, just like we still are from the rover.”
“And you know this how?”
“My father.”
The general. Riiight.
“So what did they find?”
He shrugs. “No idea. But Unity was formed a month later.”
“By a group of wealthy—”
“Governments,” he says, interrupting again. “The U.S. Japan. The EU. Even Russia and China. My father signed me up. We were the first recruits. Training started normal enough. Basic. Hand-to-hand combat. Weapons. Firearms. Then it got advanced. Points trained with ExoFrames. The advanced kind, with psy-controls. They’re—”
“I know what they are,” I say.
“Then you also know that not even active military units use them yet.” He takes hold of a dead branch in our path, snaps it, and waits for me to go through. “Supports learned how to pilot. Again, with psy-controls. And Bases... I don’t understand even half of what Duff told me.”
“You realize that it’s hard to take someone nicknamed Duff seriously, right?”
“It’s an ironic nickname,” he says. “He’s at least as smart as you, so maybe you have a point.”
When I laugh, my humor is quickly squelched by mental self-flagellation. This isn’t high school, I tell myself. Even in high school, I didn’t react to guys the way I am to Vegas. Of course, guys in Brook Meadow weren’t shirtless beefcakes, either.
“Try not to judge them all too harshly,” he says. “Fear can even make strong men like Berg do things they don’t want to. A handful of them, like Mack, are hardliners. They thrive off the conflict. Will probably turn on each other if they get to us. But the rest will fall in line the moment Quinlan is dead.”
Was Bear one of the nice bad guys, or a hardliner? I wonder, but don’t ask. I don’t want to know. After clearing my mind, I remember Gwen’s question about flight simulator training, and Daniel’s comment about psy-controls. In my three weeks, I never saw a hint of these things, but Gwen and Daniel have already confirmed what he’s telling me.
“So how does this conspiracy theory end?” I ask.
“I think you know,” he says. “Unity was formed as the first stage in creating some kind of—”
“Earth Defense Force?” I say, laying on the sarcas
m. It’s not nice being interrupted, is it?
But he doesn’t seem to notice. “I was going to say, Space Marine Corps, but that works, too.”
“Both are horrible,” I point out.
“Which is why they named it Unity,” he says. “No one would suspect its true purpose was to fight aliens.” Another smile. “There really is no way to say that without sounding nuts, is there?”
“Nope.”
“Look,” he says, “I can tell you think I’m yanking your chain, so I’ll just ask one more question.”
“Shoot.”
“Have you not seen the sky for the past two nights?”
The words sink through me, heavy and uncomfortable. Of course I saw what happened in the sky. How could I miss it? “The EMP nearly killed us,” I say. “Do you know what it was?”
“All I know is that something fell, slowly, from the sky. From above the sky. And what we saw last night...”
“The satellites.”
“There aren’t that many satellites in orbit,” he says, and I realize he’s right. We hadn’t considered anything else, because what else could it be?
“When I joined Unity, there were thousands of recruits around the world. They would be on active duty by now. We would have been, too, if we hadn’t hidden. If not for Quinlan.” I hear a tinge of shame in his voice. He looks up at the sliver of sky above us. “I think that was them up there. The other recruits. I think they were fighting a war. I think they shot down whatever it was that crashed in the ocean. I think Stephen Hawking was right, and if you’re right about the technological advancement required to travel to Earth from somewhere else, I think we’re probably screwed.” He stops and looks at me. “How’s the pain?”
The sudden shift in conversation confounds me. What is he talking about? What pain? And I nearly ask the question aloud before remembering that just a few minutes ago, I was moving with all the grace and speed of someone’s great grandmother. And now, I feel... “Better.”
Then I get angry. “Wait, this whole conversation was just to distract me from the pain?”
His answer is cut short by a warbling bird call. His whole body goes tense. The bow is off his shoulder, and an arrow is out of the quiver hanging from his hip faster than I can sneeze. He hasn’t said a word, but tension floods the jungle with enough force to stop the others, now thirty feet ahead of us. Hutch looks back, slowly drawing his pistol. I do the same.
Then Vegas cups his hand to his mouth and lets out a bird call reply.
The third call is followed by a rapid shuffling of leaves. A young man emerges, camouflaged with jungle detritus that blends in with his dark skin. He’s out of breath, heaving for air as he stops in front of Vegas, who has lowered the bow.
“Slow down, Ghost,” Vegas says. He sounds calm, but his body is still tense, ready to spring into action. “What’s happening?”
“He’s coming.” Ghost takes another deep breath. “Twenty minutes, tops.” His accent is subtle, but South African, I think.
“Is he alone?”
Ghost shakes his head.
“Who is coming?” I ask, and Ghost’s eyes, which are nearly the only part of him that are identifiable as something other than jungle, whip toward me, like he’s seeing me for the first time. “Los Diablos.”
“Quinlan,” Vegas says, and he takes my arm. He shoves me toward the others and shouts, “Move! We don’t have much time to get ready.”
“Ready for what?” Hutch asks.
“Odds are,” Vegas says, and proves that he still follows Unity’s rule of total transparency with your team, which doesn’t make me feel any better about the conversation we just finished, “Ready to die.”
25
The pain pills Vegas gave me have their limits. By the time we leave the thick jungle behind and enter a clearing, a dull throb emanates from my side with every hurried step. Despite there being fewer trees here, the sun is still mostly blocked. I glance up and see palm leaves, bound together and suspended in the gaps between the trees. From above, this would look like just another patch of endless canopy. But from below...it’s an open space.
Well, not completely open. Ahead of us is a wooden wall that stretches from one side of the clearing to the other. The top of the wall is covered in wooden spikes. It ends, on both sides, at nearly vertical stone walls. They’ve built their fort, or whatever this is, in a bottleneck. I understand the strategy, it’s how the Spartans at Thermopylae held off the Persian Empire, but as we get closer and I see the wall of stone rising up behind the camp, it also looks like a dead end. The Spartans, along with the Thespians and Thebans, who pop culture likes to forget, held off the Persians for two days. But they all still died.
Vegas sees me eyeing the thirty-foot-long structure. “It’s mostly a visual deterrent.”
“I hope it has a back door,” I say.
“That might be up to your friends.”
Before I can ask what that means, a small wooden door swings open and Gwen bounds out with a hop in her step. “Doli!” She embraces the American Indian girl first. I’m glad to see her return the hug, lifting her arms. It’s the first sign of lucidity she’s shown, aside from putting one foot in front of the other. Freckles is next. Gwen claps him on the shoulders in a parental way. The embrace between Hutch and Gwen is much different. It’s casual. It lingers. Hutch’s back sags a bit, his tension easing. Then she moves on to Sig, picking up the skinny girl off the ground, swinging her from side to side and whispering in her ear. It’s nice to see Sig with other people. Then Sig is back on her feet and Gwen is smiling at me as she approaches.
Gwen gives Vegas a quick up and down glance—who wouldn’t?—and then she’s reaching for me, arms open for an embrace. “You look like crap.”
But before Gwen can hug me, she looks at Ghost as he enters the clearing behind us, and stops. She leans to the side, looking around me, the happy reunion melting away. “Where is Mandi?”
When she looks back at me, the answer to her question is found in my quivering lip. I try to control it, but lack the strength. “I’m sorry,” I say.
Her hand takes mine. Squeezes. She looks me over. “You fought back. You survived.” She’s trying to be strong for me. To ease my pain, by squelching her own.
“Hutch is here, now,” I say. “You don’t have to carry my burden.”
“We’re friends,” she tells me. “Burdens are shared.”
And then I’m in her arms, feeling loved, and then extreme pain.
She lets me go when I grunt, holding my arms. “You’re even worse than you look.”
“Shot,” I say through gritting teeth. “Twice. Once in my arm.”
Her hands snap away. “Sorry.” Her concern is short-lived, replaced by somber curiosity. “Does Hutch know?”
I nod, but my eyes remain locked on the ground.
“How did it happen?”
I wish I could tell her it was an accident. That it was another tsunami. Or a rockslide. Or something we could blame on a higher power. I would like to spare her the hate that I feel. But I can’t. “One of them. A Diablo.”
Her eyebrows rise and then pinch down, slipping quickly from surprise to anger. She turns to Vegas, who is watching the jungle leading into the valley, about to unleash her anger toward him.
“Gwen,” I say, before she can vent. “The man who killed Mandi is dead.”
Her mouth closes with the smooth pacing of an automatic car door. She turns back to me, looking me over, taking stock of my condition with new eyes. “You didn’t...”
I nod. “I killed him.”
She sucks in a tight breath and undergoes a series of rapid fire emotions that are hard to follow, but she stops with a raised chin and eyes locked on mine. “Good.”
“We need to go,” Ghost says. He’s like living camouflage, but I can see the fear in his eyes. “We don’t have much time.”
Confusion overrides Gwen’s pride, or whatever it is she was just feeling. “What’s happening?”
“Los Diablos are on their way here,” Vegas says.
“They know where this place is?” Gwen sounds astonished. She’s clearly comfortable around both Ghost and Vegas, but she’s still catching up. So am I.
“They helped build it.” Ghost points at the faux jungle canopy. “It’s how we hid from the satellites, where we would have stood our ground if Unity came for us. When we didn’t need it anymore, when we...split, Quinlan left with the others. They’re living on the mountain somewhere. We haven’t gone looking.”
A distant, but loud hooting, like a flock of agitated geese, rolls out of the jungle opposite the wooden barricade.
“We’re out of time,” Vegas says. He takes Gwen’s arm and hurries her toward the fort.
For a moment, I’m confused. They’ve known each other for what, a day? And he’s more concerned for her than he is for the person with a hole in her gut? Then I realize he’s using the logic of a Point. Ghost has been a part of this struggle all along. He can clearly take care of himself. And me? I’m a Point. Wounded or not, my job is to stand and fight.
Of course, it’s not the fighting I have a problem with, it’s the standing.
Vegas snaps his fingers at our group and points at the open gate. “Inside. All of you.” No one looks happy about being ordered around, but there is no denying the situation’s urgency. Gwen leads them inside, but Sig lingers by the entrance, watching me, fidgeting. After being captured, tied up and who knows what else, she can’t be feeling very comfortable. I’m coming, Sig, I think, trying to quicken my pace and ignore the pain fighting to usurp the meds.
Vegas stops me before I reach her, speaking low. “How many of your people can fight?”
“I just met most of them.”
“Guess,” he says.
“Hutch and Gwen will fight,” I say, “but I don’t know if either of them can fight.” There’s a big difference between the two, and he knows it. There are plenty of people willing to throw a punch, but most of them can’t land a punch, and even fewer can take a punch. I’ve done all three. “Freckles, I have no idea. Doli is in la-la land. Daniel, Gizmo and Sig? Not a chance.”
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