They walked deeper into the city, reaching a great industrial complex. Factories rose here, ten stories tall, edifices with metal walls and no windows. Their chimneys were cold. Giant logos were painted onto the factory walls, displaying serpents eating their own tails. Below each symbol appeared the words Chrysopoeia Corp.
Ben-Ari led the Ravens platoon into one factory, where they found a towering chamber full of cold generators, rows of offices, and still assembly lines. They climbed metal staircases through the factory, but still they found nobody.
"There's barely any blood," Addy said, walking beside Marco. "If there was indeed a battle here, there would be lots more blood than this. We just found a few stains here and there, not enough to explain thousands of people killed. I think only a handful died, and their bodies were disposed of."
"So where is everyone else?" Marco said.
"Something spooked them badly. They must have fled the city. Probably left in their spaceships after sending out that Mayday, never even waiting for us to arrive." She spat off a walkway at a cluster of machines below. "It's a ghost town, plain and simple. Scum left too."
They left the factory and moved deeper into the city. Towers rose at their sides, the windows dark. In a city square rose a colossal statue, tall as a church, of a snake devouring its own tail. Marco recognized the symbol.
"Chrysopoeia Corp," he muttered. "That name again. It sounds familiar."
"Of course it sounds familiar," Addy said. "My father worked for them."
Marco frowned. "I thought your father was a truck driver."
"He was," Addy said. "What do you think he delivered in his truck? Stuff Chrysopoeia Corp digs up from the ground. It's a massive conglomerate, Poet. For somebody so book smart, you should know this stuff. Chrysopoeia is just about the biggest company in the world, but since they don't publish books or sell turtles, you haven't noticed them."
Marco approached the statue of the snake. Far above, its eyes seemed to shine with sickly delight as it consumed its own tail. Marco perhaps hadn't known much about Chrysopoeia, but he knew this snake. Here was an ouroboros, a creature from legend, symbolizing cyclicality. In many ways, the ouroboros was like the phoenix, the symbol of the Human Defense Force. Both were animals that ended and began in a repeating cycle. Both, perhaps, were like humanity rising again from ruin.
Does that mean we're destined to fall again? Marco thought.
Something at the base of the ouroboros statue caught Marco's eye. He stepped closer and pointed his flashlight. He frowned and leaned forward.
"What the hell?"
His light fell upon the skeleton, and he gasped and stumbled back, nearly dropping his flashlight.
"Poet?" Addy rushed toward him, followed by the rest of their platoon. They all pointed their flashlights at the skeleton below the statue.
"Fuck me," Addy muttered.
Lailani's eyes widened. "What is it?"
"A freak," said Elvis, cringing.
"An alien?" said Beast. "Not scum."
They all crowded around, staring at it. Marco stood with them, feeling queasy. No, it wasn't a scum, but nor was it human, not fully human at least. The legs, the ribs, and the skull appeared human enough, but the skeleton had six arms, each ending with a swordlike claw instead of a hand. The skull's jaw was opened, and when the wind blew, the skeleton seemed to howl in anguish.
"What happened here?" Marco whispered, looking up at his comrades.
They stared back, pale and silent, even Addy. A few looked queasy, and all looked horrified. All but one. Her lavender eyes glowing, Osiris stared at Marco and smiled.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
Night fell. The red surface of Indrani faded to deep crimson, then brown, then finally vanished in the darkness. Below in the dark city, the soldiers fired up three flares, and the balls of light floated above the towers like three moons, casting a sickly white light across the ruins. The temperature plummeted.
"These cold nights are wearing out the enamel on my teeth," Marco said to Elvis. "They keep chattering."
"To hell with teeth," Elvis muttered. "My balls are freezing."
"Mine too," Addy said. "And I don't even have any." She shivered.
Sergeant Stumpy gave a plaintive wail and shivered.
"Keep it down, soldiers," Corporal Diaz said, looking over his shoulder at them. The squad leader's eyes were dark, and he held his gun in both hands, but the hint of a smile touched his lips. Strangely, Marco was almost glad that Fort Djemila had fallen; it meant that Diaz had abandoned his job drilling recruits and joined them here in space. Having the experienced warrior with them was a comfort in the darkness. Diaz had survived the Appalachian inferno. He would know what to do here too.
Silently, the soldiers followed their corporal, who in turn followed Lieutenant Ben-Ari through the dark city. Stumpy walked alongside, his stump of a tail wagging. The company's flashlights moved in a hundred beams. The walls of factories, warehouses, and refineries rose around them, black and bricked and unforgiving, thrusting out metal pipes and vents and cold still fans. They walked through a metal canyon, and the wind screamed, and Marco kept thinking of that vulture with a human face, of that skeleton with six arms and blades for hands, and of Osiris staring at him from the crowd, pale and luminous and smiling, her eyes dead.
Somebody sabotaged our ship, Marco thought, remembering Ben-Ari's warning. He looked around him, seeing many familiar faces, other soldiers he barely knew. Had Petty sabotaged the mission on purpose, some form of rage against the Ravens Platoon? Had the scum hacked into Osiris's programming, turning her against the humans? Or was this all just paranoia, delusions dripping down from the gas giant above?
As they walked through this canyon of metal and brick, Marco tried to see Kemi, but he could only see shadows and beams of light, not faces. Kemi had barely spoken to him since landing here. Perhaps his brief flame with Lailani had died down; he didn't want to lose Kemi too. Not her love, not her friendship, not any form of her presence in his life. Soldiers in the HDF didn't have a long average lifespan. If Marco was to die here on Corpus or on another world, he wanted to die with Kemi still his friend.
But he couldn't find her, and in the darkness, memories of Marco's dream emerged. The vast, rocky landscape. Thousands of scum swarming toward him. That dream kept returning, night after night, and more and more Marco thought of it as a vision, a prophecy. Was that the world he would die on? Was it here on Corpus?
In the night, they found a warehouse. The company stepped inside to find a vast space full of idle bulldozers and drills the size of cannons.
Captain Petty's voice emerged from every soldier's earbud.
"We set camp for the night. Take formations by your platoon leaders for roll call, then set a rotating guard around your platoon, fifteen-minute shifts."
The Ravens Platoon gathered before Lieutenant Ben-Ari, organizing into fireteams. She read out a roll call. "Emery! Ray! Linden! De la Rosa!"
As roll call continued, Marco looked ahead at Kemi. She stood behind her lieutenant, silent, still wearing the white uniform of a cadet. She briefly met his gaze, then looked away, face blank.
Kemi, I'm sorry, he thought, wanting to speak to her, not knowing how.
"Lorrenzonelli!" Ben-Ari said. "Private Lorrenzonelli!" Nobody answered. "Has anyone seen Lorrenzonelli?"
The platoon's soldiers looked from side to side. Marco remembered Lorrenzonelli, a soldier who had joined his platoon just before they had boarded the Miyari—a tall, slender young man with a permanent smile.
Ben-Ari frowned and spoke into her helmet's microphone. "We're missing a man. Private Enzio Lorrenzonelli."
The other platoon officers approached and conversed in low voices with Ben-Ari. Other platoons, it seemed, were missing soldiers too. A total of five had vanished from the company. The names were called out again. Nobody answered. The company had come here with one hundred and thirty-three soldiers. A head count confirmed that they were down by five.
"I'll lead a search party," said Corporal Diaz. "I need a few volunteers."
Quickly, every soldier in the company raised their hand. Diaz chose four soldiers Marco didn't know . . . and Kemi. As the cadet walked toward the corporal, Marco tried to make eye contact again, but she wouldn't look his way.
"Be careful out there," Marco called after them as the five stepped outside into the night.
The others remained in the cavernous warehouse. In the glow of their flashlights, the bulldozers and drills seemed like sleeping dragons. The soldiers sat on the floor and ate cold, tasteless battle rations, consisting of energy bars, gray paste from plastic wrappers, cans of oily tuna, and sticky sheets of condensed fruit. Sergeant Stumpy moved between the troops, collecting treats, then slept with a chorus of snorts and wheezes. The minutes, then hours stretched by, and still there was no word from the search party.
"What do you reckon happened to them?" Addy said.
"Scum got 'em," said Elvis. "Has to be the scum."
"Or maybe one of those creatures with the six arms," said Addy. "Whatever they are."
Elvis shuddered. "Maybe it was human but some kind of mutated freak. Maybe the miners dug up some radioactive material that mutated them." He thought for a moment. "Maybe it can give you superpowers too. If you could have any superpower you wanted, what would it be?"
"I already have super strength," said Addy. "And super intelligence. So I'd go with the ability to read minds, so I can see all the pretty ladies Marco is always thinking about."
Marco groaned. "Guess what I'm thinking now." He stood up and walked away, leaving Addy and Elvis in the shadows.
He walked past a few drilling machines, each the size of a tank, and found a back door to an alleyway. He stepped out to find a dark, private place to relieve himself. Much of army life wasn't so much keeping a lookout for enemies but rather for a place—sometimes a latrine, often just an alleyway or hole in the ground—to answer nature's call. So much of war wasn't just fighting an enemy. It was worrying about the basic needs of survival, finding sleep, food, water, a place to relieve yourself. Bladder empty, Marco stepped back into the warehouse. He was walking between the machinery toward the rest of the company when he heard soft crying.
Marco stepped toward the sound and nearly tripped on a dark lump. He knelt, shining his flashlight.
"Lailani?"
She lay on the floor between a tree-sized drill and a bulldozer on caterpillar tracks. She rolled away from him.
"Leave me alone."
Marco hesitated for a moment, torn between wanting to respect her wishes and comfort her. Finally, uncertain if he was making the right choice, he knelt at her side.
"Are you all right?" he said softly. "Can we talk? What can I do to make this better?"
She lay on her side, facing away from him, holding her gun to her breast. The muzzle rested under her chin. "Nothing."
Gingerly, he placed a hand on her hip, ready to pull it back if she objected. She didn't move. He lay down beside her.
"Are you all right?" he said. "Is it because of Kemi? Lailani, please know that what happened between us was real to me. It meant something, meant a lot." He lowered his hand to her waist. "You weren't just there to fill my time away from Kemi. When I told you that I love you, I meant it. I love you, Lailani. And I don't want to hurt you."
Lailani spoke in a low voice, her back still turned to him. "But I'm hurt. I'm hurt beyond what you can heal, Marco. And this isn't about Kemi. This isn't about you. I've been broken all my life."
"You can heal," he said.
She sat up, eyes red. "Marco, you've had a hard life. I know. Your mother was murdered in front of you. You grew up running from the scum, leaping into bomb shelters. You grew up with a father who loved you. You grew up with a roof over your head. You grew up with food on your table. You grew up with friends who loved you. You grew up with education." Her eyes welled with tears. "I grew up without any of those things. Born to a homeless, thirteen-year-old prostitute who died ten years later from starvation. I spent my days eating from trash bins, sometimes rummaging on landfills the size of mountains, eating meat so rancid I would get the fever. I taught myself to read, stealing newspapers, studying the words in dirty alleyways while other children stole drugs. And even now, there's something broken inside of me. There's something wrong. Something not even human. I keep wanting to die, Marco. Again and again, I keep wanting to put this muzzle in my mouth, to pull the trigger, to kill that demon that's always screaming inside me. Do you think I care about Kemi?" She shook her head. "I just want my demon to be silent. I want to be healed. But I can't. I can't, Marco. I'm too broken. It's too late to fix me."
Marco took her hand in his. "Then be broken with me," he whispered. "Then let me hold you when the pain is strongest. Maybe I can't heal you. But maybe I can comfort you, just a little, when it hurts. Maybe I can love you enough to bring you some joy, to make life still worthwhile. I don't want to lose you. I love you."
"I love you too," she whispered and leaned her head against his shoulder. "I'm sorry that I'm like this. And I'm not good for you. I know it."
"You have nothing to be sorry for." He stroked her buzz-cut hair, marveling at its softness.
"What kind of girl can I be for you?" Lailani said. "If we survive this war, who would I be? I can't be your wife. I can't be a mother to your child. I'm too broken, too hurt to ever bring life into this world, to curse a baby with my depression, with a crazy mother who wakes up every night from nightmares. I would only hurt you, Marco. You can leave. You can walk away from this. You don't need to suffer with me."
"This is not suffering." He caressed her cheek. "I don't know what will happen in the future. I don't know how much longer we'll live. But right now we're here, you and me. Right now I want to be close to you, to hold you like this, to be like we were. Can you give me that? No talk of tomorrow. Just of today."
She nodded, closed her eyes, and leaned her cheek against his chest. They lay down together, and she slept in his arms.
An hour later, maybe two, a light flashed on Marco's closed eyelids, rousing him from sleep. He woke up, blinking, Lailani still in his arms, and he saw Kemi standing above him.
He stared up, silent, not sure what to say.
"It's your turn to guard," Kemi said. "We're all taking turns patrolling the warehouse."
Marco nodded, gently released Lailani, and stood up. "The search party—did you find anything?"
Kemi shook her head. "Nothing. The five are still missing. Now go guard." She turned and all but fled into the shadows.
Marco looked down at Lailani. She lay on the floor, eyes open, watching him, then closed her eyes and slept again. Feeling cold and empty, Marco adjusted the strap of his gun, then stepped outside into the night. He patrolled around the warehouse, again and again, not even tracking time, as the night shivered around him and the wind blew and the memories screamed. But even here, in hell, there was some comfort. There was the memory of Lailani in his arms. There was some light in the shadows.
CHAPTER TWELVE
Dawn rose red and cold like a corpse in snow. They gathered outside the warehouse in a canyon of gray bricks and black metal. Indrani loomed above. This morning, the gas giant revealed part of the true sky, pale gray and veiled in clouds. Marco stood with his squad, rifle in hand, grenades and magazines hanging from his belt. The company spread along the narrow road. Ahead, Captain Petty stood atop a cold generator. Behind her loomed a great black ouroboros painted onto the warehouse wall. Metal words were bolted into the bricks above the snake: Chrysopoeia Corp. Paving our way to the stars.
"Last night," Captain Petty said, "we lost five soldiers. Today I want you to remain in units no smaller than your squads. Never stray out alone, not even to take a piss. Keep your eyes open for anything—and anyone—suspicious. The instant you notice anything amiss, even if it's just a shiver down your spine, report to your squad leader."
The soldiers looked at one another. By n
ow everyone had heard the rumors of a saboteur on the Miyari. And it seemed like everyone had a favorite suspect. A few soldiers were staring at Osiris and muttering about artificial life. Some mumbled about the earthlings. A few soldiers were even looking at Marco. He stared back at them, defiant.
Captain Petty kept speaking. "We'll leave three soldiers in the city to keep searching for the missing. The rest of us travel into the mines today. The mines delve deep underground; Osiris has a map in her memory banks. We'll seek surviving colonists, and more importantly: a new azoth engine." She held out the shattered azoth heart from the Miyari. "We seek an object that looks like this: a metal heart with a crystal inside. One should be located at the lowest level of the mines, powering the entire city. If we can find a new azoth heart in the mines, we can fix the Miyari. We can go home. Whoever finds the heart will receive an instant promotion."
Addy gasped. "I'm going to be a lieutenant!" she whispered to Marco.
Marco groaned. "She said a promotion, not a commission. You'd be a corporal, not an officer. Even Sergeant Stumpy will still outrank you." Marco knelt to pat the Boston Terrier, the new mascot of their platoon. The dog wagged his stump of a tail.
"So I better find two azoth hearts," Addy said. "Maybe they'll make me a captain like the Chihuahua."
The company traveled through the city under the red light, finally reaching a stone gateway shaped like a coiling snake. Past the gateway Marco saw stairs plunging underground into shadows.
"Chrysopoeia Corp," Marco muttered. "Paving our way to purgatory."
"Chrysopoeia Corp," Addy said. "Opening the gates to Hell since 2047."
"Chrysopoeia Corp," Elvis said, walking up to join them. "We bake snakes so delicious they eat themselves."
Lieutenant Ben-Ari approached them, and her soldiers gathered around her. "Ravens Platoon, we take the vanguard," Ben-Ari said. "Snap your flashlights onto your helmets. I want both your hands ready to fire your guns. Keep magazines in guns, but do not load a bullet or remove the safety until we're in danger. Squads in tight formations. Any questions before we go in?"
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