by Ben Weaver
“Someone must’ve helped you,” I said.
“I don’t know, but Dina’s been here ever since.” He spun to the bank of electronics. “I think there’s a problem with this equipment. Until you guys arrived Alliance scientists over at the conditioning facility were trying to get the place back on-line. I think their experiments affected this place. I’ve tried gaining access, but even knowing the language doesn’t help. Could be codes or DNA or something.” He closed his eyes, rubbed the bridge of his nose. “We’ve turned these caves upside down looking for an answer. I still think maybe it’s not the caves that have healing properties—it’s this equipment. Maybe this whole place is emitting a fluctuation in the space-time continuum that allows it to reorganize the particles of your body to heal you.”
“Look at us, Paul,” I said. “Me and Halitov. We’re getting old.”
“I didn’t want to say anything.”
“You went through the same conditioning. You should be aging like us. You’re not.”
“Which supports my theory. But maybe the effect is only temporary. Maybe if I leave, the rapid aging will begin.”
I gave a long, weary sigh. “Burning twice as bright…it’s no fun at all.”
“How long you think she’s going to be up there?” asked Halitov.
Paul frowned. “Who knows. I thought about cutting her down, but I’m afraid that might kill her. These machines, they brought her back to life. But now…it’s like she’s dying on me all over again.” With that, he slammed a fist on one of the alien panels. “Fuck!”
My gaze swept the room. “There has to be something we can do.”
He stared gravely at me.
“I say we leave her up there,” said Halitov. “Maybe her pulse is getting weaker ’cause it’s supposed to. Maybe that’s how the machine works. Just leave her up there until the machine releases her.”
“Or till someone comes and takes her down,” I said.
“Who?” asked Halitov. “One of the Racinians? Some old alien who’s the guardian of this facility?”
“Maybe.”
He made a silly face. “Fuckin’ fantasyland you’re living in. Probably some Racinian drone or something scooped them up, brought them here, hooked Dina up to the machine. Now a drone I can believe. We’ve already found evidence of drones in their ruins. At least all that history they dumped in my brain says so. Best thing is to leave her. See what happens.”
“You mean we wait here in the caves?” I asked. “For how long?”
“As long as it takes,” answered Paul, shifting to get in my face. “But not we. Me. You’ll lead my people out, but I’m not leaving her.”
A cadet named Hollis, a hard-faced woman with dark hair pulled back in a ponytail, came forward. “Sir, with all due respect, sir. I speak for the others when I say that if you stay, we stay. Sir.”
As much as I disagreed with Paul’s decision to go AWOL to try to save Dina’s life, I admired his loyalty to her and the loyalty he inspired in his crew. You could see it burning in Hollis’s eyes. She would give her life for Paul in a heartbeat, and that was just the kind of fierce dedication I needed from my own people.
Paul’s tone grew sympathetic as he gripped Hollis’s shoulder. “When we get back to camp, you’re all getting out with these guys.”
“No, sir.”
“C’mon. All you ever talk about is getting out of here. What about that slice of New York pizza you said you were going to buy? What about your parents? You don’t think they’re waiting for you? You don’t think the brass’ll issue you a leave so you can see them? Your entire life has been put on hold. You’ve been living in a cave, for God’s sake.”
“But sir—”
“No. I won’t have it. I owe you a ticket out. And you’re getting one. End of discussion.”
Paul’s little speech doused the fire in Hollis’s eyes. She swung away, dejected. “Yes, sir.”
I cleared my throat. “Of course, I can’t allow you to stay,” I told Paul.
“Of course.”
“So where does that leave us?”
He cocked a brow. “At war, I’d say.”
I closed my eyes, stiffened. “Paul, I have to do my job.”
“Your job,” he began darkly, then shouted, “Look at her! Open your eyes and look at her! People are what’s important—not duty, not honor, not the Corps. My father was wrong. Everything they told us at the academy is wrong. It’s all bullshit. In the end, we’re all we got.”
After glancing painfully at Dina, I narrowed my gaze on him. “What if she doesn’t love you?”
“You asked me that once before. And my answer’s still the same: I know she doesn’t love me. But I don’t care.”
“You’re a fool,” said Halitov.
Nearly in unison, Paul and I told him, “Shut up!”
“I was going to say you both are fools,” Halitov said. “Scott, if Paul wants to stay, let him stay. We take the rest out. We don’t have to lie. We just don’t volunteer the fact that we ran into him. That’s all.”
“And that’s all I’m asking,” said Paul.
“See?” said Halitov. “One big happy family again.”
I glanced at Halitov, then at Paul, wondering whether I should keep the secret because I understood how Paul felt about Dina, understood it as intimately as anyone could.
Then, fortunately, I realized I didn’t need to make that decision. “Paul, if I leave you here with her, I’m signing your death tag. There’s an Alliance fleet up there. Chances are high they’re going to drop a major ground force here and take back this moon. That happens, the only way you’ll get off this rock is as a POW. And since you’re conditioned, I’m betting they’ll brainwipe you and put you back out there, fighting for the wrong side. We have to get out. Now.”
“I’ll take my chances. But you’re right. You do need to leave. Blindfolds on. Let’s go.”
“Fuck the blindfold,” said Halitov. “If you can’t trust us now…”
“I got very little to bargain with,” he said. “The way in here stays with me.”
I looked at Paul, saw that for the time being there would be no more arguing with him. I figured that once we returned to camp, I’d try one last time to convince him. If he did not comply, then I knew, God, I knew, what I had to do.
I didn’t plan on passing out, just five minutes into our trek back. A wave of dizziness hit, a tingling rose through my spine, and I swore as I surrendered to the inevitable.
“Holy shit. Scott, wake up.”
There are many faces I can appreciate after a stretch of unconsciousness—but Rooslin Halitov’s isn’t one of them. He gaped at me, all big jowls and pointy jaw.
“I’m awake,” I said. “What’s going on? We blacked out, didn’t we?” My gaze focused, and I got a better look at him. “Holy shit is right.”
Halitov appeared as fresh and young as the first day I had met him at the academy. No gray. No wrinkles.
“Fuckin’ fountain of youth, man,” he cried.
“No,” said Paul, now hovering over us. “If I’m right, that machine is just correcting a problem. Like you said, when you leave, the aging might return.”
“Then it’s just a damned tease,” Halitov said, bolting to his feet. “Damn! But then again, maybe it isn’t!”
I glanced up, saw the stars peeking through a twilit sky, and got my bearings. We were back in Paul’s camp. “What time is it?”
“About twenty-one hundred local,” said Halitov.
“Twenty-one hundred? Damn, we have to get out of here.” I sat up, touched my eyes, which didn’t feel very different, the skin near them perhaps a bit smoother.
“Want to look?” asked Paul, tossing me a standard-issue pocket mirror. Sure enough, my own gray and wrinkles were gone. I even felt more agile. “You got thirty more seconds to admire yourself,” he continued. “Then I’m reactivating your tacs, and you’re taking my people out.”
“Okay.”
He did a do
uble take. “Okay?”
“Yeah. I’m going to leave you here. With her.”
“You’re bluffing.”
“I’m not.” I rose, faced him squarely. “You know, Jarrett used to talk a lot like you. He never believed in any of the things I believe in. He never wanted to be a soldier. But you…you’ve always struck me as hard-core.”
“Yeah, when your father’s commanding the Colonial Wardens, everybody thinks you’re going to follow in Dad’s footsteps. I’ve always hated not having a choice.”
“Guess I’d feel the same.”
Perhaps my lingering bitterness over my brother’s death—or supposed death—made me strike back at the Corps by doing something I swore I’d never do: let Paul stay. Or maybe I just felt sorry for him, for a life dictated by his father’s choices, not his own. To this day, I’m still uncertain what really made me change my mind, but the act would later have an interesting and unexpected effect on Paul.
“All right, people,” Paul called in a familiar command tone. “Take them up through tunnel eight.”
McFarland and two others nodded, as Paul waved his little magic wand over my tac, reactivating it. He did likewise to Halitov. I immediately skinned up and called upon my tactical computer to show me the whereabouts of my platoon.
The image of two ATCs already airborne robbed my breath. The entire platoon had already evacuated the caves. “Kohrana, copy?”
“Is that you, St. Andrew?”
“Affirmative.”
“Thought we lost you, just like your XO.”
“Negative. Tac malfunction. And I’ve located my XO and about a dozen cadets who’ve been hiding here since the first attack.”
“Get up to the main entrance. We’re coming back for you.”
“Negative. What’s the status on that Alliance fleet?”
“Troop carriers en route. They’ll make moonfall in approximately twenty-one minutes.”
I ordered my computer to pull up a satellite image of those carriers. My God, there must have been a thousand of them, each jetting a full platoon toward the academy grounds.
“Just get back,” I told Kohrana. “I know another way out of here. And do me a favor: relay my status to Disque. Ask him to hold back one ATC for us. Have it wait out in the canyon below Whore Face.”
“Aye-aye. And hey, St. Andrew. You’re an asshole…but good luck.”
“Yeah,” I said with a snort. “Thanks.”
I de-skinned, glanced around at Paul’s ragtag team. “There’s a tunnel that’ll take us all the way back to the academy, out near Whore Face.”
“They know it,” said Paul. “But from here it’ll take at least an hour to get there. I’ll contact the pilot for you, tell him to hang low until you’re almost there.”
“Thanks.” I regarded the group. “All right. Let’s gear up and go.” Abruptly realizing that I might never see the colonel’s son again, I offered my hand. “Come with us.”
He took the hand, shook firmly. “If she does wake up, I don’t want her in there alone. I have enough supplies to last a couple more months. They won’t find me in there.”
“I hope you’re right.” I turned, accepted a particle rifle from McFarland, then started off.
“Scott?” Paul called after me. I glanced back. “If you ever run into my father, don’t tell him what happened here. Don’t tell him anything.”
I nodded and almost wished I had shared with him how the Wardens wanted to recruit me as part of their plan to push the new colonial government in the right direction. But telling him that his father was organizing a “mild” coup would only deepen his disillusionment.
We moved as quickly and stealthily as we could, though Halitov and I could have accessed the bond and traversed the passageways in seconds instead of minutes. McFarland assumed command of the cadets, and while he wasn’t thrilled about still answering to me, he behaved professionally and even thanked me for allowing Paul to remain behind. Five minutes into our trek, we reached an intersection, where a much wider tunnel cut at a forty-five-degree angle across our path, and smack in the middle of it lay a hole with a diameter of about two meters, with an identical one bored into the ceiling. “What do we got?” I asked McFarland, as we paused and hunkered down near the wall.
“The machines below us emit some kind of a pulse wave, which comes up through here. I wouldn’t get too close to that hole. There…there’s one now.”
The ground rumbled for a moment before a shimmering blue-green orb shot up from the floor and passed through the hole in the ceiling. Two seconds later, another one came. Two more seconds, and the third rocketed skyward. They kept coming at two-second intervals.
“I’ve seen this before,” I said, remembering the night Dina and I had jogged out to the canyon. We had been getting ready to leave when she had spotted the light show in the distance. Now I stood directly over the source.
“We’ve thrown rocks at them,” said McFarland. “And they get vaporized.”
“You got point,” I told him. “Let’s move.”
He rose and dashed off, with Halitov just behind him. I waved on the others, then pulled up the rear. I neared the pit and paused as the orbs shot past me. A strange compulsion to touch one drew me toward the hole, my arm extended, fingers twitching as they neared the eerily beautiful light. Just a few inches away. One inch. A hairsbreadth.
Suddenly, the quantum bond surged within me. At the beginning of the universe, all matter was one. All time was one. Time and space have expanded, but at that moment I found myself watching nebulae coalesce into stars and black holes grow bright as they returned to their original states. Billions of galaxies gathered toward a central region as I surveyed it all from a spectacular vantage point. McFarland, I realized, had been wrong about the rocks. They were not vaporized but transported to another space, another time.
Over the years I’ve shared the experience with close friends, but I’m often told that it was either my imagination or, perhaps, an image put in my head by the machines. In any event, the vision seemed to confirm what we suspect about the origin of the universe and how the mnemosyne allow us to tap into that most basic, most powerful of forces. I’ve come to theorize that the emissions are not created by the machine but represent a natural seam in the fabric of the space-time continuum. The ancient Racinians located this seam running through Exeter and opted to build their conditioning facility and machines close to it, perhaps in an attempt to harness its power.
And what power I sensed, though the entire experience lasted no more than a few seconds. Multiple rounds of particle fire jarred me away from the orbs and toward the tunnel ahead, where Paul’s people were shouting.
More gleaming rounds split the air just a quarter meter left of my head as I reached the rearmost cadet, a scrawny woman whose name I had already forgotten. She had skinned up but had kept the shield near her face clear. She looked scared. “McFarland says we got two snipers up ahead.”
“And I say we got no time for this.” I found the bond, skinned up, and bolted past the line of cadets, running directly into the snipers’ fire.
Either McFarland or Halitov called me, I wasn’t sure. My name echoed through the tunnel as the snipers’ beads narrowed and struck my abdomen for all of two seconds before I willed them away, bending them back toward their sources.
I saw the first sniper to my left. He had scaled a stalagmite and had roped himself tightly to it, up near the tunnel’s roof. His own stream of fire burrowed into his combat skin, weakened it, broke through, then tore apart his chest—before he knew what had happened. I didn’t spot the second sniper until I heard the death groan, off to the right. I jogged a few meters farther, saw him scrunched into a shallow depression in the cave wall, near the floor.
Rooslin came running over, raised his brow at the dead Marine. “I still have trouble doing that. One of these days you’re going to teach me.”
I sighed and scanned our course. “All clear. Move out.”
Once
again, I pulled up the rear, and occasionally I’d look up to see my brother leading the way, with Dina and Clarion just behind him. I’d shiver off the déjà vu and the memories and warily keep moving.
No light poured into the tunnel to indicate we neared its end, but we had been traveling for nearly an hour. McFarland called for a halt. I double-timed up the line and joined him and Halitov as we dropped to our bellies and crawled outside, onto the bluff opposite Whore Face. We shifted past the wide lip of rock that concealed the tunnel entrance from the riverbed below. I skinned up and zoomed in on the canyon floor below Whore Face, not far from the spot where Cavalier had died.
“C’mon, Disque, you old prick. Don’t let me down,” I muttered as I panned the area, searching for the quad-winged silhouette of an ATC.
And wouldn’t you know, an ATC came roaring over old Whore Face, turned on its starboard wings, and descended smartly toward the canyon floor.
“Paul must’ve gotten through to the pilot,” said Halitov.
I scrolled through a communications data bar and locked onto the pilot’s frequency. “ATC Delta Five-Six, copy?”
“Copy, Captain. Ready to load and dust off in one mike, copy?”
“Copy. We’ll be there.”
“Better move, Captain. We got troop carriers dropping all over the place.”
“I hear that. Stand by.”
Two things happened at once. Actually, three things, though the latter was less alarming.
Even as the ATC’s skids touched ground, an artillery nest on our side of the riverbed opened up on the ship, launching heavy particle rounds that struck and began weakening the vessel’s combat skin.
Behind us, back in the runnel, that familiar and dreaded sound of rifle fire returned, along with a scream: “I’m hit! Oh my God! I’m hit! I’m hit!” Paul’s people began pouring out of the tunnel, with a few trailing behind, shifting backward and firing wildly into the darkness.
I traded a look with Halitov, realizing with a start that he was returning to his aged self right before my eyes. I opened my mouth, about to mention it as I sprang to my feet and brought my rifle to bear.