Infinity Squad

by Shuvom Ghose

  We turned back in the direction we had come. A lone black dot was clearly visible on the sandy horizon, scuttling towards us. As soon as I pulled up my binoculars to look at it, it stopped and sat down, folding its legs below itself just like Three-Spot did. I stared at it for thirty seconds, but it didn't move any closer, just sat there.

  "Great. Juan, you watch it watching us. Butcher and I will start searching. Zaz, you cover us."

  Ann-Marie and I started spiraling outwards from the Joshua tree while Zazlu stomped around the crest of the hill, keeping us in sight. Ann-Marie was glistening pretty heavily at this point, her shirt sticking to her, and she rolled up her fatigue legs to let the dry breeze cool off her calves. I did too. The sand felt just as soft as Earth sand, and was a nice change from the muck and streams near the Night Hunting Grounds.

  We were most of the way down the hill when Juan heard a very faint buzzing, as he told me later. He had been looking through the electronic sights of the Heavy, practicing placing the crosshairs of his long range mini-missile on the Spider's torso.

  "Come on punta," he was muttering to himself. "Move. I dare you."

  That's when something that looked like a slightly larger Earth bee circled and landed on his exoskelton's arm. Juan told me he looked at it annoyed, shook his arm once, and it buzzed off. He continued keeping the distant Hell-Spider in his weapon sights, putting the crosshairs right between its eyes. "That's right."

  By this point Ann-Marie and I had found the dead hunting party, mostly covered in sand. I brushed it away to reveal the tops of five adult Hell-Spiders.

  "Pretty well preserved," I noted. "They could pass for fresh killed if we cleaned them."

  "Dry desert air will do that," she agreed, then bent closer to one of the skulls. "Sir... look at this."

  One of the Hell-Spider skulls already had a bullet hole in it.

  "There's no way," I gasped. "No one would come out this far." I looked at Ann-Marie's buffering band. Instead of five green lights, there were only four. "I mean, we're already losing signal. No one would have come out this far."

  She was looking at another spider body, and pointed out a cluster of round holes on its side. The size of the entry wounds looked bigger than anything we carried by hand, and there was a burnt ring around each hole.

  ".50 cal chain gun?" I asked. "From a helo?"

  "We would have heard about kills made that way," she said. "All of Immortal's and Omega's kills have been on the ground."

  I sighed and started cutting through a neck with my knife. "Easier to explain than lightning snake bites on the bodies, I suppose." I keyed my mike. "Zaz, we've got them. Bring the Heavy and we'll start loading you up."

  At the top of the hill, Juan was still watching the Hell-Spider when the bee returned, landing on the same spot of his arm and crawling around. He shook his arm again but this time the bee stayed. Juan brought that part of the exoskeleton near his face and blew it away. We were loading up the cargo rack on Zazlu's heavy with a second severed head when the bee settled on Juan's arm a third time and he raised the other metal hand of the exoskeleton up and slapped it down on the bee, hard.

  Ann-Marie and I dropped into firing positions when we heard the single CRACK from the top of the hill, ringing out like a rifle shot.

  "Juan! What's going on?" I demanded as Zazlu deployed his weapons, one bristling arm facing each way. "Is it the spider?"

  "Naw, it was just a bee or something," he said. "Just dazed me a little."

  "You fired a rifle at a bee?" Butcher asked.

  "No man, it was the bee that fired on me!"

  "That doesn't make sense," Zazlu said. "Have you been drinking your water?"

  "I'm not seeing things! I'll show you the burn mark on the armor when you get here!"

  I looked at Butcher, then at the round holes in the spider bodies. "Let's cut faster," I said, and we both went to work on opposite sides of the same neck.

  That's when Juan saw his second bee, a tiny black dot in the sky trundling towards him. It bumbled closer, twenty feet above him, and then dive-bombed down into his chest and went off.

  "Owww! Damn it!" he cried. The bee had exploded against the chest plate of the exoskeleton, but he said it still felt like getting punched in the ribs. "Guys, watch out for these bees! They really kick when they explode!"

  Ann-Marie looked up at me quizzically. "Explode?" she asked, about the time we heard the buzzing over our heads.

  There were five bees above us, circling like mayflies. Then one of them dove down at Butcher. She jumped out of the way and the sand behind her shot up like a mini-mortar had gone off.

  "ZAZ! Flamethrowers!" I yelled, diving out of the way of one too. I was a little slower than Butcher and my skin stung where it was sand-blasted from behind.

  "Got it!" he yelled, coming to stand over me and the dead Spiders, both arms raised to the sky. When the next bee dove towards us, a jet of flame from Zazlu's arm met it and the CRACK! ten feet over my head made my ears ring.

  "INCOMING!" Ann-Marie yelled, pointing at a swarm of bees above us. Thirty at least.

  "EVADE! EVADE!" I yelled. We scattered like we were being shelled. I flipped to the helo's circuit as I ran. "Jinx! Pick up! NOW!" I dove and two explosions went off behind me. One of them hit an exposed rock and the gravel-sized shrapnel raked my arm.

  "Inbound in two minutes," Jinx said to my implants.

  Juan was also dealing with bees, although more forcefully. He had both flamethrowers going, sweeping the sky around him.

  "YEAH, you like that?" he yelled as bees popped and exploded in groups above him. Then one circled around his flames, came in at ground level, and slammed into the exoskeleton's knee. "Damn it!" he yelled, hobbling.

  Another hit him in the back and knocked him over. With his flamethrowers interrupted, bees started falling around him like mortars, one after the other.

  Ann-Marie was actually running up the sandy hill towards Juan, weaving in a serpentine pattern. Explosions were following her like intelligent artillery. Out of breath from the climb, as a last ditch she dove under the only cover she saw, the sparse branches of the Joshua tree. One bee which had been aiming at her legs still attacked, exploding on the rocks inches from her knee. But the others which had been aiming for her head and torso pulled away, right before they would have hit the tree's branches.

  Lying on her side, she used the few breaths of space to sweep the horizon with her sniper scope to find the Hell-Spider again. It still sat far away, watching us. "Thank god," I heard her mutter, then she yelled into her mike "The tree! Get under the tree!" She tried firing her rifle at the swarm swirling around Juan but bullets were as effective as they had been against the snakes.

  Luckily, Juan's heavy was still functioning enough to let him crawl under the tree, even though he was getting barraged every few seconds.

  I was having a tougher time. I wasn't as quick as Butcher, and the bees seemed to like me more than her as I serpentined through the valley. One exploded behind me, then another right next to me, throwing me off my feet. The next hit my rifle as I held it in front of my face, shattering the action, and then I saw three bees diving towards my chest.

  They met the back of Zazlu's heavy as he dove in front of me, bridging over me as a shield.

  "Thanks Zaz," I yelled, right as a bee found an exposed joint around his knee and blew his leg off.

  Zazlu was screaming right in my face but only for a few seconds as a few more circling bees climbed inside the gap we had opened in his armor to attach the spider skulls and exploded his chest open.

  I looked up to see his buffering band with three green lights on it start flashing then go to solid red after a few seconds. A good transfer.

  Jinx brought us back in around the Night Hunting Grounds again as if we had come from the normal patrol sector, taking ten extra minutes even though Ann-Marie's burnt knee needed medical attention. She insisted on the path.

  I tried to pull off the burnt cloth sticking t
o her knee and pour water on it, but that just seemed to make the pain worse.

  The medics were waiting when we landed and I watched them cart her away as Juan stepped his barely functioning Heavy off the helo's skid and hit the eject button. Strapped to the other skid was Zazlu's Heavy, his body still in it and three spider skulls still hanging off the rack on its back.

  I could barely think as I radioed drunk private and cocaine private to come get the skulls for cleaning and for Steve to wheelchair himself down to the res tanks to meet Zaz. And then there was only one last thing.

  I staggered up to the cockpit door as the blades spun down. Jinx opened the window and looked at me.

  "Look..." I started, not even sure if we had enough on hand to bribe him with.

  "Sir," he said, "that was the most exciting pitched fire-fight I have ever seen a squad have with 15 or more spiders coming out of the trees like that." I watched him bring up the flightplan on the screens, the real flightplan, and then hit ERASE on the menu. "Your report should be something to behold."

  "Thanks Jinx," I managed, then started limping away. I tried to use my rifle for a crutch but it just snapped in half where the bee had hit it, and I left it laying on the flightline.

  Three-Spot's mind voice was full of something which could only be called mirth. "So you have met the thunder bees."

  "Yes GODDAMN IT we met the THUNDER BEES!" I yelled, pounding the glass. "Why didn't you tell us about them?"

  "Then the scales would not have balanced."

  "What scales?" Zazlu demanded. He stood in a new, clean cloned body, next to my dirty, sore and scratched one. He still crossed his arms like a stocky fireplug even though they were lean and wiry now.

  "Your clan fell upon a hunting party last night," Three-Spot said gravely. "One was hobbled, the other later went to the Long Hunt from his wounds."

  "Omega Squad's patrol," Ann-Marie whispered to me from her wheelchair.

  Three-Spot nodded at Zazlu's cloned body and the bandages wrapped around Ann-Marie's burnt knee. "Now the scales have balanced."

  "You killed eight of us when you invaded our cafeteria!" I yelled. "Including me! Where is the balance for that?"

  "Your clan killed twenty of mine earlier that night, while losing twelve. I was sent to balance the scales for that."

  "The Immortal patrol that Ridley went on," Zazlu growled. "The Night Hunting Grounds."

  Three-Spot looked right at me. " I killed only eight in your food place. I could have killed many more."

  I narrowed my eyes. "Possibly. And possibly not."

  He pulled his legs even more tightly under him, huddling down. "And once the scales had been balanced, I sat to await who from your clan would come to discuss an end to the fighting." He nodded at me. "And then you came."

  My eyes got big. "Oh no. I can't-"

  "It is already done."

  "What?"

  "It is already done."

  "Sir," Butcher said from next to me, "there's a possibility he may be right. Before you woke up, Zazlu and I were reviewing what you told him last time, when you were almost falling asleep on your feet."

  "And?" I demanded.

  She looked up at Zazlu, who crossed his arms again and said, "We think you may have offered Three-Spot a cease-fire."

  "And he accepted," Ann-Marie finished.

  "What? I- no..." I tried to remember- what had I said? Why didn't we record these sessions? Oh, that's right, because I would be court-martialed if that video leaked. So what the hell had I said?

  "An end to blood shed on either side," Three-Spot spoke into my head. "We would not kill you if you would not kill us or our prey. Patrols will be cleared by both sides. The hunting grounds would be respected."

  Fuck.

  "I relayed these terms to my clan while you waited," he continued. "A vote was taken. Many did not trust you, but enough to pass the treaty did. And then I told you the terms were acceptable."

  "You did all that from inside the holding cell?" Ann-Marie asked.

  "With practice, we can communicate over quite a distance. Even from inside caves like this."

  "And your entire clan voted on the treaty?" I asked.

  Three-Spot nodded, huddling into an even tighter ball. "Mundane decisions are handled by a council of elders, elected every two growing seasons. Matters affecting the security of the entire clan are voted on by the entire clan. More than six out of eight adults must agree. Forbidden are laws that benefit one group more than the rest, or ones that dictate what an adult may do inside his own cave."

  "Holy shit," I said, looking at Butcher and Zaz with my mouth open.

  Zazlu was equally amazed. "The Hell-Spiders have a constitutional republic."

  "And a better one than ours," Ann-Marie added.

  "You do not have a similar system?" Three-Spot asked. "How are your laws made?"

  "It's... complicated," I said. "It's almost the exact opposite of what you described. Look, we don't have time for that now. I need to you to take another vote. We can't promise a cease-"

  "No," he said. "I cannot. It is too cold."

  "What?"

  "I cannot reach the clan. I cannot concentrate enough. I am too cold."

  "Cold?" The three of us were wearing t-shirts and fatigues. I reached out to touch the six inches of insulating, bulletproof glass in front of me. It was freezing. "Holy shit. Is this..."

  I spun to face Butcher and Zaz. "Did you guys hear anything about Oakley starting his torture program yet?" Ann-Marie shook her head. Zazlu also gave me a blank look. I turned to the spider again.

  "Three Spot- the temperature you are at now, can you survive that? Endure it for a long time?"

  I hadn't really noticed how small a ball he had curled into, but he did look like he was suffering. "I have endured worse," he said. "But I need food to do so. Much more than lightning snakes."

  "What do you need?"

  "A large animal. All parts of it. Something very muscular and freshly killed."

  I pinched the bridge of my nose and sighed. "I think... that we can provide that."

  "All I'm saying Zaz," I continued as we wheeled the covered cart down the halls, "is that you didn't have to do it. You could have let the thunder bees get me."

  "You have already died once," he sighed, looking downcast. "If resurrection is really changing your soul, it would not have been fair to let you die again. It is what a good Second Lieutenant does."

  We turned the corner, both pushing to keep the top-heavy cart from tipping. "Well, thanks," I said. "Again. I mean it. And for this too."

  He frowned down at the sheet as we pushed. "It does guarantee a certain... measure of closure."

  We reached the hallway outside the holding room and Ann-Marie killed the cameras again, then opened the feeding port in the prisoner door. I pulled the sheet of off Zazlu's birth body and he and I muscled the thick corpse through the three-foot wide port.

  "You're sure about this, Zazlu?" Butcher asked as we watched Three-Spot curiously inspect the muscular, freshly killed body we had given him.

  The Iranian frowned, squatting to look through the low port. "Well, perhaps we should say a few words in service before-"

  Three-Spot split open Zazlu's chest and started feasting on his lungs and heart. Zazlu swallowed. "Perhaps not."

  "Three-Spot," I said, making sure not to look at Zaz, "will this food keep you warm for the next few days?"

  We could hear him cracking the body's bones and ripping the flesh from them as he talked. "Oh yes. I have never eaten your kind before. But this is quite agreeable."

  I closed the feeding port before we saw any more. The muted sounds of tearing flesh could still be heard in the hall.

  "Sir," Ann-Marie said into the awkward silence, pointing at a clipboard hanging on the hallway wall. "Look at this schedule of tests they're planning for him."

  It was everything Oakley had promised. Freezing. Heating until unconscious. Starvation. Poisoning. Blunt trauma to the legs. Breaki
ng the back. Disembowl-

  "God damn it," I cursed, unable to read more. I pulled the clipboard off its hook.

  "He's our best intel asset," she said. "If we lose him...especially if the spiders consider him a diplomat..."

  "I know, I know," I said, rubbing my face, then looking around. How the hell could we stop a direct order from the General? "Zaz can you find me a post-it note? And a pen."

  Butcher looked at me quizzically but Zaz was back from the nearest office in a second. I wrote on the note, "CEASE ALL TESTS ON THIS BEAST UNTIL FURTHER NOTICE, PER MILITARY DIRECTIVE 621-A. -GENERAL OAKLEY", slapped it on the clipboard, and hung it back on the wall.

  "There. That should buy us a few days."

  "What's directive 621-A?" Zazlu asked.

  I shrugged. "I don't know."

  "You have got to be kidding me," Ann-Marie said.

  "I said it would buy us a few days, not forever. Now come on, let's go see what Grimmy found out."

  We headed back to our barracks with purpose. We had forged an eye in the hurricane, but just barely. The General had his skulls. Ann-Marie promised she'd be up and running in a few days. I'd have to watch Zazlu tonight, but he looked like he was handling death well enough for now. The note would have the torture geeks cross-referencing manuals for days before confronting Oakley, which was enough time to figure out if we owed Three-Spot anything beyond a painless death. And if Grimstone had found something definitive about how Ridley had died, we had a little time to act on it before something else came out of the blue and-

  "What the hell are you doing, Grimstone?" I demanded after opening the barracks door. Our tech geek was on the ground, doing push-up after push-up with shaking arms. As was the rest of the squad. Even Steve was in his wheelchair next to them, doing chair dips and breaking a sweat. "Why the hell aren't you working on-"