Yes, the city was flooded, and the rain kept falling. But the military complex churned on. Shuttles still took off and landed, transporting troops to and from space. The planes still flew over the rainforest, bombing and bombing. Sometimes, when lightning flashed, Maria could glimpse the shadow of motherships beyond the clouds. It was said those grand starships were the size of cities, able to travel between the stars within only weeks.
The Earthlings are so powerful, Maria thought. Yet so easy to seduce with just a kiss or the curve of a hip.
"Goodbye kisses, come and get your goodbye kisses!" Charlie said, strutting across the stage, hips swaying. A tarpaulin canopy protected the stage, sagging low with rain. Some water made its way through to drench the parading bargirls, and their wet clothes clung to their bodies—much to the delight of the Earthling troops.
Another hundred Earthlings were heading home today. They lined up, ready to enter Marco Emery Spaceport and blast into orbit, the first leg of their journey home. On the way to their shuttles, they kept approaching the stage to kiss the girls goodbye.
With every kiss, Maria planted a codechip in a man's pocket, whispered into his ear, asked him to share her truth. With every kiss, she sent another little arrow into the war machine's engines.
"Thank you, Holy Maria," a sergeant whispered to her, still blushing from her kiss. "I've heard of you from my brother. Your videos are shared all over Earth. I'll share this too."
Maria blinked. "You've… heard of me?"
He nodded. "Everyone has! Some of us are just here for kisses. The others to help the Bargirl Bureau."
The sergeant gave her another quick kiss, then retreated with her codechip.
Maria's heart fluttered like a trapped bird.
More soldiers were lining up below. Charlie, Pippi, and the other girls were busy leaning forward, kissing them, slipping them more codechips.
They know, Maria thought, her legs shaking now. They all know. That means…
"Charlie." Maria inched toward her friend. "We have to get out of here."
Charlie leaned back from kissing a soldier, patted the man's cheek, and turned toward Maria.
"What?" Her eyebrow rose. "We're only getting started, Nini! We have so many codechips left, you know."
Maria looked at the crowd. At the sheets of rain, and the water spreading through the city. A city full of soldiers.
They all know…
"Charlie, we have to go." She grabbed her friend's hand. "Now."
Pippi was busy giving a soldier a long, passionate kiss. She turned toward them. Her red pigtails and schoolgirl uniform were sopping wet, and her makeup was dripping, making her look like a psychotic doll.
"What are you two chattering about?" she said. "We have goodbye kisses to give, and…"
Her words faded away.
Maria saw them in the crowd. Marching toward the stand.
Twenty or more. Earth's Military Police.
"Girls, run!" Maria said.
She leaped backstage.
The police swarmed.
Bargirls screamed, and Maria looked over her shoulder. The police were running onto the stage, grabbing girls. One man caught Pippi, who began to scream bloody murder. Another policeman clutched Charlie, who kicked and bit and howled. The police wrestled a few girls down, began handcuffing them. Below the stage, the departing soldiers booed.
"Let 'em go, pigs!" a sergeant said and tossed a bottle.
But when the MP turned toward the soldiers, the men grumbled and walked away. Nobody wanted to end their tour of Bahay in handcuffs.
Dammit! Maria thought.
She ran back onto the stage.
"Maria, no, run away!" Charlie cried.
But Maria raced toward her. "Not without you!" She began hitting the policeman holding her friend. "Let her go, let her—"
A policeman grabbed Maria.
She screamed.
She kicked wildly, but the man was so strong, pinning her arms to her sides. She was only a Bahayan woman, not even half his size.
"You treasonous little whore!" the policeman hissed in her ear. His breath reeked. "We Earthlings came here to liberate you. And we find you leaking classified material. You'll hang for this, you fucking little slit."
Maria bit his hand. So hard she tasted blood.
The policeman screamed and released her, and Maria drew her gun.
The world seemed to expand around her. Everything was pulsing, zooming in and out, a vibration of space and time, and her chest trembled, and when the policeman came at her again, she pulled the trigger.
He fell, clutching his chest.
Maria's hands shook so badly she almost dropped the gun.
For a moment—everything was silent.
Then the remaining policemen drew their guns, and Maria leaped away.
She landed behind the stage, and bullets whistled overhead. Her heart fluttered.
I took a life. Oh God, I killed again.
But she had no time for horror now.
"Charlie!" she cried. "Pippi!"
But the military police was dragging them away.
"Run, Maria!" Charlie's voice came from across the stage. "Run!"
More bullets flew. One hit the ground beside Maria. Another grazed her arm, drawing blood, and she screamed.
She returned fire. She emptied her magazine, and another policeman fell.
Then Maria finally turned and ran, tears on her cheeks.
I'm sorry, girls. I'm so sorry.
She ran into the alleyways of Mindao. The water was up to her knees. The police followed, but they were slow and clunky, and the water caught them. They slipped and fell, but Maria de la Cruz was from the provinces, had been raised a rice farmer. She had spent most of her life in the wet paddies. She waded forward with ease.
A bullet streaked overhead.
A man, an innocent bystander on a raft, screamed and fell into the water.
Maria wanted to dive after him. To try to save him. But more bullets flew, and the police was still chasing, and she was out of ammo.
She kept running.
She left the innocent man behind.
He died because of me.
"You slit!" a policeman shouted, firing.
Bullets slammed into the shanties. A wooden stilt cracked and fell. A shanty collapsed into the water. Children screamed inside, crawling out through holes, only for the river to pull them away.
Maria raced behind the pile of plywood, scurried up a pole, and scrambled into a shanty. A family huddled inside around a pot of aromatic adobo. Maria ran by them, jumped out the window, and hopped into another shanty. A family was here too—grandparents, parents, children, twenty or more people living inside this little room, no larger than a bedroom in the Go Go Cowgirl club.
Maria hopped from shanty to shanty, in and out of windows, vanishing into this labyrinth of plywood and rust. The police ran below, moving between the stilts, but slow. So slow. The water kept tugging them down, and the rain kept falling.
She moved. Room to room. All the shanties blurred together, becoming one massive maze, an entire city, a great honeycomb, family after family huddling inside for shelter. Living out their lives. Endless stories and dramas and generations here in the slums.
"Holy Maria!" they cried after her. They knew her. They all knew.
If they all know me, and the police knows me, then Ernesto knows too.
She kept running until she reached a rickety, abandoned shanty, home only to cats and mice. Lightning flashed, and between slats of particle board, she beheld the city. The shantytown rolled toward the train tracks. Beyond them snaked the Blue Boulevard, a strip of neon, glistening in the rain like a river of molten light. Farther out, the azure cathedral grew from the slums, an angel rising over a pit of hell. Farther still rose the landfills, the concrete towers of the city center, and the barracks of the Earthlings.
Thunder boomed.
The shanty rocked beneath Maria's feet, then pitched forward.
>
Maria screamed, and then the shanty was falling, crashing, and particle boards shattered, and the structure crashed into the water.
Thunder boomed again and again, and Maria struggled, caught in the flood, as wood rained around her. A sheet of tarpaulin fell over her, and she clung to it, gasping, head rising above the water.
The river pulled her along. Needles, paper cups, and the corpses of animals floated around her. Everywhere the lightning flashed, and the winds stormed, and torrents of rain pounded the city. She clung onto the tarpaulin, an ant clinging to a leaf, as the storm raged.
The police were gone now. They must have fallen behind, and perhaps the rain would take them too. Perhaps the rivers would cleanse all the evil from this city. The disease. The prostitution. The hunger. The Earthlings who had come from so far away. Maria imagined that the water could purify it all, and that in the morning, she would find a reborn city, transfigured into something holy and glistening like the cathedral on the distant hill.
Yet when the rain eased, and the winds died, she found herself in an alleyway among fallen palm trees. And the city still wept. And the world still mourned. She was alive, but her friends were gone, and her hope flowed away with the river.
Chapter Thirty-Seven
Metal and Tears
The news hit Kaelyn like a bullet.
She sat before the computer, staring blankly at the screen, unable to believe what she was seeing.
Photo after photo. Smuggled to Earth by the so-called Bargirl Bureau of Bahay.
Photos of a massacre.
A village called Santa Rosa—destroyed.
Tears ran down Kaelyn's face. She forced herself to keep looking. To scroll through the photos. To see the piles of dead. Hundreds of them. All of them innocent villagers. Men. Women. Babies too. Piled up on the roadsides. She saw photos of soldiers lining up to rape women. Tossing babies into the air and shooting them.
She saw inhumanity. Barbarism. Evil.
And then—even worse—she saw the name of the unit. Of the platoon that had done this.
Horus Battalion, Cronus Company, Lions Platoon.
George and Jon's platoon.
Kaelyn's heart broke.
"Hey, Kaelyn, want some coffee? I hope so, because I already made you a cup! Kaelyn?"
Lizzy came into the living room, wearing pajamas, holding two steaming cups of Joe.
She looked at the computer where Kaelyn sat.
Her cups fell and shattered, and coffee spilled across the floor.
Kaelyn had been living here since her father had kicked her out. It was a small apartment in Queens, New York. Lizzy paid for it, using her humble disability pension, some money from her grandparents, and a night shift working a parking lot booth. Over the past few weeks, the apartment had been a hub of activity. Every day, more activists came here, crowding the little place. They pored over the leaks coming from Bahay, built placards, uploaded videos. Every day, they planned their war against the war. Every day, they marched. They protested. They clashed with police.
And every night, it was just Kaelyn and Lizzy here. It was a studio apartment, all they could afford. Lizzy slept on the bed, and Kaelyn slept on the couch, but even at night they were not alone. At night the nightmares came. Lizzy often woke up screaming, drenched in cold sweat, and Kaelyn would sit beside her for long hours, soothing her, sometimes singing to her, until the sergeant calmed.
Days of protests. Nights of horror. This had become Kaelyn's life. She had found a new meaning here, and a new fire blazed inside her. She had not felt such burning purpose since singing for Symphonica. That old dream had died. Here was her new quest.
But today… today was not like other days.
Today Kaelyn was staring at photos of a massacre. The work of her brother's platoon.
"It wasn't them," Lizzy whispered, face pale, lips trembling. "It can't have been them. Not my platoon."
But in one photo they saw a faded figure of a giant. He stood in the background, grainy, barely visible at all. But they recognized him by his size. It was George.
"No," Kaelyn whispered, looking at her brother. "It can't be you. It can't…"
She trembled. It was impossible! Her brother was a gentle giant. As a child, he would cry whenever their father crushed an insect. And Jon! Jon was the sweetest boy Kaelyn knew, a boy who lived for poetry, who walked alone in autumn forests and gazed upon the stars. Neither boy had gotten into a fight since kindergarten. How could they have done this? Butchered hundreds of innocents?
"It wasn't them," Lizzy said. "Maybe it was their platoon. But Jon and George took no part."
Kaelyn sniffed, wiped her tears, and looked at the sergeant. "How do you know?"
"I know!" Lizzy said. "I trained them. I fought with them. I was their sergeant. With all due respect, I probably know Jon and George better than you do. As soldiers, at least. And I'm telling you: those boys did not commit this crime." Her voice softened. "And neither did Carter."
Kaelyn tilted her head. "Who's Carter?"
Lizzy lowered her head, for a moment silent. "The platoon's commander. A man I love. He would never have allowed this. If it's truly the Lions who carried out this atrocity… Carter is dead."
And now a tear rolled down her cheek. It splashed onto her lap.
"Wait." Kaelyn leaned closer to the monitor. She tapped the photo. "Look. George is standing apart from the other soldiers. And one of his hands is raised. As if…" Kaelyn gasped. "He's trying to stop the others!"
She clicked to another photograph. This one showed villagers lying dead in a ditch, tied and executed. A few soldiers stood above them, laughing. She could see George here too, standing in the distance. Again, he was apart from the others. He was shouting. Howling in silent anguish.
He was grieving.
She kept scrolling through photographs. Most didn't show George. But the ones where he appeared—he was weeping. In one photo, it looked like some soldiers were restraining him. Pulling him back.
Kaelyn's tears flowed. "My brother didn't kill anyone. He tried to stop the massacre. And Jon! Jon isn't in the photos." She let out a sob. "Of course not. Jon took the photographs. He wanted the world to see. And the world will see! We will use these photos. We will bring Hale down!"
She turned toward Lizzy, panting with excitement, then recoiled.
Lizzy was looking at another photograph.
Not one on a monitor. Not the photos distributed online around the world. But a photograph she had pulled from her pocket.
It showed her standing with a young officer. A handsome, somber young man with dark skin, closely-cropped hair, and intelligent eyes. The insignia of a lieutenant adorned his shoulder straps.
"Oh, Lizzy, I'm sorry," Kaelyn whispered. "I'm so sorry. Maybe he's still alive. Maybe…"
But then Lizzy turned on the news, and along with reports of the massacre, they saw the list of the dead.
Dozens of new names.
Among them—Captain Michael Carter. He had died a captain.
Kaelyn pulled Lizzy into an embrace. For a long time, they held each other, weeping.
* * * * *
A million people gathered that autumn day to march.
They came from around Earth, even from colonies as far as Mars and Titan. They were rich and poor. Young and old. Veterans and those who had never served. They were ruffled and shabby. Some had long hair and scraggly beards. Some wore business suits. Some wore tattered jeans and rumpled coats. Some wore military jackets, their medals pinned to their breasts. They smoked weed and they drank from flasks, medicine to forget the horrors. Some walked on crutches. Many rolled in wheelchairs. Some were elders with crooked backs and wobbling canes. Some were just children riding on their parents' shoulders.
They were all different.
And they were all angry.
They converged in New York City, and they moved through Central Park, heading toward the presidential palace.
Earth had united under a single
government long ago, following the devastating Cataclysm, an alien invasion that had brutalized the planet. For over a century, Earth's presidents had come from around the world. There was no central headquarters for the world government. No worldwide White House or 10 Downing Street. Traditionally, the president governed from his or her home.
The last president, Einav Ben-Ari, had lived in a humble home in Jerusalem. For decades, she had ruled the Human Commonwealth from that little house on the mountain. President Hale was American, and he lived here in New York, reigning from his palace in Central Park.
Lizzy was still in pain, still weak from her wounds. But she walked here with the million. She walked at their head. She had to lean on Kaelyn, but she walked on, ignoring the pain.
She had run, howling, firing bullets into the enemy hordes. She had run into fire and death. Now she limped toward a golden palace. And this was the longest walk of her life. And this was her greatest battle.
Her missing hand still ached, a phantom pain, even with the prosthetic attached to her nerves. The bullet through her lung had left her weak and wheezing. The nightmares of her captivity forever filled her mind, an eternal pain. But she was lucky. She had survived a war that had slain so many. And she was stronger than ever before.
She still wore her military uniform, and her medals clanked on her coat. Medals for courage under fire. But she no longer wore this uniform with pride. She wore it with shame. It was who she was. What she had done. A soldier in an unjust war. And she would not deny it.
She could hardly believe that only five years ago, she had been such a different person. Lizzy the popular high school girl. Always smiling. Always laughing. Captain of her volleyball team. A girl who lit up every room. Who loved dogs and volunteered at the retirement home.
That girl had died somewhere in the burning jungles of Bahay.
This was all that remained now. Sergeant Lizzy Pascal. A broken shell around a hardened soul. A soldier with medals on her uniform. With a hole through her chest. With a hole in her heart.
Her beloved Carter was gone.
Her platoon had slain hundreds.
Earthlings (Soldiers of Earthrise Book 2) Page 26