Grendel Unit

by Bernard Schaffer

  Frank could see Buehl in the mirror, mouthing along with the words Yultorot spoke, looking like he was about to vomit the whole time. "You all right up there, sarge?" Frank said. "You're not feeling an urge to go join a Sapienist rally are you?"

  "The only urge I'm feeling is the one to toss this bastard down the garbage chute," Buehl said. "Except I'm afraid slime like him would violate the space pollution code."

  "All life existed in perfect harmony under humanity's great dominion," Yultorot said loudly, speaking over them. "Until the evil one whispered deceit and confusion into the ears of the lowly creatures, confusing them and spreading discontent. Soon, the beasts forgot who their masters were and began to rebel. Even some humans fell victim to the evil one's lies and began to question the Lord, their God's commands. Now, God has chosen to wipe out the wicked and non-believer, making it the duty of the righteous to restore order to the universe. We are his sword. We are his punishment. We are his cleansing fire."

  Frank rolled his eyes and turned to look out the window at the glittering stars. He watched Yultorot shut off his tablet in the reflection and felt the man's stare boring into him like hot needles. Frank turned and said, "I warned you before about looking at me, child killer."

  Yultorot shrugged and said, "I just thought perhaps you had heard those words before and that they might bring you some comfort now."

  "I've heard them before," Frank said. "And they make me as sick now as they did then."

  Yultorot turned from Frank and looked at the others, "So none of you are believers then? All of you reject the holy word?"

  None of the crew responded, and Yultorot sighed with defeat. "Very well then. Captain, with your permission, I would like to lie down for a little while. I confess that space travel has always upset my stomach a bit."

  "I understand," Hill said, glancing at Frank for any hint of a sarcastic response.

  Wendy Simone turned around in her co-pilot's seat and said, "I'll escort him back, Captain." She waved her hand at Yultorot and said, "Come on. You walk in front of me, and don't touch anything."

  "Of course, Commander," Yultorot said, raising his hands slightly in the air. "Would you like me to place them behind my back?"

  "Just walk and keep your mouth shut," she said.

  Yultorot nodded and turned to walk, keeping his head low in a display of subservience as he moved in front of Simone. Frank turned to watch them leave, and his eyes were drawn to the tight-fitting pants stretched across her backside. She swayed when she walked, and Frank found himself thinking that it had been too long since he'd been around a woman. For a moment, the thought was enough to make him consider giving up his insane plan and run off to a new life. To settle down, and be a normal human being. It was a good dream to have, he decided, but not good enough to make him forget what he needed to do.

  And no tight pair of pants is going to make me keep you around while I do it, Commander Simone, he thought.

  When he looked back, he could see Buehl staring at him in the mirror above the pilot's seat. Buehl glanced over at Hill and then back at Frank, the question etched across his face as clearly as if someone had tattooed it there.

  Are you going to ask, should I?

  Frank leaned back in his seat and raised his hand to touch his knuckles on the cold glass of the window, and he said, "So, your dad is part of Unification? I didn't know that."

  Hill nodded quietly, then said, "It's not something we broadcast. We decided it was better if I made it on my own, without anyone thinking he helped me."

  "I'm sure it didn't hurt having him open a few doors for you though," Buehl said.

  "Who said he's in a position to do that?" Hill said angrily. "Or that he even would?"

  Frank studied Hill's face then, really and truly studied it, for the first time. Hill's nostrils were flaring in a way Frank had seen before. The man's reddish-blonde hair had always been too much of a distraction for Frank to make the connection, but now that he was looking, Frank realized that he knew exactly who Captain Joseph Hill looked like.

  Hill pointed his finger at Frank and said, "While you guys were hopping all over the universe these past years, I was working my tail off to get back. Nobody gave me a damn thing, so don't sit there and think that just because of what happened on Iscariot-Four or who I'm related to, that I'm some pencil-pusher. I was commanding an infantry unit before I got the call to rejoin Grendel. I don't have to explain myself to either of you, but you better believe I earned this. Do I make myself clear?"

  "Hooah, captain, sir," Buehl muttered, keeping his eyes fixed on the flight console

  Hill took a deep breath, shaking his head like a man who'd made a deep promise to himself about something and was surprised at how fast he'd already broken it. He slumped down into the seat across from Frank and closed his eyes and rubbed his temples in circles with his forefingers. He laughed quietly and said, "One thing's for certain, I've gotten a lot better at flying. You know, the only reason I said anything about it is because I thought you might understand, Frank. It's not easy living in your father's shadow."

  Frank looked across the aisle at Hill and felt something for the man that he'd never felt before. There was still a healthy amount of contempt, but now it was mixed with a slight tint of pity. Frank had refused to live in his father's shadow and chosen a completely different kind of life. Even if the Sapienists had never blown up the courthouse, Frank wouldn't have ever given in to the pressure to be a good son and go back to law school. It was clear just in looking at Captain Joseph Hill that he was never meant for military life. He had a soft face and weak eyes. The fact that he'd survived this long in active duty without getting blown up was, if anything, a testament to his sheer tenacity.

  If there were more time, and we were living in different circumstances, I might even try to like you, Frank thought. It's a damn shame I'm going to have to stuff you into a Baumgartner suit and maroon you instead.

  He decided he was going to kill Yultorot first. He told himself, in a cold, mechanical way, that it wasn't a revenge killing, but simply part of the operation. Yultorot was too much of a wildcard, and keeping him alive introduced too many variables.

  Once Yultorot was dead, he was going to have to find a way to disable Hill and Simone. Hill, he thought he could reason with. "Either get into that suit and jump, or you're dead," would work, especially with a rifle pointed at his head. Hill didn't have the heart to fight, Frank thought. He'd seen that first hand.

  Simone might be a different story, he thought. She was young, and stubborn, and had a lot to prove. She might want to fight, and he already knew he didn't have any desire to rough her up. He'd have to figure a way to deal with her.

  A loud beeping noise from the console broke Frank's train of thought as he watched Bob Buehl quickly start flicking switches. "Someone just opened the cargo hatch," Buehl said in confusion. "We're losing pressure from the starboard side."

  A massive boom in the rear of the ship sent a shockwave through their bodies, rattling them almost out of their seats, and the ship careened sideways, throwing Frank against the side window. Buehl yanked down on the steering wheel, trying to right the ship as the console blared red. "Explosion in the engine compartment!" Buehl shouted.

  The vents over their heads hissed with oxygen and the ship started to roll, tumbling Frank out of his seat and slamming him face first into the roof. He saw Buehl grab the headrest of his seat with the tips of his fingers, straining with effort to pull himself back down to the console. Even upside down, Buehl could make sense of the flashing lights and icons. "We have no thrust and the gravitation stabilizers are offline. Oxygen is at fifty percent!"

  Captain Hill was spinning sideways, trying to roll around enough to see the pilot console. "What the hell happened?"

  Frank felt something bump into the window behind him and craned his head around to get a better look. He was staring into the wide-eyed, pale face of Wendy Simone. Her throat was cut from ear to ear and the blood leaking out of
her neck into open space was frozen to her like a macabre scarf. "Yultorot," Frank grimaced. Simone's body began to float away into the sea of darkness and Frank banged his fist against the window glass in fury.

  "We have to evacuate the ship!" Buehl shouted. "The fire in the engine compartment is going toward the fuel cells. Everybody has to move."

  "What the hell is that?" Hill called out. "What just floated behind you, Frank?"

  The ship was spinning all around them like a centrifuge and Frank had to twist and turn over sideways to get a look at the ship's life raft, their only means of evacuation, floated past his window. It was a small container, only big enough to fit four people, but it was leaving a long trail of smoke, clearly sabotaged. The other crew members saw it too, and Frank closed his eyes. "That's it," he said. "We're finished. That bastard won."

  Buehl bent his head into his arm to cover his face, trying not to let the others see the emotions overcoming him. "My little girls," was all he could get out. "I'll never see them again. I can't believe this is it. After everything we've been through. This is how it ends?"

  Captain Joseph Hill looked at the life raft as it bounced off their ship, then he turned and looked at the two men around him, his eyes turning steely and hard. "Pull yourselves together, both of you. You are elite members of this galaxy's most badass unit, and you're going to just give up like this?" His face twisted in disgust, "I thought better of you."

  "We are done, you idiot!" Buehl shouted. "Finished! We have no life raft, we aren't anywhere near enough to a planet to land, and even if we were, we don't have the engine power left to slow our descent. It's over. It's just…over."

  "Not acceptable," Hill said. He had pressed his back against the wall to keep himself steady as the ship turned. "Lieutenant Kelly, what are our other options besides just staying here waiting to die? Give me something. Anything!"

  Frank blinked rapidly, trying to clear his head. "Uh…we have two Baumgartner suits. I snuck them on board in my gear."

  "We're too far away from any planet to jump, Frank," Buehl said with a short laugh. "Anyway, you only brought two. Which one of us gets to stay here and burn up in the atmosphere?"

  "What is the nearest planet?" Hill shouted over him. When Buehl didn't move, Hill shouted again, "Sergeant Buehl, check the console to determine the nearest hospitable planet!"

  Buehl finally clambered down to his pilot's chair and got enough of a grip on it to type several commands on the screen. He was upside down, and had to grab the console with both hands to steady himself enough to read it. "We're eighteen hundred kilometers from a hospitable planet, captain," he called out.

  "All right," Hill said, looking back and forth from the men to the corridor. "If we divert all power to the engines we can make an approach," he muttered to himself. There were fat beads of sweat pouring down his face as he looked up at Kelly and said, "You and the sergeant, report to the cargo bay and prepare to jump. Now."

  Frank took a deep breath and held it. He felt like he was going to be sick. "Captain, listen. I'm not jumping. I brought those suits to maroon you and Simone. I was going to hijack the ship from you to rescue Vic and Monster. I'm staying. You go with Buehl. I'll get you there."

  Hill pulled his way across the cockpit until he was close enough to Frank to put his hand on the man's arm and said, "Not too long ago, I heard you talk about a captain you respected because no matter what, he would find a way to win. Do you remember that? A captain worth fighting for. A captain worth dying for. Remember?"

  Frank nodded.

  "I listened to that because I knew if I was ever going to lead Grendel, I needed to be that kind of man. That kind of leader. Well, here it is, Lieutenant. I'm not letting that bastard Yultorot win. The two of you are going to find him and make him pay. Is that clear? You will make him pay, and we will win. All of us. Because no matter what it takes, this team refuses to ever surrender!"

  Frank felt his eyes stinging with tears as he nodded and said, "Roger that, sir."

  Hill pointed at Buehl and said, "Now get out of my chair and hurry down to the cargo hold. We don't have much time."

  Frank watched the captain flip upside down to slide himself into the pilot's seat and activate the emergency restraints. Hill grabbed the controls with both hands and said, "I'm setting a course for your little planet, Bob. I hope whatever is living down there doesn't mind unexpected visitors." Hill looked up into the mirror and said, "Well? What are you two waiting for? Get going."

  "Good luck, captain," Frank said quietly. Both he and Buehl stood there silently, looking at Hill as he worked the controls.

  "I'm going to accelerate toward the planet with the remaining fuel we have. You will both have a limited jump window. I'm diverting all the ship's remaining systems to the engines and life support. I'm going to do my best, boys, but it's going to be by the skin of your necks. Make it count!" Hill said.

  Frank tapped Buehl on the arm and waved for him to follow down the corridor. They were quiet as they navigated the floating field of clipboards and data discs as they crossed the corridor, making their way toward the cargo hold. Frank grabbed his gear bag out of the rack and yanked, freeing the straps from the dozens of other gear that had come loose and was now pinning the bag to the wall. He pulled it close and pushed himself with both feet from the shelving unit, floating through the void like a man pushing off of the edge of a pool, aiming for the incredibly small doorway at the opposite side.

  The ship was eerily silent, save for the metallic ding of a dozen loose items bouncing off of the walls and windows.

  Buehl grabbed the lip of the door with the tips of his fingers and pulled, forcing the door to open. They swam up to the door blocking the cargo hold, each of them with a strap from Frank's gear bag in their hands, using it to stay together. Frank opened the bag and pulled out the first tightly bundled suit and handed it to Buehl, silently telling him to put it on. The air was too thin to properly breathe, let alone speak, and they wouldn't have comms until they fastened their helmets to their suits. Buehl undid the bundle and quickly crawled inside the loose black suit, sticking his arms and legs through it and zipping it all the way up to his neck. He gave Frank the thumbs up and Frank did the same, and the moment he dropped the helmet down over his face and sealed it, he heard the familiar buzz of radio transmissions. It was Captain Hill, saying, "Mayday, mayday, broadcasting on all Unification channels. We are going down. Two survivors will be launched from these coordinates. Send rescue immediately, I repeat, send rescue immediately."

  Frank touched the side of his helmet and said, "Captain, we're suited up."

  There was a slight pause, but then Hill said, "We're approaching the planet's atmosphere. Prepare to launch."

  Frank and Buehl both buckled their gear bags to their harnesses and clutched the door's frame, waiting nervously for it to open. "Units are in position, captain," Frank said.

  "Good luck, gentlemen," Hill said over the comm.

  "Hey," Frank said quickly, looking up at Buehl as he clung to the cargo doors. Buehl nodded, and Frank took a deep breath. "I just wanted you to know, you made me proud to be a Grendel today. Me and Bob both." Frank felt his eyes burning and said, "You meet us down on the planet, whatever it takes, all right?"

  "Hooah," Hill said into the comm.

  The door flew open and both of them were sucked into the cargo bay, bouncing against the floor before they were coughed into space, spinning in the air as they tumbled toward the bright blue planet beneath them. The planet's gravitational pull was so strong, Frank worried his helmet might tear off. In that moment of panic, Hill's voice came through, clear and confident, saying, "Control to jump units, you should be entering the upper atmosphere now. The bright blue blur you've been seeing now has some color to it, I imagine."

  Frank looked down and saw that he could make out continents and mountain ridges below, and it was like the entire planet was hurtling toward them. "Roger that," Frank said, forcing the words out of his mouth. "We are o
n course for chute deployment in three seconds."

  "Good," Hill said. "Remember what I said. You find that bastard and make this count."

  "I promise," Frank said, raising his head into the merciless wind just in time to see the bright streak of light across the sky as the ship burst into flames, trailing long funnels of black smoke. There was a bright flash in the sky like a meteor and the explosion rippled through Frank's suit like a shockwave, sending him spinning end over end, with the comm channel in his helmet blaring nothing but static.

  There was a loud pop and he was jerked upwards so hard that he thought his shoulders might dislocate, but then he was covered a large shadow from his parachute deploying and his decent became a long, slow glide down through the sky. Pieces of the old ship burned to cinders upon entering the atmosphere, falling like a thousand small comets. The ancients of Earth would have called the debris shooting stars, but these are not stars, Frank thought. Just the flaming embers of a ruined ship and a brave man's body.

  Frank saw whole fields of trees emerge beneath him, their tops swaying slightly in the planet's light breeze. It was a vibrantly-colored place, filled with sweeping hills and meadows. There was a wheat field ahead of them, and Frank pointed at it to show Buehl that was where they should land. Both men pulled their chute's straps to the right, gliding gently toward the site.

  Their backpacks released small jets of compressed air to slow them, easing them down onto the long, rolling waves of green grass that sparkled in the sunlight. Frank unfastened his harness and pulled off his helmet, then mopped the sweat from his face. Neither he nor Buehl spoke as both of them numbly went through the routine procedure of opening their gear bags and setting up emergency beacons, small boxes with a long antenna that would broadcast a distress call and their location. Buehl looked up at the sky and took a deep breath, glad to be on the ground and able to breathe clean air, despite everything that had happened. "How long do you think before someone finds us?" he said.