Devastation Class

by Glen Zipper

  “Do me a favor and don’t play with that.”

  “Why not?”

  “Because I don’t want it going off in my face.”

  Ohno playfully spun the cartridge in her fingers. “Hilarious.”

  “What’s hilarious?” Bossa called out from behind me, poking his head inside.

  JD threw up his hands at the intrusion. “What do you need, Bossa?”

  “Someone out here looking for you, cookie.”

  “One of Staxx’s goons?”

  “Yup. Grumpy fella. Not very talkative.”

  “Guess it’s my turn today,” JD quipped as he got to his feet and grudgingly made his way back out into the armory.

  The dread in him was obvious. Since establishing we had in fact Blinked into the future, every day Staxx randomly summoned one of us to rehash every last detail of our experience since Gallipoli.

  As tiring as his interrogations were, I understood what he was doing. Somewhere inside the mystery of our Blink, he was hoping to find the only thing that could save our already-lost cause: the power to manipulate the hands of time.

  Following JD out into the open, my eyes were drawn to where the students had cobbled together their own haphazard enclave. A few had taken to etching graffiti onto the chalky stone wall behind it. All their different, indecipherable doodles were beginning to merge into something more singular. In its own strange way, it was kind of beautiful.

  I noticed Julian crouched beneath the mural, uncomfortably nestled between two students with whom he had nothing in common. His regretful eyes followed us as we walked toward the soldier.

  For all my well-earned anger and resentment toward him, the same thought floated up yet again.

  More one of us than one of them.

  JD took close measure of the hulking visitor as we approached. I saw the same thing he did. Something about the soldier looked conspicuously annoyed. “Off to see the general, are we?” JD asked.

  “No,” the soldier deadpanned. “Someone else wants to see you.”

  CHAPTER 44

  LIKO

  FROM MY POSITION, HUNCHED AGAINST A CRATE inside the student encampment, I watched from a distance as Gentry tried to calm Cooper down near the back of the armory. I couldn’t hear what was being said, but no doubt it was about his latest quarrel with Marshall. It was the third time in two days Cooper had instigated trouble with one of the cadets. And also the third time Gentry had played the unlikely role of peacemaker.

  “There is very little space between men,” my father once told me. “Within it there is neither good nor evil. Nor is there right or wrong. There is only circumstance.”

  He had used those words to convey a simple sentiment—that he did what he had to do for us to survive the war. As I grew older, I realized he was also speaking to something else: the fine line between allies and enemies.

  I didn’t know what happened in Gentry’s few days away from us, but something about him had changed by the time of his return. My only guess was that the same fine line my father saw may have started to reveal itself to him.

  There had been no consequence for anything. Not for Gentry’s alleged failure at Gallipoli. Not for the cadets’ mutinous response. Not for the measures we had taken to remove them from command. Regardless of any possible defense or arguable justification, we should’ve all been brought before an Alliance military tribunal, yet Staxx did nothing other than deposit us in the armory to stew in a cauldron of mutual animosity.

  I asked myself why. How could it be that the general would have such little concern for actions so abhorrent to the laws and codes of conduct of the Alliance? I could only conceive of one possible answer.

  It didn’t matter.

  Not anymore.

  With the world collapsing around him and the entire accumulated history of humankind hanging in the balance, the events that transpired aboard the California—no matter how grievous or repugnant—paled in comparison to the existential threat of the Kastazi.

  Thinking of things in those terms, it was becoming harder and harder to remain faithful to the identities that divided us. Cadets. Students. Explorers. Soldiers. With the Kastazi threatening our extinction, was there anything left other than us and them?

  The fine line between enemies and allies.

  Inside the Resistance base, was it possible for us to be on anything but the same side of it?

  We were all orphans of a world that no longer existed, clinging to survival in a time in which we did not belong, battling an enemy for which we had no answer.

  Watching Gentry go about his business, it seemed clear he was beginning to operate under a similar awareness. No longer preoccupied with a vendetta toward the cadets, he concentrated on keeping order and calm among our ranks—moving quickly to reintegrate us with those who hadn’t joined his insurrection.

  Gentry also took it upon himself to tend to the fragile psyches inside our encampment. Some cried day and night. Others had stopped eating. A few had even become physically ill. It didn’t seem like something he was particularly well equipped to deal with—nevertheless, he was doing the best he could.

  In our second day in the armory, I observed him consoling Jagdish Patel. Gentry spoke to him softly, never wavering in his steady, reassuring eye contact. A few minutes later, Jag picked up a discarded PRM lid and scratched the words Devastation Class onto the wall. I wondered what Gentry might have said to inspire him to do that.

  I wondered if Gentry’d go so far as to try to integrate us with the cadets next. Even if he wanted to, I wasn’t sure where he’d even begin. There were still plenty of students like Cooper. Those who insisted on blaming everything that happened to us on the cadets, as if their actions alone had caused the Kastazi invasion and all that had followed in its wake.

  It was irrational, but I thought I understood the psychology of it. They needed to point their angry daggers at something, and the cadets offered a far more immediate target than the Kastazi.

  “One by one, they leave and come back,” Cooper grumbled, stomping back into our encampment with Gentry in tow. “Where do they go? What are they planning?”

  “They’re not planning anything,” Gentry calmly replied. “They’re being debriefed.”

  “Debriefed? They mutinied and Blinked us into oblivion. That’s all there is to it.”

  “Some think they saved our lives,” I interjected almost reflexively, surprising myself.

  “No, Liko. They stole them.”

  “How? By Blinking us past an apocalypse?”

  “By Blinking us into one!”

  “Gentlemen, let’s move on,” Gentry admonished.

  “Are you serious? To where? To what?” Cooper snapped at him.

  Gentry crouched down, wearily resting his back against the crate beside me.

  “We’re still here,” he said, looking up at Cooper. “And as long as we’re alive, we’ve got a fighting chance.”

  “Does this feel like a fighting chance to you?” Cooper asked, gesturing at the walls surrounding us.

  “What does it feel like to you?”

  “Hopelessness.”

  “Is that how you feel?” Gentry asked, tapping my knee. “Hopeless?”

  Even after three days with little else to do but sit with my thoughts, I didn’t have a clear answer.

  “I’m feeling a lot of things.”

  Gentry closed his eyes and nodded to himself. “Lima Station.”

  “What did you just say?” Cooper indignantly replied.

  “Lima Station. The first civilian outpost attacked in the war. Your mother refused to evacuate and held off an entire Kastazi platoon for two days. By herself. No weapons, no reinforcements. Just her wits.”

  “And then she died. Just like she would have if she’d done nothing,” Cooper spat.

  “Ju-long Chen,” Gentry said, turning to me. “Your father was the highest-ranking Axis operative ever captured by the Alliance.”

  “That’s no secret.”

 
; “His infiltration went all the way to the High Command, entirely undetected. He never made a mistake. Not one.”

  “Yet he was discovered nonetheless.”

  “Only because the Alliance turned another Axis operative against him.”

  “If you’ve got a point, why don’t you just go ahead and make it?” Cooper complained.

  Gentry pulled down the creases in his uniform.

  “When we were prepping for launch, Captain Marshall briefed me on every single one of you. Prelaunch briefings are standard operating procedure, but this was something different. He wanted me to know everything there was to know about every student and cadet in the Explorers Program. Not just test scores, special skills, and disciplinary histories. Your families. Where you came from. What made you who you are. When I asked him why, he said it was because each of you was on the California for a reason. I thought he was just making a point. Telling me that there was a method to his madness, because some of you weren’t even close to meeting the Explorers candidate profile. Now I’m beginning to think maybe he was trying to tell me something else. That he knew something was coming, and he was putting everything in its right place to be ready for it.”

  As crazy as it sounded, jumping five years into the future had left me ready to consider almost any possibility.

  “You think Captain Marshall knew all of this was predestined? That somehow we were meant to be here?”

  “Maybe.”

  “That’s ridiculous!” Cooper scoffed.

  “Is it? Even after everything you’ve seen?”

  “If it were true, it wouldn’t make any difference.”

  “If it’s true, you wouldn’t need to feel hopeless.”

  “Why?”

  “Because Captain Marshall never would have set all this in motion just to have us die here.”

  CHAPTER 45

  JD

  I MADE SURE TO TAKE EVERYTHING IN as the soldier escorted me toward my unknown destination. Along our path I recognized the docking platform from our arrival, various guard posts and staging areas, as well as a mess and an infirmary. Each looked conspicuously vacant, undoubtedly the result of the Resistance’s mounting losses.

  We turned another corner and walked past what appeared to be a provisional chapel. Inside, four rows of hastily constructed pews faced an ornately dressed icon of an Aeson goddess. A few Aeson knelt quietly before it, their heads solemnly bowed.

  “Do they pray every day?” I asked.

  “They’re not praying,” he stoically replied. “They’re asking for permission to die.”

  “Bavmat?”

  “Yes, I think that’s what they call it.”

  Bavmat, the Aeson death rite, was no perfunctory ritual. It was said to be practiced only at the imminent intersection of life and death. Whatever threat had put the Aeson on their knees had to be grave. It also had to be close at hand.

  At the end of one more long corridor, there were no more corners for us to turn. All that remained was the heavy alloy door. Affixed to it was a handwritten note.

  Must you disturb me?

  Annoyed, the soldier snatched the note and tossed it to the floor.

  “Weirdo,” he muttered to himself as he placed his hand on an adjacent scanner. With a clang and hiss, the lock disengaged and the door fell ajar.

  “What is this place?”

  Ignoring my question, the soldier ushered me inside and retreated in the opposite direction.

  I immediately recognized I was inside a laboratory. In addition to the sophisticated analytical equipment I expected to see, its space was littered with antiquated accoutrements, such as funnels, test tubes, stir rods, pipets, and volumetric flasks. At the center of the space, a body lay on a long steel examining table, obscured by a sheet. It appeared to be humanoid.

  At the far end of the lab, an observation window overlooked the docking platform. From my vantage point many of the ships were hard to make out, but I could clearly see the mighty California. Dwarfing every vessel around her, she was front and center and prominently in view. The repair drones blanketing the fuselage made her appear like a dog infested with thousands of tiny, spark-throwing fleas. The Delphinium was tethered to an adjacent berth, her damage being attended to as well.

  “Welcome,” a voice called out from behind me.

  A figure lurked in the shadows, watching.

  “Who are you?”

  “A tired old man,” he answered, striding into the light.

  With each step forward his features came more clearly into focus. His shoulder-length black hair and carefully manicured beard. A small, jagged scar just beneath the right eye. I knew exactly who he was.

  “Fuller,” I whispered.

  “Hello, John.”

  “But, you’re . . .”

  “Dead?” he spiritlessly answered. “Reports of my death . . . well, you know the rest.”

  A sharp chill ran down my spine. To see Fuller standing before me, in the living flesh, was almost impossible to process.

  Despite his pronouncement to the contrary, he didn’t look very old. If memory served me, he was somewhere in his late forties when he disappeared, and his appearance had barely changed at all. The question of his age aside, he did look tired.

  “I’ve read your debriefing reports,” he said, sluggishly lowering himself onto a chair by the examining table. “You claim the Hybrid—”

  “Nicholas,” I corrected him, my ears thumping with the pressure of my skyrocketing pulse. “His name was Nicholas.”

  The doctor reacted with a winsome tilt of his head. He seemed pleased I had referred to Nicholas by name.

  “Nicholas,” he cordially repeated. “You claim his self-termination protocol malfunctioned.”

  Still in shock, I struggled to articulate a response.

  “This is important, John,” he prodded me, assuming a more reassuring tone. “I need you to focus.”

  I tried to calm myself as best I could. “No, that’s not what I said. I said he disregarded the protocol.”

  Fuller pensively massaged his temples.

  “Tell me what you think the difference is.”

  “It was a choice. Not a malfunction.”

  “What makes you so sure?”

  I paused, not sure how to express what I perceived in Nick to be the nuance of sentience.

  “A malfunction is mechanical. It occurs, and its consequence inescapably manifests.”

  “And that’s not what you observed?”

  “No. There was an awareness. And a struggle.”

  Fuller’s impassive expression suddenly bloomed into a full-blown smile.

  “Come. Sit,” he invited, gesturing to an adjacent chair.

  My adrenaline finally regulating, I cautiously approached and sat facing opposite him. It was hard not to stare. I was looking into the eyes of not just a legend, but a ghost.

  “You cared about him.”

  “We all did. He was one of us.”

  Clasping and unclasping his fingers, the doctor silently regarded me. It seemed clear he was engaging in some manner of internal deliberation, carefully considering what to say next.

  “You should know your father risked his commission to help me bring Nicholas into being,” he finally said. “If not for him, Nicholas would never have existed.”

  Whatever anxiety I was feeling was abruptly joined by indignation.

  “You can’t possibly expect me to believe that.”

  “Why not?”

  “Because if you knew anything about my father, you’d know he’d never willingly subvert Alliance law.”

  “So says his son the mutineer,” Fuller scoffed. “Your father was my friend, and I can assure you your apple didn’t fall very far from his tree.”

  “If you want me to believe you, you need to do better than that,” I shot back, recoiling at the unearned tone of familiarity he was addressing me with.

  The doctor nodded, perhaps acknowledging for himself that he was moving too fast.


  “I can tell you he did what he did because the Kastazi revealed an undeniable truth to him. That our existence is little more than a fragile metamorphic mutation. An evolutionary aberration waiting to be culled by the universal laws of natural selection. It could be a hundred years or a thousand, but, absent extraordinary intervention, our extinction is inevitable.”

  “And Hybrids were supposed to be that extraordinary intervention?” I skeptically retorted.

  “No, it needed to be something more than that. Your father tasked me to engineer a second-generation Hybrid. One that would be entirely self-determinate. Capable of inheriting our civilization and carrying it forward long after we fade away.”

  It took a moment for the full impact of his revelation to hit me.

  “Are you telling me he wanted them to replace us?”

  “Not to replace us. To succeed us. By the operation of nature, humanity will eventually end. It is inevitable. So it was intended for them to continue on as the children of our civilization when that time comes, and for some vestige of us to live on within them.”

  “And that’s what Nick was. The first Gen Two.”

  “Not the first. The first was barely distinguishable from a human being, possessing almost none of a Hybrid’s special abilities. I thought self-determination might be more easily realized under the constant, existential threat of mortality. When that experiment bore no fruit, I abandoned it and created Nicholas. And then I waited.”

  “Waited for what?”

  “Sentience. He could not have defeated his termination directive without it. What transpired aboard the California is proof of it. I have finally succeeded in endowing something born from lifelessness with life.”

  “You make it sound like you gave him a soul.”

  “I didn’t give him one. It was there for the taking. The marrow of sentience and essence of life, it is inextricable from the fabric of space and time. It is material. It has form and substance. It can be captured. Harnessed. Directed.”

  As I had so often experienced with Bix, Fuller seemed to have no awareness of the complexity of the ideas he was trying to relate. Yet, despite the unwieldiness of the metaphysical brain twister he had sent tumbling through my head, I still managed to deduce my way to the next step on the path he was leading me down.