by Adam Sampson
Drafted
Proxy War
Adam Sampson
Copyright © 2019 Adam Sampson
All rights reserved.
This book is dedicated to my wife.
Hopefully you can get a dedication in a better book next time.
You deserve the very best.
Contents
Title Page
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 1
They say you can sometimes smell the alien dust on the tribute trains, but only right after the train arrived at the station. The rumor was that the smell would let you know this would be a tribute train, so you could choose a different one. This wasn’t really true, but it didn’t stop Peter Grey from arriving early anyway. He sat down on a wooden bench to wait for the Amtrak passenger train that wasn’t due to arrive for another fifteen minutes. He was mostly practical, but he allowed himself this one superstition.
The train station was the largest one in Lubbock, Texas, but it still wasn’t that large. Other towns had invested more in their train stations as airports grew obsolete, but Lubbock was a bit behind the times. This platform would soon fill up with travelers, but for now it was sparsely populated. Few people sat on wooden benches strung along the platform. Footsteps of travelers echoed off the metal ceiling, making it sound busier than it was.
Peter nestled his small suitcase between his legs as he sat and stared off into space at something only he could see. Most free moments were spent working on his proposal for work, using his smart glasses to tweak and improve the presentation. This was his first major presentation overseas. Up until now he had been a junior salesman at his company, this was his first chance to show his boss he could shine.
Although Peter looked overdressed for the afternoon train station crowd, he would fit right in when he got to the meeting in a few hours. He had just bought a new business suit, and he hoped it would be worth it. Peter has short brown hair, light brown skin, and a physique that showed both his regular exercise regime and his love for pizza. He looked at himself in the mirror this morning and thought he looked rather handsome. Most of his friends disagreed, they said he was slightly handsome at best, “not ugly” at worst. It was his work ethic that got him this job, not his looks.
A gentle chime sounded in his ear. Someone was calling, and he didn’t have to look to know who it was. He tapped his glasses to answer and said, “Hi Mom.”
“You shouldn’t go to Germany,” his mom said.
“Fine thanks, and how are you?” Peter replied. This non-sequitur threw Peter’s mom off for a moment while she processed what he had said.
After a moment she said, “I just don’t like it when you travel so far. It is dangerous,” Mom said.
“It really isn’t though, Mom,” Peter sighed and then continued, “Portal trains are safer than cars. You know this, I have told you a hundred times.”
“But what if the aliens get you? I would never forgive myself for letting you go,” she replied.
Peter knew what she was talking about, why she didn’t want him to take the train. Portal trains are one of the gifts the alien benefactors had bestowed upon the world. You loaded up on a standard train, and your train drove through a portal and ended up in a different country. Instantaneous travel almost completely replaced airplanes.
But of course, portal trains had a disadvantage that airplanes did not. The troll-like aliens demanded a tax for their generosity. After all, technology, healing, and portals did not come free. Every so often at random, about once a month, a train full of people would be drafted into their war as tribute, and an empty train would be delivered at its destination. Unlucky train passengers fought a war for the trolls in exchange for all the wonders they gifted the human race. The aliens called themselves Vindilar, but everyone on Earth called them trolls since they resembled the hulking brutes from fiction.
The chances of being on a tribute train were still very small. Statistically speaking you had a one in a half million chance of being on a tribute train at some point in your life. People who did not want to be taken by aliens could still take an airplane. But planes are slow, and portals are instantaneous, so people still prefer to take a portal train. Car travel was still the more dangerous of the three travel methods, even with modern medicine you still had a 1 in 200 chance of dying in a car crash at some point in your life.
Peter often told his mother this, each time he traveled in fact, but she still worried. Humans have a bad understanding of true risk. Peter wondered sometimes if the trolls were better at understanding probability, but he didn’t know. Even after twelve years of their presence on Earth he still knew very little about them. The aliens had contacted the Chinese first, assuming they were the leaders of the planet. They only talked to the Chinese government and didn’t give out interviews. Peter’s best guess is that tribute trains are probably why China opened up the gifts of the aliens to others, to lower the human cost to their own people. If it weren't for that human cost, perhaps the rest of the world would not have even known about the aliens.
Knowing all this Peter said the only thing that could end the conversation, “Mom, I promise if I ever get taken by aliens, I will get strong enough to come back home to you.”
A few years after the first tribute train, a few people started coming back home. They had done well in the troll’s war and had earned the right to come back home. It was the hope of all those who had friends or family go missing on a tribute train. Thousands left every year, and a handful returned. The trolls said that the others simply hadn’t earned the right to return yet, but those few humans that returned hinted at a terrible survival rate.
“You had better come back to me. I just couldn't live with myself if I knew those evil aliens took you away from me,” Mom replied.
Peter bit back his reply. Those aliens were not evil, they are the only reason why she was still alive. She had inoperable brain cancer last year, cured by an alien serum. She just didn’t like to be reminded of that fact. The last two times he brought it up, she yelled at him for more than an hour, claiming the serum could have killed her because the aliens might have spiked the serum.
There were no facts to support this claim, but that did not stop her heartfelt beliefs.
So instead he said, “I am glad to have you too, Mom. It would break my heart if something took you away from me too.” This wasn’t exactly true, but he knew it was what his mother wanted to hear. He was pretty sure he loved his mother, but he didn’t really miss her much when he was out of the country. Perhaps the daily calls had something to do with that. Seeing the train pulling into the station, he said, “I have got to go now Mom, I love you.”
“Call me when you get there, sweetiekins,” she said.
Peter winced at the childhood nickname. He could tell she was really mad at him, she knew he hated that name. “Yeah, Mom. Of course I will call you. I love you as much as you love me. But the train just rolled into the station and I need to hop on. Bye.” Peter hung up before she could answer. He knew she was just going to go on and on about the danger, and that conversation was easier to have when he had already made the trip. He loved being
in a different country and asking his mother if she thought he shouldn’t come home.
Picking up his briefcase, Peter hopped aboard the train. Each train car had two levels with stairs on each end to travel between levels. Halfway up on each side there was a small section with six seats and Peter always wanted to sit there. It didn’t feel as crowded to him as the larger sections of the main train car did. It always felt cozy, like a small reading nook in the library that no one visited. Peter particularly liked it when the train didn’t fill up all the way and he had the section to himself.
The train was idle for five minutes before Peter realized he wasn’t going to get the section to himself. A large man in a tan trenchcoat sat kitty-corner to him, grunting as he sat down. He was large in a way that refrigerators are large: ungainly in movement, but fading into the background when not. He tucked his thin briefcase between his legs and removed his black hat and placed it on his lap. With the hat off, Peter could see that the fridge man was balding, but his hair was close-cropped. Peter saw a long scar below his left ear before he looked away, not wanting to get caught staring.
You didn’t stare at men that large without consequences. For all Peter knew, this man could be a kindergarten teacher, but he would certainly guess mafia enforcer first. He would fit in well in the background of a mob movie, or perhaps a henchman in a James Bond movie.
They were the only ones in his section for a while and Peter started to hope that this train would not fill up. Portal trains didn’t really take long, but Peter didn’t like being squished between strangers. As people walked by him and continued up to the second level, he would cheer silently. Peter was a good passenger so he didn’t spread out his stuff on the seat, but he still hoped that people would pass him by.
A woman and her young son dashed his hopes as they stopped at his section. Peter scooched over to give them room. The mother sat near Peter and the little boy on the far side, his small legs dangling off the edge of the seat. The new arrivals looked Asian, but Peter didn’t have enough experience to accurately guess which country they were from. If pressed, he would guess that they were from Korea, based on their hair color. Their hair was black, exactly the same kind of black hair found in many Asian countries. He smiled when she talked to her son, he was pretty sure his guess was right, and they were speaking Korean. The mother had short black hair, looked to be in her late thirties, and had a round face that looked at her son kindly. Her son looked about three years old, black hair in a bowl cut. The cute little boy was looking around at the train in wonder, smiling and having the time of his life.
Traditional etiquette on trains and all mass transit in America, Germany, and South Korea was to pretend that the other passengers on the train were not there. No touching, no eye contact, and certainly no talking to each other. A polite train trip was a silent one, with everyone pretending they were sitting in their own opaque pod and could not see anyone else. In blatant disregard for this rule, Peter leaned over slightly and smiled at the young boy. The boy can be forgiven for breaking etiquette rules and smiling back on account of his age, but his mother showed better manners and continued to ignore Peter.
Next to join their small section was a tall, thin woman. She was much older than the rest of the passengers, but Peter suspected that when she was his age, she was a great beauty. Now, however, she had a pinched face and seemed dissatisfied in every way with the world around her.
Since his section was full now, Peter bowed to societal pressure and stopped people watching. He tapped his glasses and started making the small hand movements needed to manipulate the sales presentation. His arms in his lap, he only moved his hands a few inches at a time to get the desired results. His smart glass’s slim design and groundbreaking interface combined to make a true modern marvel, but Peter hated it. He didn’t actually need glasses, it was just for the screen. He hoped that after this sale in Germany, he would get enough commision to get a display implanted in his eyes. It would eliminate the need to move his hands since it tracked eye movement much better, and the resolution would be as crisp as his eyes could possibly detect.
His father had died before smartphones had become old technology; he would be amazed at all the advances the aliens had gifted the human race. That didn’t stop Peter from taking it all for granted only a few years later. Twelve years was plenty of time for most of the human race to get used to the new normal, and Peter basically grew up with the new technology, only being thirteen years old when they arrived.
The train rocked forward gently as it started rolling forward. On a small electronic billboard above the passengers’ heads displayed their destination, Dresden, Deutschland. Although still in America, the language for all signage had switched to German once the train started rolling.
Once they left the train station, they picked up speed and came to the portal just outside the station. The portal was a large oval extending above and below with the train tracks disappearing into the bottom edge. Purple with silver lightning trickled around the outside edges, the center a shifting mass of light and dark blue. Although it seemed to cut the tracks in half, the portal was literally one dimensional, so the landscape was unaffected by its presence.
Peter saw none of this, he was focused on shutting down his glasses. He would need to start it up again once he arrived since nothing worked during a portal trip. There was usually 12 seconds of darkness, the length of time it took for the whole train to enter the portal, before they arrived at their destination. Inside the train there was light, but outside was pure, featureless black. It was like someone temporarily painted the windows with vantablack paint, and removed it when they arrived.
The passengers should have known that something was off when it took twenty seconds for the light outside to return. But even the most seasoned traveler didn’t notice something was off until they looked outside.
The large man with the hat was the first in their train section to notice. He looked outside and said, “What in the...” He paused in confusion and said, “That ain’t right. That ain’t right at all.”
Soon most of the passengers were looking out the window as the train slowed down and pulled into the station. It was obvious that they had not arrived at their intended destination. The Dresden train station was covered, but this station was open air. Instead of benches and signs, this station was basically a slab of concrete on either side of the tracks to facilitate deboarding.
Seeing this, Peter said, more to himself than anything, “They must have misrouted the portal. They say that never happens, but there you go. He turned back and sat in his seat again as he said, “I hope they fix this soon.”
It was the general unease of his fellow passengers that made him look out the window again. This time he saw the sky, a gray-red expanse with scattered pink clouds. The realisation hit him like a punch to his heart.
“Oh shit. Mom is never going to forgive me.”
Chapter 2
He was going to die. This train had been chosen by the aliens as a tribute and he was going to die in their war. What were they fighting for? He didn’t want to die out in space. Or wherever this is, a planet of some kind, obviously. What planet had a red sky? He had no idea.
The tall thin woman stood up, started rocking back and forth on the same spot, and said, “Oh nein, oh nein.” Her eyes were wide with panic as she continued, “Das geht nicht. Ich werde spät sein. Das geht nicht. Ich kann nicht spät sein. Das geht nicht. Wir müssen zurück gehen. Ja, das mach ich. Ich werde einfach zurücklaufen. Ha, ich laufe einfach zurück.”
Peter knew enough German to realize that the older woman was planning on just walking back through the portal. He leaned up against the window to see if he could see the portal. He couldn't because the train track was directly behind them. Seeing the older woman start for the exit, he followed her. They walked up to the exit right as the train came to a stop. They were one of the first few to exit the train. Most of the rest of the passengers were reeling with shock at their une
xpected destination and not in a hurry to leave the train and walk into the unknown. A few passengers hadn't even realized that they weren’t in Dresden as they tried in vain to get their electronics to connect to the internet again.
The older woman turned towards the portal in the distance and started walking. Peter started to follow after her, only to see the portal close. He stopped, defeated. This was it. He was stuck here, for the rest of his life, however long that ended up being. Looking around at the new world, he squinting a bit. For a world with reddish-gray colored skies, it was certainly brighter than he would expect. There were tall mountains on either side of the train, far in the distance, but it was clear they were massive. In front of the train, where the concrete platforms ended, was a collection of vehicles.
He turned towards the old woman to talk to her. But she had continued to walk towards the end of the train when he wasn’t looking. Perhaps she hadn’t seen the portal close?
“Hey, das uh Portal ist geschlossen!” He yelled at her. He was reasonably sure that she would understand that the Portal is closed even though he couldn't remember the German word for Portal.
She half turned towards him as she kept walking, “Ich kann nicht warten, ich bin schön spät,” she said. Then she turned around and started walking further away from the train. Peter was about to go after her, but at this point, more people started to exit the train and blocked his view of her. He almost ran after her anyway but stopped himself. What would he do if he stopped her? What should they be doing now anyway?
Belatedly he thought about the quality of the air around him. How was he able to breathe on a different planet? The sky and ground obviously indicated the composition of the planet was vastly different than Earth. He took a deep breath, thinking about the air. It smelled clean. Not fresh exactly, just devoid of any bad smells. It was a little dry. His second big breath left him a little light headed. Did that mean there was more oxygen in the air? He had no idea.