by Joshua James
Terrified, the fourth AIC soldier quickly climbed into the cockpit with the driver and closed the security door behind him. Wan and Tonga were left in the back with three dead bodies.
“Now what?” Tonga asked.
For a second they looked at each other, trying to figure out what to do. Then Wan grabbed one of the soldiers’ rifles and clambered up to the top hatch of the armored transport. He climbed up onto the roof of the moving transport. It took him a few seconds to gain his footing.
There was a decision to be made. From the top of the armored transport, Wan could see the second transport, just beside and ahead of their own. The arrangement was his first lucky break. It kept him just out of sight of the other pilot. Wan’s jacket flew behind him flapping in the wind as he made his decision.
He aimed at the cockpit of the second transport and opened fire. It took a couple of hits, because the glass protecting the driver was thick and tough. But the super-heated high-velocity bullets eventually hit their mark.
The second transport spun out of control. Then it tumbled end over end, undoubtedly killing or, at the very least, grievously injuring the soldiers inside. Wan reopened the hatch and stuck his head back inside the armored transport he was on top of.
“Whaddaya doing, big man? Get on up here!” ordered Wan.
“My arm,” complained Tonga.
“Your arm…Well, buddy, I’m about to shoot the driver of this vehicle. Either you get up here and jump off with me, or you take your chances inside this metal tube of death as it careens out of control. Take your time.” With that, Wan’s head disappeared from the open hatch.
Tonga cursed to himself, then went about trying to climb up and out the hatch. Wan helped him up to the roof. Then he immediately pushed his comrade off the vehicle.
The big man screamed some unpleasantries at Wan, but Wan ignored him. Tonga would live, probably. They were flying low, and the ground below was wet.
At any rate, Wan would join him soon enough. So if he sent Tonga to his death, he’d be following after him.
Wan made his way over to the front of the armored transport. He stood, trying to reach some semblance of balance, but the driver wasn’t going to make it easy for him. Aware that their prisoner was on top of their vehicle, he swerved left and right, trying to knock him off, but Wan was sure-footed.
Once he noticed a brief pause in the swerving, Wan fired down at the roof of the armored transport’s cockpit. Armored transport seemed to be a misnomer, at least at the point where the cockpit armor reached the front glass. When he saw that his bullets easily tore through, Wan jumped off and hoped for the best.
Tumbling in the dirt, Wan regretted his actions in the last few minutes. With each somersault came a new pain in a new part of his body. For a little bit, it felt like it was never going to end. Finally his tumbles came to a stop, and the pirate was staring up at the sky.
Wan had almost forgotten that there was a battle raging in space above Europa. He lay there for a second in the dirt, looking at the beautiful display of lights and death just outside the moon’s atmosphere. Then he remembered the situation he was in.
When getting up, Wan remembered why he’d made a habit of avoiding fights. Everything hurt. He managed to fight through the pain and return to his feet.
The first thing Wan did was to walk up to the crashed armored transport he’d just escaped from. It was on its side, smoldering like his ship and pilot. Without even checking to see if anyone had survived, he emptied the remains of his rifle mag into the cockpit through the passenger side window. Then he threw away his rifle and jumped off.
“This is what I get for being diplomatic,” muttered Wan to himself as he limped in the direction he’d seen Tonga fall.
A few minutes later, and he discovered the big man. Tonga was on his feet and looking angry. Wan figured he’d get punched in the face, but he was in too much pain and too tired to care. But Tonga must not have seen much sport in it, because he just shook his head.
“You couldn’t have warned me?”
Wan shrugged. “It would’ve been worse if you’d known what was coming.”
Tonga’s broken arm hung at his side, as he’d lost the sling somewhere in his own tumbling. He was covered in black dirt, including the bandages on his head.
“We gotta get out of here before someone gets wise,” Wan said. “Somebody was waiting on those transports, and we don’t want to be here when they come looking for them.”
“Where do we go?”
Wan, armed with a pistol, pointed the way back in the direction of the ship. “That way.”
Six
It’s Complicated
“That’s a hell of a story, Private,” said Werner as he sat on a swiveling chair in his little base’s improvised medical bay.
Ada sat across from Werner with a towel over her right shoulder, spotted with her own blood. She wasn’t leaking because she was hurt, though. The UEF army medic was removing and re-installing a new HUD implant. Doc Congo and Tomas had already gotten theirs done, because Ada insisted on going last so she could explain how she and her group found themselves on Europa.
“It’s the truth, Captain,” insisted Ada.
“Well to be honest, I didn’t buy it at first. Aliens and cultists, visions and shit like that, you can’t blame me.”
“But…?”
“But then again, I’ve often found the crazier the story, the less likely it is that the person telling it made it up. Especially after all the crazy shit I’ve seen on this godforsaken rock.” Werner leaned back in his chair.
What struck Ada as a bit odd was not only how Werner never took off his Kevlar and uniform, but how everyone on his base was dressed for a fight. She didn’t see a single soul in civvies.
It wasn’t just the soldiers at the UEF scout base being dressed for war that stood out. Ada could feel the atmosphere, and it was tense. Looking at the physical building itself and the walls surrounding it, there were scars of war. Bullet holes revealed steel rebar under thick concrete. Craters served as memorials of friends lost, for anyone stationed there. And there were shell casings everywhere. She figured that there were so many being spent so often that they’d stopped trying to clean them up. Instead, they’d pushed them into huge clanging piles. The fighting must’ve been constant.
“Speaking of, what’s going on here? Looks like you guys have been through it,” commented Tomas. He stole the words straight out of Ada’s mouth.
“That’s because we have. We’re the easternmost UEF post on Europa. Thirty, forty klicks out is the AIC’s main base of ground operations. We’re the first line of defense for each one of their pushes into our territory, and lately they’ve been stepping those up. We get hit every damn day,” explained Werner.
“How? I mean, we just flew through your blockade. Don’t see a lot of troop transports or warships making their way through there,” said Ada.
“The blockade is new. Just got set up about a week ago. The higher-ups were scared after all contact was lost with Vassar-1. There were reports going around that we invaded their home planet, so naturally, we prepared for a counterassault here and then on Earth’s moon as well.”
“That also strangles the rebels that are already here. They can’t get out, and no supplies or reinforcements can come in,” pointed out Tomas.
“Exactly. But that’s made them desperate, more dangerous. I’ve lost…” Werner stared off at nothing for a moment before returning back to the moment. “We’ve lost a lot of men and women in the last few days.”
“I’m sorry to hear that, Captain. I really am. But despite all, that we need your help. We need to talk to whoever’s charge here, on Europa. They need to be warned about what’s coming,” insisted Ada.
“I assure you, they know that the AIC are coming. Hell, you just flew through the battle against them. Which I still want to know how you did, by the way.”
“No, about the Shapeless.” Ada gave Werner a look that asked if he’d list
ened to a word she said. She’d told him about the Atlas, Sanctuary Station-33, and Vassar-1. She’d warned him about the alien threat that threatened to eat the UEF from the inside out. But he was a military man. He believed and was ready to deal with what he knew. He knew war against the AIC. A strange shapeshifting alien that he never saw, or never knew of anyone who had any run-ins with one, was more abstract, harder to wrap his head around.
“I understand. I do. And I believe you about the ETs. But my responsibility is this base and the people here. We need your help. You stay here and help us fight. You do that, I’ll personally escort you back to HQ myself. Deal?”
Werner had already lost over forty men and women to the cold embrace of death or injury in the last month. Things were very bad.
“Okay,” agreed Ada. “We can do that.” She didn’t consult Tomas on that decision, or Congo. The thing was, she didn’t have to. Tomas, even after all they’d been through, was still a soldier. Like her, his loyalty to the UEF hadn’t wavered even though loyalty to each other, the group, was more important. And the doc was just happy to not still be locked up in the incinerator with Clarissa and LeFay.
“Good! I’ll see if we can get you set up with some armor and uniforms, if you want. Arm you. I have to go deal with your friends.” Werner got up.
“What are you going to do with them?” asked Tomas.
Ada could feel the animosity radiating off Tomas. His loyalty was to the group, much more than to the UEF. If Werner told him that he wasn’t going to let them go, or worse, no one in the scout base could stand between him and freeing them.
“Not sure yet. I get that they’re your friends and that you’ve been through a lot. But they’re both known AIC spies, agents. Just letting them go, it’d get me in a hell of a lot of trouble.”
“It already looks like you’re in a hell of a lot of trouble,” Ada said. She wanted to get up, but the UEF medic was using the flesh fuser to close the incision on the side of her neck. “You said yourself that you need all the help you can get, and those two ladies, well, they can do more than help.”
Werner sighed and nodded. “I know. Still…”
“What’s the deal with you two, anyway?” asked Ada, genuinely curious. “You and LeFay.”
LeFay was born Sarah Diana Pavlic in the Russian Republic. She was born on Earth. But her parents, they were rebel sympathizers. When she was eight, they fled the planet and moved to Vassar-1. At the time, she’d thought it was a choice, but in actuality they’d run afoul of the Kremlin.
When they got there, they had nothing. They lived in the Bowery Slums for two years as LeFay’s parents tried to scrape their family off the floor. And they did. In those two years a young LeFay picked up an aptitude for computers and coding in particular.
LeFay got accepted into the United Institute of Computer and Bio Technology (UICBT) at only eleven years old. She was the youngest student accepted in the school’s fifty-year history. Once she started, it became clear that she was special. Her university-aged fellow students couldn’t keep up with her ideas and projects regarding a discovered love: biohacking.
One week after LeFay paid a friend to cut off her left arm at the elbow, and installed her own homemade version made from scraps and stolen bits of tech from UICBT, she was approached by an instructor and recruiter from the AIC’s Intelligence Services. It wasn’t long until she was whisked away to the outskirts of Vassar-1 to train to be a spy.
LeFay’s abrasive yet nonchalant personality didn’t do much to endear her to her fellow recruits and instructors. Add to that her love for hacking into the Intelligence Services servers, just for fun, and she didn’t last long in the program. Once again, she found herself on the streets of the Bowery Slums.
With two parents too old to work full time, LeFay took it upon herself to take care of her family. She worked for different Aug Centers around Vassar-1, creating and installing different body augmentations for rich clients. On the side, she used the information she got from said clients’ HUDs to steal credits that she paid to nurses to take care of her folks. Her other side hustle was a body hacking/augmentation service out of her own apartment that quickly gained popularity, due to the quality of her work.
One day, while in her shop/apartment, LeFay got an unexpected visitor. A fellow trainee from her time at the AIC Black Room, Clarissa, showed up at her doorstep. She offered LeFay another chance to work for the Intelligence Services. In return, the city sentinels wouldn’t kick down her door, and Clarissa would get the Confederation Police to forget her many charges of digital robbery. To top it off, she offered government-paid in-home care for LeFay’s parents. There was no choice but to accept.
LeFay’s name changed when she entered secret training off-planet in a space-based training center called the Hive. The Hive was reserved for military and citizens of the AIC who showed exceptional skills and talents when it came to advanced technology. She quickly rose to the top in body hacking and augmentation.
Armed with military training and access to the AIC’s most advanced technologies, LeFay was given her first assignment, on Earth. She actually flew there with Clarissa and Clarissa’s family. Both put down roots in and around Seattle. LeFay was ordered to infiltrate the UEF equivalent of the Hive, situated under the megacity. Clarissa was assigned to a power plant.
LeFay was reassigned away from Seattle. She went back to her old habits and was stealing UEF tech, keeping the best for herself and handing the AIC Intelligence Services the scraps. Luckily she was caught by her own side, but couldn’t be trusted around such valuable technology anymore. She wasn’t there for the cultist terrorist attack on the power plant.
The next stop for LeFay was Annapolis. Her new assignment was to apply to be a UEF Phantom, one of a group of tech-savvy specialist spies whose whole purpose was to stay invisible and attack the enemy digitally. She excelled at the job. This time she curtailed her extracurricular activities and stayed on point. During that time she also met a man, a newly-graduated young Lieutenant Darren Werner, at a bar not far from the Government District.
LeFay was a hard woman. Of all the things that could’ve been said about her, no one would doubt her toughness, but she wasn’t everyone’s cup of tea. At that point she was more machine than woman: not just physically, but in her personality and emotions as well. The death of her parents made things worse. Werner didn’t care about all that, though. He loved the mind that dwelt under the metal and wires. And she loved him.
“What the hell happened between you two? You never told me,” asked Clarissa as she lay on the floor of the incinerator, staring at the scorched ceiling.
“It was…complicated,” answered LeFay as she pressed her hand against different parts of the incinerator walls. Though not visible, she was using a system of sound-wave emitters and echolocation receptors in her hand that would show her where the door panel on the other side was. She would’ve just hacked into the base’s operating system, but the thick metal walls and door of the incinerator room made wireless connection impossible.
“That’s it? That’s all? C’mon, it’s not like we’re going anywhere anytime soon. Tell me,” urged Clarissa. She then turned to her side. “I don’t know, that’s what I’m trying to figure out.”
LeFay turned and looked at her friend, concerned. “For somebody who talks to her dead husband, you’re sure nosy about my ex-fiancé.”
“Stop trying to dodge the question. What happened?”
“We, uh…well, it was my fault. You know what I was doing there on Earth in Annapolis, right? As my ‘handler’?”
“You were supposed to gather as much information from the Phantom program as possible and relay it back. I remember.”
“Yeah, well, one day, we both had free days, me and Darren. I wanted to stay in bed while he was wide awake, so he decided he’d watch some TV on his HUD. But he wanted to watch something I had on file in mine. He asked, and I gave him access.”
“So? That sounds pretty innocent.”
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“So, it turned out the night before I was a bit sloppy. We met for drinks after our shifts and I was running a bit late. I was so late and in such a hurry I forgot to encrypt my report for the AIC before leaving. I forgot to encrypt it while out drinking. I forgot to encrypt it while I was drunk. I forgot to encrypt it when I got home.”
“And you didn’t encrypt it in the morning?” Clarissa could see where this was going.
“Yup. Anyway, so he could get the show off my HUD, I gave him access. He stumbled upon the report, and you can guess what happened next.” LeFay went back to work emitting sound waves through the thick metal walls, looking for the door panel.
“Pretend I can’t. C’mon, it’s pretty damn boring in here.”
LeFay sighed. “He found the report, and we fought. I told him the truth about who I was and what was going on. He called off the engagement and gave me one day to get off-planet before he’d report me. That was the big issue. To him, the job was important than our relationship.”
Clarissa laughed.
“What’s so funny?” LeFay stopped and turned around, looked at her friend again.
“You! You say it like it was his fault.”
“The way I see it, it was. I mean, why couldn’t he just look past that and focus on the fact that we were, you know, in love?” LeFay ended the sentence like a proclamation of love made her feel queasy.
“He’s in the military and you were a spy, spying on that military. How could he just ignore that? No wonder he’s still pissed.”
LeFay was silent for a moment. She went back to work; then she spoke up again. “I mean, it was more than just that.”
“What do you mean?” Intrigued, Clarissa sat up, propping the upper half of her body up by her elbows.