“No. There’ll be plenty of survivors. In a thousand years, you’ll never know we took these poor shits down to the one-percent mark.”
I said, “Five-by-five. And three-beta. Let’s go.”
o0o
It was less than an hour before the little green folk were blown to Hell and gone, or chased away, streaming out across the blackened plain as we let them go, running up into the hills, clutching babies to the chests, dark mouths open in horror, pits of shadow as a bloated red sun rose over the smoky horizon. We left marksmen stationed around the perimeter, knocking down anyone who tried to take a weapon. After a while, they got the idea.
Kathy Lee, Solange and I walking slowly through smoking rubble, rubble that tinkled and cracked underfoot like so much broken crockery, streets full of broken brick and crushed glass, buildings collapsed down into their own foundations, flanked and followed by our personal octals, soldiers wary, but knowing the job was done.
Kathy Lee toed a twisted Hatailli corpse, turning it over, looking down at a blank-eyed, gape-mouthed face. Not too human. Human enough. She said, “Look’s like he wasn’t very happy about all this.”
Solange laughed. “Guess not.”
City of the Hatailli like fallen cities everywhere, all this proud labor, like the proud flesh that bore it, come to nought. Sometimes I still dream of the days when Alix and I wandered, lost children, in the ruins of Chapel Hill. I can still feel her small hand in mine.
Image of her face, watching me walk away on that last sunshiny morning... Put it away. She’s gone now. It never happened. No. But you don’t want to lose all those splendid childhood memories, just because...
We walked on, picking our way up into the ruins of the Keep, the last stronghold where the Hatailli leadership had held out to the proverbial bitter end. I hope it was a very bitter day for them, very bitter last moments. Because of them, a lot of innocent people had to die, people who would have been happy, would have prospered under the tutelage of the Master Race. Not benign tutelage, no. But lax.
They say it’s better to die as a free man than live as a slave. Ask these people, here and now. Ask the dead if they’re any happier. Ask the dead children if they wanted to die so their parents could experience a few moments of glorious freedom.
We picked our way past a collapsed monumental arch, down a now-open corridor littered with bits of flesh and bone, and found the hostage.
It had been an armored room, deep inside the castle, its walls still standing, though the upper floors had been carried away. Dead Hatailli here as well, dead but otherwise undamaged, probably just killed by some concussion or another, internal injuries invisible but for traces of blood at nose and ear and eye, clothing stained near where we might find anus or cloaca.
The people here, these proud Hatailli, were richly dressed, in what must surely be the local equivalent of comic-opera uniforms. I could picture them dancing their way through some very silly Gilbert and Sullivan number.
There was a wire cage in one corner, broken open now, containing the corpses of some little blue poppits, all of them dead, eyes closed, mouths hanging open. Flattened. Stepped on by the blast. Beside the cage was a Master’s transport capsule, hard black plastic dulled now, and the vents were wide open, but no wisps of vapor spilled out.
There was a long crack down one face, morning sunlight spilling in, lighting up layer on layer of sandwiched circuitry, perforated throughout with spiracles through which cryogenic coolant had once flowed. It glittered in there like silver and gold, circuitry that once provided a home for some Master’s mind. A mind which evaporated along with its liquid helium blood.
Did it die slowly, I wondered, or fast, like switching off a light?
Crouched under one corner of the shell was a lone poppit, still alive, shivering, huddling close. I leaned down and picked it up gently, tucked it under one arm, running my hands along glittery blue scales. Its teeth chattered briefly, uselessly, on my armor, then it settled down, seeming to relax, favoring one obviously broken leg.
“You have to wonder,” I said, to no one in particular, “if they’re afraid to die. Really afraid.”
Solange rapped on the shell with her armored knuckles, listening to a hollow almost-echo. “I wonder if they even know they’re alive.”
I held my hand over the poppit, shielding it from the sun, petting it softly. Sometimes, if you’re nice enough, they’ll make something that sounds a little bit like a kitten’s purr.
“Think they know we’re alive?”
Kathy Lee leaned her weapon against the dead Master’s hull, kneeled beside me and looked into the poppit’s eight-eyed face, chucked it under the chin and made a little kissing sound. She said, “I don’t think they care.”
No. Most likely not. I said, “OK, guys. Let’s wrap it up. Call assembly. Head for the pickup point.”
o0o
We were already back up in the hills when Kathy Lee’s suit broke down, telltales abruptly winking out, joints locking up, freezing her motionless as a statue. A spitting curses at us over the command link, the rest of us laughing like hell. Harmless enough now, but if it’d happened at just the wrong moment...
It’s the way most troopers die in combat. Not enemy action. Not friendly fire. Just mechanical misadventure. Because not even the Master Race is perfect, and I imagine even they, from time to time, are erased in error. Oops. Gone forever.
We got her out of the damned thing, ran the manual override to unlatch the breastplate, unlock the joints and lay her on her back. And now I sat watching from a nearby hillside as she and Solange worked it over, troopers standing around them, watching the hills, watching the skies, because you never knew, and it pays to be careful.
Solange had her faceplate open so she could wear a pair of microgoggles, bending over the empty shell, working on the ventral face of the backpack electronics, Kathy Lee beside her, dressed only in her coolant longjohns, working the diagnostic analyzer.
It was hot outside, a combination of local summer and firestorm wind, dry vegetation all around us bowing down low, and Kathy Lee had the front of her undergarment unzipped, her breasts hanging out as she bent over the machine, rim of dark auburn pubic hair visible below the lightly ridged muscle of her stomach.
I seldom had cause to realize what a really pretty woman she was, with her curly brown hair, smooth, regular features. Strong-looking features. Determination. Pride. Happy with who and what she is. She’d’ve made a damned attractive burdar, but they don’t make burdars like that. People do have affairs within the ranks. It’s never a good idea, but it happens. It happens, and then you go your separate ways, a little wiser, I suppose, or maybe not.
I tried to imagine myself having such an affair with Solange, tried to imagine making love to her, tangling with those long, lean limbs in the night, pressing my face into her dark, hairless little crotch. Imaginable. And we’d certainly have plenty to talk about.
Tried to imagine myself with a woman counterpart, someone who’d reflect back on me something of my own self, my own values. Is that what I want? What I ever wanted? Is that what Alix was all about? No. I don’t think so.
Try turning around Freude’s most famous bit of silliness. What do men want? Even they don’t know. Kathy Lee stood up from her machine, holding her undergarment by the crotch, flapping the material in and out. “Jesus Christ, is it hot out here!”
Solange tapped her on the thigh, grinning. “Take it easy sport, we’re almost done.”
One of the men turned, tracking a dot across the sky, down near the horizon, lifting his weapon. I zeroed in and cranked up the targeting system’s magnification. Something like a bird, covered with curled and fluffy blue plumage, flying hard, with some desperation. We watched until it went out of sight. I was glad no one shot it down.
o0o
Pickup point was on the runway of a large Hatailli airport, around which an industrial center and town had grown up, most of it rubble now, factories collapsed, buildings of th
e town in ruins, gray smoke towering away at an angle from whatever fires were still burning.
We passed in a long column through the town, exoskeletons powered back, so we could simply walk, almost like marching. A loose gaggle now, discipline mostly relaxed, there being nothing more they could do to us. Not that there’d ever been a real danger. We kept our detectors and passive radars running though. Because you never know.
Walking down the streets of what appeared to be a residential neighborhood, not far from the end of the runway. These must have been poor folks living here, what with the noise and all, houses made from the flimsiest material, now reduced to piles of burnt wood and curled brown paper, like the houses you see in pictures of old Japan.
Not many bodies. A few. Lying untended in the road. Not much real damage around here, all of it superficial. In a little while, things like bugs would come out and start cleaning up, surviving scavengers would start to gather for their task.
Something like a playground. A trampoline. A pole standing at a slant, bent in the middle, with two crossbars making an X at the top, one canvass seat still hanging by a single chain, the others lying tangled on the ground. There was a smallish Hatailli, naked, huddled in on itself, sitting on the edge of the trampoline, another larger one lying by its feet on the ground. Asleep? Maybe not.
The little one looked up, sat solemnly watching as we marched on by.
I stopped and stood out of the line, looking at the little being, who eventually turned to look right at me. Eyes like pale brown marbles, catching the dim light of this smoky day, reflecting it back at me. I imagined there would be images of my featureless, suited self reflected in each of those eyes.
Who is that lying so still at your feet? Mother? Father? Older brother? Some relationship we never bothered to learn, or even imagine?
And who do you hold accountable for the burning down of your world, the carnage wrought on your short life? We, who are the instrument of fate? Those among you who were so foolish as to rebel? The Master Race, perhaps, for wanting to rule over the universe and everything in it?
But, feeling her gaze upon me, I realized who would be held personally responsible for this one death, here and now. I turned away, marching off with my soldiers.
Seventeen. A Bright Night on Karsvaao
It was a bright night on Karsvaao, the chronometer reading 0110, around the twentieth light-time tero, early afternoon outside, tawny sunlight streaming down through the closed curtains of my crib, pooling on the polished wood of the bedroom floor.
We could hear natives passing by from time to time, over the soft hiss of the air conditioning unit, going about their daily business. Hard to imagine what they thought of our habits. Waking and sleeping and waking again during the course of a single day, consciousness rotating through the long terek of light and dark.
Cool in here, air slightly dampened by the humidifier, just right. Lying on my side at the foot of the bed, looking up to where Janice reclined, half-sprawled against the headboard, still positioned the way I’d left her, watching me watch her, breathing slowed now, color still high in her pale Nordic cheeks, blonde hair tousled like a pre-Invasion 3V porn-star.
I could taste her in my mouth still, could lie here and taste her and wonder where life’s simple satisfaction had gone. You kept it with you, Alix Moreno. I left it behind me in a falling down old hovel on Earth, in the ruins of an old mill town named Carrboro.
Watched Janice watching me, and wondered if she could tell what was going on in my head. It’s important to you, you know. Make me happy or I’ll send you away... Is that how it goes?
Looking into her eyes now, like blue ice mirrors. I wanted, just then, to crawl inside her eyes, go looking for her soul. Shields down. Locked. Locking me out. But looking back at me. Level. Calm. Probably full of thought. Private. Thoughts all her own...
She drew her legs up then, slowly, just as slowly let her knees fall apart, until her thighs were flat on the bed, legs crooked, soles of her feet about a half-meter from each other, toes pointed at me. Face absolutely still. Not a clue.
Put her hands between her legs, fingers sliding through all that yellow pubic hair, palms flattening against her mons, pulling it apart, opening herself to me. Distracting me. Making me look away from her eyes. See, Master Athol? See how wet I am? Ready for you.
I suppose I should be glad they know how to defend themselves from me. Put the burden on Fyodor, who polishes my boots and washes my back. On Margie, who cooks my food, who sits with me at the dinner table evenings, drinking coffee with me, talking about times past, places, things we have in common after all these years.
Janice tucked her hands under the backs of her knees, pulled her legs up until they were against her chest. Lay still, still watching me. Waiting. Prepared, I suppose, to wait me out. Didn’t take long.
o0o
Down in the Soaaren of Arat Arrao, there was a native establishment we more or less made our own, running off the service-burdars first, letting the Saanaae know they weren’t quite welcome. Natives still came by, but they were the... what do I want to call them? The sort who’d suck your dick for a dime? Something like that.
Fixed it so they could stock beer from the PX, taught the proprietor how to make a passable grade of pseudo-brandy from a fermented native fruit beverage that tasted at least a little like wine. Got them to put on a sort of “dancing girl” show, slim, shiny males and females dancing to recorded human music, hit tunes from the 2140s and ‘50s, in place of the inter-species sex-show ruckus in all the wilder bars.
A place we could call our own, all the octals of my regiment, officers, non-coms, troopers, familial, together.
Quiet now, a tension in the slightly-smoky air. People sitting around their tables, drinking, eating tidbits of this and that. Talking quietly.
How, Kathy Lee wanted to know, could something like the Xú have eluded discovery for all the thousands of years it took them to develop? How? You tell me that.
Solange lolling back in her chair, long legs thrown carelessly out in front of her, a North American pose she’d picked up somewhere, body language evolving with the corporate culture of the Spahi mercenaries, taking a long pull from a two-liter bottle of Mechanicsville Scrub, one of the few brands of terrestrial beer still in full production, in an Iowa brewery that’d miraculously escaped destruction.
Hell, she’d say, galaxy’s a big place. Takes a starship three full years to cross from one rim of the lens to the other...
Something of a misstatement, for the galaxy had no clearly defined edges. Still, her point was well taken. How many stars? A hundred billion? I tried to count back. I’ve been to maybe six dozen star systems over the past twenty-five years. Jesus.
So the Xú quietly developed a technological civilization out on the distal end of some spiral arm, maybe fifteen thousand parsecs from here, a little less than a year’s travel time, say, from Karsvaao or Boromilith or Earth. And Kathy Lee wants to know how it is they developed starships, got out into their own neighborhood, started colonizing the worlds in their neighborhood, and all without being spotted by the Master Race...
Wu Chingda put down her glass of sweet red ale, face quiet and serious, eyes, as always, slitted, inscrutable as Hell. Reached up and ran one hand through her long, straight, glossy black hair. “Hyperdrive,” she said.
The rest of us looking at her. The magic word. No organic species, anywhere in the galaxy, that anyone ever heard of, developed faster than light travel on its own. Humans didn’t even have a theory, when the Master Race showed up. Nor Kkhruhhuft, nor Saanaae, nor any of the technically sophisticated peoples.
I have heard speculation. Wild and fanciful. Sober and scholarly. Somewhere in the quantum processes of their artificial minds, the Masters picked up a hint, far away and long ago. Something no other sort of intelligence could glimpse. That, at least, made a good excuse for the rest of us.
I said, “Kkhruhhuft think they stumbled on an automated refit station on the
edge of their space, just as the Masters were thinking about starting to move in. Got away with some hardware. Spent the next few centuries getting ready.”
The story Shrêhht had to tell wasn’t all that complicated. Just that a Master Race scoutship, probing what turned out to be the Xú colonial region, had been taken out by an armed fleet, the scoutship detected so deep in space it could only mean one thing. And that a Kkhruhhuft expeditionary force had been caught between the stars, a force of five corvette-cruisers jumped and mauled, one ship limping away through hyperspace, radiating energy, being pinged by some kind of remote detection device.
“They knew,” I said, “that we were coming.”
Solange raised an eyebrow at me, and said, “You know the old joke, White Man...”
I grinned.
Jimmy Dietz said, “How bad you think this is going to be, chief?” He was drinking some Italian whisky he kept as private stock, was about five shots up on the rest of us, nose nicely reddened.
I shrugged. “They know we’re here. I bet they don’t know how many of us there are. They’ve had time to sneak about the galaxy, take a good look around. Probably time to get scared as Hell, but not nearly enough time to get ready. Not really ready...”
Wu Chingda tilted back her ale, finishing it, licking a bit of foam from her upper lip. “Too bad,” she whispered.
No reaction from anyone.
I laughed into the sudden silence. “Hell,” I said, looking right at her. “Now we’ll find out what a real fight is like.”
o0o
I spent my last night before shipping out with Mira, in many ways the least favorite of my burdars. I don’t know why this should be so. As burdars go, she’s perhaps the most genuine, the most likely of any I’ve had to have an unfeigned orgasm for me, to enjoy what we do together, to smile and laugh with me. On the other hand, she’s not quite attentive either, more likely than the others to fall asleep unexpectedly, to yawn and sigh before I’m quite done with her.
What that says about me is not quite to my liking, but not something I have to confront either.
When Heaven Fell Page 28