She raised her megaphone, and she spoke to the president—and to the world.
"We demand Etty's release!"
The crowd cheered.
"Free Etty! Free Etty!"
Kaelyn spoke louder, chin raised. "We demand justice! Clay Hagen and his soldiers raped, murdered, and mutilated five hundred souls—and they did not spend a day in prison. Corporal Ettinger told the world—and was sentenced to life in prison!"
"Injustice!" a man cried.
"Free Etty!"
"Free Etty!"
"Free Etty!" Kaelyn repeated. "She committed a crime, yes. She leaked information, yes. But only to expose a far greater crime. What kind of world celebrates murderers and locks up those who speak of murder? We demand justice! We demand freedom for Etty!"
The next day, Kaelyn led another march.
This time to the penitentiary where Etty was imprisoned. For hours, the crowds surrounded the prison. Chanting. Raising signs with Etty's face. Demanding her release.
The drones kept filming. Around the world, they saw Etty. Her gentle face, her skin light brown, her eyes startlingly large and green. An Israeli war orphan, only sixteen, who lied about her age to join the military, to fight for Earth. A girl who fought to stop the massacre at Santa Rosa village. Who told the world of Earth's crimes. Who had been brought back to Earth in chains, tossed into a prison, and left to rot.
I've never met you, Etty, Kaelyn thought as she chanted. But you're a friend to George and Jon. And so you are a friend to me. And you're a greater heroine than I could ever be.
Every day they chanted.
Every day they marched.
And President Hale was defiant. And the war continued.
Every night, Kaelyn sat alone in her apartment. The apartment she had once shared with Lizzy. And she watched the news.
The bombing of Bahay was only intensifying.
"We will never surrender!" Hale boomed in his speeches. "We will smite the enemy and liberate Bahay. We will win!"
Kaelyn sat before her television, tears streaming down her face, watching Earth's starships bomb Bahay from orbit. Watched the fire blooming over the rainforests. Watched the poison rain. Watched the countless innocents die.
Three million dead and counting, she thought. Half of Bahay's population—gone.
"This is more than a war," she whispered in the shadows, only the monitor's light washing over her. "This is genocide."
She remembered her history books. She thought about the Alien Wars a century ago. Back then, humanity had fought united. Einav Ben-Ari, the Golden Lioness, had led Earth and her colonies against alien empires. She had taken a beaten, bleeding, brutalized world and built a galactic power. Today, years later, Ben-Ari's legacy remained. Earth, once such a fragile world, ruled with impunity across multiple star systems, and no alien power could threaten her fleets.
There were no more aliens to fight.
So humans fought humans.
Is that the kind of species we are? Kaelyn wondered. Must we always fight? If we cannot fight an external foe, will we always fight one another?
Humans had evolved in the wilderness. Kaelyn's ancestors had huddled in huts and caves, afraid, for great beasts roamed the world. Powerful bears with mighty claws. Saber-tooth tigers with a hunger for flesh. Ravenous crocodiles in rivers, and bloodthirsty sharks in the sea. Everywhere—an enemy.
Humans had no powerful fangs, no sharp claws, no thick fur to shield them. They were weaker, smaller, slower.
So they became cruel.
They became experts at cruelty.
With spears and arrows, they fought back against nature. And they won. They smote the larger, stronger predators, drove them to near extinction, and swarmed across the world. Weak, naked humans, the prey animals, the betas… with their cruelty, they became Earth's deadliest apex predators.
Fear, humans learned, fueled the greatest cruelty. And humans had plenty of fear to draw on.
Nature was conquered. And for thousands of years, humans fought humans. All their cruelty, their ingenuity, their fear and hunger and rage, this quiver of arrows collected over generations of bitter survival—they turned it upon one another.
For thousands of years, humans drenched their world with blood. Genocides and wars, conquest and colonization, murder and despair. With every new tool, every new technology, human deadliness increased. With a crescendo of violence, the twentieth century erupted with bloodshed like never before. Murder became industrialized, and factories of death pumped their fumes over dark forests.
We needed the aliens, Kaelyn thought. Without them, we'd have driven ourselves extinct.
The aliens came. Just when humanity needed them most.
The Scolopendra titaniae, giant alien centipedes from deep space. They brutalized the world. The marauders followed, gargantuan spiders from another world. Then the grays, bloodthirsty humanoids. Than the nightmarish cyborgs and machines of perverted intelligence. For a horrible century, horrors from the darkness flowed across Earth.
Billions died. But the survivors united.
Humans had conquered other life forms on Earth. Then they conquered life in space.
So now again, their enemies exhausted, they were turning upon one another.
Now Kaelyn sat before the monitor, watching the bombs fall. Watching fear turn into cruelty. Watching humans kill humans.
"And there are no aliens to save us," Kaelyn whispered.
She remembered President Ben-Ari's last warning. Kaelyn had been only a toddler when the fabled Golden Lioness, by then an elderly woman, had vanished. But Kaelyn still remembered.
Ben-Ari had spoken to humanity.
"A new enemy is coming," the legendary president of Earth had warned. "A horror from another galaxy. I won't be here to face it. You must prepare. I pass you the torch of humanity. Keep it burning bright."
But that had been fifteen years ago. And no aliens had ever arrived. No invasion from another galaxy was washing over the Milky Way. Sometimes Kaelyn thought only such an invasion could unite humanity again.
The aliens aren't here, she thought. And neither is our Golden Lioness. But I am. And I can keep fighting Lizzy's war. If I save even one life, it's worthwhile.
* * * * *
The next morning, she led her people to Linden Bridge.
Named after Addison Linden, a heroine of the Alien Wars, the double-decked bridge spanned the Hudson. Addy had once fought in the ruins of New York. Today the city rose again, and its finest bridge bore her name. It was among the busiest bridges on Earth.
And today Kaelyn stood here, blocking it.
She stood before a swarm of honking, shouting drivers.
Across all lanes, her followers stood too.
People of all types had come.
Some protesters added a bit of theater. They wore fake blood, or even fake army uniforms. They carried dolls of babies, pretending to kill them, to drink their blood. Kaelyn could have done without those displays.
But those were only a few people. Other people wore the uniforms of nurses, construction workers, businessmen. Some were elderly. Some were schoolchildren. Many were veterans. They limped on crutches, sat in wheelchairs, or walked with straight backs but haunted eyes.
The cars all honked. Drivers got out and shouted and cursed.
Kaelyn raised her megaphone.
"We demand the release of conscientious objectors! We demand the release of all Filipinos imprisoned on Earth for nothing more than their heritage! And we demand the release of Corporal Ettinger!"
The crowd cried out: "Free Etty! Free Etty!"
Suddenly—an ambulance siren began to wail.
Kaelyn saw it across the bridge, lights flashing. It could not get through.
Why weren't they using a helicopter?
Kaelyn cursed. These days, helicopters and shuttles normally served as ambulances. Wheeled ambulances were of a bygone era. Was this just a decoy? A way to shame her? To break up her demonstration?
> Kaelyn couldn't risk it.
She cried to her fellow protesters: "Stand back! Let the ambulance through. Sta—"
Rumbling engines and shrieking wind drowned her words. Kaelyn stumbled back, the air blasting her face, whipping her clothes.
Helicopters were descending.
Police helicopters. Armored men leaned out the sides, holding rifles. One policeman spoke into a megaphone.
"Protesters, disperse now!"
"Friends, fall back!" Kaelyn cried.
But barely anyone could hear her. The bridge had two decks. Sixteen lanes. Thousands of protesters.
"Disperse now or we will open fire!"
The ambulance sirens sang.
Kaelyn stared up in dread.
And the helicopters opened fire.
Protesters screamed and fell, riddled with bullets. Blood spilled across the bridge. Everyone began screaming, fleeing. One car drove forward and plowed into three protesters, tossing them into the air. One man fell off the bridge, and the helicopters opened fire again, and the ambulance wailed.
Kaelyn stood there. Silent. Still. The world seemed a haze.
She blinked.
She was back in Lindenville. Watching her friends die.
She blinked again. And a man was crawling toward her, bleeding, a hole in his face.
Bullets streaked overhead. Police raced across the bridge toward her. And Kaelyn snapped out of her paralysis and ran.
She hid behind a car as bullets peppered it. But this was no armored military vehicle. The bullets were tearing through the car and hitting the pavement around her. She ran at a crouch, moving to the next car. People ran everywhere. Falling. Dying. A few jumped off the bridge, but they would not survive the fall into the river, not from this height.
Kaelyn reached a truck full of horses. The animals were neighing, kicking, desperate to break free. Protesters were fleeing by, racing around the truck, between the cars. A helicopter thundered above and strafed the bridge.
People fell.
Bullets tore through windshields. Drivers slumped down dead.
The guns ripped through horses, and the animals fell, and one broke free and galloped across the bridge.
Kaelyn crawled around a dead horse and hid under the truck. She covered her head, trembling, as horse blood flowed around her, as a huge black eye stared at her, ringed with lashes.
* * * * *
Over three hundred people died at the Linden Bridge Massacre.
The drones, which had flown there to record the protest, had filmed everything.
That evening, Kaelyn huddled in her apartment, trembling, pale. And on the television, she watched the president's approval rating drop two percent.
The next day, Etty was freed. And his approval rating went back up to normal.
So that's what it took to free one woman, Kaelyn thought. Three hundred lives. And two percent.
She waited for Etty outside the prison. The girl was an orphan. But she was not alone.
The world is here for you, Etty, Kaelyn thought.
The girl stepped outside the prison, blinking in the sunlight. With her petite frame and messy black hair, she looked ordinary. She was not a tall, blond warrior like Lizzy, all fierce beauty like a Valkyrie of legend. Perhaps not striking like Kaelyn, with her porcelain skin, flowing red hair, and crystal voice. Not what you'd expect from a heroine of the resistance, she who had sacrificed her freedom to speak the truth.
But then Etty looked across the dusty yard, and she made eye contact with Kaelyn.
A bolt shot through Kaelyn. She saw strength, iron will, and compassion in those large green eyes. Mesmerizing eyes, their vivid color in sharp contrast to her dusky skin. Eyes so bright they were almost luminous.
Kaelyn stepped toward her.
"Etty, hello! I'm Kaelyn Williams. George's sister. And Jon's friend. You're a heroine of mine—and of many. It's an honor to meet you."
"Oh, I know who you are." Etty smiled, eyes sparkling. "George and Jon would never shut up about you. Neither does the television." She winked.
The two women embraced for a long time.
Hundreds had died on the bridge. Millions were dying on Bahay. But here—here was a little victory.
Chapter Twenty-Three
A View from Above
The general took her to banquets. He took her on helicopter rides to view the crystal islands in the eastern sea. He bought her jewels and perfumes and gowns, and he danced with her at the military galas. At every event, he told her that she shined. That she was the most beautiful woman in the room. She was his trophy. His rose. His pet.
And every day, Maria's belly swelled a little more. And she inched a little closer to death.
She kept her fake diamond on her choker, and the little device inside kept recording. But she dared not ask General Ward again about the bombed villages. About the massacres. About his role. Not after last time. After he had choked her, nearly extinguished her life.
I stepped too far, and I got burned, she thought. But I cannot wait much longer. I'm running out of time. And so is Jon.
The military's high command still lived in splendor. The senior officers still wined, dined, and whored. But Maria saw the nervousness in their eyes. After meetings in the war rooms, she could smell the fear.
The war is going badly. They kill and kill but cannot win. I must strike at the right time and place—and they will shatter.
"Why do you keep me around?" she asked the general one night.
They were sitting in his home by the fireplace, sharing an armchair. He was reading a leather-bound book by Vegetius and savoring a cup of wine. Maria was curled up against him. Her only job at these times, she knew, was to be there beside him. To offer her femininity and warmth. To be a soothing presence like the crackling fire, little more than a kitten for him to absentmindedly stroke.
Perhaps this is what men crave most, Maria thought. A warm fire. A cup of wine. A good book. A nurturing woman at their side. They conquer worlds and build empires, but at the end of the day, this is all they truly want.
"Pardon?" Ward looked at her.
"Why me? You could have any woman on Bahay. Or multiple women if you wanted them. You call me the most beautiful among them, but that's not true. Why me? My mother always said my head was too big, that I asked too many questions. Last time I asked questions you got angry. You could find another girl, a demure and silly girl who would never make you angry. Why did you choose me?"
He placed down his cup of wine, and he closed his book. For a long time he was silent, gazing into the fireplace.
Then he spoke softly to the flames. "'Sometimes even to live is an act of courage.' Seneca wrote that long ago. You are alive, Maria. In a world of death, your life blazes hotter than this fire. And your courage casts more light than Sargas, Bahay's fiery sun."
She lowered her head. "I'm often afraid."
He turned toward her. "Were you afraid when you fought with the Kalayaan? When you killed Earthlings? Were you afraid when you served in the Bargirl Bureau, smuggling leaked information to Earth?"
She leaped off the couch. Her eyes darted, seeking a weapon. She knew the game was over. That he would kill her now. That her mission had ended. This was the checkmate.
But Ward made no move. He did not draw a gun. Did not clutch her throat. He merely sat there on the armchair, gazing at the fire. The light painted his craggy face.
"Yes, Maria, I know. Know your enemy. Those are words I live by. Why did I choose you, Maria? Because you are my enemy. And you are courageous. And you live."
She stared at him, her back to the wall. "Are you going to kill me?"
He finally rose from his armchair. He approached her, cornered her. He was twice her size. She pushed herself flat against the wall, trapped. He loomed above her, reached down, and caressed her cheek.
"I would sooner burn the galaxy than see your light extinguished."
She couldn't help it. She gave a crooked smile. "Is that so
mething Seneca wrote too?"
He smiled thinly. "If only I were as eloquent as him! That line is one of my own." He held her hand. "Come with me, Maria. I'll show you the heavens like you've never seen them. Go put on your Orion silk. You will shine among the stars."
She wore the silk, and she placed the choker around her neck. She touched the fake diamond, a nervous habit, then took the general's arm.
This time, he didn't order them a limo or helicopter.
He took her to a grove of trees behind his home. They were oak trees, imported all the way from Earth, merely to create a little illusion of home. It must have cost a fortune to import oak trees, when the local pagluna or mamula trees, common across the city, would have looked just as fair. But Little Earth took its name seriously.
Past the oaks they found a bamboo pavilion. It was so large its thatched roof could shade a thousand people. Here, tucked away from the world, awaited the general's fleet.
In many ways, the general was a humble man. His brigadiers and colonels, though lower in rank, peacocked with larger tails. They lived in large homes. They constantly boasted of victories, both in battle and bed. They wore so many medals they looked like walking trophy cases. General Ward was different. His home was smaller. He dined on simpler fare, often preferring a local fish to filet mignon imported from Earth. He wore no flashy pins or medals, keeping them in his drawers rather than upon his breast.
But now Maria saw his vice.
Vehicles. A dozen or more luxury vehicles, their hulls trimmed with gold. Figureheads of unicorns and goddesses leaped on their prows.
"Are they limousines?" Maria frowned. "Wait, they have folding wings. Fancy planes?"
"Space shuttles," the general said. "Not military ones. Civilian shuttles—from the best manufacturers in the galaxy. My own personal collection. Walk between them! Choose the one you like best."
Maria looked at him, then back at the vehicles. She couldn't help it. Even here, even with him, she smiled.
Earthling's War (Soldiers of Earthrise Book 3) Page 19
