by M. R. Forbes
A third cry and Caleb saw Valentine had grabbed one of the creatures in her tentacle, using it to throw the winged Relyeh to the ground. She stepped on it, holding it in place as she turned toward Caleb.
The gap was closing. The alley was vanishing. There was only one way to it, and that was right behind Riley. There was no time to hesitate. Caleb adjusted course again, closing within a meter of her, able to see her left eye as she continued to turn.
“Card,” she said again. One of her hands reached out for him. He batted it aside, eager to get past and on his way.
Only she had more than two hands. More than four. Another, more prominent appendage stretched out for him, managing to smack into his side and send him sprawling.
“No!” Washington shouted. He was suddenly knocked aside by the tentacle, thrown to the ground nearby. He bounced to his feet.
So did Caleb. Their window was closing. An army of dark, moist, demonic Relyeh was about to surround them.
Valentine’s tentacle snapped out, whipping toward him. He ducked under it, the appendage going just over his head. He came upright, only to have it sweep back, the end grabbing his chest and sticking, lifting him suddenly like he weighed nothing at all. The world spun as he was gathered into the arm, turned and brought around to Valentine’s front until his chest was in line with her squidlike mouth.
Washington rushed her, throwing energy blasts that burned her flesh and caused her to scream. She spun quickly, her agility greater than her size, hands stretching out for him. He tried to get through them, desperate to reach Caleb. Knocking them aside, one after another, she let energy flow from the Skin into her flesh. One of her arms burned off and fell to the ground. Wounds bled and oozed. She cried out in anger, a new appendage seeming to sprout from nowhere in a boney tail that speared Washington in the chest. She lifted him off the ground, leaving him dangling and impaled on it.
‘Valentine, damn it!” Caleb shouted.
Her eyes looked down at him. They were the only human thing about her. The tendrils ahead of her tooth-filled mouth straightened into a dozen daggers and then plunged into his chest.
Everything changed.
Chapter 46
“What the hell?” Caleb said. It was the second time in a few hours that he should have died right away but didn’t.
The moment Valentine’s tendrils pierced Caleb's flesh, he knew they weren’t there to kill him. She had paralyzed him, and the world around him changed.
He was standing upright. The Relyeh were gone. The Relyeh city was gone. He was in a forest. An Earth forest. He knew from the trees. Pine. Maple. Fir. So real he could almost smell them.
Such beauty. Such peace. It was good to be home. Free of having to defend himself every minute, every second of every day. Then he realized he was wearing Marine fatigues and holding an MK-12 rifle.
None of this was real. He was hallucinating.
“Card.” The voice came from behind him.
Spinning around, he raised the weapon. Another Marine was in front of him in matching fatigues. A patch over the chest bore her name.
“Valentine?” Caleb said. “You couldn’t just let me enjoy this in peace, could you? Just for a little while.”
“There is no peace,” she replied. “There never will be. Only endless war. That’s what the Hunger is. That’s what I am now.”
“What is this place?” He asked the question, but he already knew the answer. The Kuu. Whether it was the same as Arluthu’s or whether Valentine was able to create her own self-contained version, that’s where he was. “Nevermind. Whose side are you on?”
“Arluthu can’t see us in here, but he’ll know what I’m going to tell you almost as soon as I let you go. We need to talk, and then you need to get your ass out of here.”
“Sarge?” Caleb turned his head again. Washington was approaching, equipped with the same Marine gear. “What is this?”
“A mental reaction to a chemical injection,” Valentine said. “A shared hallucination occurring faster than the speed of light. It’s amazing, Card. The Relyeh? They’re unbelievable.”
“I don’t give a shit about their tech right now,” Caleb said. “Why did you bring us here? Does it mean you aren’t going to kill us?”
“For the moment. We’ve been through a lot together these last couple of centuries.”
“Cause and effect. You caused trouble. I effectively tried to fix it.”
Valentine laughed. “My motivation has always been to protect Earth and what’s left of humankind. Every decision has been driven by that, even the ones you’ve taken as betrayal.”
“You sold out the colony to Arluthu. You sold my people and me out, and you got nothing in return.”
“Nothing? Do you call this nothing? I have access to endless knowledge, a well so deep I can never reach the bottom. Understanding of the universe it would take millions of years to gather. The problem with you, Card, is that you think I’m an idiot.”
“If the shoe fits,” Washington said.
“It was a calculated risk. I assumed Arluthu would find me too valuable to waste. I’m assuming he still will, even after this. He kept you alive, after all, and all you’ve got is some decent military training. He wants the teleportation tech so bad, it’s almost funny. He has what I knew, but it’s less than he expected.
“Oh well,” Caleb scoffed.
She smiled. “I’m going to give you something. I’m going to give both of you something. It’s how we save our home.”
“How we save our home?” Caleb said.
“I’m not against you, Sergeant. It’s never been personal for me. Not for a second. My orders were to come here and wage war against the enemy. When I couldn’t do it with soldiers on battlefields, I had to come up with another way. This is the other way. Sorry to break this to you, Card, but you’re just a grunt. Your job has always been to do your damn job without question. I know exactly who and what you are, and I used you against yourself.”
“So you’re telling me you planned to become a Relyeh?”
“It wasn’t first on my to do list, but yes. In the end, I realized that Arluthu would either accept my terms in exchange for the modulator and the teleporter or he would renege on everything and force me to give up what I knew. The only way he could do that was by making me into one of them. I didn’t expect him to give me as much control as he did, but he’s so high on himself he can’t see how any of us mere humans can do a damn thing against him. It made him sloppy and gave us this chance. If he were smarter he would never have left you alive.”
“Wait a second,” Caleb said, pausing to think. “If you knew what Arluthu might do to you, that means—”
“That I already knew about the Relyeh. Arluthu met with us in Manhattan before the trife invasion, remember?”
“I get it. The Relyeh were on Earth before the trife came.”
“A long time before the trife came. Hidden in plain sight. The Relyeh and the Axon. But we weren’t smart enough to draw their interest. Either of them. They observed and waited. But not everyone was ignorant.”
“Command knew about the Relyeh before the invasion? They knew the trife were coming?”
“Of course not. Don’t be stupid. Command didn’t know anything about the extraterrestrials on the planet. Hardly anyone did.”
“Then how do you know about it? You seem to have way too much intel that’s way above your pay grade.”
“I was a Marine Raider. Special Forces. But I didn’t get my degrees from any college the public knows about, even if the records said I did. Not that any of those records still exist. I was recruited into a dark ops team working on the alien problem. The Reapers were one part of that team.”
“That isn’t what you told us earlier,” Washington said.
“I lied,” Riley snapped back. “I do that a lot. It’s part of the job.”
“You encountered the Relyeh before we came to Essex?” Caleb asked.
“They send scouts to planets with i
ntelligent life. Observers. They’re similar to your Advocate, Ishek, only much smaller. They enter a host and live in them like a parasite, dying when the host dies. Their only role is to collect as much information as they can. Normally, they’re non-violent and innocuous. But the presence of the Axon complicated issues. Like this world, Earth is too close to the border between the two races. There were a few incidents. You were involved in one of them in Syria. You just didn’t know it.”
“I don’t believe this,” Washington said.
“I don’t care if you believe it or not,” Riley replied. “The past isn’t the point. The point is that we came here with an idea of what we were up against. We knew we needed soldiers that could stand up to almost anything, and we had a plan to achieve that. Only David Nash happened and screwed the whole thing up.”
“You’re the one who slept with him.”
“I was trying to keep him under control. There are two sides to every story, Card, and the truth is usually in the middle. You didn’t spend enough time with him. He was erratic when I met him, and the editing didn’t take that entirely away.”
“It doesn’t change the fact that you planned to use the colony as an army, against their will.”
“No. But if you think I’m sorry about that you’re still playing the bleeding-heart instead of the soldier. Millions of Japanese were willing to kill themselves in the name of the Emperor during World War Two, but we can’t sacrifice forty-thousand of our own for our entire planet? Give me a break.”
“What’s it going to mean for the colony and the planet now? Arluthu will get the teleportation tech, and he knows where to find Proxima. The entire Hunger knows where to find Proxima thanks to you.”
“They would have found it anyway. That’s what they do. At worst, I’ve cost the settlement a hundred years or so. We don’t get out of this without taking the ball, Card. We don’t get through this without a fight. Which is why you need what I’m going to give you. I’m counting on you to do the right thing. You need to take over where I’m leaving off.”
“And what will you do? Marry Arluthu and make little squid babies?”
“I’ll try to keep him away from Earth, whatever it takes. Will you ever understand that? I’ll do whatever it takes. Good, bad or ugly. You can hate my methods, but you should respect my motives. You’ll have a chance to save the settlement on Proxima. You might even get a chance to save the Deliverance. We can still win this war, Card.”
Caleb stared at Riley. He had no idea what to believe. He wasn’t sure any of this was even real. For all he knew, Valentine was in the process of dining on his kidneys.
She approached him, opening a pocket in her fatigues and withdrawing two folded pieces of paper. “I was going to get this to you through Ishek, but since you came to the city to kill me, you made it a lot easier.”
Caleb didn’t reach out to take the paper. “What if Harai had killed me back on the Deliverance when you took the modulator? What would you have done then?”
“I always have contingencies, Card. I intend to send the same information through the Relyeh collective to an Observer still on Earth. I don’t know if it’ll be successful, so it’s good to have options. Otherwise, there’s an Axon portal hidden on the Deliverance, and I’m giving you what you need to access a portal on Earth. That was how I planned to get any information I gathered back to Proxima. I expect you to use it.”
Caleb started reaching for the paper. He paused again. “One more question. What happened to Joe King?”
“I killed him. He wouldn’t give up the modulator. He didn’t trust me.” She smirked. “And the Reaper mutation was affecting my head in a bad way. You should know; he gave the trife down there the energy to create a queen. I thought it was a problem, but given time to reconsider, it might be something you can use.”
“If we can get out of here,” Washington said. “If this isn’t a dream or a hallucination. You stabbed me with your tail.”
“To bring you here. The Vultures weren’t chosen for the Deliverance by accident, Card. Your team was the best of the best at dealing with the enemy as we knew them. Things didn’t work out the way we planned, but that doesn’t mean you can’t overcome. You’re a Space Force Marine, after all. Both of you.”
“If you give us a chance to get out of the city and away from the Citadel, we’ll get it done,” Caleb said.
“I can’t help you get out of the Citadel. I can give you a chance to escape the city, but it’s going to hurt.”
“Everything about this hurts.”
“I’m loyal to Earth, Sergeant. I’ve always been loyal to Earth.”
“So am I.”
“Then take this.” She shoved the paper into his hand and held the other out to Washington.
Washington took the paper. “I thought we were in a dream state?”
“It’s symbolic. The contents will remain in your memory.”
“What is it?”
“Arluthu made the trife. This will help you unmake them. And if it fails, it also includes information about Axon Intellects that are already on Earth. Find one and tell it what you’ve learned and experienced. It might decide to help you.”
“Might?”
“Contingencies, Card. The first step is to get the trife off our planet. You’ll have at least three hundred years before the Relyeh reach you once you do. That’s three hundred years to prepare for them. The Hunger is powerful, but it isn’t invincible.”
Caleb wasn’t sure about the last part. He had gotten a glimpse at the Relyeh through Ishek. Their domain covered millions of light years. How was one planet supposed to stand up to that? Riley was trying to give him hope. Maybe she was trying to give herself hope. She was right. Her methods sucked, and she was a complete bitch, and a part of him still wanted to kill her. But she was also trying to help, for whatever it was worth.
“You could have told me all of this up front,” he said. “You could have been honest with me.”
“No, I couldn’t. Need to know, Sergeant. You didn’t. I counted on you being a good Marine, and you didn’t let me down. Be satisfied with that.”
Caleb tucked the paper into his fatigues. He wasn’t sure how he would remember it without reading it, but the Kuu was strange like that. “We’re ready to go,” he said, glancing at Washington, who nodded.
“Good hunting, Sergeant. Dismissed.”
The world changed again.
Chapter 47
Valentine’s tendrils pulled out of Caleb’s flesh. He could feel the wounds healing immediately, something secreted from the spears repairing the damage. Riley glared down at him with knowing eyes, clutching him in her tentacle. He looked over to Washington, still hanging from her tail.
Valentine growled, tentacle tightening around him and swinging back and around. The city was a blur as he was carried close to the ground and then unraveled toward the ceiling.
He launched into the air, the force of the throw carrying him nearly a dozen meters. He started to slow, able to see down to the ground to where Riley had started attacking the Relyeh below. At the same time, she curled her tail and released Washington in his direction. Then she grabbed one of the Norg and bit off its head. As she whipped her tail back to decapitate one of the winged Relyeh, she howled and stormed the others, who decided they didn’t want anything to do with her.
Caleb came to a stop at the top of his arc, expecting to begin plummeting back to the ground. He didn’t. A separate gravitational field had caught him, continuing to pull him up. His back slammed into the bottom of a bridge. He winced at the burning pain that traveled up his spine. She was right when she said it was going to hurt.
Washington smashed into the bridge a few meters away, grunting as he hit.
Caleb stood, upside down compared to the action below. The winged Relyeh were getting their bearings, ready to resume the chase. Riley had pulled them out of the thick of the melee, but they were anything but home free. With the damage from Riley’s tendrils already heal
ed, he rushed to Washington’s side, helping him up.
“Remember when things were simple?” Washington said, looking down at his chest. The wound from Valentine’s tail was gone.
“No,” Caleb replied. “Come on.” He could only hope Ishek could get them out of here.
I can. Give me control.
He couldn’t. Not this time. It was his mission to succeed or fail. He reached into the Advocate’s mind, pulling out the path.
“Let’s move,” he shouted to Washington, racing across the bridge. He took it halfway before stopping. “Over the side.”
He turned and dropped over, holding on with his hands and looking down. Another platform waited five meters above them. Or was it below them? Either way, he let go, dropping upward to the next bridge, landing on his feet. Washington followed.
The maneuver forced the flying Relyeh to maneuver around the bridges, slowing them down a little more. The platforms were otherwise clear. The rest of the enemy would need to make their way back up.
Stretching out his arms, Caleb ran across the platform and then leaped. The gravity of the next bridge caught him, pulling him to its side. Washington followed him, laughing when he wound up back on his feet, perpendicular to the ground.
They kept moving, getting closer to the Arshugg tunnel with every jump, crossing the bridges in a pattern they could never have managed without Ishek’s help. They managed to stay ahead of the winged Relyeh, the multiple crossings making it difficult for them to keep up. When they made it to the Arshugg platform, the creature wasn’t there, but they didn’t need it. They could take the tunnel back to the hangar.
No. There is another way. A better way.
Caleb paused. He reached into Ishek’s mind, searching for his alternate route. He didn’t want to go toward Arluthu. He found the memory a moment later. The transports were for the Inahri, but the Relyeh had other ships.
