by Dan Davis
Around him, many of his new comrades eyed him with open curiosity. He ignored them, for now. He needed to focus completely on the task at hand and would leave the others for later. Captain Williams ducked down beside him and held out a small case with a pair of ear protectors inside. Onca nodded his thanks as he pushed them in.
The telescopic sight was medium strength with a wide-angle lens, ideal for medium range and multiple targets. He lined up on the hundred-meter target and fired. It was only a few centimeters out, high and to the left so he needed no more than five shots to be sure he had the sight zeroed for that range. He did the same at two hundred and three hundred meters until he was getting such a tight grouping that the holes in his target tore a gaping, ragged hole in the center.
“I’m ready for the test,” Onca called to Captain Williams, who was standing a few paces behind him.
Williams approached as Onca stood and reloaded. “Nice shooting. They’ve programmed a standard sequence. You’ll fire standing, in a static position. You’ll have targets pop up along this corridor from twenty meters to four hundred meters. Targets will be fully extended from point-five up to three seconds. There will be between sixty and eighty targets. One round for each is a score and the closer to the center of the target, the higher the score. Questions?”
Onca shook his head, tucked two additional magazines in his belt, planted his feet and pulled the rifle into his shoulder. If the targets would come as close as twenty meters, he would have to go in and out of the telescopic sight.
“Ready?” Williams asked.
The other shooters slowed or stopped. He felt the eyes of dozens turn toward him.
Block them out. Only you exist. Only you and your target.
“Yes.”
A tone sounded from underneath him and the first target popped up from out of the ground, white on the desert red rock and sand beneath and behind.
The biological improvements they had made to his body were always there, always working. The doctors called them passive enhancements because they did not require activation but there was nothing passive about what they did to him. He felt clearer of mind, stronger of limb, and full of energy from the moment he woke until he lay down at night. There had been little enough time for practice with his new and improved biological systems but every run and workout had been electrifying, every combat training session a revelation.
He put a round in the center and snapped the rifle to the next target, popping up at eighty meters, and squeezed the firing button. Center. His improved eyes tracked to the next target, one hundred and fifty meters. His improved nervous system pulled his aim over and his muscles held him precisely on target as his reticule met the spot he wanted to hit.
Time after time, he reacted, locked on, fired and tracked to the next. All other senses—the muffled crack of the weapon banging in his hands with each shot, the cases flying away in his peripheral vision, the feel of men gathering to the sides and behind—were distant, secondary to his primary focus. His world narrowed to tracking, moving, firing, tracking.
As the thirty-second round left the barrel, Onca ejected the magazine, tracked to the next target, pulled the next from his belt and slid it home, repositioned slightly and fired the shot into the center.
The targets sped up during the next phase of the test, appearing in rapid succession. He went through the mag in no time at all, then reloaded, expecting the next phase to be tougher still.
He was right. Two targets began appearing at once, then three at the same time, often one at close range and the other at the farthest distance. Each would be up for a different amount of time, so the order of shooting was important yet the timings appeared to be random. Usual practice was to take out the nearest targets first as they were, generally, the most dangerous so Onca stuck with that consistently. Sometimes it was the wrong choice and making all of his shots was difficult but sometimes you have to choose a strategy and see it through.
After the third mag change, he tracked back and forth until the sound chimed beneath him. He was hot. Incredibly hot, with sweat running down him all over. Sensations of the world came flooding back in. The blue-white glare of the sky, the oven-heat of the air and desert rock underneath him.
He made his weapon safe and turned to check his score with Williams.
The whole firing line was silent, turned to face him. His new colleagues had stopped their own tests, their own practice, to watch him. The new guy.
Behind, Colonel Boone stood, legs planted in gritty sand, huge arms crossed over his chest. His aides fluttered around him.
“How did I do?” Onca shouted to the Colonel, walking toward him.
The huge officer flicked his eyes to Williams.
Out of the corner of his eye, Onca saw Captain Williams nod once.
“Welcome to UNOP, Major Santos,” Colonel Boone said, then looked at the Captain again. “Take him to Disclosure.”
***
Inside the briefing room, Onca took a seat while Williams closed the blinds and lowered the lights.
“You know that UNOP stands for United Nations Orb Project,” Williams said as he took a seat opposite Onca at the boardroom-style table. “And you know that this mission will involve a journey in space. But I wonder if your government has told you exactly what the mission entails? And why we need a soldier such as yourself to be part of it.”
Onca shrugged. “I assume it relates to the Mars colonies. Or perhaps some other base further away. So many people are going up every month, now. I am willing to bet that there is a risk of splinter groups forming, perhaps terrorist activity following our colonists.”
Williams shook his head. “There is no terrorist activity in space. We vet everyone extremely thoroughly.”
So did I. There is no way to be sure about anyone other than yourself.
“What is the mission, then?”
Williams typed on the surface of the table and a screen glowed into life on the wall beyond the head of the table.
It showed a silvered disk on a black background. No, the disk was more like a chrome ball, shining in the darkness.
“This is the Orb.” Williams spoke softly. With reverence, perhaps. “This object is four kilometers in diameter.”
“Who built this?” Onca asked.
“We don’t know.”
Onca looked at him. “The Chinese?”
Williams let out a tiny laugh. “It appeared in our solar system decades ago.”
“No,” Onca said. “No, no. The Ascension Leak videos? They’re not real? I don’t believe you.”
Williams nodded. “It is true. The footage from the Ascension was captured over forty years ago, during the first manned mission to the Orb. Of course, none of the Artificial Persons companies wanted it to get out and most governments supported them. Everyone had a stake in the truth not coming out that the ship’s Artificial Persons had woken into some sort of self-awareness.”
There was not much in the world that reached Onca on an emotional level but he felt like he had been kicked in the guts. He found his head in his hands.
“You mean that APs truly are capable of consciousness?” All the terrorist groups he had been fighting for years believed in the veracity of the Ascension Leaks. Onca could not believe that he had been wrong all this time.
“The APs nowadays have been thoroughly revised since then. They’ve been continuously iterated and optimized for decades. No, the early years in the AP industry was barely regulated but now it’s all been sorted out. We even employ them in the Project. Anyway, nothing excuses the way those terrorists behave. Kill the lot of them, that’s what I say. You and your men are bloody heroes, no doubt about that. So, you have seen the Ascension Leak videos?”
Onca rubbed his face. “Enough of them to convince me they were fakes. You’re saying it’s all true? A mission to visit aliens?”
“Clearly, the AP named Max spoke pure nonsense for hour after hour and came to highly critical conclusions about our society but t
he voyage happened just as he described. Max, the Artificial Person, was one of the last survivors of that mission. He boarded the Orb and took readings, recorded the internal structures and so on. The Orb was empty. No aliens. Nothing alive. Nothing moving. No one home. Then the Orb communicated with us once more, telling us to send a champion back in thirty years.”
Onca sat up straighter. “So, you recruited us.”
“No. That first champion already went. Unfortunately, the idiot civilians running the project went and sent a goddamned politician.”
“I don’t understand.”
The Captain raised his eyebrows. “UNOP misinterpreted the alien communications. They did not realize it was to be a fight. You see, they assumed we were invited for a conversation. The Orb signals with the outer layer changing color but it also sends genuine radio signals, right at us, right at our ships and satellites. It told us that we were in line for a whole lot of wonderful gifts. Gifts of technology and so on. What a tease, right? So, we thought they would hand them over. We were wrong. I’m going to show you what happened when we sent a diplomat into a death match with a monster.”
Williams brought up video of a group of men and women walking through darkness, lit by personal flashlights gleaming from everyone’s shoulder or chest. Headcams recorded bare heads, overalls and what looked like Navy-style uniforms. They were clumped together like frightened sheep, no spacing at all.
“This is on that Orb? If it’s four kilometers’ diameter, how are they walking normally?”
“Gravity on the alien structure was ninety percent of Earth’s. We don’t know how it does it.”
Onca jabbed a finger at the screen. “No space suits? Breathing apparatus?”
“The first mission discovered that the Orb replicates our atmosphere pretty well. When they went on this second mission that we’re watching now, the atmosphere was subtly different. It stank of sulfur, for one thing, but it was perfectly safe for humans too. Pressure, humidity, oxygen. Made for us.”
“Are those the only military personnel?” Onca pointed out a handful of men at the front and rear with assault rifles and combat gear.
“They honestly thought it was a diplomatic mission. The military liaisons from pretty much every member country had to gang up to lobby for this many. Not that it turned out to be important. There was nothing they could do to save the ambassador.”
“Were they amateurs? Why are they sticking so close to the main group?”
Williams shrugged. “The UNOP Marine Corp was pretty new back then. No one really expected them to be utilized and there was no drive to recruit the best people. Just anyone willing to give up the Earth, possibly forever.”
Onca glanced at the Captain. “A soldier takes that chance every time he takes any mission.”
“Alright, so the boarding party reach this huge chamber, okay? Look at it, a hundred meters a side, no openings but the one they just came through. The scale of this place is inhuman. It’s no wonder they were so scared.”
On screen, the group clustered and fussed around the finely dressed, upright older gentleman who was the ambassador.
“See that one section of wall is this kind of force field thing? It is not something you want to touch. They test it here, watch.”
Williams skipped to a section where a gaggle of tech nerds gathered at one corner of it and lowered metal rods and other things into a square of swirling, semi-transparent wall. Each item was fried off, instantly, wherever it touched the force field.
“That would be a useful device,” Onca said.
“I heard our UNOP Research and Development guys have produced something like it but only at a smaller scale and it takes an absurd amount of power to generate and contain. That means it’s not deployable. But one day, maybe. Who knows.”
“So, here’s the bit you’ll want to know about. Ambassador Malcolm Diaz stands in the center of the force field and it chimes three times. You hear that? It means the Orb is about to open up.”
The center of the swirling screen blinked open to reveal to the cameras a vast chamber beyond. Above, the ceiling arched over in a dome shape, like an upturned bowl. Other than Diaz, it was empty. The low light came from everywhere, diffused and even. There was no cover at all, no good firing positions.
The far side was so distant that it barely showed up on the camera.
“Dimensions?”
“It’s like four hundred meters across. Two hundred high. Like I said, the scale is inhuman.”
The forcefield was back in place, blurring the image but Onca could see enough to know the ambassador was alone.
“You said there was a monster? An alien?”
“Yep, watch the far side.”
A shape appeared on the far side. Hundreds of meters away from the camera and blurred but it grew larger as it approached. A yellow shape against a dark background.
“That’s the monster,” Williams said.
“I suppose that is my cue,” the Ambassador said on the screen, half turning to the camera behind him. He and the others in the crew indulged in a bit of back and forth banter. Everyone was excited, extremely tense, covering their terror with appallingly false bravado.
Diaz squared his shoulders, straightened up and marched out into the great, empty space. It was a long walk to the center, two hundred meters. Williams sped up the footage until the cameras zoomed in past the ambassador and focused as best they could on the yellow shape. The monster. The alien.
The creature was bizarre. Onca sat up and leaned forward. The alien was shaped like a circle. A wheel. The shape of the monster was a thick wheel with six spokes, no, legs. Each leg had a large, flat pad. All six appeared to touch the ones either side, so they fit together almost without a gap between them to form the rim of the wheel shape. Two long arms stuck out from the hub at the center perpendicular to the legs. It looked strong. Heavy.
It was big. Bigger than a man.
At the ends of the arms were what had to be the most dangerous weapons the creature had. The hands at the ends of the arms had three long fingers and at the end of the fingers, claws. They had to be. Long, wicked-looking claws.
The ambassador was unarmed.
The alien lumbered toward the human, growing larger and larger. The man seemed to grow ever smaller.
Onca could barely believe what he was seeing.
“It is two meters tall?” Onca asked. “Perhaps more?”
“The diameter is two point eight meters,” Williams said.
On screen, the ambassador drew to a stop. His fear was written in his posture. The man’s shoulders were drawn up, his head lowered as if he was being pulled into himself.
The alien monster kept coming.
The two arms rolled over and over, sticking out from the central hub. Huge, long, knobbled arms ending in three-pronged hands. They stuck out to both sides, rolling over and over, with the legs and central hub closing in on the ambassador.
“Greetings,” the man said, attempting to sound imposing and powerful. “I am Ambassador Malcolm Diaz and I am here representing humanity, which is my species and for my planet, which is called Earth, and all the lifeforms that we share it with.”
The alien did not stop.
Its feet made a soft thump-thump-thump on the black tiles, growing louder as it cartwheeled up to the man. It was a monster half his height again, surely many times his weight, with the long arms twirling and the hub seemingly without eyes or mouth or any features at all other than lumpen sockets where the limbs met the hub.
The ambassador finally realized the danger that he was in but for some reason he did not flee as the alien leaped ahead and accelerated the final few meters, charging him down.
Probably he was just too old and slow and his instinct, such as it was, took over far too late. He barely completed a half-turn before the great yellow monster was on him. Onca assumed the thing would run him over like an automobile accident. Instead, it swerved, pivoting on one of the feet and slashed a long arm i
nto the man. The blow smashed straight down into his head and chest with incredible force.
Earth’s ambassador snapped in half at the spine and the blow ripped on through and blew the man's chest apart in an explosion of bright blood. The man’s skull was crushed so completely that it disappeared into pieces.
The alien spun, turned, rolled back and smacked into the body against the floor repeatedly, gathering smashed parts to break further into pieces. The body was obliterated further with every blow. Shredded strips of clothing hung sodden with chunks of flesh as the blood-splattered creature flailed into the gore, flinging it everywhere.
Then it simply turned and rolled back the way it had come. Its feet left a trail of blood, glinting in the dimness.
Williams paused the video.
Every now and then in life, Onca knew, there came a shifting of reality. No doubt, it happened often in childhood but perhaps only once or twice after you became a man. New information that suddenly forces a new perspective on life that changes everything. It changes the memories of your past, knowing what you know now, and that knowledge will alter the course of your future. Your perception has changed, slid 1mm to the left and now every surface has a different shine, every color a different hue.
All his life, it was people who were the biggest danger. When he was a child it had been the thugs and the organized criminals. Later, it was the other recruits or his instructors and senior officers. For the longest time, it had been the pro-AP terrorist groups of South America. Now, Onca knew that alien monsters existed, that they were hostile and that the armed forces of Earth were preparing a response.
He almost felt a switch being flicked in his brain, almost heard the sound of a key turning inside his head.
And then he was back. Everything the same. Everything forever different.
“Did the Marines attack?” Onca asked.
“The transparent forcefield structure remained in place and they could not get through immediately. It parted only when the alien had exited the arena. They sponged up Ambassador Diaz and then there was nothing left to do but leave. Go back to the ship on the shuttle.”
