Action Figures - Issue Seven: The Black End War

by Michael Bailey

“Lieutenant,” Commander Do says. Lt. Maasuur turns and greets me with a sneer. “Tell the cadet what you told me.”

  “The Nightwind was raided before we could dispatch the recovery team. Lieutenant Commander Fast was killed in the assault,” Lt. Maasuur says, spitting each word with open contempt.

  “What do my friends have to do with that?”

  “Everything. They failed to safeguard the Nightwind.”

  “That doesn’t make them responsible for Fast’s death.”

  “As far as I’m concerned, they are every bit as responsible as those who committed the act itself,” Lt. Maasuur says. “Your arrogant friend in the helmet called them Thraw-zhers.”

  “Thraw-zhers?” I repeat. What the heck are Thraw—

  Oh. Oh.

  “What?” Commander Do says. “What are they?”

  An unwanted blast from the past is what they are. The Hero Squad’s first fight as a team was against a Thrasher, a high-tech battlesuit, under the control of Archimedes, our first official Big Bad. We eventually learned the Thrasher belonged to a shadowy organization run by a man calling himself the Foreman. He slipped away before we could learn the true purpose and full reach of his operation, and he’s been underground ever since. If the Thrashers are back, that means the Foreman’s back too.

  “The Foreman isn’t Black End-level bad news, but he’s dangerous,” I say, “more so if he’s in possession of weaponry from the Nightwind.”

  “There’s no if about it,” Lt. Maasuur says. He turns to Commander Do. “Before I left to request the recovery team, I personally made certain every piece of equipment recovered from the battlefield was secured in a cargo bay. When the cadet’s comrade informed me of what had happened, I conducted a preliminary search of the ship. The bay was empty. Several suits of battle armor are missing, along with countless hypervelocity guns and ammunition.”

  Oh, man, this gets worse by the minute. Those babies can do some serious damage. I saw them tear through body armor like it was paper, take chunks out of Joe Quentin, turn Stuart into a mass of bruises...my God, something like that in the hands of the Foreman? I can’t begin to imagine how much damage he could do.

  “I hope you understand the enormity of this, cadet,” Commander Do says. “Someone on your world is in possession of advanced weapons technology and killed a Vanguardian to get it. The Alliance is not going to look on this kindly.”

  “They can look unkindly on it all they want,” I say. “My friends could be in huge trouble. They might need my help.”

  “Neither your friends nor your world are your concern right now.”

  “The hell they aren’t.”

  “Cadet!” Commander Do snaps. She’s about the same height as me, yet she somehow manages to loom over me. “You are Vanguard now, Carrie Hauser. You made a solemn vow to accept the astrarma and the responsibilities that go with them, and you will honor that vow. Your first loyalty now is to us. Your only priority is to crush the Black End. Everything else is irrelevant. Do you understand?”

  Forget about Dorr. In this moment, Commander Do Lidella Det is a thousand times more intimidating.

  And she has every right to be ripped at me. She risked her own reputation with the Council of Generals in standing up for me, and I swore to her I was in this for real — and then the first challenge to that loyalty pops up, and I’m ready to say screw it and bail.

  It takes a supreme effort of will on my part to look Commander Do in the eye when I say, “I’m sorry, ma’am. You’re right.”

  “Anything else to say, cadet?” Commander Do says.

  “No, ma’am.”

  “Very good.” She takes a step back. “Lieutenant Maasuur, I want you to continue monitoring the recovery effort. The council will want a full, detailed account.”

  “Of course, commander,” Lt. Maasuur says. “I’ll report to the council as soon as possible.”

  “Thank you. Cadet, with me.”

  Commander Do dismisses her escorts and takes me back to the airlock and then back to my barracks. I spend the flight stewing in my own embarrassment and shame. She stays with me until I’m back at my quarters. I mumble another apology and turn to slink away into my room so I can brood in peace. Commander Do throws an arm out, blocking my path.

  “Cadet,” she says. “I want you to know that I’m not unsympathetic to your situation. You’re worried about your friends and your homeworld. I don’t fault you for that.”

  I nod. “Thank you. I’m sorry,” I say again.

  “You can atone by never again giving me a reason to doubt your commitment to the Vanguard.”

  “Yes. Absolutely. I won’t.”

  “You’re not the only one making sacrifices,” she says, but without the harsh commanding officer tone. “Everyone in the Vanguard, from the generals all the way down to the civilian support staff, made a choice to put the greater good before themselves.”

  “I know,” I say. “I guess I didn’t realize how hard that would be.”

  “We all experience that moment when the weight of our decision comes crashing down on us. That is why I only reprimanded you.” She leans in. “When it happens again — and believe me, it will happen again — I advise you to deal with it better than you dealt with it this time. I would not enjoy taking disciplinary action against you.”

  That wouldn’t stop her from doing it, though.

  “Yes, ma’am.”

  Commander Do straightens up. “I understand your training begins in earnest tomorrow. I suggest you get some rest. You’ll need it.”

  “My training? You mean I’m not — I don’t know. Grounded? Confined to quarters? Under arrest?”

  “Why would you be?”

  “You think my friends had something to do with Fast’s death, or at the very least let it happen. That doesn’t reflect well on me, you have to admit.”

  “I don’t hold individuals responsible for actions others take.” She gives me a funny little one-shoulder shrug. “The council may feel differently, but until they formally weigh in on the matter, you are an active cadet and shall conduct yourself as such.”

  “Yes, ma’am. Thank you, ma’am.”

  She nods and strides off.

  My plan to take a shower and go right to bed goes out the window when I step into my quarters and find that all the stuff I requisitioned earlier has already been delivered — and I mean all of it, every piece of furniture and every scrap of clothing, the latter packed up in plastic crates like the totes Mom uses to store her off-season wardrobe. That was fast.

  Me, not so much. I take my sweet time unpacking, though not out of choice. Every part of me aches so much that moving at all is a labor unto itself. I can only imagine how bad it’ll be tomorrow morning after everything’s stiffened up.

  I make it through one whole tote of clothing, grunting and groaning like a decrepit old woman all the while, when someone knocks on my door. Oh, now what?

  “Come in,” I say. The door slides open.

  “Hi, Carrie,” Erisia says. “Ah, setting up the new quarters, I see.”

  “Starting to, anyway.”

  “Excellent. I think my quarters are right above yours,” hye says, pointing at my ceiling.

  “Teammates and neighbors? Cool.”

  “Cool is a good thing?”

  “Cool is a very good thing.”

  “Mm. Well, Pardo-En’s quarters are two floors down and Mells lives in the next block.”

  “If you tell me Grun lives next door I’m going to blow my head off.”

  “He lives on the other side of the complex. Little chance of a casual encounter,” Erisia says. Oh, thank God. “Anyway, I wanted to see if you were up for a little company tonight. You, me, Pardo-En, Mells, maybe give Zqurrl a call. We can hang out in your room, get some takeout...”

  “Takeout’s a thing here?”

  “You sound surprised.”

  “I am. I totally am.”

  “People need to eat. People are lazy and want stuff brought
to them.”

  “I guess. It’s funny,” I say, sitting on the edge of my bed. “I’m meeting races from all across the galaxy and seeing things I never could have imagined in my wildest dreams. Sometimes everything seems so incredibly...well, alien that every time something remotely familiar pops up it throws me. It’s like, how can two civilizations separated by literally trillions and trillions of miles have anything in common?”

  “I get that, but as Zqurrl loves to point out — and explain in excruciating detail,” hye says, rolling hyer eyes, “there are as many commonalities in the universe as there are differences.”

  “I’m glad cool people are one of the commonalities.”

  “Yeah?”

  “Yeah. It’s been kind of a tough day. I was going to go to bed early, but maybe I could use some friend time first.”

  “Say no more. Ava? Ping Pardo-En, Mells, and Zqurrl and tell them to get their butts over to Carrie’s quarters, double time.”

  “Who’s Ava?”

  Erisia gets a sudden look of panic on hyer face. It vanishes as quickly. “Oh, that’s what I call my VA,” hye says, showing me the back of hyer hand. “I got tired of calling it a VA so I gave it a name. Everyone does it.”

  “Good to know.”

  ***

  In any given group of friends preparing to order food for delivery, there’s always the one who desperately wants one specific thing and will argue against any other suggestion, the one who’s up for anything, the one who keeps suggesting places but never has a strong preference, and the one who doesn’t care what kind of food it is can we please just order already? That holds just as true here as it does back home. Zqurrl is the insistent one, and he pushes hard for something called squurp (I resist the suggestion based on the name alone. I don’t know if I can bring myself to eat something that sounds like a fart noise). Erisia is the no-strong-preferences one. Mells keeps suggesting new places before any of us finish considering his previous recommendations. Pardo-En’s mantra is, “That sounds great. Can we order now?”

  Despite my reservations, we wind up ordering squurp with an assortment of sides. The name may be unappealing but the squurp itself — fried chunks of meat that, yes, tastes like chicken, coated in a syrupy sauce — is pretty darn tasty. We chase it down with swit, a sweet-and-sour beverage that’s extremely popular on most Alliance worlds — cosmic Coca-Cola. Once the food is gone, we sit around and talk about our days. The story of my afternoon ends with my expedition to Plaza North. I hate keeping things from my new friends, but Zqurrl hasn’t said anything about the Nightwind or Lt. Commander Fast. That means he hasn’t been informed of his teammate’s death, or he has and is under orders to keep quiet, so I err on the side of caution and play dumb.

  I haven’t yet figured out how time works here, but it feels late when we finally decide to call it a night. Erisia is the last to file out.

  “You okay?” hye says.

  “M’tired,” I say. “Long day.”

  “And you haven’t started proper training yet.”

  “Thanks for reminding me.”

  “You’ll do fine.”

  “Thanks. And I mean for everything. For tonight. I needed this.”

  Erisia smiles. “Sometimes they’re the only reason I make it through the day.”

  Hye leaves on that decidedly down note.

  I force myself to stay on my feet long enough to grab a quick shower and then dive into bed and burrow under my new comforter. I pass out the second I close my eyes.

  EIGHT

  “Good morning, Vanguardians.”

  I awaken with a startled cry, my hands instinctively flaring to life. I flail free of my comforter to find a disembodied alien face staring at me from the screen opposite my bed.

  “Morning announcements will begin in five minutes,” the face says. The panel goes black. Good morning to you too, jerk.

  I’m fully dressed by the time the head returns more than five minutes later (or maybe I should say, the head returns more than five minutes later as I measure it) and delivers what amounts to a morning news broadcast. Ninety percent of it goes over my head. There’s talk of possible Black End movement in the so-and-so system, mention of an important meeting of the Council of Generals (“All personnel should expect the council to be unavailable throughout the day.”), a rescheduling of deep space exercises for Commander Mikks’s squadron...

  “Finally, I regret to inform all personnel that Lieutenant Commander Fast was recently killed in the line of duty,” the head says. “Lieutenant Commander Fast was killed in the process of retrieving Black End prisoners from a previously unknown world in the Lehzutan Arm. The council expresses its sympathy to Lieutenant Commander Fast’s comrades.”

  Well, that’s out.

  My first act upon stepping out of my quarters is to pretend that the sight of Jozh scuttling along the wall doesn’t give me a massive heart attack. Guh, I will never get used to Cestrans. But on the up side: I am totally awake now.

  “Good morning, cadet.”

  “Morning, Jozh,” I say.

  “I’m not Jozh, I’m Tym.”

  “Oh. Oh, God, I’m so sorry.”

  “Happens all the time. I have that kind of carapace.” Tym scurries along the wall alongside me as I head toward the elevator. “Sad news about Lieutenant Commander Fast.”

  “Yeah.”

  “Were you there when he...when it happened?” Tym asks. “You are the one from the Lehzutan Arm, yes?”

  “That’s me, and no, I wasn’t there.”

  “Oh, so you don’t know what happened?”

  It comes across as a sincerely casual inquiry, innocent early-morning chitchat, but something about the question sets me on edge. Is Tym simply expressing a natural curiosity about a dead colleague, or is he subtly attempting to interrogate me? It’s odd that one of the Vanguard’s living data recorders just happens to be in my complex and just happens to bump into me as I’m heading out.

  Fortunately, I only have one response, and it happens to be the complete truth. “I was already here on Kyros Prime when it happened. I don’t know anything other than what Commander Do told me yesterday.”

  “I see,” Tym says.

  The elevator door slides open on Erisia. “Good morning,” hye says.

  “Morning,” I say.

  “Cadet,” Tym says, crawling into the elevator with us.

  “Ready for your first real day of training?” Erisia asks me.

  “Probably not,” I say, “but I expect Commander Dorr will try to totally wreck me.”

  “An open mind and realistic expectations. Good call. You’ll do fine.”

  “Oh, you’re with Commander Dorr’s squadron,” Tym says.

  “I am,” I say. “Why? Is that bad?”

  “No, not at all.”

  Do these jeans make my butt look big? No, not at all.

  The elevator stops to let Tym off. After the doors close, Erisia says to me, “Was that Jozh or Tym?”

  “That was Tym.”

  “That was Tym, okay. I have a hard time telling them apart.”

  “He has that kind of carapace.”

  “Mm.”

  We fly over together to Training Commons One, where the mood stands in stark contrast to yesterday morning. A pall hangs in the air, and everyone is subdued if not outright sullen. Erisia and I cross the cafeteria without anyone greeting us.

  “Looks like Fast’s death is hitting pretty hard,” I say in a respectful whisper.

  “The first dose of cold, hard reality is always the hardest to swallow,” Erisia says. I look a question at hyer. “This is the first time the current roster of cadets has experienced the loss of a senior Vanguardian.”

  “And they’re all realizing that the astrarma doesn’t make them invincible.”

  “Exactly. Plus, Fast was something of a minor legend. He trained under Commander Dorr, he was the top cadet in the squadron, rose through the ranks quickly, and was hand-picked by Commander Do to join her
team. He was well-liked and highly respected among the command staff and an inspiration to the cadets.”

  Jeez, was he two days away from retirement too?

  We find Mells and Pardo-En at our regular table (listen to me; two meals here and it’s our regular table). Mells’ head is bowed as if in prayer.

  “This is going to be a fun day,” Pardo-En says as we sit.

  “I don’t suppose this is the sort of occasion that warrants a day off,” I say.

  Pardo-En chuckles humorlessly. “This is the sort of occasion that’ll give Commander Dorr an excuse to ride us that much harder.”

  “Lovely. Nothing like hitting the ground running.”

  “I expect we will be hitting the ground rather frequently today,” Mells says, emerging from his reverie.

  “You’re killing me, Mells,” Pardo-En says.

  “I think Commander Dorr will be the one trying to kill us,” Erisia says.

  “Don’t you start.”

  Grun passes by our table. He slows and locks eyes with me as if daring me to say something. It is way too early for this crap.

  “What?” I snarl. He sneers back. “Yeah, real scary. Go be a tough guy somewhere else.”

  He backs away all the way to his table.

  “You’re learning,” Pardo-En says.

  “Huh?” I say.

  “How you responded to Grun. That was well handled,” Mells says.

  “Really?” Huh. Wasn’t my intent, I’m just grumpy because I haven’t had my morning dammas fix yet, but whatever.

  “It won’t make him back off for good, but at least you won’t get into another scrap with him this morning,” Erisia says.

  “What would make him back off for good?”

  “Beating the living hell out of him,” Pardo-En says.

  “Seriously?”

  “Seriously. Beat him in a fight badly enough and he’d respect your superior strength.”

  “Alternately, you could endure a severe beating at his hands and prove your worth that way,” Mells suggests.

  “Again, seriously.”

  I hate to get all judgmental on an entire culture I barely know anything about, but Grun’s people kind of suck.

  “I think I’ll go with option C and keep my distance from him,” I say.