Action Figures - Issue Seven: The Black End War

by Michael Bailey

  Her eyebrows jump. “Galt?”

  “Where is he? Has he been, um, disarmed? Defused? De-astrarma-ed?”

  “He is imprisoned securely,” Commander Do says without offering any additional details, “and yes, we are in the process of removing the stolen astrarma.”

  “In the process?”

  “Removing astrarma that have bonded with their host is a traumatic experience.” Preaching to the choir there, commander. “Removing all the astrarma from Galt’s body at once would kill him.”

  “Considering how many people he killed to get them, some might argue that’d be a fair outcome,” I say. For the record, I do not share that sentiment. I’m merely playing devil’s advocate.

  “The Kyros Alliance neither condones nor practices capital punishment,” the commander says with an air of pride that suggests she agrees with that philosophy. “Regardless, meting out punishment without the benefit of a fair hearing would be unjust, even for the likes of Galt. The council wants him alive so he can stand before a tribunal.”

  “I can appreciate that, but you might want to advise the generals to step up the process. Do you know what a suicide bomber is?” Commander Do hits me with a healthy dose of side-eye. “I know it sounds nuts on the surface, but think about it. Galt ran around picking off Vanguardians for the express purpose of taking their astrarma for himself. Why would he do that?”

  “To reduce our numbers,” the commander says. “The greatest challenge to a Vanguardian is another Vanguardian, and a single being possessed of several astrarma would be —”

  “But he’s still only one guy. And there are how many Vanguardians? Hundreds? Thousands? How much of a dent could a lone gunman realistically make in such a superior force?”

  Commander Do opens her mouth, then closes it. Doubt settles onto her features.

  “Maybe his ultimate goal was to wipe out the Vanguard, but picking us off one at a time would take forever,” I say. “What if the endgame here was to take us out through a single strategic strike to Kyros Prime? Commander Dorr said multiple astrarma working in unison could destroy a planet.”

  Commander Do settles into the chair in front of my little desk and stares at me for several minutes, her eyes dark and intense. She wants to dispute my theory. She’s desperate to find a flaw in my reasoning, a critical detail I’ve overlooked, facts that don’t quite line up, anything that suggests I am way off base and should keep my dumb human mouth shut and let the grown-up Vanguardians do all the thinking.

  “If that was in fact his plan, to turn himself into a living bomb and strike at Kyros Prime,” she says with heavy emphasis on the if, “it is a moot point now. He’s been captured and soon he’ll be, as you put it, defused.”

  “Granted,” I say, “but let me ask you: is the Black End a one-shot, all-or-nothing outfit? Or do they like to have a Plan B ready to go?”

  Her lips press into a tight, thin line.

  “I can’t tell the generals this came from you,” she says apologetically. “They’d discount it out of hand.”

  “I’m not looking for credit, commander, but I don’t want you to catch hell if I’m wrong.”

  With a wan smile, Commander Do says, “In this instance, I would be much happier to catch hell for being wrong than take credit for being right.”

  Yeah. That makes two of us.

  TWELVE

  It takes a few weeks, but my body eventually acclimates to Kyros Prime’s wonky schedule, and I settle into a routine, which goes a little something like this:

  Wake up.

  Go for a morning run.

  Go home, shower, and dress.

  Meet Erisia, Mells, Pardo-En, Zqurrl, and Grun for breakfast. Yes, Grun has become part of the group, despite Pardo-En’s continual protests. I swear, the way they bicker you’d think they were an old married couple.

  If it’s a training day, I train all morning, break for lunch with my friends, then train all afternoon. We’re finally moving beyond honing our individual techniques and getting into basic team-based tactics and combat strategies. That means we’re spending more time in space, in the training zone just beyond Kyros Remote One and Two, but I’m not complaining. Zipping around in a vast expanse of utter nothing is every bit as disorienting as you might imagine, but God is it cool. Bonus: once I’m deemed qualified for unescorted space travel (meaning that I don’t need a more experienced Vanguard chaperone to prevent me from getting hopelessly lost) they’ll teach me how to warp. That’s right — I will soon add to my already impressive list of skills the ability to travel between planets, stars, entire solar systems.

  Awesome.

  If it isn’t a training day, I tend to spend my free time boning up on Kyros Alliance and/or Vanguard history, other races and their cultures, combat tactics — whatever piques my curiosity on a given day. Along the way, I work up a lengthy dissertation on the value of making an ally of Earth and its people, to offer as a more coherent, thoughtful, well-researched, and less emotional appeal to the council if and when the opportunity arises.

  Whether it’s a training day or an off day, it ends with getting together with my friends to do something fun and relaxing until bedtime, which is also a great opportunity for some cultural exchange action. I’ve learned a ton about music, literature, theater, dance, sports, and leisure activities from other worlds, and I’m always happy to discuss the many ways humans entertain themselves. Once I figured out how to connect my phone to the Alliance’s systems, I uploaded into the archives my small e-book collection, which includes The Hobbit, of course, The Lord of the Rings, some of my favorite Sherlock Holmes stories, and the complete works of William Shakespeare. I also uploaded all my music. Bruce Springsteen and the E Street Band have officially gone galactic. You’re welcome, Kyros Alliance.

  It’s worth noting that on training days, General Gretch will sometimes make a cameo appearance. He’ll pop up randomly, watch the exercises for a while, chat with Commander Dorr, then leave. Dorr’s never shared with me the reason behind Gretch’s sudden interest in his squad, but that’s a question that really doesn’t need answering.

  Commander Do checks in with me from time to time, but those are brief exchanges and neither of us has anything substantial to offer. “The Earth situation” remains on the back burner and Galt “continues to be processed.” If the Council of Generals has an opinion on my Galt-the-living-bomb theory, they’re not sharing it with anyone. Or maybe I should say, there’s been no news Commander Do is free to share with lowly ol’ Cadet Carrie “Fargirl” Hauser.

  So, yeah, I have a routine now. The good thing about routines is that they’re comfortable. The predictability, the familiarity, they’re good things. They trick me into believing my totally weird-ass life is perfectly normal.

  The bad thing about routines is that they lull you into a state of complacency. You wake up and go about your day thinking everything’s going to be exactly like it was yesterday and the day before that and tomorrow and the day after that. You drop your guard.

  That means when the unexpected does hit, it hits hard.

  ***

  At first, I don’t hear the knocking over the strains of Bruce Springsteen’s “Radio Nowhere.” I dance over to my door and open it to find Mells standing in the hallway.

  “Good morning!” I say, shouting over the music. “I’m almost ready!”

  “All right,” Mells says. He steps inside, his eyes on his feet, his hand up as though shading himself against bright sun.

  I turn the music down. “Erisia should be here any minute, then we can get going.”

  “Very good,” he says to the floor.

  “What’s with you? I don’t look that tragic in the morning.”

  “You are dancing,” he says as if that in and of itself is an explanation.

  “Yep. Sure am. Gettin’ my groove on.”

  “My culture regards dancing as a...as a very intimate act between two people.”

  “Oh. Oh!” I turn off the music. “I’m s
orry, Mells, I didn’t know.”

  He peeks up cautiously. “Thank you. Your people, they dance openly?”

  “All the time. For us it’s not — well, it can be, as you said, intimate, but usually people dance because it’s fun. We dance when we’re happy.”

  “Ah. You are happy, then?”

  It’s a simple, innocent question, but it stops me dead in my tracks. I am happy. In defiance of all reason, I’m as happy as I’ve ever been at any given time in my life.

  Huh.

  “Carrie?” Mells says.

  “Sorry. Spaced out for a minute. Yeah, I am happy. I have the day off, I’m going to spend it doing nothing important with my friends...what’s to be unhappy about?”

  “Perhaps you should share that wisdom with Pardo-En. He is of the opinion that we will spend the day in a state of misery because of Grun’s presence.”

  “That grumpy dragon should build a bridge and get over it.”

  Mells wrinkles his nose. “Am I correct in assuming this bridge you mention is metaphorical?”

  “You are. It means Pardo-En needs to accept that Grun isn’t going anywhere and constantly butting heads with him isn’t going to drive him off.”

  “Mm. If anything, Pardo-En’s belligerent attitude has endeared him to Grafton Grun.”

  “Unlikely besties, huh? Why not? Weirder things have happened.”

  “That is one of the things I most cherish about the universe: it never ceases to provide one with surprises.”

  “That’s for sure.”

  Once Erisia arrives, we head out for Plaza North to meet up with the others. Pardo-En and Grun are staring daggers at each other, as usual, while Zqurrl watches the silent exchange of ill will with wide-eyed, scholarly fascination. For him, people watching is more passion than hobby. If they had popcorn here, Zqurrl would be chowing down on a huge tub of it.

  “Oh, good,” Pardo-En says. “The fun people are finally here.”

  “I’m fun,” Zqurrl protests.

  “Yes, you are. You’re a big ol’ weird squishy blob of fun,” I say. Zqurrl beams. “All right, ladies and gentlemen and miscellaneous, what’s first?”

  “Food,” Pardo-En says.

  “Food,” Zqurrl agrees.

  “Sounds good to me,” I say. “Who’s up for trying something new? Ylena said there’s a Turyian place in the western sector that’s really good.”

  “Turyian? Bold choice,” Pardo-En says. “Half of their foodstuffs scream when you eat them.”

  “Uhhhh...”

  “I think Ylena set you up,” Erisia says, smirking.

  “Yeah, that sounds about right,” I say. “Do they have anything on the menu that isn’t alive?”

  “I didn’t say any of it was alive,” Pardo-En says.

  “Let’s go somewhere else.”

  “Fell Ma-Drun’s,” Grun says. “Eastern sector. Wide variety, good quality, reasonable prices.”

  “Sounds like we have a winner,” Erisia says, which prompts an extended groan from Pardo-En. “Problem?”

  “I was really hoping we wouldn’t go somewhere where we’d have to kill our own breakfast,” Pardo-En sneers.

  “We will not have to kill our food,” Grun says. “That’s Urrdrl Tang Sur’s.”

  “Look, dragon,” I say, my temper growing short, and it’s way too early in the morning for that — but before I can tear into him for his craptastic attitude, my earpiece lets out a low, deep beep.

  “This is Kyros Remote One,” a voice says. “We have a possible hostile incursion in Kyros space. All Vanguardians, stand ready to respond to —”

  The rest of the alert is drowned out by a deafening boom, like a thunderclap from the biggest storm in the history of ever. The sound dissolves into an echoing rumble that causes the air itself to vibrate. The last time I experienced something like this, it was during my first up-close encounter with the Nightwind.

  The ship descending toward Plaza North like an incoming meteorite makes the Nightwind look like a Hot Wheels car.

  I can’t make out its profile from this distance, so I can’t begin to speculate what sort of ship it is, but whatever it is, it’s coming in hot — very literally; a white nimbus, the heat energy generated by a high-speed reentry, surrounds the ship, flaring and pulsing like the world’s angriest aurora borealis as it hurtles toward the ground, growing larger by the second — and it’s still miles above us when countless fingers of smoke erupt from its sides. Any lingering doubts whether this is an attack vanish.

  “Oh no,” Erisia gasps.

  “GO!” I shout.

  We rocket up to meet the ship. Its fiery aura dissipates to reveal the mass within, a vaguely light bulb-shaped hulk that spits a second volley of missiles toward the planet’s surface.

  “Kyros Control, this is Cadet Hauser! We have a hostile vessel attacking Plaza North!” I say, unsure of who, if anyone, is listening in, but I have to believe every last Vanguardian on Kyros Prime knows by now what’s happening. “We need backup, ASAP!”

  “You and everyone else!” someone replies. “I have a Tratan-class transport coming in over Nantack Island!”

  “We’ve got a pair of Haltan light cruisers taking position over Training Commons Four,” someone else says.

  Oh my God. This isn’t one ship launching an isolated attack. This is an all-out planetary assault.

  “All Vanguardians, hold the line as best as you can!” General Tis says.

  “Easy for him to say,” Pardo-En says.

  “Orders are orders,” Erisia says. “First priority is to take out these missiles.”

  “There’s too many of them! And they’re too fast!”

  “No they’re not,” I say. “We’re faster.”

  We break off and pick out our own clusters of missiles to intercept. This is a risk in and of itself because we don’t know what we’re facing. If these are nukes or something similar, blowing them out of the sky could set them off, and we’d wind up doing the Black End’s job for them (of course this is the Black End. Who else would pull something like this?), but the alternative is to let them drop and pray the destruction isn’t that bad, and that is not an option.

  I open fire on a missile no larger than a refrigerator. It goes off with a flash of light and a high-pitched squeal. Okay, it’s not a nuke. With that question answered, I pour on the speed, zipping from missile to missile, knocking them out of the sky in rapid succession. This isn’t an ideal solution; the debris has to go somewhere and that somewhere is Plaza North, but again, there’s not much in the way of better options here.

  “How’re we doing, people?” I say.

  “Keeping up, but barely,” Erisia reports.

  “Same here,” Pardo-En says. “If they launch another salvo, we’re screwed.”

  Gaartiin breaks through the din of exploding missiles. “Hold strong!” he says, and not a second later, Gaartiin and a half-dozen more of our fellow cadets scatter throughout the sky to take out the strays the rest of us missed. The air pops and flashes like a Fourth of July fireworks display. It’s a valiant effort but not a perfect one; a half-dozen missiles slip past us and hit home, cratering entire neighborhoods, leveling buildings, reducing parks to blackened scars.

  “We need to take out that ship,” Erisia says.

  “We need to get it away from Plaza North first,” I say, recalling the gigantic crater that used to be the center of Olar, but moving this beast is so easier said than done. It’s parked itself over the dead center of the plaza, and it isn’t going anywhere. Come on, Carrie, think. There has to be a way to —

  “Incoming!” Grun says as the ship releases a machine-gun spray of sizzling white projectiles.

  “Evasive! Evasive!” Gaartiin shouts. The warning comes too late for Cadet Jakka Qo. One of the flare-like missiles detonates, releasing a pulse of pure blackness, like light turned inside out. I’ve seen the same effect when Astrid teleports, but this, I don’t know what it is. All I know is that Qo is there one moment, at
the very edge of the blast, and the next, there’s nothing there but empty sky.

  “Oh, devils, they’ve got singularity missiles!” Grun says.

  “What are those?” I say.

  “Bad news is what they are,” Erisia says. “Take them out at a distance.”

  “No, hold your fire!” Gaartiin says. “We have to clear the sphere first or we risk catching each other in the missiles’ blast radius!”

  (FYI, “the sphere” is Vanguard shorthand for the airspace in which combat occurs — which, at present, is the entire sky above Plaza North.)

  “Draw fire above the ship,” I say, “maybe we can use these singularity thingies against it.”

  “Maybe,” Erisia says. “If nothing else, we’ll draw their attention away from the city.”

  A sound theory, but the ship hasn’t opened fire on the city again. It seems to be focused entirely on us now.

  As if to confirm my theory, a hatch slides open on the ship’s topside to reveal a squat gun barrel. It tracks us as we climb and fires with a hollow thump. A single glowing orange streak tags Cadet Werv, but instead of a shrill explosion or a burst of black, an amber crystalline substance engulfs him. The mass stalls out as it loses momentum and then plummets toward the plaza.

  “They have amber rounds too?!” Zqurrl squeals.

  “They came prepared, I’ll give them that,” Pardo-En says.

  “Admire later, kick ass now,” I say.

  “Target the front of the ship,” Gaartiin says, and since he sounds like he knows something I don’t, I don’t question it. We open fire as a unit, eleven Vanguardians acting as one, and rip a chasm in the hull. Metal screams. The ship rocks from the impact, listing.

  It returns fire, a finger of energy like a lightning bolt blazing toward us. Gaartiin orders everyone to scatter. We disperse as the bolt scorches past — and I fly right into the path of a singularity missile barrage. It was a feint, and we fell for it.