by Matt Thomas
Red sand and dust covered nearly everything. Unlike its sister planet, with its mountains and thinner atmosphere collecting enough moister for rain, Pollux was a high-desert, habitable only if human beings had no other choice for survival. The humans that lived there scratched out what the could, using pieces of the ship for shelter for nearly three generations, growing what they could using the cargo-hold stores that had survived the ship splitting in two and crashing to the surface. The sands had reclaimed much of their survival settlement since the Hetarek plucked them off this planet and deposited them onto Castor. Only eleven of the Pollux settlers had survived the Hetarek occupation. Others had lived long enough to have children while in captivity and raise their own descendants, but only eleven had actually lived there before their Free Human liberators took them back. Those eleven had wanted to return to where they grew up to salvage what memories they could and to bury the dead the Hetarek had left rotting on the ground for a generation.
Xander spotted a white-haired woman whose shaking, thin hands pulled futility at what appeared to be scrap of flexible plastic from the ground with a great reverence indicating the item was something more. He knelt next to her and found a piece of metal, a child’s drawing barely recognizable on it, half sticking out from the ground. He pulled it out, dusted it off, and handed it to her.
“Thank you.” She said in her strange accent he struggled to understand. “I just wanted something to remember her by.” She said to herself, somehow expecting Xander to know what she was talking about. She started crying. “I closed my eyes because I didn’t want to see. I didn’t want that to be my last memory of her, but it was anyway, whether I saw it or not. I just wanted something else. You all said we could come back and I thought, I have to find something else of Rachel’s.”
“I can’t imagine what you’ve been through.” Xander empathized.
“They say the Hetarek are on Earth now?”
He nodded.
“No one should have to go through this. I hope you’re able to help them too.”
“There may be a way you can help us help them.” Xander replied. He held up his tablet. “I was wondering if you recognized someone. We took this photo of someone we think lived on Pollux when you did.”
He showed her a photo of the man they had labeled Objective Iago, the human so ensconced in the Hetarek administration they local humans called him simply “the Speaker.” The quality of the image was poor, taken at extreme distance by a source on Earth known to the files only as Helen. Her information told a legend that the Speaker had come from the Twins, an early captive of the Hetarek conquest. After conversations with Colonel Tamaka and Lieutenant Colonel Bern, Xander decided to find out more about Iago himself. The beard and wrinkles made it unlikely anyone could make a positive identification, but he had to try. Besides, it gave him an excuse to visit the surface of the planet so steeped in history and mystery.
The woman looked at the photo, long and hard. Then she smiled. “I’d recognize that nose and jawline anywhere. His whole family had that. Is he still alive?”
Xander nodded. “Yes, ma’am. Do you know who he is?”
“Ira.” She replied instant. “It must be. He looks so much like his father. And his grandfather.”
Xander smiled his success. “What can you tell me about him?”
She laughed. “Ira was our messenger. He could talk to the people on Castor through flashing light. Denos taught him, and they would go up to the mountain and flash the sunlight off of a large mirror, and look through a telescope, and every few weeks Denos and Ira could talk to the people on Castor.” She pointed to a steep, tall mountain not far away. “He was very willful. Very sarcastic and full of himself. But he always meant well. Ira was very smart. He helped out a lot, but in his own way. He never did what you asked him to do if you told him how to do it. His father was the same way.”
She smiled and looked away. “I’m glad he made it off of Castor. We were so worried about him. Especially when he started working for the Hetarek.”
“How did that happen?”
She shrugged. “They can’t speak English, or any human language that we could tell. And we couldn’t speak theirs, as much as we tried sometimes. It hurts the throat so badly to make all those scratches and grunts. Ira learned to understand them. They brought someone with them, a human they found on some freighter somewhere. He was not a very nice man. He stood there while the Hetarek...” Her voice trailed. “He let it happen. The man told us how to be compliant. He told us how to live, and how to die. But he angered the Hetarek, and they killed him like the rest of us. And when they did, they needed a new translator. Since Ira was starting to understand their language, they let him do it.”
“How was he at speaking for the Hetarek?”
“You mean how was he working for the Hetarek, and telling us what to do?” She gave a knowing, distant grin. “He was better than the one before. He tried to protect us, again, in his own way. He had to make some terrible choices, and a lot of us resented him for that. But he made them, and some people lived who would have died.” She sighed heavily. “It was a very difficult time, and Ira did the best he could. One day he didn’t show up. Someone else began to speak for the Hetarek, but she didn’t do as good a job as Ira. A lot more were killed while she worked for them. We assumed that Ira had been killed himself. The Hetarek usually like to execute people in front of us, so we know, but Ira just disappeared. I’m glad to know he’s alive.” She stopped herself, and then looked Xander in the eye. “Why are you asking? And why is your picture so bad?”
Xander shrugged. “He’s a person of some importance now, and we are just getting to know him.” It was true, on both counts. He didn’t feel the need to ruin yet another memory for the woman. “This just happens to be the only photo I have. I just wanted to find out more so that we can talk to him better.”
“Ira could definitely talk. He always could.” She held the scrap in her hand, looking down at the drawing again. “We you speak with him, tell him that Shisha is glad that she taught him well enough to survive. Tell him we’re still here, that we are alive, and that he is always welcome to come back.”
Xander nodded, knowing full well the name would only come up during an interrogation. A tool to convince him to join the side of his own species, and only if he was caught alive. But she didn’t need to know that.
CHAPTER NINE
“This is rain?”
“Yeah, Smythstyne, this is rain.” Jess shot back. “You’d better get used to it. We’ve got at least another few months of it. By the end of it, you’ll have depression and a vitamin D deficiency. Maybe become a serial killer.”
“Maybe you’ll start a band. And I never got depressed or had a vitamin deficiency.” Bryan said.
“You were two. And it’s really more of a heavy mist. It’s not like there’s a monsoon season.”
“I was thirteen, Jess.”
“It really makes me want a latte.” O contributed.
The fern leaves around them bobbed with each rain droplet and the moisture had long ago soaked through the back of their uniforms. Elbows sunk into the soft dirt as they stared down at village compound below. The overcast skies dispersed what little gray light of dusk still scattered amongst the hills. The village had once been a densely packed development, houses nearly identical crammed atop one another, with a Hetarek wall built around it. Rotting and dilapidated strip malls and overgrown streets stretched off into the remnants of suburbia. Once just another sub-division, now a ghetto for humans dominated by the Hetarek.
“You’ve had to have seen rain before.” Alan said from behind his M-350 medium machine gun.
“The only times I’ve ever been on a planet it’s been dry.” Smythstyne defended himself. “Hot and dry. Cold and dry. Never seen water just fall out of the sky before. It’s always come out of faucet or some ice or something. I was more at home up with the snow.”
“There it goes. It
’s leaving.” Jess pointed out.
From the abandoned school just outside what had once been planned community, they watched a Hetarek Scythe shuttle kick up dirt and gravel as it rose from the ground. The high-pitched whine of the engines echoed across the hills. Contrails formed of points of its wings as it accelerated much more slowly than they expected, before it disappeared into the low clouds.
“I wonder what that was about.” O said.
“We’ve got nothing on what their daily battle rhythm is like down here.” Jess replied. “This could be a one time thing or they could swing by every two hours.” Jess replied. “This whole thing could go south real quick.”
“I’m so glad you mentioned that, Jess, because you haven’t brought it up since we made it planetside.” Bryan said. “You managed to bring it up in every rock drill, every rehearsal, every exercise, but you’ve been strangely quiet for the last week.”
“Well, we’re going to go talk to this woman who has no idea we’re coming. We know next to nothing about her...”
“We know she used to be one of us.”
“Until he got left behind half a lifetime ago. We have no idea what she’s like now.”
“And she’s been sending status reports out into the ether the whole time. She’s been transmitting intel out into space once a month like clockwork. She clearly wants to help.”
“Yeah, and we haven’t been able to respond to her in any meaningful way. We gave her a few innocuous drops of supplies and messages to keep sending stuff. We have no idea what the last few decades have done to her.”
“We know she lives there.” Bryan pointed towards the village. “And we know which house she lives in. And we know she wants to help. So we can bitch about it or we go do what we’re supposed to do. If it doesn’t work out, we get out of this mess and find someone else.”
“Roger, sir.” Jess said with an ironic smile. She knew she’d successfully gotten under Bryan’s skin.
“That being said, if you don’t hear from us and hour after we’ve made it in, get the fuck out. And, for God’s sake Alan, don’t start shooting unless we’re shooting. A few rifles firing is one thing but a Three-Fifty will tell everyone on the planet that it’s us, not some insurgents.”
“Roger.”
Bryan looked at the sky. “I think it’s probably dark enough. O, Bridget, Jess, you guys ready to go?”
“We going slick?” Bridget, the senior medic, asked, wanting to know if they were going to drop their helmets, body armor, and other equipment to keep a low profile.
“No, we’re going to stand out if someone sees us no matter what. Let’s go.”
Bryan pushed himself up, raised his weapon to the high-ready, scanning the area ahead through his sights. With a flick of his hand, the lenses of his night vision flipped down the front of his helmet, and everything turned to shades of green. He let Jess move a few feet in front of him in her position at the head of their small formation, having traded in her sniper rifle for her short-range but silent MP-21. He knew that O and Bridget were only a few meters away behind him. The rest of the team held their position in the schoolhouse. All four walked quickly down the hill and across the open spaces between their overwatch position and the edge of the village. They approached a crumbled road and Jess stopped. She took a knee and looked north. Bryan crouched next to her, looking south. Bridget and Siskind crossed between them, taking mirroring positions on the other side of the dangerously open space. Jess tapped Bryan on the shoulder, and he followed her to the safety of the other side.
The wall around the village was more of a boundary than a barrier, solid enough so that the inhabitants knew where to live, porous enough that anything could get through. Crouched in the brush running along the perimeter, Bryan checked the small tablet wrapped around his forearm. The target’s suspected house was close to the wall but not immediately next to it. They needed to find a way in as close as possible if they were going to make it without being seen.
A drainage ditch cut beneath the wall in a few locations, and they were able to find a crossing point only two doors over from their target. On the other side of the muck, it was quiet. The neighborhood had been built for a much higher population density. From the candles and fires burning in what windows remained, it looked like perhaps only every other house was occupied. The remainders had been stripped down, subject to scavengers over the years. Bones remained, worn out and rusted appliances, many re-purposed or metal recycled. Anywhere there had once been wood remained bare. Windowsills stood empty. What was left was whatever couldn’t be used. Much like the inhabitants.
They came across one house, packed back into the corner of a cul-du-sac, flanked by empty buildings. A few lights shown through the windows, flickering candles or lanterns. Bryan checked his tablet again. It was the right place. They ducked into the remnants of the home next to it. He switched his night-vision to infrared and scanned the outside of the building. Color, red, yellow, green, and blue filled in the temperature spaces on the other side of the wall. He found the concentrations and counted.
“I’ve got four pax inside, two downstairs together and two in separate rooms upstairs.”
“Me too.” Alan said through the headset.
Bryan reached his hand behind him, not taking his other off his weapon or his eyes of his objective. O placed the receiver in his hand. “Serpent Eight-Two, Beast Two-Two. Over.”
He waited, and heard nothing.
“Serpent Eight-Two, Beast Two-Two. Over.” He repeated. He turned around finally, and watched O check the setting on the system on his back.
“Beast Two-Two, go for Serpent Eight-Two, Over.”
“Must’ve been eating lunch.” Siskind quipped.
“Serpent Eight-Two, Beast Two-Two is Time-Out, grid to follow.” Bryan checked his tablet and read off the ten-digit gird coordinates.
“Serpent Eight-Two copies all. Out.”
He handed back the receiver and thumbed his headset on. “We’re on the objective.”
“Roger.” Alan responded from his perch further up the hill.
“Bridget, you and O find a spot upstairs.” The stairs inside the two story structure had collapsed long ago, and the scrap removed for firewood. Bryan stood with his back to the wall, interlocked his fingers, and gave both of his team members a boost up to the second floor. The creaking floorboards helped him track the two as they found a spot in a corner away from the cul-du-sac facing the rest of the neighborhood.
“In position.” His radio operator called over the headset.
Jess stepped back out through the rotting doorway to the outside. Bryan followed her, around the side of the objective house towards a side door next to a garage. The wind whistled over the long-uncut grass that brushed against the sides of his boots as he cautiously approached the door. A second check on infrared told him that there was no one on the other side. The pair was in the next room over. Jess stood to the side of the door, careful not to brush up against the wall. Bryan check his surroundings again, then took a hand of his rifle to try the doorknob. It turned. No need to keep doors locked in a neighborhood where the bad guys came and went at will anyway.
He made eye contact with Jess, and nodded once before slowly and quietly pulling the door open.
Jess went through quickly and silently, immediately turning left. He followed, going right. The inside was a small washroom, empty hook-ups for a washing machine and dryer. Wood had been stacked in their place. Only feet from where they entered, a doorway would pour them out into an open floor-plan. From his limited vantage point, Bryan found a kitchen to his right and a dining room on his left. A man and a woman talked in the kitchen. He couldn’t see them, but he could see the shadows cast by their lantern.
Once again, Jess went first through the door.
The man and woman were both in their late fifties or early sixties. The man’s hair and long beard were more gray than silver, from what Bryan could tell looking at h
is back. The woman’s salt-and-pepper hair hung in a braid down her back. Weathered skin somehow highlighted the look in her brown eyes, the look that Bryan had seen many times before. Some sights permanently change perception, scaring eyes with a mark that will not go away with booze, exercise, or therapy. Bryan saw the same look when he peered into a mirror.
Those eyes went wide, but not in panic.
Bryan lowered his weapon, only slightly. “Captain Anastasia Genovese?”
The woman nodded slowly, smiling slightly. “No promotion for time spent in captivity, huh?” She said, quickly recovering from her shock.
“I’m afraid not.” Bryan let his weapon dangle down the front of his chest. He strode over, arm extended. “Captain Bryan Howe, ODA Eighty-Two Two-Two.”
*****
The man was Anastasia’s husband, and he boiled a pot of tea on the fireplace and served it in clean glasses. Nothing inside the house labeled its occupants and “desperate” or “oppressed.” Walls remained in good repair, as the tidiness spoke of the owner’s pride. Whatever Bryan had expected was closer to the decrepit building next door where two of his team had taken up their overwatch positions. The two heat signatures upstairs were Anastasia’s children, both grown yet without families of their own. While none of them feared the team’s presence outright, the cold looks and physical distance made it clear that the husband and children had more than a few apprehensions. At first, Bryan thought that their nerves were more from the weapons, or fear of losing a wife, but after Genovese had dismissed her family upstairs and sat around a flickering candle with the two soldiers that Bryan began to fully understand.
“You’re not going to get the reception you expect.” Anastasia said eventually, staring into the bits of leaf swirling at the bottom of her cup. “When I first started sending messages out, maybe you would’ve. I’d hoped you would’ve. But now...”
