by Matt Thomas
"Or volunteering us for a new mission." Jean said, picking at his beef flavored protein. He thought it was beef flavored. At least that's what the placard in front of the serving tray had said. Not that the teenager who set out the placard had ever tasted beef in his life.
Sasha came bounding into the mess hall, shoving past annoyed crew members. Forgetting about grabbing a tray of food, he dropped into a seat at their half empty table.
"I've got great news. We're clear." He announced.
"Of the flight rotation? Of the other thing?" Dauod prompted for useful information.
"The investigation. They cleared us in shooting down that Ahai transport."
Dauod and Jean exchanged looks. Quinn looked up from his dinner.
"Yeah. Of course they did." Jean said.
"They were always going to clear us." Dauod added.
Sasha looked perplexed. "But, they did. It's done."
"Great. What's the problem?"
Sasha shook his head. "There's no problem. I just thought you guys would be more excited."
"I'd be pretty pissed if they didn't clear us." Dauod declared. "Get us off the CAP rotation, then I'll get excited."
"Or a new squadron leader." Costeaux suggested.
"Fuck you."
"When is our next CAP?" Dauod asked.
Sasha's face fell. "Tomorrow morning."
Without a word, Quinn stood up and walked away from the table. Sasha pulled the tray over to himself and started picking at the half of a meal left sitting on the plate.
"Then I better get some shit done before hitting the rack.” Jean stood up, stretched, and grabbed his tray.
"You really suck at this leadership thing."
*****
His excuse was that he wanted to check on the Komodo repairs. Fortunately no one challenged it, so Bryan lingered in the cold, staring up at the ridge where two fresh mounds of rocks accumulated their first layer of snow.
He just needed the silence for a few minutes. The constant talking, the squawk of the radio, the whirring of the computers wore at him after so many months. He'd always appreciated the stillness of the mountains in winter. Since he'd arrived home, the snow and hills that made everything were obstacles to be overcome. But for a moment, staring away from their camp, ignoring the pistol forever stuck on his belt, he could forget for a moment that he had left in the first place.
Boot falls in the snow broke his reverie.
"Don't worry, I don't tell anyone you're slacking off." Jess said.
"You keep bigger secrets than that." Bryan replied, not turning around.
She stood next to him, staring up at the burial sites. "It's been a rough couple of weeks."
"Yes it has." He moved himself to the present, ignoring the past both distant and recent to keep his sanity. "How's your face?"
"Good as long as I don't look in the mirror."
"Fortunately we don't have many if those."
She turned to him, exposing the bright red scar running across he right cheekbone. "You look like a badass motherfucker." He said.
"If I wanted that, I'd just get another tattoo. Maybe a Hetarek skull on each shoulder."
"Plus the new crosshairs on your dragonfly."
Jess looked down at where the decorative crossed arrows on her forearm made the wing of the insect, and a long line stylized crosshairs of varying sizes made the body. "Jesus, I've lost count. It'll look ridiculous after this, just a line all the way up my arm."
He didn’t have a response.
"How's your back?"
"It's fine. It pulls a lot, but that salve makes a difference. I just wish it weren't right where my vest is." He finally looked over at the tablet in her hand. "So what's up?"
"O just gave me this. It's a new mission plan. The Task Force is trying to push us some additional resources for the day of. Eighty-Two Fifteen and a company of Rangers."
They took Bryan aback. "That's a pretty big change in plans. How'd that happen?"
Jess shook her head. "That wasn't in file they sent. They're apparently going to drop within twenty-four hours of the main landing. They said that was the best they could do."
"Eighty-Two Fifteen is a direct action team. So are the Rangers. What do they want us to use them for?"
"The message said that's totally up to us. We can task them through Thunder until they drop. Including where they drop."
"Well, Chief Kysley, you're my master strategist."
"I'll figure something out." She resumed staring up at the ridge. “I guess it's not so long now. In a couple of weeks this'll be over."
After long pause while he processed what she had said, Bryan started laughing.
"It's not going to be over Jess. If everything goes off without a hitch, we'll fight the Hetarek here for years to get them off. Then there'll be infighting amongst the survivors here. They already call us Runners. They’re not going to just accept whatever the Council tells them to do. Once we get back and there's aliens left to fight we'll go back to fighting each other."
He regretted spilling all of that out into the open. He was supposed to be the stoic one. He was supposed to take one step in front of the other no matter what.
"So what you're saying is that I'm not getting a vacation this summer." She realized he struggled with the thoughts running through his head.
He rolled his eyes. “You’re not getting a vacation an instant before I do. It may be selfish but that’s just the way its going to be.”
“Yes, sir.” They stood in the cold in silence until she looked back at the lodge, covered in snow. “I guess it’s pretty selfish of us to stay out here any longer. We’ve got some planning to do.”
CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE
So early in the morning, with the cold, light rain making its way through the holes in the roof and cracks in the wall, Ava could find some warmth in the repair bay where Hetarek heat lamps kept the desert-loving aliens functional. Her small room, once the office for the small regional airport, provided some comfort through the colorful blankets she had collected and a discarded Hetarek couch for a bed. Julian lived in the next office over, as did a dozen other mechanics and engineers spread throughout the compound. Metic Ahai, of course, lived in a collective up the hill, occupying a well-maintained apartment building. The Hetarek occupying the airfield generally kept to the perimeter, ordinarily completing their patrols huddled around the heat lamps. They would toss rooms occasionally, and vehicles were searched coming and going, but complacency rotted everything they did. Howe's team hadn’t ventured into their valley, at least not yet.
That complacency kept her from shutting down Julian's enthusiasm. More attentive Hetarek may have noticed the return of hope to his eye, not that they would know it when they saw such a rare thing. It meant they didn't overhear his whispered comments to her or notice how vehemently she shushed him. He couldn't confine his excitement about the Runner's fight to the many hours and nights they spent in the road.
It wasn't stress or worry about her little brother that kept her up, however. Nor was it the nightly dreams about bodies displayed along the roads. It was the anger. She ventured down the familiar path to insomnia. The growling of Hetarek would wake her up. They'd keep her awake, and she'd start getting irritated about the inconvenience. Then she'd correct herself, realizing in guilt that the Hetarek deserved hatred for far more than being inconsiderate. She'd want to do something, to take action, but resisted anything that might get either her or her brother killed. Howe and his group wronged her by giving her hope. She often thought about that first night. The dead Hetarek, and the casual way Howe treated them, like fallen omnipotent demigods were commonplace. Such thoughts eroded the fatalistic shell that kept her safe. That team represented just a token of the force she wanted them to use. She'd heard the rumors of their gunfights. She'd seen the aftermath of their operations. Yet she still lived as a Hetarek slave. Without the Runners, she wouldn't wish for anything else.
When the anger overtook her in the middle of the night, she gave into the inevitable, brewed tea, and warmed herself by the heat lamps in solitude until morning.
Only this evening, someone broke her solitude abruptly.
"Ava." The high-pitched voice of M'Tari, one of the Metic Ahai administrators of the facility, seemed to echo loudly in the room. "If you are up, go to Hanger Three. A Scythe is landing in a moment."
She looked at the dreary night outside. "In this weather?" Risking a landing at night, in low clouds, in the rain, was extremely unusual.
"They reported hydraulic issues coming in and were diverted here. Once it lands, repair it. It needs to return to service immediately."
Ava shuddered at the thought of the brown caustic fluid burning her arms and leaving her skin cracking and peeling for weeks.
She opened her mouth to object, but the Metic Ahai grasped the tips of his fingers with his two thumbs, a command for compliance. She put down her up of tea and stepped out into the rain.
The light precipitation dampened her clothes just enough to chill her as she walked along the ramp to the single large hanger. Her head down, she didn't see the armed Hetarek, strangely alert and wearing a personal heater, blocking her way. He grunted a command at her, stopping her just before she stepped under the roof. He stared at her, his reptilian gold eyes projecting that he was not a guard; he was a warrior. Past him, inside under heat lamps, she saw the bundles, neatly aligned in the deep green reserved for the honored. Two Hetarek stood ceremonially, rtek blades out instead of rifles. Another Hetarek moved steadily about on all six legs, his guttural voice in a strange song she had never heard.
The warrior caught her looking, and hissed again. She took a step further back in the rain.
Over the steady drum of droplets, the rushing thrum of a Scythe materialized in the darkness. Lights appeared, then the sweeping crescent shape. It slowed to a hover. The Hetarek warriors opened the hanger doors, giving Ava a better look inside. In the corner of the hanger, opposite the bundles, she saw humans. She counted twenty, all older, all hanging their heads, shoulders drooped, all with graying hair. They looked like they had surpassed the age of utility, as the Metic Ahai called it. The kind of people rarely seen in the work force. Metic Ahai surrounded them as they had their backs to the hanger floor.
The Scythe inched into the hanger, its landing struts struggling to get down, a clear indicator of a problem. Without its usual grace, the ship made contact with the hanger floor.
In the vortex caused by its engines, the green wrap around the bundles fluttered. One of the shrouds came loose, and, for the second time in her life, she saw dead Hetarek.
The ramp came down, and several dozen Hetarek came down the ramp. Unlike the warriors or the guards, their skin had a smooth luster. They bore no scars or other signs of wear. They exited the ship in formation, forming a tight triangle once on the ground.
An older Hetarek walked with them. After they had become perfectly still, he barked.
The formation dissolved into a panicked charge. Towards the humans. Several of the people tried to run, but the Hetarek leapt through the air with their powerful legs. The descended upon the old and weak. Then they started tearing them apart with their claws.
Ava tried to look away, but the nearby warrior stared at her, smiling. She watched as blood and tissue soiled the floor of the hanger. The young Hetarek started returning to their formation, each carrying a bloody human head.
A Metic Ahai called to her, breaking her concentration. He waved her over to the rear of the Scythe, away from the carnage.
She ran with what little dignity she could muster. It took her several attempts to register her identity with the ship, a requirement to call out saboteurs in the event her repairs failed to meet standards. Finally the retinal scanner recognized her eyes, tearing them away from the newly minted Hetarek killers.
The Metic Ahai directed her to the reported mechanical problem, but Ava barely listened. The overseer had to regain Ava’s attention several times during the discussion. In the corner of her eye, she saw two more humans, a cleaning crew, begin to collect body parts from the floor. One vomited, and a Metic Ahai struck him repeatedly. Ava’s focus drifted too much, and she received her own sharp pain on the side of her head. The Metic Ahai shoved her towards the Scythe, telling her to keep to her to work. Ava felt nauseated, swallowing hard as her hands began to shake.
She had given up on fear long ago, knowing that at any minute a Metic Ahai could say the wrong thing or a Hetarek guard could be in a foul mood. Fear didn’t make her shake. Anger made her shake. Anger at the helplessness of her species that stood still, flailing meaninglessly as the Hetarek ripped them apart. Anger at the Hetarek for having such cowardice that they became true warriors after murdering elderly humans corralled for that purpose who didn’t fight back. Anger at the Metic Ahai for doing the corralling. Anger at herself for standing next to one of the most important Hetarek ships in the region and not attacking it with her bare hands.
The Hetarek received their rtek blades in a brief ceremony, smearing human blood from their claws along the shining metal as they baptized their weapons.
Ava, feigning compliance, stepped onto the Scythe’s ramp, thinking of the weapons she had at her disposal, weapons she had seen baptized without fanfare in the middle of the night.
*****
The creaking of the office door woke him up more than the light spilling in. Bryan peered through the narrow opening in his sleeping bag. He could tell from her stance more than her shapeless fatigues or the black sweatshirt that it was Jess. He stayed curled up on the floor of the old manager's office, alert but motionless like maybe she wouldn’t know he was there if he just stayed still enough.
"What time is it?"
"Zero five-ish." She answered. "Sorry to wake you. I know how cranky you get without a good two to three hours of sleep."
Bryan grumbled in response, still not moving from his bag.
"At least it's you and not Siskind. He’s way too cheerful at this hour. What's up?"
"I got a call from Ava."
"You mean Julian?" Nearly every contact had been with the brother. The kid had great enthusiasm for the mission, but tended to reach out every time he found another handful of people to join the cause. The kid’s utility outweighed his annoyance, for the moment. Jess squatted down next to Bryan. The light reflected off her green eyes strangely, like they were some kind of computer screen. She tossed her now long, dark hair over her shoulder.
"I mean Ava. She contacted me a few minutes ago because she just left the Hetarek maintenance facility in Wenatchee. She says there's a Scythe there being repaired that she’s working on, and that it’s from the regional hatchery."
He rubbed his eyes. "So what?"
"Well, she says it’s about fixed and it could fly out today.”
He tried to shake understanding into the exhaustion fog occupying his brain. “How does she know it’s from the hatchery?”
Jess shifted uncomfortably on her feet. “Ava said she saw some very young Hetarek get off of it. She also witnessed some kind of ceremony where they killed a group of elderly humans, and then got their rtek blades.”
That got Bryan’s attention. “What, they got blooded into the warrior caste or something?”
“I read... somewhere... something about Hetarek not getting their rtek blades until they’d killed someone in combat.”
“What you said Ava said doesn’t exactly sound like combat.”
Jess rolled her eyes. “So file a complaint with the Hetarek that they’re cheating. But she saw a bunch of fresh recruits and we know that fresh recruits only come from one place.”
“The hatchery.”
“The hatchery.” Jess confirmed. “She also said something else. She saw a bunch of bodies of dead Hetarek, and it looked like they were going to load the bodies onto the Scythe.”
“The ones from yest
erday?” Bryan asked, barely remembering the last gunfight. They had pushed some of MacIntyre’s people into ambushing a convoy of Hetarek moving through the mountains. The details of that battle blurred into all the others, but he remembered a couple of burning Komodos.
“Maybe. We’ve got no idea what they do with their dead. Lucas said something that one time about feeding them back to the hatchery, but that’s the first I’ve heard of it. Either way, it looks like she may be right about the Scythe.”
“So, what, she wants us to ambush the new recruits?” He looked over at his rifle as though it would tell him something he didn’t already know. “Even if we got everyone up now, we’d never make it there in time to actually do anything. They’re probably already moving and there’s snow.”
Jess shook her head, a broadening smile on her face. “Oh no, that’s not what she wants at all. She thinks we should use the Scythe to attack the hatchery."
Bryan laughed. "I bet she does. Did she say how she wanted us to do it?"
“She suggested either planting a bomb on it or stealing it.”
He scowled and cracked his knuckles, trying hard not to take out his frustration on the messenger. “First, we can’t make and transport a bomb big enough in a few hours. Second, we’d have to get a team to the Scythe, steal it intact, not get shot out of the sky, and then we’d have to get back here.”
"We could find a hatchery, which should have about three dozen females, we think. A couple thousand eggs per year. It would do some damage."
He hauled himself up to a sitting position, feeling to cold bite at his exposed skin, and glared at her. "You're not seriously pitching this, right? I'd expect this from some of the others, but not you."
Jess shrugged, immune to his unreasonable accusatory tone. "Kendrick says we should let them go ahead and do it themselves."
"Was he sober?"
"Do you want to know?"
"Not really."
"But to answer your question I'm just giving you the facts. You know, my job."
He relented. "To play that tape to the end, all of us get killed. Either at the hatchery or when they get so pissed they burn these mountains off the surface of the planet. I appreciate her enthusiasm but we need to stay focused."
