by M. R. Forbes
“This isn’t the first time the Reapers chased me away from the bridge. I didn’t think two of them would show up there so quickly after we messed with the lights. It’s a good thing I’ve used this path before.”
“Roger that,” Flores replied.
Riley’s eyes shifted to Caleb. “Sergeant Card. What the hell is wrong with you?”
Chapter 15
“That is so messed up,” Flores said, once Caleb finished telling them about the hallucinations he was having. “Your dad?”
“That isn’t the worst part,” Caleb said. “The worst part is that in the back of my mind I know it doesn’t make any sense and that it can’t be real. But the larger part of my experience is telling me it is, no matter how impossible it seems. I feel like I have so little control over what I think or how I react. You’ve never heard of that before, Riley?”
Riley shook her head. “Nothing we were working on caused that kind of reaction, intentionally or unintentionally. I don’t have a good explanation for you. I would say it could be something internal, but it isn’t consistent, though it does seem to happen when you’re under stress. I’m assuming you went into stasis in perfect health?”
“I did. I watched almost everyone I knew succumb to the trife virus. I never got it. I haven’t been sick since I was four years old.”
“Maybe it came from being in stasis,” Sho offered. “A side-effect of the long sleep.”
“There are no known cases of that kind of reaction from stasis pods,” Riley said. “If it were a potential cause, someone else would have come down with the same symptoms, both during trials and out here. None of you see anything strange, do you?”
“Negative,” Sho said.
“No,” Flores said.
Washington shook his head.
“There isn’t anything we can do about it right now anyway,” Caleb said. “But the fact is I may be a liability. You can’t count on me making the right decisions because I might be basing them on something that isn’t there. I hate to say it, but I think one of you should take over as Guardian Alpha.”
“Sarge, no,” Sho said. “I believe in you. I know you won’t do anything to get us hurt.”
“I appreciate that, Yen. But I don’t even know it, so how can you?”
“He’s right,” Riley said. “We need to look at the whole picture. Too many lives are at stake to take any chances.”
“I’m sorry,” Caleb added.
Washington put his hand on Caleb’s shoulder and squeezed it lightly.
“It isn’t your fault, Sergeant,” Riley said. “Whatever is happening to you, we’ll get to the bottom of it once we reach the surface. Metro has full medical facilities, even better than what you had in your sickbay.”
“I know it isn’t my fault. That doesn’t make it easier to take.”
“So, who’s going to be in charge?” Flores asked. “I don’t want to do it.”
“It’s my decision,” Caleb said. “Riley, you have the most experience. You were a Marine officer and a Raider.”
“She’s not even a Guardian,” Sho complained.
“What was it you said to me before? We’re all in this together, right?”
Sho opened her mouth again but didn’t speak.
“Riley, someone needs to be in charge here,” Caleb said. “I think it should be you.”
He still had that gut feeling he couldn’t completely trust her, but Sho was the one who suggested he put more faith in her and tell her about the hallucinations. Not that there had been any way to avoid it after the second one. He had seen a Reaper as his father. If Sho hadn’t been so close, he wouldn’t be alive right now.
And none of them could argue Riley didn’t have the experience. If anything, she was a better natural choice than he was.
“I agree,” Riley said without hesitation.
“With all due respect,” Sho said.
“Private, you’re out of line,” Caleb snapped.
“No,” Riley said. “It’s okay. We need to be able to trust one another. Private Sho, you have my permission to speak freely.”
“Thank you… Alpha,” she said, struggling to spit out the title. “With all due respect, I have a serious problem with putting the person who created the problem in charge of solving the problem. If she was capable of doing anything about this, why hasn’t she already? I’ll take a compromised Sergeant Card over a questionable Doctor Valentine any day.”
“I’ve already apologized for the mistakes I made. I screwed up. I admit it. But I also enacted the plan that put the Guardians here today. We’ve already arrived at Essex. If we can finish mopping up the remaining Reapers, our mission will be complete.”
“Our mission will be complete,” Flores said. “Your mission was to make better people. You failed in that.”
“And then we can get the Deliverance to the surface, and then we can go our separate ways and get on with our separate lives.” Riley finished without acknowledging Flores’ remark. “Until then, you do what I say, and maybe we can all get through this alive. I know you don’t like me. Any of you. I’m the bitch who got Banks and Habib killed. I’m the bitch who screwed up all your hard work getting the trife off the ship. I’m also the bitch that saved your asses from the trife when you were overrun in the water filtration unit near Metro. So technically, you’re only here because of me for a couple of reasons.”
Sho and Flores glowered. Caleb refused to show anything. In truth, he liked Riley more now than he had the first time they met. Maybe that wasn’t saying much.
“I’m with you, Alpha,” he said.
Washington thumped his chest, pointed at her, and flashed his thumb. Sho and Flores were slower to come around, but they did after a stern look from Washington.
“Okay,” Sho said. “But if you get me killed, I’m going to haunt you like you’d never believe.”
“Fair enough,” Riley replied with a faint twitch of her lips.
“Alpha,” Caleb said. “What’s our next move?”
Chapter 16
“This was a good next move,” Flores said, taking another bite of the MRE. “Thanksgiving Dinner. I was starving.”
Washington jabbed his chest with his thumb and nodded in agreement, taking a large bite out of his Coffee Ice Cream.
“I’m just glad these things were made to last forever,” Sho said. “Or we’d really be hungry. I thought the goop in the stasis pods were supposed to keep us fed?”
“They do while you’re in them,” Riley said. “We’ve been out for nearly four hours. With your level of muscle mass and fitness, it’s no surprise you’re hungry.”
Flores ran her hand along her bald head. “I can’t wait to get my hair back. Especially my eyebrows. Is it just me, or do people look freaky without eyebrows?”
“I think we look like the aliens without any hair,” Sho said.
“It reminds me of one of the projects I was brought in to consult on,” Riley said. “The military was working on robots with fake skin, the same kind they tried to use on artificial limbs. They wanted to use them in high threat civilian zones, to work with the population instead of actual Marines. Risk mitigation. But they couldn’t get the flesh quite right and the robots were attracting the wrong kind of attention. We were trying to use genetics on synthetics. It was interesting work.”
“What happened to it?” Caleb asked.
“The trife showed up,” she replied.
“That’s the most common answer to just about any question,” Flores said.
“What about you, Sergeant?” Riley asked. “Where were you when the trife came?”
“Middle East. Not that my answer is surprising. Chasing down some terrorist or another. I can’t even remember half their names.” He smiled. “The dust from the meteor shower was hard to see against the backdrop of the desert, and we were cut off from the outside world while we closed in on our target. We didn’t know anything had happened until one of our squadmates got sick, and then two, and then thre
e. We had to bag the mission, and when we got back to base we found out our guys weren’t the only ones getting sick.
“The whole thing seems like a blur now. We were called back to the States to be near a hospital in case we got ill. The military invested so much time, energy, and money into us they treated us like VIPs. I still remember about a month in, calling home to check on my parents. My sister had already died by then. My dad was close to going. My mom had it too. The trife were starting to appear. It felt like the whole world was going mad.”
“It was,” Sho said.
“They kept me on the base for another month after that, until they were sure I wasn’t going to get sick. I’ve always regretted those two months. Sitting around, doing nothing while millions of people were dying. Those were the hardest two months of my life.”
Caleb paused, fighting against his emotions. He wasn’t the only one damaged by the invasion. Everyone around him had been too, in their own way. When he looked at them, he could see they were fighting their own painful memories, their own inner demons.
“They sent what was left of the Raiders out to confront the trife, guerilla style. We didn’t know anything about them then. We killed hundreds of them in the span of weeks, and it never made a dent. I remember at the time we were calling them hydras.”
“Like from those superhero movies?” Flores asked.
“There she goes again,” Sho said.
“Like the mythical hydra. Probably for the same reasons. You cut off one head, and two more grow in its place. That’s exactly what it felt like. I was on the front lines watching humanity fight a war it couldn’t win.”
“Against an enemy that had been specifically designed to destroy us,” Riley said.
“How do you mean?” Flores asked.
“Like I said, I was already in research when the trife showed up. I made the switch after my sister was diagnosed with Niemann-Pick disease.”
“I’ve never heard of it,” Caleb said.
“It’s pretty rare, and usually gets diagnosed during childhood. It’s a genetic disorder, and it can cause all kinds of problems for the afflicted. Ataxia, dystonia, palsy.”
“Come down to grunt level, Doc.”
“Difficulty with movement and muscle tone, essentially. I thought if I became a geneticist, I could help find a cure. In any case, before the Reapers I was moved to a team studying the trife. We looked at their genetics through every tool we had. We mapped their entire genome, and we realized one of two things. Either God is real, and He wanted to start over, but since He promised no more floods, He sent the trife instead. Or someone else made them. Their properties were just too perfect. Too controlled. Just like the virus. Not everyone agreed with that assessment, of course, but I’m convinced.”
“But if there’s another alien out there, and they made these aliens, why bother?” Flores said. “They’re obviously more advanced than us. Why not nuke the site from orbit, just to be sure? Or whatever passes as nukes for them.”
“The trife only attack humans,” Riley said. “I’ll repeat that. The trife only attack humans.”
“They want to get rid of us without harming the rest of the planet,” Caleb said. “So they sent a predator to hunt us down and kill us all.”
“That’s my theory.”
“Who is they?” Sho asked.
“Who knows,” Riley replied. “Whoever they are, they didn’t want us going into space.”
“I wonder if they expected us to destroy half our planet fighting them,” Flores said. “Jokes on them if they didn’t. Plus we made it to space anyway.”
“They’re a bigger failure than you, Alpha,” Sho said.
Riley’s expression changed. She glared at Sho. “There’s a line, Private. Go over it again, and there will be consequences.”
Sho’s face froze. She nodded curtly. “Roger that, Alpha.”
They fell into silence for a few minutes, finishing their MREs. Then Flores spoke up again. “So, if the parent aliens wanted to get rid of humans but keep the Earth intact, what do you suppose their endgame is?”
“What do you mean?” Caleb asked.
“I mean, when we left there were still humans on Earth. They were still surviving, even if they weren’t doing it well. Today? Maybe all the people are gone. What if they are? The trife inherit the Earth? Or is there some alternate endgame? Does it have anything to do with the spaceship you found?”
“Good questions,” Riley said. “I don’t have anything but instinct to answer them. I think the parent aliens, as you called them, are preparing the planet for them to take over when the time comes.”
“When do you think that will be? When all the humans are gone?”
Riley hesitated. Caleb noticed the change in her face. The slight narrowing of her eyes, the sudden tightness of her lips. It was gone just as quickly.
“Yes. I think so.”
She glanced over at him, eyes fierce and defensive. She wasn’t telling them everything she knew, and he had caught it.
Who was Doctor Riley Valentine...really? And what did she know that she still refused to share?
“If everyone has had their fill, grab a couple of MREs for your hardpacks and let’s get moving,” Riley said.
“Roger that, Alpha,” Caleb replied. “Where are we headed?”
“Stern side entrance to Metro,” she said. “Our first target is there.”
“You’re sure?”
“Yes. How are we doing on plasma charges?”
“My original cell is almost empty,” Caleb said. “But I’ve got two fresh cells in my hardpack.”
“Same for me,” Flores said.
“I’m already on my second,” Sho said. “About twenty percent used.”
Washington held up two fingers. He was on his second cell too.
“We need to be cautious with our ammunition,” Riley said. “We can’t get more than what we have.”
“We might be able to get a little more,” Caleb said. “Some of the vehicles down in the hangar have weapons and ammo in them, but probably not plasma.”
“If we can get to the hangar after you blew our module,” Sho said.
“There are entrances at both the bow and stern. Those should be intact.”
“If it isn’t plasma, it’s fairly useless,” Riley said. “Other than to harass them.”
“You made them, Alpha,” Sho said. “Do you know if there’s another way to kill them?”
“There is one other way. But we’d have to get into Research. Harry and I were never able to get close, not in the entire time we were out here.”
“That doesn’t mean we can’t do it.”
“No, it doesn’t. But if David is still alive, Research is where he’ll most likely be. He has control over the Reapers. He’ll bring them to him, all five at once. We can’t fight five at once. If we can reduce the population by two or three, then maybe we can attempt breaching Research.”
“One step at a time,” Caleb said. “There’s too much at stake to take a risk like that.”
“Tango Metro it is,” Flores said. “I’m ready.”
“Me too,” Sho said. “Let’s go, Guardians.”
Chapter 17
“Caleb,” Riley said, getting his attention. “I want you to take the rear. Stay close and watch for trouble, but don’t take any action without clearing it with me.”
“Roger that, Alpha,” Caleb replied. He understood the reason for the order. It was the same reason he had given up command of the Guardians in the first place. He was unreliable. Unpredictable. To the others and himself. That didn’t mean it was easy to take. These were his Marines. His Vultures. And his wings were clipped.
The Guardians were on Deck Sixteen, in the corridor leading from the central lift. The lighting here was mostly offline, the overhead LEDs only activating when the sensors picked up their motion, giving them twenty meters of light ahead and behind. It was a benefit in that it would signal them if anything were coming before it arrived. I
t was also going to make it harder to sneak up on the Reaper.
But not as hard as Caleb initially thought. He hadn’t seen Riley grab one of the laser pistols from the armory, and he hadn’t noticed it snapped to her SOS until now.
She fastened her P-50 to the rear plate of the combat armor and bent over, grabbing the pistol from above her calf. “Our goal is to get in as close to it as we can without waking it,” she said. “Assuming it’s where I expect it to be.”
“I take it you’ve encountered it before?” Flores asked.
“We had to get past it a few times. The Reapers go into a hibernation state of their own when there’s no activity, to conserve energy. They’re somewhat aware of their surroundings, but not completely. You saw that with the last one.”
“Until I woke it up,” Caleb said.
“Yes. We’re going to try not to do that again.”
“Roger that.”
“We get in close, and we burn it. If everything goes the way it’s supposed to, it shouldn’t be all that difficult.”
“If there’s something strange, in your neighborhood,” Flores said, her lips splitting into a sheepish smile. “Who you gonna call? Trifebusters.”
“You have problems, Mariana,” Sho said.
“I’ve got my proton pack ready,” she said, tapping on the P-50. “I ain’t afraid of no Reapers.”
“Alpha, can you shut her up?” Sho asked.
Washington squeaked slightly, laughing too hard to prevent any noise from escaping.
“It’s game time, Marines,” Riley said. “Knuckle up.” They fell silent and serious in an instant. “I’ve got point. Once we reach the corner, I’m going to start taking out the sensors to keep the lights from coming on ahead of us. We’ll stop for a minute to let our eyes adjust.”
“How are we going to see the Reaper if you keep us in the dark?” Sho asked.
“If we come at it slowly, it’ll be easy to spot against the bulkhead.”
“Maybe for you, you aren’t a cyclops.”
“Trust me.”
“Yes, ma’am.”
