Galaxia

by Kevin McLaughlin

  She had often envied her beauty and the ease with which she socialized with people. Alicia had the best boyfriends, ran with the popular crowd and, Laura hated to admit, was probably her parents’ favorite. There were many things she had envied about her sister, but success in her career wasn’t one of them. From a young age, the two of them had loved science. They both wanted to be famous for making groundbreaking scientific discoveries when they grew up. They should have been able to study the Zoo together.

  Apart from finding evidence of her sister’s demise, she had developed a hypothesis about the Zoo from the information in the reports. The positive side was that there was still time and the damage could still be reversed. The harmful course of action that the government had taken had not yet completely arse-fucked them. But she needed to test her hypothesis in the field.

  For that, she needed to get to Fort Archway before it was too late.

  “You’ve been tapping into information on the Zoo,” Wixom accused, her tone grating. “Classified information. For God’s sake, state secrets—do you have any idea how much risk we incur when you do something like that? You could have had this entire institution dismantled. This could put every university employee out of a job.”

  She tried to gather herself before she responded. “Okay, yes, I understand that, and I’m sorry. Really, I am. But it makes no sense for them to lock us out. They’re closing the door on intelligence that could change their whole approach to the Zoo.”

  The woman sighed in frustration. “I don’t want to hear it, Laura. We both know this isn’t about the Zoo or saving the human race. It’s about her, isn’t it?”

  Laura looked at her hands. She couldn’t deny it.

  “I’m not entirely heartless,” the director said and warmth seeped into her voice for the first time. “I know you lost your sister to the Zoo and I know you well enough by now to be sure that your interest in the Zoo has something to do with her dying there. However, you can’t do it from this position any longer.”

  She leaned in. This argument wasn’t only important for her sake anymore. Steering away from the talk of her sister, she decided to appeal to the scientist in her boss. “Look, from what I’ve seen in the reports—”

  “The classified reports.”

  “From what I’ve seen in the reports,” she pressed, raised her voice slightly beyond what was appropriate, and probably turned a little red, “the people down there don’t know what the hell they’re doing. They’re looking at it in all the wrong ways, and if my research is correct, they could quickly find themselves in very real danger. I’ve developed a hypothesis that could help them and that could change their perspective.”

  Jane’s resolve seemed to fade into fatigued irritation as if she was merely a speck of dirt in her eye that she couldn’t manage to wash out. “If you really cared about helping people, if you really wanted to follow in your sister’s footsteps,” the woman stated, “you’d do your job and follow the same rules that everyone else has to follow if they want to effect real change in our world. From where I’m sitting, Dr. Curie, you look like someone who’s willing to break all the rules to get what she wants, leaving behind a trail of unfortunate bystanders who have been forced to take the blow for your reckless behavior.”

  Laura groaned and threw her hands up in exasperation. “Are you even listening to what I’m saying? They don’t understand what they’re dealing with down there. It’s vitally important that I keep working on this.”

  Wixom stood from behind her desk and unofficially marked this conversation as finished. “I have a meeting with a member of Parliament, Dr. Curie. I’m sorry, and I’m afraid MI6 knows about your hacking. In fact, they’re the ones who informed us about it. It’s out of my hands. The officer you saw in here before you came in is waiting to take you away. Since you know so much about the Zoo already, they’ve decided to sentence you to three years in there as a research scientist. Some might say they’ve gone easy on you and given you the very thing you seek. I wonder, though, given everything we know about the Zoo, if you wouldn’t be better off in prison. I’ve told the officer to wait for you outside. Take a moment if you need to gather your thoughts.” With that, she walked past without deigning to look at her, but Laura sensed her pause. “I hope you find what you’re looking for,” she said before the door closed gently behind her.

  She sank into the chair and her mind replayed everything her boss had said. Of course, she was right. Going to the Zoo was precisely what she wanted but being there by force wasn’t exactly what she had in mind.

  Her expression glum, she surveyed the arsenal of accolades spread across Director Wixom’s desk and the certificates laminated and framed on the office walls. What was this but the academic equivalent of a kid displaying their trophies for rec football on a dresser beside their bunkbed?

  Wixom had spoken of their world being different from the sci-fi worlds of books and movies and television—worlds in which Laura had spent many hours immersed. But seated alone in this office, she felt, not for the first time, like there might have been some overlap. In both worlds, people like her were often asked repeatedly to keep their heads down, told to follow instructions and protocols, and to uphold the status quo. They were discouraged from floating ideas and opinions that contradicted those of the people in charge. She knew she was no heroine—hacking a secure government website had surely disqualified her from that category—but she was both excited and terrified by her research into the Zoo and the hypothesis she’d drawn from it.

  She had to be heard. Laura realized being fired and even being detained might have been the best thing that ever happened to her. Now that she was assigned to the jungle, she could concentrate her efforts on what mattered.

  It was time to get her hands dirty in the field.

  Chapter Two

  Soldat Gunter Grün had arrived at the Archway Research & Defense Facility at 0800 hours.

  By 1300, he was already fatigued and irritable.

  Today was his first day at the base and indeed, this was his first real assignment as a deployed soldier amongst the enlisted men of the German Bundeswehr. They had immediately given him a difficult and dangerous mission of the utmost importance, along with a small desk and ink pen with which to complete it.

  The forms also contained innumerable helpful instructions.

  “Oh, don’t even bother getting tea from the vending machines,” an obviously British fat guy in a white lab coat said as he strolled past. He and a very petite woman, also wearing a white coat, talked as they passed through the large lobby-office and ignored the mostly German soldiers and various minor bureaucrats who sat doing paperwork. “It’s not up to snuff at all. You’d be much better off simply petitioning a few family members at home to ship you some Tetley’s. We’re still trying to see if we can have the local Tuaregs smuggle proper tea down from Algeria…”

  Gunter rolled his eyes. It was good to know the Brits had their priorities straight.

  The Zoo was, from what he had heard so far, currently the most dangerous assignment available to the German Army. Casualty figures were mysteriously hard to come by, but any imbecile could tell that they were higher than one would expect for a single, contained location. And by now, the staggering losses the US had suffered were common knowledge. The Americans had tried to cover it up, of course, but they’d lost probably half as many people in the jungle as they had in the entirety of Turkmenistan some years previously.

  Soldat Grün was fine with risk. He hadn’t joined up merely to sit on a base at home or to be sent on a routine deployment in a developing country where action might happen but probably wouldn’t, aside from the locals periodically slashing the tires of their trucks. He’d recently turned twenty and he was ready to kick some ass.

  Someone wandered over. “Hah! Doing paperwork, are you?” they observed, a statement rather than a question.

  Gunter looked up, but the individual had already strolled away. It appeared to be a British officer
, perhaps one of those tasked with base security. Fort Archway was originally and primarily a research project of the United Kingdom with a task force deployed to secure the safety of both the wall and the civilians. Increasingly, however, the Germans shared the base and, from what he’d heard, seemed to mainly be used to protect the teams who ventured into the Zoo. Still, some of the Limey civilians were the type who might carry and even know how to fire guns as well. He couldn’t imagine that the Brits would be lackadaisical about their own protection.

  He looked at the huge, bloated stack of papers on his tiny desk. They represented so much repetitive busywork. He couldn’t even remember, at this point, how many times he’d written his name and other obvious identifying information, over and over and over again. Couldn’t they find some way to automate this shit?

  With a sigh, he laid his pen down and rubbed his eyes. He needed to get the hell up from this desk, stretch his legs, and find food and coffee. After all, he only had to complete the forms by the end of the night. And it was time, he decided, to visit the mess hall.

  His mind made up, he stood, ignored the slight critical glance of the bespectacled lady behind the window at the desk, and made his way to the door. Beyond it lay a hallway, which at least was not so head-achingly bright as the lobby, although its white walls still reflected the overhead illumination so as to leave not even a trace of shadow in the corners.

  “Which way…” he muttered to himself as he looked left and right. An officer had shown him when he’d first arrived, but he had already forgotten. The place was big and disorienting and it was easy to forget where things were in relation to other places one had already been.

  Left, he was fairly sure. Yes, he decided, and acted on the choice. He passed men and women in suits and ties who looked at their phones, at clipboards, or at nothing at all. Some wore lab coats, and other German soldiers—easily identified by their uniforms that distinguished them from their British counterparts—looked at him and furrowed their brows as if to determine if he was new meat or if they’d simply forgotten who he was. It seemed like there were numerous people coming and going at any given time.

  Soon enough, he heard noises that sounded like a mess hall and shortly thereafter, he saw a sign confirming this—in both English and German—with a nice, convenient arrow pointing to a large double-door. He pushed through with both relief and anticipation.

  The room was maybe a third full or less. Most of the troops and other personnel who’d come in for lunch had already started to drift out. That was fine with him. It meant he could get something to eat without having to stand in line for forever and a day, sit somewhere without having to force his way onto the bench, and also escape having to listen to other people bullshit him.

  Gunter located the actual counter, the stack of trays, and the slouching cook standing over stoves and pots with his back turned. He walked toward them all.

  “Stop!” someone snapped. “Attention! Achtung!”

  Instantly, he halted, stiffened, assumed the correct posture, and waited. He glanced around, moving his eyes but not his head. A man strode toward him at a brisk pace. He had no idea what the problem might be—or even if the problem involved him or someone else behind him—but he recognized the sound and the vibe of a pissed-off officer with a stick far up his ass. Better safe than sorry, he decided.

  “Soldat!” the officer rasped as he came close enough for the young man to have a good look at him. In German, he went on, “You are not in uniform, and you are violating one of the rules of my base. Are you aware of this?”

  “Sir, no, sir,” he replied.

  The man who had approached him was, from what he could see of his rank insignia, a hauptmann—or what the British and Americans referred to as a captain—and obviously someone of real importance at this base. He was on the tall side of average, very lean, and in early middle-age and gave an immediate impression of self-discipline, decorum, and impeccable grooming. High cheekbones, a thin aquiline nose, and dark eyes cemented the impression. He had black hair and a somewhat tanned or olive complexion, which suggested a mixed heritage. Aside from this, however, he seemed in every way a walking stereotype of traditional German military hardassery.

  “Do you know which part of your uniform you have forgotten, Soldat?” he asked in his clipped voice.

  “Sir, no sir.”

  “The most important part,” the hauptmann told him. “Rule Number Thirteen. Never go anywhere on base without a weapon. Did someone fail to issue you one?”

  “Sir, no sir,” Gunter answered. He suddenly wanted to hang his head in slight shame and embarrassment but maintained his posture lest he incur even more disfavor. “I’m very sorry, sir. It will not happen again.”

  “See to it that it does not,” the officer replied. With that, he spun on his heel, stormed away, and seemed to vanish as quickly as he’d appeared. A pistol hung in a holster at his hip so at least the man wasn’t a hypocrite.

  Soldat Grün exhaled slowly and relaxed, but only slightly.

  “You heard the man,” someone said in a loud voice. “You can’t be caught unarmed. The bugs here are huge.” He turned his head and saw a couple of other soldiers looking at him with a mixture of sympathy and amusement as they departed the mess hall. It seemed prudent to ignore them and he headed toward the counter.

  As he picked up a tray, he gritted his teeth despite himself. Where the hell had that hauptmann even come from?

  Between the dispiriting experience of being dressed down like that and the even worse prospect of all the paperwork still waiting for him in the office, he began to wonder how wise it had actually been to volunteer for this place. There they were in the middle of the North African desert and trying to stave off an alien invasion, and the base was run by a group of martinets who insisted on enforcing every protocol and procedure, no matter how arbitrary. He wondered if Hauptmann Tight-Ass even forced the men to fold one corner of the toilet paper over in the lavatories.

  The cook behind the lunch counter noticed him and turned. “What will it be, soldier?” he asked in cockney English, although he seemed to try to suppress his accent for the sake of being understood by all the Germans.

  “Give me some of everything,” Gunter replied. His English was fairly good. In addition to school, his father had raised him on a steady diet of old British TV shows and American movies.

  “Everything? Well, I think I can do that…he-he.” He chuckled and began ladling some beans. “You’re new here, aren’t you, soldier?”

  “Yes. Soldat Gunter Grün. It is nice to meet you, uh, Mister…”

  “You can simply call me Sonny,” the man said. He looked to be somewhere in his late thirties and was thick-set, stubbly, overweight, and somewhat sloppy-looking—to the extent that he could get away with sloppiness on a military base. A couple of faded tattoos were visible on his forearms and he was probably balding under his white hat and hairnet. Somehow, it occurred to Gunter that the man might have been in prison when he was younger. And interestingly, his eyes had a definite pinkish, bloodshot look to them. It probably meant he’d either been drinking or smoking cannabis. He wondered how Hauptmann Tight-Ass would feel about that.

  “Sonny.” He nodded. As the cook added a biscuit and steamed vegetables to his tray, he decided to make conversation. “So, what would you say is the problem with that officer? I don’t understand why I have to wear a gun on the base here. It is not as though the things in the Zoo have bomber planes. We’re safe with the base inside the wall.”

  Sonny looked at him and looked bewildered for a moment. Whatever substance he’d abused had slowed his cognition somewhat. “Oh, Jan?” he said. “Bloody hell, you don’t know anything yet, do you? Well, for starters, Wall Two isn’t finished yet. In theory, those things could stroll through parts of it. Until it’s done, no one is really all that safe anywhere.”

  “I see,” he responded. It still irked him but he could grasp the logic in that, at least.

  “And as for
Jan—Captain Jan Shalwar, that is—give him a second chance, I’d say. The guy is a legend, honestly.” As he spoke, Sonny added a chicken breast to the tray. “He is a hard-ass, he is, yeah, what with all his rules he keeps stored someplace deep within his own skull, and he don’t tolerate people breaking them. But the guy would cut his arm off for you. He cares about the men and women here, he does. He’s willing to sacrifice everything for this place. Jan is not one of them types who would throw his own people under the bus if he thought it might advance his career a little.”

  “I see,” he said again. “That is good, then.”

  “And that’s why,” Sonny continued and pointed at him with a pair of tongs that still had biscuit crumbs clinging to them, “he’s always top of the charts in the Death League.”

  The young soldier glanced around to make sure that neither Jan nor any other officers were watching, then picked up one of the biscuits and bit into it as he stood there at the counter. “And what the hell is the Death League?” he asked with his mouth half-full.

  “Oh, it’s a chart in the pub,” the man said as if that explained everything.

  He raised an eyebrow as he added beans to the remaining biscuit-mush in his mouth, impressed that the base had its own alcohol dispensary. He’d have to look into that later.

  “It’s like a bet,” the cook went on. “Anytime someone goes into the Zoo, they are entered in the weekly pool, you see. Someone calculates all the statistics based on how likely each person is to die. Whoever’s at the top…well, most people place their bets that he’ll be the next one to shuffle off this mortal coil.” His jovial demeanor grew more somber. “Because, you know, people tend to die a lot here.”

  “Oh,” the soldier replied. He dabbed his mouth with a napkin and decided he should probably finish his meal without delay and get back to his all-important paperwork.