The bishop pulled off his wetsuit and strode out into the center of the cave. Every gaze was upon him, as were the sights of a dozen guns, but the priest ignored them all and shouted in a voice that was amplified to uncanny levels by the cave’s acoustics. “In the name of God, and the Episcopal Council of Earth, this bloodshed will cease now!”
The defenders looked at each other warily, either reluctant to upset the Big Boss upstairs, or perhaps calculating that if the shooting started again, they wouldn’t get out alive.
The bishop’s cry was answered by a cheer from the beach. They must’ve thought their leader was dead.
The cheering subsided but then a single voice – sounding suspiciously like Caccamo – started up a chant that was swiftly taken up and repeated on every lip and mouth part.
“Hot Sauce! Hot Sauce!”
Still chanting the bishop’s former call sign, the Catholics stormed the entrance. Armed but not firing.
At that moment, hatches opened at the rear of two pop-up battleship turrets, releasing a cloud of smoke, followed swiftly by fleeing HUB people, including their leader, Mayrik. It was too much for the defenders lining the walls who dropped their weapons and ran for the rear of the base.
But first they had to get past Leaky Veck and its merry band of HUB loyalists who raced to intercept Mayrik and his traitors.
I left them to it, and made for the Revenge Squad prisoners as my priority. Three of their guards ran. Two remained, hands high in surrender.
My attention was on those who were running. The bug in my brain might prevent me from shooting them, but they didn’t know that. I aimed my carbine above their heads.
Let them go, said Bahati with an unusual note of pleading, and I could feel the other denizens of my head backed her up.
It’s not easy to feel a connection to your foe when rounds are flying through the air and embedding in the flesh of people you care about, but even I could see that if the Levelers had any military sense, then they would have killed the Revenge Squad prisoners the moment the shooting started. Many of the Levelers clearly did have a lot of military sense, and they had spared their prisoners through a conscious decision. I guessed at the conflicted loyalties for the rank and file Levelers. I’d fought against the Human Legion in the early stages of the civil war. At least then, when soldiers changed sides, we tended to do so at divisional level or higher. This was more personal. To my surprise, I wanted to understand their motivation.
“Why didn’t you shoot the prisoners?” I asked one of the Levelers who had surrendered.
He spat on the ground. “That Zhakar-Ree is a power hungry tyrant. It’s not even her real name. What kind of degenerate hides behind a false name?”
What kind, indeed? asked Bahati. You’ll always be Sergeant Joshua to me.
I willed her to be quiet. This was no time to debate whether I should have added McCall to my real name.
“I hope and pray you don’t have an ambush waiting out back,” continued the surrendered HUBber. “But if you do, I hope you kill Zhakar-Ree.”
He looked at me like he’d asked a question that required an answer. “Well, do you?” he spelled out.
“An ambush? Probably.” I shrugged. “To be honest, I know even less than you do.”
That wasn’t true. I didn’t know what kind of reception the bishop and the police had planned, but I knew the amphibious invasion force who had stormed the beach was comprised of the kind of ruthless bastards who would first pin you down with a hail of questions about your immortal soul, and then blast away at your spiritual defenses until you were forced to confront the moral consequences of your actions.
“I lied,” I told him. “If you’re fast and strong, you stand a chance of getting through the horror that’s waiting for you. Go now. Run!”
He appraised me for a moment, before seeming to conclude that I now spoke the truth. “We’re all former Legionaries,” he told me. “We deserve a little dignity and respect. That’s all most of us are asking for.”
He turned and ran… straight into two of the freed Revenge Squad prisoners, bad-ass looking former space rats who had grabbed rifles from the surrendering Levelers.
“Let him go,” I told the rats.
Shock lit up their faces like exploding stars. “What?”
I interposed myself between the ex-prisoners and their former captor. “You want a piece of him, you have to go through me first.”
The Leveler sprinted for the rear of the cave. I shuffled sideways with my arms held wide to keep myself in the line of fire.
In truth, I was so exhausted that all it would take from the space rats would be a hefty sneeze, and I would drop like a sack of stones. We all knew that, but my new comrades limited themselves to glaring at me in a way that made clear I could add two names to the list of people who detested me.
I kept my eyes open long enough to conduct a little situation update. The Leveler had gotten away, the HUB people in the pop-up battleship had surrendered to Leaky Veck and its faction, dripping wet Catholics were flooding inside, bringing their liberated space fighter shields with them, and best of all, I could see an alien with skin like baked fish running my way with her young legs still filled with a disgusting amount of energy. The ribbons in her fronds streaming out behind her now seemed playful rather than an invitation to shoot her dead.
Then my tired mind updated its analysis of the data incoming from my artificial eyes. Silky wasn’t running to me, she was racing to intercept Mayrik who had escaped Leaky Veck’s HUBbers. How the hell had he gotten away?
Then I saw the combat blade he held in one hand, a glaze of lurid green poison flowing over the coating of fresh blood.
“Stop him!” I shouted at the former Revenge Squad prisoners.
“But you said to let him go,” said an aggrieved sounding ship rat.
“Not him, him!” I said, pointing at Mayrik. When the rats didn’t act, I rolled my eyes in disbelief, gathered my last dregs of energy, and threw myself at the passing HUB leader.
I grabbed him from behind. I was very wary of that blade, but I had only friends and allies around me, so I simply gave him a bear hug and overbalanced until we toppled clumsily to the ground. It wasn’t the flashiest of unarmed combat attacks, but it was enough for the others to disarm him.
To my dismay, they did no such thing. Mayrik was a former Marine too, but he had far more fire in his muscles than me, and I was supremely aware of the poison blade the squirming man was trying to free up and stab into my flesh.
“No, NJ,” said the Pavnix. “Let him go.”
Mayrik’s struggles were loosening my grip, but I ignored the Pavnix and held on grimly. Whose side was this ugly alien on?
They’re men, said Sanaa. They need to do the manly thing. I didn’t think she had fully recovered from the episode when I pulled Bahati from my flesh. Her explanation made no sense because the Pavnix was not a man. It wasn’t even male. Probably.
Not the Pavnix, idiot. That was still Sanaa in case you were wondering. The HUB people are mostly human males so any change of authority needs to be carried out under the influence of testosterone.
She had some seriously sexist notions, my first wife, but she did understand people better than I ever could. Even so, I wasn’t ready to let Mayrik go.
Marines settled seniority in hand-to-hand combat as recently as the Seventh Frontier War, I corrected her. General McEwan’s mother, of all people, fought against a Horden descendant for the right to lead the detachment at Akinschet.
Bahati intervened. Ndeki, I think you should trust Sanaa on this.
Damn! I couldn’t resist both of them allied against me. Mayrik sensed my weakness and broke free. He leaped to his feet and slashed at me with the knife, but he was just toying with me. There was a ritual to be performed here, and I was not a part of it.
I scrambled away and everyone moved to new positions in such an orderly manner that they looked like pieces being set up in a board game.
T
he HUB people ringed the cleared circle, and focused inward on Leaky Veck and Mayrik in what had become a gladiatorial arena.
While they were busy doing the manly thing (as some saw it) Caccamo took charge of both Team Hot Sauce and all Revenge Squad personnel, ordering us to take up positions in the amphitheater, and lay harassing fire against anyone we didn’t like the look of who appeared in the three rear entrances to the cave.
He tasked Lazheet, the not-Magenta, to keep watch on the HUBbers to our rear.
The Levelers tried several times to enter the cave, more in confusion than in a determined effort to retake the area.
Meanwhile, Leaky Veck and its loyalists were still engaged in coming to terms with the HUB family split.
I kept my carbine close, even though there weren’t enough weapons to go around, and tried to play my part. I fired my carbine into the roof, not wanting another reminder of my dirty little secret, but warning shots were all we required for the moment.
The HUB people finally finished their family feuding, and I was pleased to see the Pavnix leading them and the former, human, commander lying dead in the center of the arena.
United at last, the Revenge Squad and HUB teams readied to advance deeper into the base.
I couldn’t join them. I should have done but I was exhausted. It was more than aching muscles: my joints were in open rebellion in alliance with my lungs, which were rattling like a worn-out boiler.
“Just need… A second to get my breath back…” I announced to the world.
“Me too,” said the bishop who had returned to liaise with us after rallying his flock.
“Understood,” said Caccamo. “Sylk-Peddembal, stay with these two and help our beach army to seal the rear-left and rear-right exits. Bottle them up with the shield shunts. The rest of us will press on through the main tunnel and out to the rear hatches.”
Under our direction, the church people got the force shunts set up rapidly. Strictly speaking, they were called dimensional shunters, and their principal purpose wasn’t to protect X-Boats from incoming fire, but to dump the ship’s heat and momentum into the Klein-Manifold Region, which I didn’t really understand except it was Someplace Else. X-Boats with working energy shunters could change speed and direction at rates that would liquefy unprotected crews, while the pilots – people such as Caccamo and Hot sauce – didn’t even spill their coffee.
Even so, I wouldn’t dare to walk in front of one. Unfortunately, the more tech-minded amongst the beach army insisted the energy shunters should not bleed from one into the other, so we left gaps a meter wide between them. We didn’t block the exits so much as choke them off, daring anyone to pass through the gaps we had left.
Eventually, one group did. I guessed they were HUB stragglers, still loyal to Mayrik and probably didn’t realize he was dead. They were well armed.
“Surrender!” I told the leader, standing up from behind the amphitheater and letting him know my carbine was targeted on his heart. “Mayrik is dead.”
My target snapped off a burst of darts from his SA-71 and ran for cover. I tracked him in my sights all the way but no matter how hard I tried, I just could not pull the trigger.
Silky could. She shot him in the hand.
He dropped his SA-71 and kept on running.
Silky shot his foot. That stopped him.
The fight went out of the others. HUBbers, and the beach army – still in their wetsuits – surged around the intruders. They might not like killing anyone, but the God people were not gentle.
“I see we have the same handicap, my son,” said the bishop. “Thou shalt not kill is a tricky thing for a soldier. Maybe there is still hope for your soul.”
“No, Bish. I’ve no moral qualms about killing. Just that my brain’s been frakked by too much war and too many concussions. If you’re under any illusion that my head is in working order, then face facts – I’m married to an alien, can’t shoot to kill, have long conversations with the voices in my head, and haven’t felt the loving touch of man nor woman since…”
I was going to say since Bahati died – not counting the paid kind of loving – but I’d already said too much. Damn, but that priest was far too good at opening up your soul and peering inside.
“I wouldn’t worry about that last point too much longer,” said the bishop. Leered might be a better description, because he gave Silky a look that wasn’t suited to a Catholic bishop so much as to a Navy X-Boat pilot with the world – and its prettier denizens – at his feet.
Then he was tumbling – his good leg swept from under and his prosthetic unable to compensate.
He hit the sandy floor hard, and lolled there spitting out the grains. I think there might have been a tooth among that lot.
“Don’t upset my husband,” roared Silky.
We looked at each other, the former space rat turned Catholic bishop and I, mirror images of a sort with the same raised eyebrow in amusement at Silky’s intervention to save the Assault Marine damsel in distress.
A blaze of motion snapped against my head. Before I could react, an alien fist had cut across the bishop’s jaw. A split second later, a matching alien foot landed in my solar plexus and set me staggering back against the stone steps, gasping for air to reflate my lungs.
“They told me they were the last in the side branches,” Silky informed us, and I recalled she had spoken with the fresh prisoners. “They believed that to be the truth.”
She took up the SA-71 the HUBber had dropped. Silky was strong by normal human standards but didn’t have the build of a Marine. The weapon looked heavy in her hands but she seemed to know what she was doing and I didn’t pass comment.
“Keep this lot from hurting themselves,” she ordered me. Then she bounded off after Caccamo and the others.
I held my hand down to the bishop and helped him to his feet. He rubbed his jaw. “We should follow but… My son, I do not fear the bullets and plasma rounds of the Levelers, but I fear your wife’s wrath.”
“Won’t God protect you? Even from her?”
His face told me that I’d said the wrong thing.
“I mean no insult,” I told him. For some reason I wanted to impress the man of God. “I don’t understand religion.”
“God extends his protection over His servants while they perform His service, but He expects you not to call upon His protection too readily. He would not want you to deliberately walk off a clifftop, for example. Nor would He want–”
“Nor would He want you to walk into my wife’s fist.”
The bishop smiled beatifically. “Exactly.”
I looked critically at him. For the first time in my life, religion made a little sense. Before I had time for a spiritual awakening, the staccato beat of heavy automatic fire came from the tunnels Silky had entered, and drove away whatever I was about to say.
With a fresh morsel of energy, I ran after Silky.
— CHAPTER 29 —
My advance through the base was too confusing to describe clearly. The passageways zigzagged, and were half collapsed in places, meaning I had to clamber over obstacles using limbs that would never forgive me. My mind was fuzzing over with fatigue too, and I only grew more confused when I finally reached the rear of the base and started to ascend through switchback ramps hung with anti-missile netting.
Somewhere along the way, I’d left my carbine behind, but finding myself unarmed didn’t even slow me. The route was peppered with blood and bodies. None of them with fronds and ribbons, but the need to keep it that way spurred me on, testing new limits to my endurance.
My ghosts cursed, encouraged, and shamed me onward. I remember Bahati’s voice most clearly, the raw panic that made her sound on the edge of tears. I knew my most recently dead human wife was jealous of Silky and her warm living young flesh, and Bahati’s horror at the thought of losing her living counterpart touched my heart and fueled my muscles.
I caught up with Silky in what looked like a guard post, so close to the cliff top exi
t that I could smell the grass and the sea air. I heard voices from the outside.
She nearly riddled me full of darts when I surprised her, but when she recognized me, a very human smile came to her face that broadened to inhuman dimensions as I raced toward her.
I reckon she thought I was running to her in some kind of human emotional response, but I was actually about to throw myself at her legs to tackle her to the ground. I had to stop her because she was about to do something stupid. But I do listen to Sanaa and Efia sometimes, and just before I reached Silky, it occurred to me that it would be easier just to talk to her. For good measure, I was also momentarily mystified why my ghosts had been so unflinching in driving me on to rescue Silky as if she were helpless, when in fact she was the one with the SA-71, not to mention a kick like a torpedo.
“Stop right there,” I ordered her. “Don’t speak! Don’t do anything!”
She frowned but didn’t speak.
“Think, Silky!” I added in a whisper, “You’re carrying a mil-spec weapon.”
“But we’ve already fired a barrage of–”
I shook my head violently. Amazingly, she trusted me enough to stop whatever she was about to say.
“We’ve done nothing but fire a barrage of love,” I said very deliberately. “We are innocent victims here. What a good job it is that if the police should happen to be nearby then there will be evidence. Video and microphone evidence. Microphones that will hear what you and I are saying right now. For our protection, do you understand?”
I could see she did. “Alpha, Beta,” she said, “time to go home and tidy up before we get back.”
A figure came walking toward us from the exit to the clifftop. He was dressed in baggy shorts, beach shirt, and wore sandals on stained feet. He was covered in blood that didn’t appear to be his own.
“We’re playing a game upstairs,” he said. “Role-playing. You know, dress ups?” He patted the two of us in our backs and guided us out of the base. “I only came here for a stroll on the beach, happened to chance across my pals at HUB, and what a lot of excitement and racket they have been up to. Come on, it’s rude not to join in.”
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