by Mark Wandrey
“What happened with those idiots?” Rick asked and pointed.
Sato followed his gesture and saw the four men who’d confronted him seemingly moments ago, all apparently dead. He could see one had a laser wound in his head, but another had his head and neck twisted in an impossible angle. He opened his mouth, only no explanation came out. He shook his head. “I don’t know.”
“Fair enough,” Rick said and held out a hand to help him up. Sato took it gratefully. Even with just one leg, the Æsir was powerful enough to lift a car.
“How about you?” Sato pointed at the shredded leg. “That hurt?”
“The sensor data and warning kinda hurt, yeah. But I managed to sort out the sensations and feedback after the armored car blew up.” He hooked a thumb over his shoulder to the smoldering wreck of the modified garbage truck.
“You warned me,” Sato said. “I should have listened to you about these gangs.”
“You got us out of Mexico to here. Call it even. Can you pick up my leg? I can make it to the car,” Rick picked up the armored box they’d come for. “But I can only carry one thing at a time.”
“Yeah, sure,” Sato said and picked up the limb, almost dropped it, and had to use both hands. It was heavier than he remembered. Of course, when he’d assembled the Æsir in New Warsaw, it was with a manufactory and through remote operations to keep it quiet.
Struggling a bit under the load, he stumbled through the rubble, both old and new, until they came to the SUV. Rick did a rather amusing one legged hop, complete with dangling wires and broken linkages from the severed stump of his right leg. It looked almost like real bits of flesh and muscle, in some ways.
“You better let me drive,” Sato said as they stood by the SUV.
“I’d say you don’t have a leg to stand on, but that would be me.” Rick nodded and put the case in the back seat.
Sato glanced at the former garbage truck. It had bulged out in places, and a burning body hung out of the driver’s door. He swallowed, then blinked.
He opened the hardened door, a wave of heat and smoke washing over him. Inside everything was ruined, burned, or melted. A trio of bodies were slumped in chairs, all contorted, frozen in their final moments of agony. He nodded at the results, then blinked as he struggled with himself. A tear rolled down his cheek.
“I only used one grenade,” Rick said. “Less than a K-bomb, you said, but it brewed up bigtime. Must have had a lot of ordnance inside.” He shook his head and spoke. “Mr. Sato, we need to go.”
He turned his head and looked at Rick, blinking against the fading dual image. Rick was already in the passenger seat, staring at him.
“There’s no legal authority here, but my grenade could draw scavengers.”
“Yeah,” Sato said. “Sure.” He handed Rick his severed leg and climbed into the driver’s seat. He examined the vehicle’s controls; nothing like modern flyers or spacecraft. The vehicle was a descendant of types that had been manufactured on Earth for well over a century.
“You ever driven—” Rick started to ask, but Sato had already started the SUV.
A tone beeped, and Sato secured the seatbelt without conscious thought, silencing the tone. He put it in gear, grasped the wheel, and moved away from the curb with calm assurance.
“When did you drive a ground car?” Rick wondered.
“It’s been a while,” Sato said. “We need to get to a hotel so I can open this box.” He glanced at Rick’s leg lying between them on the seat. “And fix you up.”
“You can do it now?”
“I’ll need a few things, but most of it is in my bag.” He accessed the AetherNet, despite the terrible connection, and located a hotel with good reviews only a few kilometers away, outside the warzone they’d been adventuring in. There also appeared to be a hardware store right across the road. “We’re good, let’s just get out of here.”
“I won’t argue with that.”
* * *
The hotel was a dump, but at least it was a dump in a somewhat safe area. Sato guessed ‘safe’ was a relative term in most of Houston just then. Maybe most of the world. While they’d driven to the hotel, he’d spent some time downloading a better take on the planet’s current situation. He wanted to know how far the storm extended. The answer was pretty damned far.
He’d spent many years away from current events. As a key player in the Winged Hussars, he’d lived in New Warsaw, the Hussars’ hidden home base. A fascinating star system where the sun had gone not-quite supernova eons ago. He’d studied the system himself and put forward the theory that one of the powerful races of the galaxy had triggered an aborted nova for the purpose of mining the system’s mineral rich planets.
The theory gained credence because of Home, the only planet to survive with an atmosphere. Simply stated, no planet should have survived such an event. It would have either been too far away to have had an atmosphere dense enough to support life, or too close to avoid being charred to a cinder. No, Home had survived by plan. It now orbited just far enough from the stellar remnant to possess a carefully crafted minimal ecosphere.
He’d always thought the biggest prize of the stellar project was the former gas giant. F11 was the fuel the galaxy ran on. The key component to fusion power. A stable isotope of fluorine, it was both an inhibitor of neutrons as well as absorbing most radiation. Without it, fusion wasn’t practical on a large scale. You only found F11 in two places: around a black hole and in the core of a gas giant. Since black holes were dangerous and the cores of gas giants impossible to get at, you needed the remnant of a gas giant left after a nova.
New Warsaw’s former gas giant was an F11 mine with reserves measured in gigaliters. It must have powered millions of starships before or during the Great Galactic War. Now it fueled the Winged Hussars, with more than enough left over to discreetly sell for billions in profit.
Living for years in such a place of relative luxury and seclusion, Sato had lost track of the events within the galaxy at large. At least until the Mercenary Guild’s war against humanity began. Even then, he didn’t wonder why, only what the war would deliver to him in the form of new technology to discover, implement, and explore. Which brought him full circle to the incident with the Keesius doomsday ship and his new pinplants.
“Earth’s a real mess,” he mused aloud as they worked together, moving Dakkar’s support cube into their rented room.
“You think?” Rick replied dryly.
“No, I mean bad. The economy is in tatters, and there are at least a half million alien mercs occupying every starport on the planet. The Horsemen’s attempt to take out Peepo failed in a major way. Alexis Cromwell was killed, and Jim Cartwright’s Raknar surrendered in Sao Paulo. Took me a while to get that news, because it was being suppressed for some reason.”
“Jim Cartwright?” Rick asked. He’d been reduced to moving the support module a meter, setting it down, hopping a step, picking it again, and repeating. They’d just settled it in the bathroom, next to the tub, when Rick stopped and stared at Sato. “Jim Cartwright?”
“Yeah, the kid who inherited Cartwright’s Cavaliers? Fat guy, likes ponies and Raknar?”
Rick’s glowing blue eyes stared at Sato for a long moment, then he turned and hopped back into the main room without a word.
“Okay,” Sato said, watching his travel companion leave without another word. “Guess he doesn’t like fat kids?” Sato shrugged and activated the module via pinplants. With a click, the top slid open to reveal the blue eyes of Dakkar staring at him. A kaleidoscope of scintillating colors erupted as Dakar spoke.
“I was getting bored,” the Wrogul said. “Can you set up a comm link in here so I can talk?”
“Sure,” Sato said. “It’s actually built in, but I think Nemo turned it off so I wouldn’t know you’d been hidden away.”
Sato finished his download of the current situation of the war. It might be aimed against humanity, but its scope was wider. An attempt to alienate and isolate Earth.
He wanted to know about the colonies. Very little information was available on the Aethernet, and he dared not try to access the GalNet directly. Besides the woman who seemed to know him, he had no clue who else might be after them. Gleaning what he could, it looked like all the major colonies had been occupied, though it seemed the Horsemen had rallied Human mercs and taken the three biggest back, then dealt Peepo a major defeat before returning to Earth and losing badly.
He filled the bathtub with lukewarm water, removed a hose from the support module, and dropped its weighted end into the tub. A hum announced the module beginning its cleaning cycle. The tub’s water began to turn a slightly murky color. The module had many days before it needed cleaning, but considering how they kept getting themselves into trouble, Sato decided to take advantage of any moments of peace, no matter how brief they turned out to be.
Dakkar slithered over the side to the floor with a plop. Being cephalopods, the Wrogul had no bones. Out of water, they looked like melted piles of plastic. The young Wrogul moved across the floor with its suckers, employing a writhing motion, and explored the sink’s plumbing.
“I’ve never been on Earth,” Dakkar said. “It’s not much like New Warsaw, but a little like Azure.”
“Azure is a Human colony, so it stands to reason.” Sato remembered the warm brackish waters of Azure and its rich sunlight. There was a small bay near the hospital where some of his first memories were. The water was only a meter deep, and the Wrogul loved to venture out to hunt the planet’s various shellfish. “The atmosphere is a little thinner here, and the gravity similar.”
“I would like to swim in the ocean.”
“We’ll see if we can arrange that,” Sato said. The module beeped; it was done filtering. He drained the tub, then refilled it. “You can swim in the tub if you want.”
“That would be enjoyable,” Dakkar flashed in reply. “The module is becoming boring.”
“I can imagine,” Sato said as he watched the alien rhythmically slither across the floor, up the side of the porcelain tub, and into the water. Even on land, their movements had a certain curious grace to them.
Dakkar swam around the tub. Sato noticed the bud was a good ten percent bigger than when they’d first found it. Young Wrogul grew quickly, probably a survival mechanism from their home world. He recalled that they didn’t know where they were from, part of the mystery of the Wrogul their Human friends on Azure were studying. Somewhere in the back of his mind an elusive fact danced. Something about the Wrogul?
Dakkar zipped around the tub on powerful jets of water. He found the stream coming in and played with it using a pair of his tentacles. Colors flashed. “Do you know where we’re going yet?”
“Like I told Nemo, no. I just know I’m going in the right direction.”
“Good enough for me,” Dakkar said. “But I’ve decided. When you’re finished, I would like to return to Azure.”
Sato nodded, then thought for a second before speaking. “Dakkar, I don’t know if Azure is still there. The war…”
“As Nemo, I knew it was. Nemo had access to some of the intel from the captain of the Ulfberht, which was damaged at Golara. The Hussars gained a lot of intel in Golara, and among it was all the Human colonies being attacked. Nemo found the list in Captain Espa’s brain.”
Sato closed his eyes and rubbed his temples. Nemo had never understood the concept of personal privacy or space. He’d known about the Wrogul’s propensity to help itself to whatever it might come across in a brain he might be working on.
“Dakkar, you need to consider something. It isn’t right to rummage through the brain of someone you’re treating.”
“Nemo never understood these feelings of yours.”
“I’m aware of that,” Sato replied.
“I think I understand better now.”
Sato had been looking at the Wrogul’s support module, accessing the programming as he spoke with Dakkar. At the little Wrogul’s words, Sato’s head spun around in surprise. “What? Why?” He knew it couldn’t be anything he’d said. Nothing he’d ever said to Nemo had had the slightest influence on the alien’s behavior.
“It was the young Human female, Nina Gutierrez. When I was working on her cerebellum, I had access to her current thoughts at the time.”
“Did you see how terrified she was?”
“No, she wasn’t afraid. She was…”
Dakkar trailed off, his flashing chromatophores dimming in intensity as the translator stopped. In all his years with a Wrogul, Sato had never seen one at a loss for words. Never. Dakkar flashed again.
“The young Human trusted me. She thought I was an angel.”
Oh, no, this could be bad. “You’re not an angel, Dakkar.”
“I know that.” Was it his imagination, or did the Wrogul’s translated voice contain a hint of peevishness? “But that is still what the Human child felt. The adults were more nervous, but none were scared. Why is that?”
“You already said why; they believed you were an angel. A mystical being there to help them. When you have trust, people tend to lose their fear.”
“I see,” Dakkar said. “I need to eat.” The Wrogul transitioned back to its module.
“I’ll look into getting you some fresh food,” Sato said as the alien disappeared into the darker depths of its temporary home. And I hope you don’t start down the wrong path with those thoughts. The idea of a Wrogul thinking it’s a god… He gave a little shudder as he turned the water off in the tub and headed into the hotel room.
* * * * *
Chapter Three
Rick sat on one of the hotel room’s two beds and stared at the wall. He couldn’t do anything else because his mind was reeling under a deluge of memories. The dam had broken, and all it had taken was hearing one name: Jim Cartwright. “My best friend,” Rick said, dumbfounded.
It was all playing through his mind like a high-speed movie. Meeting Jim in grade school. Jim was a pudgy, socially awkward kid, as opposed to Rick’s naturally charismatic athleticism. Yet somehow they were friends. First playing on the playground, where Rick’s intimidating presence gave Jim the space he needed to grow, then into the middle grades, where Jim’s superior intelligence and computer prowess paid Rick’s early friendship dividends through tutelage and science understanding. In short, they’d complemented each other.
They spent thousands of hours watching movies and playing computer games. They explored the streets of Carmel, Indiana together, both helping the other when they could. The relationship strained slightly as their teens began and Rick matured into a powerfully built man, while Jim’s physique deteriorated, to his extreme frustration. Rick only once suggested nanite treatment to his friend, who was quite rich compared to Rick’s lower middle-class status.
“I’ll do it myself or I won’t do it,” Jim had snapped with surprising intensity. Rick had never brought it up again.
Then the memories began to taper off as they entered high school. More and more centered around study and preparation for their VOWs, Voluntary Off World assessments, a series of grueling mental and physical tests that would assess their suitability as mercs. Jim was increasingly stressed as their PE classes became harder, while his physical prowess was essentially static.
Finally Rick heaved a huge sigh and shook his head, the suit’s motors whining with the movement. The newly recovered memories combined and replayed tiny parts over and over again. He was overcome with emotions, finally remembering his friend after so long. The laser wound to his head, which he’d suffered fighting Pushtal pirates before joining the Hussars, had taken away much of his childhood. It was shocking to get it all back.
He’d been told it could happen after his ‘resurrection,’ but to finally experience total recall? He laughed, remembering watching a movie called Total Recall with Jim. They’d spent many hours eating popcorn and drinking sodas as they watched old 20th century movies. The most intense emotion he felt was loss at not remembering such a good friend for so long.
Rick tried to think about Jim after they graduated, but it all went blurry and confusing the day of their VOWs. Even his recollection of his own VOWs tests was hit or miss, and seemed to again orbit around time shared with Jim Cartwright. His exultation at remembering his friend was tempered by the fact that so much still seemed to be missing.
“You okay?” Sato asked as he entered from the bathroom.
Rick released his helmet catch and let it rotate upward. He carefully used his metallic hand to wipe away the tears clouding his vision. The expression on Sato’s face turned into concern. Rick held his hand up and smiled. “No, I’m good. I just had a huge memory breakthrough.”
“Oh. Oh! That’s great. How much?”
“A lot,” Rick said. “Some stuff is still missing, though. When you mentioned Jim Cartwright, it caused a connection. Jim and I were best friends in school.”
“Wow, really? Then why were you with the Hussars instead of the Cavaliers?”
“I’m not sure yet. The Cavaliers almost went bust; I read about it later in the Hussars. Maybe Jim couldn’t hire me, I just don’t know.” He closed his eyes and thought for a second. Nothing. He shook his head in frustration.
“It’s fine,” Sato said. “I’m sure the rest will come to you eventually.”
Rick nodded then closed his helmet again. The room’s light, dim though it was, felt wrong on his bare eyes. The instant the helmet seated, his visual input changed from his eyes to the armor routed to his visual cortex via pinplants. Touching his bare face with the suit’s hands made him nervous as well. He looked at the hand and could see nicks in the alloy steel, sharp edges, where partially shaved metal fragments clung in places.
He put his metallic hands together and rubbed them like he was washing. They grated, and tiny metal fragments fell away.
