Messenger

by James Walker

  Even the humans. What were they becoming? Was there some direction to this change, or was it merely that this new world was rejecting them? Somehow, within the confines of that alien forest, Vic thought he sensed that they were not welcome there. By migrating to the outer worlds, they had violated the peace and silence that had permeated those places for countless eons. But what was it that was re­jecting them? Was it merely the blind law of nature, unaware of their suffering, placing a strain on their Theran-born life so poorly adapted to the harshness of space? Or was there some deeper will at work, watching and judging them?

  Vic almost hoped for the latter. If their Theran life was changing as a reaction to some sentient force, then perhaps they could reason with it, try to understand it. But then he wondered. If that sentient force existed, what if they were merely intruders to it, and it desired nothing but to purge them from its land?

  Again and again his thoughts turned to the girl in the Cage. Could she be the form toward which humans were evolving as they adapted to these alien surroundings? If she was the face of their future, what was to become of them? What was it that he had glimpsed in that brief contact with a foreign consciousness? Curiosity?

  Anger? Hatred?

  Or, most frightening of all...

  Emptiness?

  *

  The jungle foliage, seemingly determined to intertwine into a single, gigantic superorganism, grew so thick in places that the exosuits had to use their large blades to cut a path through. Between the darkness, the rain, and the thick underbrush, visibility was almost zero. Even with his night vision, Vic often could not see more than a handful of meters in any given direction, except for the twisting, alien shapes of the forest, which seemed so vibrantly alive and unwelcoming to intruders.

  Finally, Ridley's static-fringed voice cut through the patter of the pouring rain. “This is Spear Point. We're getting close. All units, assume left echelon formation. As soon as battle is engaged, I'll free the weapons on the rebel units. Objective is simple: Suppress all resistance at the base so we can execute the rogue officers and secure Tango. Spear Point out.”

  The forces spread out into formation and continued their advance. The foliage was growing thinner, and the rainfall heavier, as they neared the edge of the forest. Vic felt his palms growing slick with sweat and pulled his right hand off the controls to wipe it off on his vest when suddenly the hot-colored blossom of an explosion erupted from several dozen meters ahead. At the same time, a rocket shot up through the forest canopy and exploded high in the air in a burst of glittering red stars.

  “A booby-trap,” Ridley exclaimed. “All units, charge! Let's close the distance before they can muster their defense.”

  Although unenthused about rushing through foliage rigged with explosive traps, Vic obeyed the order, working his exosuit up into a run as he navigated through the thinning brush. Another couple of explosions briefly illuminated the night air to either side of him; and then he was out of the trees, and all of his weapons came online.

  *

  A blaring alarm roused Lambda from her inner turbulence. She raised her head off her pillow and stared through tear-stained eyes at the speaker in her ceiling as an operator announced, “Condition red. Condition red. This is not a drill. I repeat, this is not a drill. Enemy forces are attacking the southern perimeter. All hands, to your stations.”

  Although hazy fragments of Lambda's true memories were returning, she still felt the irresistible compulsion of her programming, forcing her to obey orders. She wiped the tears off her face, left her quarters, and began making her way to the locker room. But whereas before she would have rushed to answer the call, now her movements were reluctant, lethargic.

  She changed into her pilot suit and entered the hangar. A handful of armored vehicles and exosuits were already heading out to take up defensive positions. Omicron was standing next to his Ghost, his gaze sweeping around the hangar. When his eyes alighted on Lambda, he waved and shouted at her.

  “What the hell took you?” he called. “That has got to be the worst response time in the history of Chi strain. Look, a bunch of normals already beat us to the punch.”

  “Too bad,” she answered.

  Ignoring Omicron's shocked expression, she climbed in her Arrow-3, closed the canopy, and activated the system. As the viewscreen came to life, she saw Omicron shaking an angry fist at her, then he climbed in his Ghost and powered it up.

  Lambda guided her suit out of the hangar, her movements lifeless and mechanical. As she emerged into the darkness and rain, a C.I.C. operator's face appeared in the corner of her screen to issue orders.

  “The enemy force is attacking from the south. Numbers estimated at approximately 500. Composition predominantly infantry and exosuits. Conjectured to be an unidentified SLIC unit. You are to engage and destroy the enemy at the southern perimeter. Don't let them reach the base. I'll now transmit your assigned positions.”

  A map of the base and surrounding area replaced the operator's countenance, together with a flashing marker indicating Lambda's assigned position. She left through the base's southern gate and entered the rolling hills that separated the base from the surrounding forest. The torrential rain had turned the ground into a muddy quagmire, causing her suit to slip and slide with every step. She could have acti­vated her thrusters to hover over the ground, but instead she contin­ued trudging through the muck.

  It occurred to her that, given that her programming was still active, she might not be able to resist opening fire on the enemy. As she advanced slowly to her assigned position, she dropped her rifle in the mud, then drew her two monomolecular cutters and flung them away. Finally, she aimed her wrist-mounted grenade launcher at the ground and emptied all of her grenades into the earth.

  There. Without any weapons, there was little she could do to fight back.

  She arrived at her position and stopped, watching the flashes of battle near the edge of the forest. Here, she would await her judgment.

  *

  The blaring alarm and announcement of enemy attack awakened Falsrain from a light sleep. He came instantly awake, his mind racing through the possible identities and objective of the attackers. Out of a dozen possibilities, he could arrive at only one feasible conclusion.

  “That bitch betrayed us.”

  He flung himself out of bed and changed into his uniform. He armed himself with his chosen weapon, then pulled on his officer's coat, grabbed his comm, and called Koga. His executive officer answered almost immediately.

  “Commodore?” Koga said. “Who's attacking us? Do you have any idea what's going on?”

  “It's the P.S.A.,” Falsrain replied as he left his quarters and began making his way to the infirmary, his stride long and swift.

  “Sir?” Koga sounded confused. “But I haven't heard any reports that they have P.S.A. markings, and they're not using Agency equipment. Besides, why would they attack us?”

  “Use your head,” Falsrain snapped. “They obviously want Subject 778. As to the equipment, I'm sure they've got a stash of unmarked weapons they use for shadow ops.”

  “Then what should we do, sir?”

  “The safety of the subject is paramount.” Falsrain flung open the exit and stepped out into the rain. “I'm retrieving the subject and making my way to the aerospace hangar. I'll use the dropship to take the subject up to the Onyx Down. You and the pursuit team are to remain here and cover my escape. Once I've returned to the ship, I'll send more dropships to extract the rest of you.”

  Falsrain terminated the transmission. It was unfortunate that he would have to remove the subject from the only facility on Chalice equipped to treat her, but perhaps simply taking her outside the moon's atmosphere would serve to restore her functionality. He would just have to take the chance.

  He reached the infirmary and flung the doors open. He stormed inside, tracking mud and water, and found several medical personnel waiting inside the treatment center. Among them was Lieutenant Commander Aco
ustic, looking frazzled and short of sleep.

  “Lieutenant Commander,” Falsrain addressed her. “I want the tis­sue samples you took from Experimental Subject 778.”

  “Sir?” Acoustic replied in a distracted tone. “But I'm supposed to wait on standby here to treat wounded—”

  “I'm overriding your orders,” Falsrain said. “Get me the tissue samples now.”

  Acoustic did not bother to conceal the annoyance in her expression, but she left the treatment center and returned a couple of minutes later with the tissue samples.

  “Good.” Falsrain took the samples and slipped them into his pocket. “Now wipe all records about Experimental Subject 778 from your database.”

  “What?” Acoustic exclaimed. “But that's valuable—”

  “The existence of the subject is classified top secret,” Falsrain said. “You will erase all the records. And I will observe to make sure you're thorough about it.”

  Acoustic went to the nearest access terminal, grumbling. Falsrain watched as she purged the records from the database, then he forced her to run a data-scrubbing program to scramble the remains of the data beyond recovery.

  Acoustic glared at Falsrain over her shoulder. “Satisfied now, sir?”

  “Almost,” Falsrain said. “Now take me to the subject. I believe her to be the objective of the enemy attack. I'm evacuating with the subject before the enemy can capture her.”

  “As you wish, sir.”

  Falsrain followed Acoustic to the quarantine ward and then to Astral's glaringly white room. They found her sitting on her bed, rubbing the sleep out of her eyes.

  “What's all the noise?” she asked through a wide yawn.

  “Bad people have come to try and abduct you,” Falsrain said. “But don't worry. I'm going to take you away from here before they can get you.”

  “Where are we going?” Astral asked.

  “Back to where you belong,” Falsrain said. “Back to space.”

  39

  Vic plunged ahead through the muddy hills. The rollers were useless on the treacherous ground, forcing him to rely on normal locomotion. Even with the aid of night vision he could barely see anything; and every few steps, his suit slipped and he had to restore its balance. Occasionally explosions erupted nearby, their source unknown. In the dis­tance, he could see the rapid flashes of a machine gun's muzzle high atop a watch tower. A couple of rockets streaked past the tower, nar­rowly missing it; then finally one scored a direct hit, engulfing the tower in flames, and the turret fell silent.

  Vic advanced in this fashion for several minutes, with shots flying and shells exploding around him, and no clear targets for him to fire at. Then his console trilled, warning him of an enemy weapons lock, and he spotted the glowing silhouette of a tank a few hundred meters away, rotating its turret toward him.

  Vic flung his suit to the ground and the tank's shell whistled over his head, detonating behind him. He acquired a lock and, remembering advice Cena had given him about fighting Union armor, returned fire with two high-penetration missiles. They covered the distance in a couple of seconds and arced into the tank. The tank's reactive armor de­flected most of the force of the first missile's explosion, but the second scored a solid hit and blasted the tank into a charred shell.

  “Thanks for that one, Cena,” he whispered.

  Vic tried to return his suit to its feet and slipped in the mud, then tried again. The second time, he managed to regain his footing and continued his advance. He barely made it another dozen meters when the roar of hypersonic engines warned him of incoming aircraft. He dropped his suit to a crouch as a wing of Slayers blazed over the rebel line and bombarded them with air-to-ground missiles. One landed near Vic and showered him with shrapnel, but his thick armor protected him from any serious damage. A handful of infantry near his position were not so lucky.

  He stood up and once again continued his halting advance. A laser flashed in the darkness some distance away; he returned fire with his rifle and the target fell silent, though he never saw what it was that had fired at him. Another wing of Slayer drones screamed over the battlefield and bombarded the advancing rebels, but this time none of the missiles detonated near Vic's position.

  As he began cresting the next hill, the silhouette of an enemy exosuit came into view. It was a flighted, high-mobility type. And he recog­nized the markings on it.

  “You,” he snarled. “You're the one who killed so many of our comrades—who disabled Captain Tinubu's suit—who did that to Cena!”

  He raised his rifle and opened fire. The enemy suit was engulfed in sparks as rounds made contact all across its hull; then it tipped slowly backward like a falling tree and crashed to the ground, where it lay still.

  “What the?”

  Vic kept his crosshairs trained on the enemy suit and cautiously advanced. Why didn't it fight back? Was it a trap? Had the pilot abandoned it?

  Now he was standing right next to the downed suit. Part of his mind told him to draw his heat edge and impale the cockpit, just as it had done to Cena. But another, deeper part of him was filled with curiosity—curiosity that demanded to be satisfied.

  Vic stowed his rifle and drew his heat edge. He held the giant blade with its red-hot edges poised over the enemy suit, two conflicting urges fighting within him for dominance. Finally, after a long hesitation, curiosity won.

  He drew his heat edge back and slashed through the clamps on either side of the canopy. Then he stowed the heat edge, grabbed the canopy in his suit's powerful hands; and, with a shriek of tearing metal, ripped the canopy free and tossed it aside.

  A pilot sat motionless inside the cockpit. Through the grainy night vision, Vic could discern little except that she was female. Her visor hid her face from view, and she was so still that she might have been unconscious, or dead.

  Vic knelt his suit and opened the canopy. He drew his sidearm, leapt out of his Mad Ox onto the enemy suit's chest, and positioned himself over the open cockpit, careful not to lose his footing on the rain-soaked surface. He aimed his pistol at the enemy pilot and spoke. Unlike his foe, his own helmet was open-faced, so his voice rang out loud and clear over the pattering rain and the din of battle, which now seemed strangely distant.

  “Are you the pilot who shot down the mag car in the transcontinental tunnel?” he demanded. “Who single-handedly broke through the defense line in Hongpan? Who stabbed Cena through the cockpit? Who took the three-eyed girl from the Cage?”

  The pilot remained silent and motionless, her expression hidden behind her visor.

  “Well?” Vic shouted. “Answer me!”

  Slowly, the enemy pilot unfastened her restraints and swung her feet over her head so she was crouching on the back of her seat. Vic backed up several steps and kept his gun aimed at her chest as she stood up, the upper half of her body rising past the edge of the broken canopy. Then she reached up, broke the airtight seal on her helmet, and slowly pulled the helmet off.

  “Yes,” she said, her voice barely audible over the downpour. “It was me.”

  “You,” Vic gasped. “Major Cutter was right. You two really were...”

  The woman from the abandoned parking lot stood before Vic, one side of her face stained dark by an old burn scar. The rain was soaking her hair and plastering it over her face, which was contorted into an expression of such misery that Vic felt all desire to kill her emptying from his mind.

  “Go ahead and shoot me if you want,” she said. “I won't try to stop you.”

  Vic's aim dropped until he was no longer pointing the gun at her. “But why?”

  “Why does a puppet want to die?” she answered him. “Because if it can't cut its own strings, then death is the only freedom it can hope for.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “It was my programming.” The pilot reached up with one hand and groped painfully at her face. “Compulsory orders, fake memories. I don't know how, but some of my true memories are starting to come back. But all that is not
hing but a pathetic excuse. There is no justification for the things I've done.”

  “You mean you weren't fighting against us willingly?” As the full force of the realization settled on Vic, he was overcome with pity. He reached out his hand to the enemy pilot and said, “Come with me. You don't have to fight for them. Help us overthrow this rotten system that turned you into a killer puppet. Then you can really be free.”

  “No, I can't.” The pilot shook her head, her voice breaking. “Didn't you hear me? A puppet can't cut its own strings.” She squeezed her hands into fists so tight that her arms trembled. “Even now, it's taking every ounce of will I have not to lunge for your throat.”

  Vic retreated a few steps and jerked his gun back up, but the pilot made no move toward him.

  “Listen.” She looked directly into Vic's eyes, holding him fixed with her dichromatic gaze. “Are you here for the girl who was inside that thing? She's probably being taken to the aerospace hangar for evacuation. The area behind me is clear. If you go now, you might be able to make it in time.”

  “Then I should go.” Vic holstered his gun. “Thank you.” He turned away.

  “Aren't you going to kill me?” the pilot demanded.

  Vic looked back at her with pity. “I can't. I'm sorry.” He climbed in his cockpit and called out, “You're wrong, you know. If you realize the strings are there, you can cut them. You just have to figure out how.”

  The rebel pilot closed his canopy, then his suit rose to its full height and lumbered off in the direction of the base. Lambda stood in the rain for a long time, oblivious to the battle raging around her. Slowly, the despair in her eyes began to waver. She held up one hand and looked at it as though she had never seen it before.