LODGEMENT

by Chris Lowry

  Lutz knew what her nickname would be if Lt met her first. Cali. That was the only thing he could think of, and when it popped to the forefront of his mind, he snorted a small laugh. He’d been hanging out with Lt too much.

  “Carl,” he said. “But call me Lutz.”

  “Why not call you Carl?”

  “Because everyone calls me Lutz.”

  He could see one of her shoulders heave, and assumed it was a shrug.

  “What are you Lutz? You were going to tell me something.”

  “You’re planning an escape,” he said.

  She was quiet then and he was reminded of something else Lt told him. Sometimes, it was best just to keep your trap shut and wait for someone else to talk. Something about he who speaks first, loses.

  In this case, Lutz figured it was she who speaks first, and he wondered if she was planning to test him.

  It might have worked. He would have tried to find more ways to get her alone, to pursue her agenda, to find out the plan. But she didn’t make him play for it.

  “I am,” she whispered.

  “I want in,” Lutz told her.

  And as the night stretched toward morning, he listened to her plan.

  CHAPTER NINE

  “I don’t like this plan,” Jake said.

  He felt like huffing, because in the past he had. He jogged with Lt, an eight minute mile that felt like nothing to the two of them as the nanos surged in their system and controlled the aches, the oxygen delivery, the lactic acid removal.

  “You got a better suggestion, Chief?”

  Jake shook his head. He didn’t.

  What he had was a nagging feeling that this was the wrong play.

  “It doesn’t feel right,” he shared.

  “Being out here, just the two of us, going into the lion’s den?”

  Again, he shook his head. That wasn’t it. There was something about the camp that felt off, something about the situation that bothered him. But he couldn’t put his finger on it.

  “It doesn’t feel like a trap,” he said.

  “I studied it,” Lt told him. “It’s not a trap.”

  “Then what is it? Why is it bothering me?”

  “Chief,” Lt said. “I think you’ve got what we call pre-battle jitters. Your body’s producing adrenaline in anticipation of the old fight or flight reflex, only this time we ain’t going up against the fucking Licks. We’re taking the war right into the heart of a pile of humans. It don’t sit well with you.”

  “I don’t think I care about that,” said Jake.

  “Well I fucking do,” Lt growled. “I fucking hate it. This is a waste of my fucking time, trying to bring a bunch of damn idiots into line, time that could be spent fighting the real enemy. But human nature, being what it is, requires me to iron glove the shit out of these fuckers to bring them back in line. I care about it quite a bit.”

  Jake ran beside him in silence as the miles to the camp dropped away. He considered the human encampment as they drew closer, and wondered if he did care about the fact that they were not aliens.

  He wasn’t bothered about the confrontation they might have. He wasn’t concerned that they were people instead of aliens. If there was fighting to be done, he would do it.

  What bothered him was the timing.

  They were in a stolen hovercraft on the way to the alien base and just happened to run across a group that tortured other humans.

  Lt was right. It was a waste of his time to deal with it, but to Jake, it felt more like-

  “Distraction!” he screamed as a flaming ball of rubbish arced through the air and smashed down on the asphalt in front of them.

  It exploded in a cascade of flaming debris, showering their suits with sticky burning pitch and flames.

  Jake screamed as he watched his arm burn, waved it to try and put out the fire.

  Then he realized he didn’t feel the heat. Nothing burned through the suit. The fire scorched the exterior, but he was alright.

  A second round ball of flames arced up into the sky.

  “Are they using fucking catapults” Lt screamed and aimed his blaster.

  He sent a laser shot into the ball at the height of hit’s flight, creating a miniature supernova that rained embers, coal and flaming debris on top of and around them.

  Jake took a knee and rested the blaster against his shoulder. He searched the area where the flying cannonballs were coming from, and saw tiny figures working around a cart, with a long wooden arm on it.

  “Trebuchet!” Lt screamed and shot a blast into the group.

  Jake sent two more after his, clipping one of the ropes holding the arm down. The tension slammed the arm forward, the torque so strong it flipped the cart over, and trapped several of the men manning it in the flaming wreckage.

  They could hear the screams of the dying men as more figures raced out of the woods. They were armed with hunting rifles and pistols, a couple of M16 automatic weapons, and all aimed at the two soldiers in suits on the road.

  An order was screamed, and the howling group opened fire.

  Bullets pinged into the suits, ricocheted off. Lt and Jake stood under the onslaught.

  It hurt.

  But the suits were bulletproof against conventional weapons and neither man was harmed.

  Like being hit with a stick or a bat, and Jake thought about Babe.

  As if thinking of him brought the man to life, Babe and Weber ran in from the woods and flanked the men attacking them.

  Lt sent one warning shot into the crowd, blasting three men into smoking chunks of ruined flesh. Babe and Weber sent a shot each, laying out five more men.

  Then the man who screamed the order to fire now screamed retreat.

  They group broke in panic and ran back toward the tents.

  “Do we chase them?” Jake stood up.

  Lt reached over with a gloved hand and patted the flames off of one of the boy’s armored arms.

  “Yeah,” he said. “I suppose we should. Think they won’t feel like talking too much now we done killed so many of ‘em.”

  “You sound disappointed,” said Jake.

  Lt started marching up the road, past the still smoldering bodies of what once had been men laid to waste by his blaster.

  “I don’t like killing humans,” Lt said. “Even fucking scum of the earth murderin’ sons of bitches like these.”

  Jake watched Lt pull ahead as they got closer to the tent city set up on the side of the road. They were closer to the riverbank than he thought, a small shallow dip that ran twenty feet to the swirling water below.

  Jake saw clothes spread out on the blue river rock to dry, and heard people screaming as they approached.

  Babe and Weber joined them.

  “Old fashioned weapons,” said Weber. “I’ve only read about those in history books.”

  “What were they?”

  “Catapults,” said Weber.

  “Trebuchets,” Jake corrected.

  “What’s the difference?” Babe asked.

  Jake shrugged.

  “It’s what Lt said.”

  “If they had those, they might have built-Shit,” Weber shouted and shouldered them both to the ground.

  A six foot arrow sliced the air over their head. Weber whipped his blaster to his shoulder and had enough time to watch another arrow plow into Lt’s chest plate and knock the man backwards, narrow wooden shaft vibrating as it stood straight up in the air.

  CHAPTER

  Lick Commander stared at the Nestmate stretched in front of him, the lazy gaze of her yellow eyes watching him as her tongue flickered in satiated pleasure.

  “He underestimates you,” she hissed.

  Here, in the privacy of his chambers, they could forgo the voice box translators worn on chunky chains around their throats, but she kept her chip on, so he did as well.

  The humans had a saying he had heard of, and he found it very fitting. When in Rome.

  It translated well to his native tongu
e.

  He preened under her adoring gaze and worked to remind himself that she was trained in the art of making even the lowliest soldier feel like His Imminence.

  Part art but he was open to the possibility that she was right, that their Leader did indeed underestimate him.

  A part of his subterfuge, he told himself. But also his fear.

  Perhaps all underestimated what he was capable of achieving because they could see the truth.

  And if they were able to see the truth, then the concubine lounging in front of him, basking in the afterglow of their sex, would be a liar.

  If she could lie about such things, one thing, then she could lie about everything.

  “To his detriment,” Lick Commander answered.

  “Will you share your plans with me?”

  His tongue flickered in and out, masking the indecision. He took a calming breath. She would taste his fear, his indecision. She would taste all, and perhaps report back, though he had monitored no communications from her chambers.

  That did not mean she didn’t make them, just his techs could not discern them.

  “They are yet complete,” he hissed. “The humans on the base have been replaced. But our initial purge of the infestation had an unforeseen consequence.

  There were no skilled humans left. The slaves they brought to the base were little more than janitorial staff, working on the maintenance of the occupation.

  Cattle to be burned through and discarded. Easily replaced.

  But the slaves who showed promise, the ones who knew the secrets of the world were now too hard to find.

  That didn’t mean he wouldn’t unlock the secrets that nestled in the heart of the base, behind hidden walls and locked rooms. Those would be broken, those would be pillaged.

  They would give up their secrets to him, and he would in turn, decide what to share with His Imminence.

  Decide how to share it too, his skin rippled in pleasure.

  The Commanders of the Mars Campaign, his mind still reeled at the way he was thinking even, more human every day spent in this sector.

  Those Commanders spoke of weapons the human’s possessed that could harm his people, destroy them even.

  It was the reason His Imminence enacted the elimination protocol, the reason they slaughtered so many upon arrival.

  But those weapons were lost in the purge, and the men who knew about them, the humans who knew how to make them gone as well.

  “I would see him gone,” she said. “And you in his place.”

  He rippled again. She shared his dream, but again, it was her skill, her training to do so.

  Yet, he pondered. They were far enough from the home world that he could rule this sector, this galaxy with the thousands of habitable planets to seed, to colonize and conquer.

  He could imagine himself at the head of it all, an Imminence of his own.

  But before the dream could capture him, before he got lost in the what if of it all, he turned away from her.

  “It is as you wish,” he told her. “Things move fast and there is still much to be done before we reach that point.”

  CHAPTER

  “Shit,” Jake screamed.

  He wasn’t sure if any of the others heard him, but he saw Lt go down and dropped to his knee again to return fire.

  Laser blasts shot over his head and sliced into the crowd. The others had seen too.

  The tents caught on fire as the bolts seared through the dry canvas. People screamed, men yelled and over it all the rat a tat of automatic weapons shooting back at them.

  Weber stooped next to Jake.

  “Advance in a line,” he shouted an order. Jake turned his visor and saw Renard line up next to him on the other side, blaster raised.

  Crockett and Waldo exited the woods on the opposite side, lasers skewing across the smoke covered battlescape.

  Jake stood and marched forward with Weber and Renard, his gloved finger depressing the trigger again and again.

  Everywhere he aimed, death followed.

  He tried to concentrate on the men, or male looking figures, though it was hard to tell with most.

  Each figure in his sights was a cloth covered moving mound of clothes, faces hidden by scarves or heads hidden under hats.

  He aimed at the ones with weapons. Guns that were firing back at him.

  The trio advanced in orderly fashion, shooting as they moved. Bullets bounced off his chestplate, off the armored arms and thighs of his suit. Once or twice, a ping rocked his head back, sending a searing headache bouncing around his skull.

  They reached Lt’s fallen body.

  The tip of the spear was a triple blade, barbed with hooks so that any attempt to remove it would rip skin and gouge muscle.

  It was buried inches in the armored chest plate, testament to the force thrust of the crossbow used to shoot it.

  Weber stepped to one side to move around the body, still firing as he moved.

  Lt sat up.

  “Son of a bitch,” he yelled.

  It wasn’t much of a yell, but the torrent of curse words he released on the tail end of the yell matched the staccato tempo of the machine guns shooting at them.

  The bullets slowed down when he rolled to his knees, and stopped completely when he stood up.

  Jake quit shooting too as he stared at the Lt like he was rising from the dead.

  The rest of the squad paused as well, blasters held ready just in case. Except for Babe.

  Babe shot eight more men, their heads disappearing into puffing mists of blood and smoke.

  “Babe!” Lt screamed.

  It was more like a rasp than a scream, but it cut through to his crazed soldier and made him stop.

  “I thought you were fucking dead,” Babe snarled.

  “Fuck me, I thought I was too. Never been hit with an arrow before.”

  Lt looked down at the six foot shaft wiggling in his chestplate.

  “That was a good fucking move you did there, Weber. Didn’t need you to save my bacon this time, but it’s nice to know you’ve got it in you when I need it.”

  Weber nodded.

  “Standard formation training,” Renard said, weapon still nested into his shoulder.

  “Standard huh? That shit works on Mars, but if those fuckers use a grenade, you’re toast.”

  “Are you hurt?” Crockett and Waldo jogged up from their flank position.

  Lt reached up and wrapped his glove around the shaft of the arrow, yanked it out.

  He dropped it on the ground and used the tip of his fingers to explore the rent in the chestplate.

  “Didn’t get through,” he said. “Huts like a son of a bitch though. That’s gonna leave a mark.”

  “Fireproof,” said Jake. “Bulletproof. Arrow proof.”

  “Ain’t idiot proof though,” said Lt as he turned back to the camp. “So, let’s go get our fill of dumb ass’s.”

  He started marching toward the camp again.

  “Come on boys, before they get a chance to reload that fucking crossbow contraption.”

  CHAPTER

  The escape plan was simple.

  As simple as something Lt would come up with, thought Lutz.

  “Tonight?” Pomona breathed out of the side of her mouth.

  He was surprised it sounded more like a question than a statement.

  The plan was to create a distraction on one side of the camp, draw the Lick guards to that point, and make a break for it on the other side.

  The main worry was hidden guards. Hidden traps.

  Hell, Lutz could make a list of a million ways this could go wrong. Lt would tell him that’s the wrong way to think about it.

  Any time you start concentrating on things going wrong, Lutz told himself in Lt’s raspy voice. That’s all you’re going to see.

  He even squinted his eyes in a fair imitation.

  Try to see what will go right and do more of that.

  Lutz remembered sharing an eyeroll with Babe over that o
ne, but Lt had been right. The more they focused on killing Licks and doing it the right way, the better they got.

  The more he focused on staying alive, the more alive he stayed.

  It stood to reason that if they focused on what could go right during the escape, then things would go right.

  He tried not to think about the slaves sacrificing themselves so others could get away.

  That tended to freeze him up, as his mind turned the problem over trying to find a way to save everyone.

  Every human at least.

  But their sacrifice would buy many others a chance.

  A chance to die in the woods, being hunted, or starving, or being killed in the attempt.

  He shook his head.

  Too easy to think about the wrong.

  The way it was going to go down, six people would die.

  He had a small head count of thirty making the escape.

  Thirty people running to the woods, running through the trees.

  It was stupid to even try, he thought. They were going to die.

  But Pomona had a plan for that too. Break up in pairs.

  No idea where they were in the world, not sure which way to break once they were beyond the fence.

  She told them find the North Star and follow it.

  Lutz didn’t know what was North, and if the pairs had a half mile between them, if they got separated in the woods, they could walk a parallel track and never know the other was there.

  But as far as half assed plans went, he thought it wasn’t too bad.

  For his part, he was going to keep the herd close together if he could.

  It’s what Lt would do.

  He finished up the work in the hanger by twilight, still worrying and working over the plan in his head.

  Lutz made his way back to the warehouse cell block in a line of other slaves. All of their heads hung low, all shuffling.

  He matched them step for step all the way to the door. They entered under the watchful eye of a single soldier, tongue dancing in and out of its snout, as if tasting their defeat, their exhaustion.

  Searching for defiance, thought Lutz, eyes still down.

  There was no set space on the floor, no designation to wander back in, so he moved to the center of the room where no one else was and sat with his back to the wall to wait.