by Isaac Hooke
Azen paused. “Does that answer your question, Rade Galaal?”
I raised an eyebrow. “It more than answers it.”
“Good.” Azen lifted its head to regard the rest of us. “The surface will cool to the appropriate temperature for our operation one hour from now, at 1400 human Stantime. We will have a prelaunch training session fifteen minutes before then to acclimate your squad to the new mechs.”
“Fifteen minutes? Doesn’t seem like a whole lot of time to acquaint ourselves with alien tech,” Manic said.
“Trust me, it is more than enough time for ATLAS-trained operatives such as yourselves. Until then, rest, and mentally prepare yourselves for the battle that comes.”
Shaw and I headed to our favorite spot behind the screen of stalagmites on the far side of the cavern, and there did our part to get ready for the upcoming operation. Forty-five minutes wasn’t much time, but we made good use of it.
I’ll say.
A few minutes after arriving I lay naked on the cave floor, holding Shaw in my arms, wrapped in the afterglow of sex.
“I still can’t get over the fact you’re alive,” I said. “Wake me up from this dream.”
“It’s as real as it gets,” Shaw said. “I know, because I’ve never felt what I just did.”
“So I’m getting better?” I quipped.
She giggled softly. “A little.” She rested her head on my chest.
We remained still, lying in each other’s arms, basking in the warmth of our bodies.
There was a topic I wanted to broach with her. A sensitive one. And I wasn’t sure how to raise it.
In the end, I decided to just put it out there.
“In the upcoming operation . . .” I said, feeling my resolve waver as I stared into her all-encompassing eyes.
She lifted her head, sensing the hesitation in my voice. “Yes?”
I swallowed. “In the coming op, I want you to, I mean, you should . . . well, stay here.”
She blinked in surprise and then pushed away from me. “What?” Her features contorted in a mix of rage and shock.
Ah shit. “We’re going to need someone to watch the civilians,” I added hastily. “Tung’s just a boy, after all.” I tried to remember the other excuses I’d come up with, but I was drawing a blank under that shriveling stare.
“We’ll leave one of Azen’s mechs behind to guard the civvies,” Shaw said, lifting her chin defiantly. “Manned by a green. That’s good enough.”
I wanted to tell her the real reason I needed her to stay behind, but I couldn’t bring myself to. It was just too hard. So I continued down the path of the lie. “Look, Shaw, just leave the mission to the experts. This is work for battle-hardened MOTHs. Not some inexperienced astrogator.”
“Some inexperienced astrogator?” she said, the hurt and disbelief obvious in her voice. “After everything I’ve been through, you think I’m just some doe-eyed astrogator?”
The disappointment in her eyes hurt me more than any blow ever could.
I swallowed. “Shaw—”
She got up and started dressing, keeping her back to me. “You’ve changed.” She glanced over her shoulder and sighed sadly. “The Rade I knew would have never told me to stay behind. He would have wanted me by his side to the very end, doing my part to save humanity. I’m the one who brought Azen here; you know that, don’t you? I convinced Azen to intervene early. He was hesitant, wanted to wait, but I persuaded him we had to stop the enemy here. In Tau Ceti. That we couldn’t afford to delay. I’m also the one who helped capture the original technology that Azen’s faction used as a basis for the golden mechs you see today.
“So no, Rade, I’m not staying behind. I’m instrumental to all of this, more a part of the operation than you, and I’m coming. I didn’t fight for all those months, survive through all those horrors, to be left behind now. You’re not my commanding officer. And neither is Chief Bourbonjack. This isn’t your team. This is Azen’s. And he’s told me I can come. And I will.”
She finished pulling on her cooling undergarment and moved on to the leg assemblies of her jumpsuit. She purposely didn’t face me.
This tack obviously wasn’t working. I decided I’d have to tell her the truth of the matter, no matter how hard it was for me. “Shaw—”
“Don’t talk to me until after the battle is over.”
“Let me explain,” I pleaded.
“I said don’t talk to me.”
“But there’s another reason I don’t want you to come. I—”
Again she cut me off. “I don’t care.”
I had to tell her while I had her alone.
But damn it, again I found myself hesitating.
Why was this so difficult?
I’d waded into rooms full of enemy combat robots. Piloted an ATLAS mech across battlefields swarming with alien entities. And I couldn’t do this? Couldn’t explain to the one woman I cared about more than anything why she mattered to me?
I took a deep breath.
I could do this.
“Shaw . . .” I began.
She spun around and opened her mouth to interrupt me, but I raised a hand to forestall her. She must have seen the pain etched into my features. The raw sincerity.
“Shaw. Here’s the truth. I already lost you once. And I can’t bear to lose you again. That’s why I don’t want you to go. That’s why I don’t want you to fight.”
“So that’s it?” She shook her head in wonder. “Silly man. You’re not going to lose me. Neither of us is going to die. We’ll watch each other’s backs. Together, you and I can’t lose. Especially not after everything we’ve been through. The universe won’t let us. Part of the checks and balances of the system. We’ve already gone through the bad shit. It’s about time the universe gave us a break, especially since we’re trying to save it.”
I wanted to tell her that I’d said almost those very same words to another woman. Lana. And that I’d watched her die in my arms shortly after.
Instead I extended my hands. “Come here.”
She practically leaped into my grasp.
I held her tight. So tight. Knowing full well that this might be the last time I ever held her again.
In my arms, she leaned back to look into my eyes. She wore a smile of forgiveness, and seemed to glow in that moment, more so than at any other point in her life, at least as long as I’d known her.
“If you’re going to fight with us, you’re going to need a callsign,” I said softly.
“My callsign is Shaw,” she murmured. “That’s the only one I’ll ever need.”
Moving with undisguised fervor, I pushed off her leg assemblies.
We made love again but I found myself distracted, because in that moment I remembered what RDC Bowden had tried to hammer into our heads back in Basic. The recruit division commander had suspected Shaw and I were involved in a secret liaison, and he’d told us a story about the Sacred Band of Thebes, implying that relationships between members of the service didn’t work, especially when those members had to fight side by side in battle.
If Shaw got hurt, I knew I’d fall shortly after her.
But worse, if it came down to it, I wasn’t sure whether I’d choose to sacrifice my brothers, and maybe even humanity itself, to save her.
What a terrible thought.
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
Tahoe
As we sprinted twenty-five klicks beneath the surface of the moon, wearing nothing but our cool vents undergarments, fleeing the pursuing wave of Phants, I wondered what would kill us first. The Phants? Or the nuclear detonation? There couldn’t be more than fifteen minutes, maybe half an hour tops, remaining on the countdown.
Other Phants—the slower, blue variety—flowed into the main tunnel from side passageways along the way and joined with that pursuing river. Usua
lly the new Phants appeared after we’d already passed, but sometimes they arrived at precisely the moment we ran by an offshoot corridor, forcing us to dodge or leap. It didn’t help that the tunnel was slowly widening, which meant the trailing Phants would soon be able to edge past our drag man, Mauler, who carried an emitter in either hand to stave them off.
Up ahead a smaller crab exploded from a side passage, but my brothers quickly mowed it down. I vaulted over its corpse, which took up half the tunnel.
Another crab stuck out one of its heads from the same passage and I unleashed a burst of gunfire into its umbilical as I went by, killing the alien.
Mauler and I hurried after the others. Behind us the Phants flowed right over the bodies of the crabs.
More crabs intruded into the corridor from side passages along the way, forcing us to repeatedly spray our rifles at them.
This was getting ridiculous. Crabs. Purple Phants. Blue Phants. And all we had left were our rifles, some grenades, and our cooling undergarments.
The cave was rumbling and I realized a slug was coming from somewhere. Probably burrowing, from the sound of it.
When that slug came, our journey was likely at an end.
But I wouldn’t stop fighting. Not until my very last breath.
“Stop!” TJ shouted from the forefront.
In the split second after TJ spoke, I realized the floor of the tunnel had fallen away up ahead, leaving a pitch-black abyss. TJ was balanced right on the edge.
Unfortunately, the rest of us couldn’t check our momentum fast enough and we piled into TJ, sending him hurtling over.
Except TJ didn’t fall.
He merely hovered there, floating over the dark pit as if he’d been caught by some invisible web or alien confinement beam.
The rest of us huddled near the ledge, defending our rear quarter, unsure of how to proceed.
The river of purple Phants bubbled and seethed just behind, staved off only by Mauler and the emitters he held. Farther back, crabs splashed through the glowing liquid, apparently immune to the incinerating effects of the interdimensional aliens, forcing us to fire past Mauler at them.
The cave continued to rumble.
“Jump, people!” Facehopper said.
And so we did. Taking the leap of faith, putting our lives on the line in the hope that we, too, would be caught by whatever held TJ.
Mauler and I leaped at the same time. I arced through the air for a second and then my motion abruptly ceased. It felt like something had grabbed onto me, rather rudely, maybe some giant spider’s web—my limbs were snagged and I could move only my head.
I glanced around nervously, not wanting to meet the spider. My brothers were snagged in various positions around me, but other than them I saw only the nearby rock face; the floor, ceiling, and other walls were hidden in the dark. This abyss was all too similar to the one we’d fallen down to reach the lower levels in the first place. If the hidden force that held us let up, we’d probably plunge several klicks to our deaths.
Purple Phants gushed into the abyss behind me. The liquid pooled, as if striking some unseen flat surface, and formed an ever-expanding mass that flowed toward us.
The force around me weakened slightly, and I was able to move my limbs, though none of my motions allowed me to move from the spot where I was suspended.
Crabs began jumping from the quaking tunnel.
I twisted my torso to fire at them, making use of my newfound freedom of motion to aim for the cords. My brothers did the same around me and we severed those umbilicals so that by the time the invisible web caught the crabs, they were already dead. Lifeless alien bodies halted in place all around us, locked in various stages of contortion.
One corpse struck me a glancing blow before coming to a stop; the invisible force that held me yielded momentarily, and I slid backward a few paces before my motion was stemmed once more.
Starting with TJ, the squad began to slowly drift upward, one by one.
“What the hell?” Fret said when he was yanked up.
My turn came. The movement felt abrupt, like some giant hand plucking me. I rose in a straight line and there seemed no way to counter the motion, no matter how much I swiveled my body nor moved my limbs. I was at the mercy of the unseen force.
The liquid Phants receded below us.
We weren’t trapped within an alien confinement beam or web after all. This was something entirely different. It seemed to me that it was some type of transportation corridor.
“It’s a grav elevator of some kind,” TJ said. “Too bad we have no idea how to control it.”
“Maybe it has a ‘default floor’ setting,” I said.
“Ain’t ever seen an elevator with a ‘default floor’ setting,” Bomb said.
“Yeah well, I have. And we are moving, even though we haven’t pressed any buttons. Which is exactly how default floor settings work.”
“Don’t see any buttons, mate,” Facehopper said. “But if we are headed to some default floor, that begs the question, what exactly waits for us there?”
“Forget about our destination for a second, guys,” Bomb said. “And look down. Easy pickings!”
Bomb fired into the crabs that were continually leaping into the shaft below.
I unleashed my rifle, too, but paused as the rumbling crescendoed.
A huge, white-hot slug broke through the cave wall near the tunnel opening below and landed in the shaft. It froze, suspended in place.
The Phants had begun to ascend by then, but they moved far slower than us. I wasn’t quite sure why. It shouldn’t have mattered that they weighed less—when you dropped a feather and a rock at the same time on the moon, both fell at the same rate. Perhaps the grav elevator amplified the repulsive effects of the emitters Mauler held. Or maybe my elusive spirits were finally helping.
Yeah, that’d be the day.
Though to be honest, it truly did feel like divine aid. After all, we had just stumbled upon a grav elevator. What were the odds? Either we were the luckiest bastards alive or some unknown force was helping us.
Maybe the spirits of Alejandro and Big Dog were somewhere out there, guiding us. I knew that if I died, I would do the same for my still-living brothers.
Below, the distant slug had begun squirming its body back and forth as it too very slowly began to rise, along with its linked crabs.
My brothers had stopped firing by then, since we were too far from the enemy. I hadn’t noticed before but we were accelerating. Lit by the lamps attached to our rifles, the rock face to our left scrolled by faster and faster.
“Hang on, mates!” Facehopper shouted.
Soon the walls became a blur. It felt like we were falling upward.
I noticed during the ascent that we drifted subtly toward the blurry wall, the lot of us aligning so that our bodies formed a vertical stack. If we didn’t slow down, the eight of us would be compressed like an accordion when we reached the ceiling.
We began to decelerate. I could feel the G forces shifting . . . my stomach felt like it was going to leap out of my chest. The rock surface beside me became more distinct with each passing second, changing from blurry gray to crawling, detailed outcrops.
The ceiling materialized out of the darkness above, and our vertical stack came to a halt.
Mauler floated just above me. He still carried the emitters, I noted. Good man.
I was able to move my limbs but it didn’t help. I extended my arms, reaching for the rock face, but it proved just out of range. And no pumping of my arms or swaying of my feet would change that.
TJ was at the top of the stack. He shouted down: “There’s a tunnel here! I think I can enter.”
TJ extended his leg and stepped onto a ledge up there, passing from view.
“I’m in,” came TJ’s muffled voice. “And . . . I think I see
the sky in the distance!”
Had the grav elevator already taken us the twenty-five klicks to the surface? It was almost too much to hope for.
But even if that was true, we weren’t out of the woods yet.
I glanced down and saw only the unending darkness below. Still, I knew the Phants were coming. And the slug with its crabs.
I felt myself drawn upward as the vertical queue of bodies moved up a man-length.
Trace stepped onto the ledge next and the line advanced yet again. This repeated as each of my brothers stepped off in turn.
I kept looking down, wishing the queue would move faster.
I heard Facehopper’s muffled voice from above. “Bomb, plant the microexplosives. Ghost, help him. TJ and Trace, scout ahead. I want to know if that’s really the surface.”
Finally my turn came and I ascended to the opening. I spotted Bomb two meters inside the passage. He stood in the clasped hands of Ghost and was planting the last of the microexplosives in the ceiling.
I took a step onto the ledge in front of the opening, bringing my other leg in from empty space. It felt good to stand on solid ground again.
A glow from behind drew my attention back to the shaft and I peered over the edge.
The Phants had arrived. They had amassed into a glowing sphere of blue and purple about the size of an ATLAS mech, and slowly floated up as the grav elevator decelerated them.
“They’re here!” I yelled.
I edged past Ghost and Bomb, toward a glimmer of light in the distance. The rest of the squad was already making for that spot.
“Done!” Bomb said.
Ghost lowered Bomb to the cave floor and the three of us ran.
Behind us, the Phant sphere became level with the tunnel. Liquid erupted from its side like a solar flare and Phants gushed into the tunnel at high speed.
The microexplosives detonated.
The shockwave hurled Ghost, Bomb, and me to the cave floor.
For a moment I didn’t know where I was. A high-pitched frequency assailed my hearing.
