by David Adams
“Well,” said John. Liao suspected his use of well was a verbal tic. “It’s because everyone hates America now instead of them.” He clapped his hands. “I’m still working on the punch line, but that’s basically what I’m going for.”
A reflection on predevastation global politics. She’d underestimated John. “That’s funny,” she said. Then the mirth faded a little. If only there was still an America. Or still a Germany.
“Well, only if you’re not American. Americans sometimes get angry when I tell that joke. Mostly, they laugh. Sometimes, they get mad.”
“If they’re laughing, they can’t be that mad.”
“Mostly, but I don’t like seeing even a few people get angry, so I mostly tell jokes about myself. Sure, it gets a bit depressing sometimes, but I don’t let an extra chromosome get me down.” He smiled at her. “That’s one of the jokes I tell.”
She laughed a little, touching her chin with her thumb and forefinger. “Okay, that’s a good joke too.”
“Wanna hear more?”
She did. She wanted to just walk around Eden and hear jokes all night.
“Sure,” she said. “Go ahead.”
Before John could answer, in the distance, a flash of light like distant thunder stole the stars from the sky. A dull explosion was carried in by the wind. Both of them followed the sound to the mountain range, where an ominous glow grew on the other side.
“Excuse me a moment,” she said. Frowning, Liao touched her radio. “Liao to Beijing. I just heard an explosion on the other side of the mountain.”
Jiang’s voice returned through the device. “Captain, falling debris has impacted near the city, crashed beyond the tree line. One of the Madrid’s Broadswords has been dispatched to investigate. I could ask de Lugo, but inventory suggests it’s carrying a squad of Marines from the search-and-rescue effort. Our SAR Broadsword is already en route.”
Her throat tightened. “Keep me informed,” she said, leaving them to deal with that mess.
“Is everything okay?” asked John.
“Yes,” she said, glancing to the tip of the mountains, unable to shake the nagging feeling of worry that was worming its way inside her belly. “I think.”
“Do you need to go?”
She thought about it for a moment. Her first instinct was to run off to duty, but the more she thought about it, the more she just wanted to spend more time with John, listening to his stories, a world away from battles and death.
“Not right now,” she said. “I tell you what. Let’s keep walking. That way, you can tell me more of your jokes.”
“Okay,” said John, his eagerness returning. “In ancient Ireland, a woman spent ten years chasing after a leprechaun…”
They wandered north, away from the edge of the settlement and toward the mountains. Eden rested in a valley. The hillsides had been blasted clean during the orbital bombardment, waves of flames running up them. As they drew close, Liao could see fresh regrowth sprouting out of the thin black layer of charred remains. Plant life was returning from the ashes.
Somewhere, in that mess, was her arm, burned to nothing. It would not grow back. It was just ashes.
The night air seemed so distant. All she could smell was seared flesh.
Her scars burned, a phantom pain but no less real. It came as pins and needles over her upper body and the burned side of her face, a wave of pseudo-agony that forced the memories of the bombardment, raw and vivid, back into her mind.
She could feel the heat, see the flames, and hear the crackle of her own skin as it flaked off in charred, blackened lumps. It consumed her vision. She was no longer standing at the edge of a peaceful settlement that had not known war in months but the outskirts of Hell, the world burning around her.
The rational part of her brain told her she was just having a panic attack, a memory of trauma resurfacing, but its effects could not be dismissed easily. It flooded her body with fear and seized her lungs in an iron vice. The panic squeezed her whole body with pain.
“Captain,” said a faraway voice that sounded vaguely familiar. “Are you all right? Captain?”
Act. She had to act. Her hands shook, violently at first, but less so as she forced air into her lungs and the spotty lightheadedness crept away. Air. Just focus on air.
“I’m fine,” she managed, even forcing a smile.
John’s eyes were wide, and his whole body trembled.
“It’s okay,” Liao said again. “Just a bad memory.”
“What kind of memory?”
With the lights of the city behind her, and the fiery trails of falling stars darting across the night sky, growing in intensity, Liao pointed toward the mountainside with her prosthetic hand. “That’s was where I was burned.”
“Oh,” said John. “That must have been frightening.”
“It was.” Liao turned her back to it. She couldn’t even look.
John’s eyes kept flicking over the blasted landscape, and he fidgeted again.
“Sorry,” Liao said, “did you want to go?”
“Yes,” said John. “It’s late. Sorry. I should go.”
“Okay,” said Liao. Her tone turned serious. “You know… you are a funny man, John, and you have a good heart. You know what this place needs? A little more fun, a little more laughter. Go see Mister Shepherd. Tell him that I sent you. I think…” she smiled. “I think we need a stage. Put it where the Beijing was—there’s a great amphitheatre-style hole in the ground there now. Make it a central place where people can go and be entertained. Theatre. Comedy. Dramas. We could even rig up a projector and show movies. It’ll be like old Earth.”
John seemed pleased. “You would do that for me?”
“No,” said Liao. “I want to be clear about this: it’s not a charity. You’re doing this, and you’re doing it for yourself and everyone else in Eden. Okay?”
“Okay,” said John.
“Thank you for the walk,” she said and turned her eyes away from the settlement, where the glow of the fire intensified. “I have work to do, John.”
“Okay,” he said again, and then without looking back, he left, walking at a blistering pace.
She hoped he would be okay, but first, work called. Liao touched her radio. “Beijing, report status of the SAR bird.”
Jiang answered swiftly. “Archangel is en route, as are Marines from the Madrid.”
“Have they got room for one more?”
Jiang paused, presumably relaying her question. “Yes, Captain.”
“Tell the Archangel to swing past and pick me up. Home in on my signal. I want to see this for myself.”
The Archangel descended like its namesake, floating through the air, blowing the ashes away from her in a dark storm that dirtied her uniform and forced her to squint. The smell of everything burned was blasted into her skin, and as she climbed the loading ramp into the steel bird’s insides, the stink followed her. She left dirty footprints on the steel, black powder falling off her with every step.
[“Good evening Captain,”] said Saara from one of the fold-down seats, her large paws folded neatly in her lap.
Liao hadn’t even noticed her sitting there. “Good evening. Coming along to inspect the falling star?”
[“Commander Iraj believes the debris may be an escape pod, based on Brigadier General Decker-Sheng’s recommendations.”]
“Decker-Sheng?” Liao frowned. She pulled a helmet off the rack and clipped it on and then offered Saara one but realised right away it would not fit. “How the hell is he involved in this at all?”
[“We have detected microtransmissions being sent from Velsharn, short bursts of signal hard to separate from static unless you know what to look for. As Decker-Sheng is something of an expert in Alliance communication methods, Commander Iraj made the decision to request his help.”]
That ate at her, bitter bile forming in her throat. Liao pulled down a seat of her own, locked it in place, and strapped in. “Yes, well, aren’t you an expert too?�
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[“Captain, I was only a pilot. I have a base knowledge of many things, more than enough to serve as your chief engineer, but I am hardly a specialist in covert operations.”
Saara’s exact phrasing surprised her. “Covert operations?”
[“There are few justifications for microtransmissions because they are hard to transmit and equally hard to receive, so they are usually reserved for signals one does not want detected.”] Saara’s tail twitched beside her. [“There are few other benefits.”]
The ship started to move. Liao rested her chin in her hands, fiddling with her helmet strap with her metal fingers. “And you mentioned that the transmission location was hard to pinpoint?”
[“Yes. As they are so brief—and difficult to detect—sourcing them can be difficult as their direction of transmission is obfuscated. The best way is triangulation, but at least four points must be actively listening in three-dimensional space, and with frequency rotation, this can be avoided. We were lucky that the Beijing detected them at all, let alone three others.”]
“So it could be a Toralii escape pod,” she said, “or it could be a transmission from within the fleet.”
The question seemed to surprise Saara. [“It is possible,”] she conceded.
Very possible. It had to be Decker-Sheng. Liao knew—somehow just knew—that he was behind it. He was the communication specialist and shared the same blood as Gaulung. She could practically smell his fingerprints all over this: sending covert signals to the Toralii, working his way into Iraj’s trust, being named Sheng.
If the Toralii had another mole aboard her ship, she would deal with it—differently than Gaulung Sheng, hopefully. Shooting a man had caused a lot of problems for her, and she knew that kind of thing was excusable only once.
The ship whined, Saara stared at her curiously, and Liao sat in silence, digesting the information and trying, largely in vain, to ignore the itching on her shoulder, which seemed to go away only when she thought about how she might use that information and the ways in which the Toralii would pay.
Eventually, a crack appeared around the edges of the loading ramp, and it lowered.
[“Are you all right, Captain?”] asked Saara as the large Toralii stood, eyes on the outside.
“Just being pensive,” she said, unstrapping herself and adjusting her helmet.
Saara studied her with her yellow eyes, a prolonged stare that Liao knew well. [“You believe there is a spy amongst the fleet.”]
“Correct,” she said, seeing no reason to lie to Saara, whom she trusted.
[“I would ask, then, that you keep this information to yourself. There are Toralii on Eden—including myself—and Kel-Voran and other visitors. Currently, your species and your allies are united in common purpose. Little would be gained from seeding mistrust amongst your allies.”]
“I agree,” said Liao. The noise from the ship’s engines died down, and in the distance, she heard another landing. “Don’t worry. I learnt from Sheng. If there’s a mole aboard, this time, I’m going to investigate properly.”
The memory of Sheng’s mistreatment seemed to disquiet her Toralii friend. [“I am pleased to hear this.”]
Liao beckoned toward the ramp. “Let’s go.”
They did not have to go far. The Archangel let them loose and then took off, hovering a few hundred metres above, its ventral turret following ahead of them.
The Broadsword from the Madrid discharged a dozen Marines, amongst them, Liao noted, a Kel-Voran. The waist-high reptilian was bristling with weapons. Without counting, Liao could see almost a dozen: plasma weapons, grenades, long tubes that glowed ominously at both ends. At his hip were a pair of double-edged blades, sheathed in leather or hide that was also edged.
Yanmei Cheung, the head of the Beijing’s Marine detachment, greeted her with a warm smile. “Evening, Captain.”
“Hanging out on the Madrid now?” she asked, curious.
“Actually, yes,” Cheung said. “A cross-training initiative. When the call came in, we were just a few hundred clicks south. Figured we might as well make it a live-fire exercise.”
Liao noticed Hanna Keller amongst the Marines who disembarked and saw how she smiled at the back of Cheung’s head. It was the kind of smile that she had seen on Rowe when she looked at Iraj. Suddenly, Liao didn’t believe that Cheung’s decision was entirely pragmatic.
Those crazy kids.
Trying to avoid staring, Liao’s eyes roamed until they fell upon the Kel-Voran. He was sniffing around the area, growling eagerly like a barely restrained animal. Liao slid up to Cheung and lowered her voice so only she could hear. “I can’t believe all of those are training rounds. Is he expecting to fight a war here?”
“Honestly,” said Cheung, “he basically is. He’s got a name although I can’t pronounce it for the life of me, so everyone calls him Stumpy. Strangely, he prefers that. Getting a nickname is kind of a point of honour or something. The guy doesn’t talk much, but when he does, it’s about death, death, killing, more death. He’s useful to have but not that good at following orders.”
“That’s a problem.”
“We’ll see,” said Cheung. “He’s certainly got the skills we need.”
She left it in Cheung’s hands. “Right,” she said, raising her voice and addressing the Marines present. “Let’s find this debris.”
With no further ado, they left. Stumpy took the lead, sniffing eagerly, a pistol in one hand and a comically oversized sword in the other. He walked, stooped and bent, hunting eagerly. Liao and the others followed him into the gloom.
The ships had landed in a natural clearing with firm ground, but as they got further away from the landing site, the soil underfoot became mud. The smell rose to her nose, rotten and festering, thick with the scent of decay and mud. Liao’s boots slurped as she walked, and soon she was splattered up to her knees with muck.
“This sucks,” bitched one of the Spanish Marines. His accent reminded Liao of de Lugo. She and de Lugo slept together once… a long, long time before. James had taken the revelation with humour. She was lucky to have him, and that thought, odd though it might be as she stood surrounded by rotting vegetation and filth, made her smile.
[“Hardship breeds strength,”] said Stumpy, his attention focused on the ground. [“I smell metal. Flame. We are close.”]
Perhaps the Kel-Voran was simply smelling the burning from the orbital bombardment. Liao said nothing, trusting his judgment.
Stumpy lead them on a winding, meandering trail that seemed to double back on itself. He made no effort to avoid deeper parts of the bog, simply wading in up to his shoulders, holding his primary weapons above his reptilian head.
“What’s the point of bringing all those guns if he just lets them get fucked up?” whispered Cheung.
Liao assumed—or rather, kept assuring herself—that Stumpy knew what he was doing.
Then he stopped. [“Here,”] said Stumpy. He gestured down into the mud with his snout.
The Marines fanned out, with Cheung and Keller organising a defensive perimeter. Stumpy’s hand disappeared into the mud, and he lifted. A muddy object rose from the muck, long and thick.
Four other Marines helped lift. Liao reached out with her prosthetic, brushing the mud aside. Beneath was metal, smooth and black, the same material the Toralii cruisers were made from.
It was an escape pod, but not intact. A thin line ran up the side of the hull. The metal of the hull had expanded and contracted unevenly, and a thin web of cracks had sprung up over the surface. Water and mud had leaked in.
A trickle of mud ran from the crack, heated from being near the hot outside surface, and with it came a stink, detectable even over the background odor of the bog. Something within smelled terrible: seared flesh, thick with the scent of decay and mud.
“Don’t like your chances of interrogating him,” said Cheung.
Liao’s hand found a round button, and curious, she pushed it. The pod’s casing groaned as the ben
t, damaged metal tried to open, the mud on the edges vibrating slightly with the strain. And then, all at once, the trickle of mud became a sudden gush, exploding out from all edges, showering the Marines with goop.
“Sorry,” Liao said. The stench intensified. More and more mud flowed out of the pod, warmed from being near the outside surface; the muck flowed out, and the unlocking and opening sequence worked with a faint hum.
Inside was a Toralii corpse, gender unrecognisable. Its fur was roasted off, mouth locked in pained, silent scream. Each of its limbs was terribly curled, twisted and gnarled, as though trying to extinguish the heat of reentry. By his side was a sword, splashed with scorch marks.
“What a way to go,” said Cheung. “Burning alive, drowning in mud. Poor fucker.”
[“He died slowly.”]
“He?” asked Liao. “How can you tell?”
Stumpy glared at her as though she were stupid, his black reptile eyes glinting. [“This is a senior officer’s personal pod. The occupant’s name is written on the underside of the lid.”] He pointed. [“Warbringer Avaran.”]
Liao’s chest seized. Her gaze returned to the corpse. Avaran… the Toralii who had led the assault on Earth, who had taunted her, repeatedly, about killing her with the very sword within her grasp.
Now he was a ruined corpse, burned beyond recognition. He had died a horrible death, trapped in a metal box with tiny cracks in it, slowly filling with hellfire, hot enough to inspire agony but not hot enough to kill quickly.
“That’s as close to Hell as I could imagine,” said Liao. She inhaled, breathing in the reeking bog, and steadied herself. “I guess I was wrong. A fall through the atmosphere will kill him. Warlord Avaran is mortal after all.”
[“He deserved such a fate,”] said Stumpy.
She wanted to say something pithy about all life being sacred but couldn’t bring herself to do it. “You’re right.”
Stumpy seemed mollified by that. [“As do all who oppose the Kel-Voran.”]
“Humans have a saying: war is hell.” She shook her head, weighing up her options. The pod could be interesting salvage, and the body would have to be disposed of. “I guess we should drag this thing out of here and give him a burial. It is tempting to leave him in the bog, though.” Liao flicked the mud off her fingers and then reached in for the sword.
