Battle On The Marathon

by John Thornton

  That earthy smell had a somewhat calming effect on me. A balsam poplar was in bloom and its rich, sweet, aroma reminded me of honey. Even there in Queen, after the Jellies launched their horrific attack, the biome still was a sort-of sanctuary for me. Not only in Kansas do the trees smell nice, but also in Queen. As I trotted through those woods, making decent time following the well-marked paths, I saw the dark greens of the tress at night, and heard the rustling of woodland animals. My goal was the far other end of Queen, some eighty kilometers away. As I travelled, I noted various aromas which were more distinct the further I got from the fires in Sheba. There were the sweet, almost sour, bitter, and pungent scents of those woods. Animals scurried away, and night birds took wing. The sounds of the woods were as varied as were the fragrances. I wished those birds and animals peace, but knew they would not find it. The Jellies were on a rampage, and the Queen biome was the anvil for their war hammers.

  About half-way across the biome, I came to a cabin in those woods. The first thing that alerted me to its presence was the sound. Music was playing and it was not good music. Some antique style of music which was more noise than pleasant. However, there I also saw two living people. They were sitting outside of their cabin, lit up by the illumination of a porch light. Some kind of smoke was around their heads, and at first I thought it was a fire and that the Jellies had been there.

  But as I approached closer, I saw that the two people, a chubby man and an even heavier woman, were blowing smoke out of their mouths. When I got close, I saw that they were sucking on small burning tubes.

  “Hello!” I called.

  The couple made no real response, although I knew they heard me calling. But with the loud music, maybe they did not understand. So, I repeated my greeting. “Hello! Who are you?”

  The man turned in his chair and looked away, the woman just sort-of glared at me. I could see a plague of some kind which was hanging on a post by their porch. It read, “Home of Heith and Barlys” and had some odd kind of cartoonish character drawn under it.

  “There is a great danger here in Queen,” I announced. “Could you shut off that music, please?”

  The man made some adjustment and the noise lessened but did not go off. “It is not that loud,” he refused to make eye contact with me. He inhaled and the white stick in his mouth glowed at its burning end.

  “Right. Someone is always yapping about something. What is it this time?” the woman said as she turned away.

  I was tired and frustrated. “The town of Sheba has been attacked. Many people are dead. Have you seen anything strange out here?”

  “You,” the woman snapped and blew out a long stream of gray smoke.

  The smell of those burning tubes was disgusting. I wanted to close my faceplate to escape the foul stench. If I did that I could also shut down the external microphones and cut off the dumb music, but instead I tried to explain.

  “I am Corporal Kalju, and there is a battle going in. Many people are dead, and that includes Red Guard soldiers, citizens, and others. Do you have access to the shell from here?” I had noted a walkway which led toward the sidewall of the biome. “I need to make contact with some artificial intelligences, or some authorities.”

  Puffing more on that white stick the man replied, “Could not get the doors to work this morning. I had just topped the plants in one field.”

  “We needed to get some fish emulsion fertilizer for plants, but the doors would not open,” the woman answered in a way that seemed to finish the man’s sentence.

  “The sewage treatment access door was locked up too,” the man said and barked a productive cough. “Really need to treat the plants soon.” He inhaled a long draw on that burning stick.

  Since my childhood was on a farm. I asked, “What crops?”

  He still would not meet my eye, and instead just sucked in more of that stinky stuff from the burning stick, and ignored me. The woman, who was also still puffing away just nodded and stared into the dark woods.

  “There are real dangers here in Queen. Do you have some place safe to hide? Have the Red Guard been here? Have you tried to contact anyone? Do you have an escape plan? Do you need anything here?”

  “The curing house needs more leaves!” the woman said and cackled at what to her was some kind of a joke.

  “Maybe this man can speed up a leaf’s aging process?” the man giggled a bit, but it was a rough and harsh sound. His voice was gravelly. “Plants will not age properly if the temperature and moisture is off by much. Gets too dry it is ruined. Gets too moist it rots. Takes four—five years for a good aging and curing. Otherwise the flavor is bad. Can you do anything to speed that up, or make it easier?”

  “What are you talking about?” I demanded. “There are Jellies here who are killing people.”

  “We all got to die of something. Never heard of someone dying from eating jelly,” again the woman cackled. It was no more pleasant than before. “There is a display by the exit door, up the trail, help yourself if you got to talk to someone.”

  “The Jellies are vicious aliens who have invaded the Marathon. They put off a harsh purple light. If you see that, run! Do not wait. See a purple light, leave! You need to find a way to escape or to hide. Weapons are not very effective. The town of Sheba is in ruins. Troops are heading for Nuwa.”

  The man shook his head in dismissal of what I was saying. The woman rolled her eyes, and then just looked away. She muttered something under her breath, but I did not catch what it was. Before I could say anything more, the man turned the music up and it was louder than before.

  I considered arguing more with them, but then I realized that would be useless, futile. So, I hustled up the trail toward the sidewall and away from the strange couple and their odd habit of deliberately sucking in smoke. After seeing the fires and destruction in Sheba, I could not imagine why anyone would want to inhale something toxic like smoke. But I just moved on.

  Several hundred meters from the cabin, I reached a place where the woods had been cut back to make a wide glen, or meadow. Much of that had been cultivated and a crop planted. Row upon row of plants were growing there. Those plants were about shoulder high, with very broad leaves. I did not recognize what they were. Of course, it was night, and the only illumination was from the ambient light off the sky tube, and some reflected light from the dim lamp at the roof edge of a nearby shed. That shed looked like it was designed for automacubes, having a garage-like open area, but none were there. Two other small buildings, set back a distance, were present, but they were not lit up at all. I moved on.

  At the biome’s wall, there was an egress doorway, but the display failed to respond to anything I did. I connected in via the cable off my armored spacesuit, but that did not give me any response either. The door would not respond to any command. I even popped open the manual overrides, but no matter how much force I applied to the hand-crank wheel, the door remained sealed.

  While I was pulling on that hand-crank, I noted the music had stopped. I then recalled that the man had said something about a sewer door. A chill ran down my back. I sprinted back toward the cabin, only to see that purple glow radiating out from somewhere ahead of me.

  “Run away! Jellies! Alien monsters!” I yelled as I flipped on the strobe light on my helmet. “Run away!” I readied the bullpup, wishing it had a grenade launcher on it. The purple glow was intense, but I adjusted my faceplate’s filters.

  As I got near the cabin, I could see the purple light was moving in the woods just to the side. The trunks of the trees were silhouetted by that alien illumination. I charged right toward it, but I honestly am not sure why I did that. As I passed the porch, I saw the cabin’s light had been smashed away, and the porch was a wreck. Neither of the individuals were on the porch. My helmet was sealed, so I did not smell their filthy smoke. It is strange I still remember that detail, how odd.

  The flashing white light from my helmet cast gloomy shadows into the woods as I entered it. The trees lit up in s
trange ways, but the filters on my faceplate compensated for that. I switched on an infrared sensor so I could look for the couple. The purple light was still there, but mitigated by the filters so it was only mildly irritating.

  I found a path and came upon the first body. It was the woman, and she was spread out across the path for about ten meters. The sensors in my suit showed her remains were rapidly cooling off. Running onward, I came to another clearing, and there I saw what had been the doorway to the sewer treatment facility. There was a triangular shaped structure where it looked like a stairway came up from underground. The purple light was coming from the newly created hole in the ground next to that. The door to that structure was crumpled and had been cast aside. I then heard the screaming.

  A Jellie came into view, its tentacles waving something about. The diffuse glow and my strobe lights made seeing what it was holding difficult, but my ears told me the man was in its clutches.

  Blam!

  Blam!

  Blam!

  I fired the bullpup in single mode, as I could not tell exactly where the man was, and so I aimed carefully at the Jellie’s midsection, and not where it was flapping its tentacles.

  A white blur emerged from the side of the Jellie, and I dove to avoid the icy explosive ball as it flew right at me. It detonated behind me, and I heard some of the fragments deflected off my armored spacesuit.

  Blam!

  Blam!

  Blam!

  Something dark came flying at me, and on my faceplate’s sensors it glowed red color. I ducked away, and that torso landed near me. Another object was thrown by the Jellie, and I dodged that was well, seeing it was another part of that man.

  I increased the flashing rate of the strobe light, and knelt down. I flipped the bullpup to continuous fire and emptied the rest of that magazine into the Jellie as it retreated down the tunnel it had created.

  Brruuuuuppppp!

  I no longer needed to worry about hitting the man. How many rounds actually struct that Jellie? I do not know, but it moved quickly down the tunnel. I ran up and tossed a fragmentation grenade into that purple-lit shaft.

  Kablam!

  My hand went to pump the grenade launcher, only to realize that rifle did not have one, so I grabbed another fragmentation grenade from where I had stored them. Looking into the tunnel, I saw that the walls and ceiling had collapsed and dirt was crumbling into it. The purple glow was gone, either by the passage being blocked by debris, or by the Jellie scooting away. I did not care why.

  I realized that there was no reason for me to stay engaged in that battle, since there was no enemy in sight, and I was not sure I had even hurt the Jellie. I was more convinced it retreated because of the strobe light than because of my weapon’s fire. Perhaps the grenade had done something to it. I only had a few left, and did not want to waste another.

  So, I shut down the strobe and took off as fast as I could. I did not look back at that cabin, or consider the two strange people who had died there. I had tried to warn them, and they refused to listen. I had no guilt about their deaths. I found a trail marker and then headed on toward Nuwa.

  Trying the transceiver again, I sent out a message, “Jellies are using the sewers! Beware all underground water passageways.”

  Static was all I heard back, even though I transmitted it on all the channels. The library connection was all that still answered with its automatic replies for basic information. I pressed on, but was quickly becoming totally exhausted. I did hear distant echoes of gunfire a few different times, but I could not tell from which direction. Those noises bounced around the trees and seemed to come from different places each time I heard it. Several large explosions resounded as well, and afterward the forest was eerily quiet. After a couple hours more walking I had to take a break. The trail from that cabin had not been as straight as it had been before getting there. It appeared that the cabin was roughly midway—on the edge—of the biome and that the hiking trails from there toward Sheba were straighter than they were from that cabin toward Nuwa. Or at least the end of the biome where Nuwa was located. I called up deck plans and got a rough layout of the biome. It did not show the specific trails, but it did show the location of Sheba, Nuwa, all six lakes, and their rivers. Nuwa was diagonally across the entire biome from Sheba. I roughly guessed at my position.

  Knowing I still had something like sixteen more kilometers to go, I found a place where several trees made a fairly secluded spot. It would offer little by way of cover, but some decent concealment. I laid down in that spot and again tried the transceiver. There was still nothing on it but static. I listened for sounds of battle, but it had been some time since I heard any weapons or explosion. Checking the time, I knew there were about two hours until the sky tube would light up and day would break across Queen. I had to get some sleep, so I set my armored spacesuit to wake me at dawn.

  I ate some of the food, which I had gotten from the ESRC, and settled in to try to sleep. So many thoughts raced through my mind I thought I would never be able to rest. My exhaustion was worse and I drifted off wondering where my militia friends were, and if Eight-Squad were in battle. I fully expected to wake up with purple tentacles crushing me.

  The suit’s alarm awoke me, and there was no sign of anything purple. The sky tube’s light was beginning to brighten the canopy of leaves and needles which was over my head. I opened my faceplate and put the interior atmospherics at minimum again. The sounds of the woods were typical for what I expected, but there was a hint of smoke in the air. It was not only some haze, but also a lingering burnt smell.

  I decided to cut across the remaining section of Queen rather than stay within the woods. The trees had given me some measure of concealment, but now that it was day, I could see across the farm lands and ranches of the biome. Cutting across would also involve less travel time, and I did feel some guilt about sleeping while the battle raged on somewhere.

  “This is Corporal Kalju. Does anyone hear this signal?” I sent out on the transceiver.

  This time the static was pierced. “Message from MC001. All troops rally at Nuwa armory. Repeat. All troops rally at Nuwa armory.”

  “MC001, I hear your message. I am on my way,” I replied.

  I found a trail that took me out of the woods toward the middle part of the biome. I knew I was closer to the end where Nuwa was located, and so I hustled to get to the rally point.

  Coming out from the woods I stopped in shock. I could see across the farmlands, and every building in sight was either smashed or on fire. Black smoke billowed up from several places that had been ranches or dairy farms. Off in the distance I could see Lake Six, but it was a brown smear across the landscape. It reminded me of the poisonous gunk where we had rescued the oceanographers. Why I thought about them, I just do not know.

  “Earle and Sylvia, you are also lost somewhere. Are Matkaja, Tudeng, Radha, and Carol with you? What happened to Eight-Squad?”

  I pushed aside those thoughts as my mind calculated the size of Lake Six. I knew Lake Three intimately well, and all six lakes in Queen were said to be the same rough size and shape. Lake Six, that brown quagmire before me was far bigger. The lands around it looked flooded with the brown crud. With the magnifiers in my faceplate I scanned and saw no one close to the route I was planning. I also checked out Lake Five, which was much further away and mostly obscured by some hills. It too looked brown from what I could see. That was not in the direction I was heading, so I gave it only a cursory overview.

  I kept a careful watch, but saw no signs of any Jellie activity. During the daylight hours, I figured my own strobe light would be less effective—even though I was unsure why it was effective at all—and I also wondered how bright the purple glow of the Jellies would be in the full light of the morning sky tube. “How much warning will I get that they are close?” So, I fast marched onward and about three hours later was getting to the opposite side of the biome.

  Everything I saw was ruined. Every building was crushe
d down in one way or another. Jellie made tunnel opening were in various places, and I tried to give them a wide berth. None were glowing, but I did not want to take any unnecessary risks. I saw signs that some livestock were running loose. The hoofprints showed a wild stampeded. I knew they were terrified, and when I caught up to where they were, they bolted as they saw me. Many of them were wounded with open slashes on their flanks. They had encountered the Jellies, somewhere.

  As I rounded around Lake Six, I caught sight of a battlefield, or the aftermath of one. Several engineering automacubes, two trucks, and a scattering of clothing were spread across a hay field. All the machinery was damaged. The hoods on the trucks were open, and the motors had broken parts hanging out. The automacubes were busted open, and one was still smoldering from some kind of fire. The clothing that was scattered about was in fact, more dead bodies. That included two people in Red Guard armor. I checked those bodies, but there was no additional ammunition or a better weapon. It looked like the guards had been killed by a Jellie ripping their heads off while they were still in their suits. Their helmets were in place, intact, but the faceplates of the armor were open, and the bodies inside were horribly mutilated. I wish I had not looked as closely as I did.