CROSS FIRE

by Fonda Lee

  A man waiting in line with his wife and child had been watching the entire drama unfold across the street. “You’re just letting those people go?” he demanded. “They’ll be up to something worse tomorrow.”

  “There’s nothing else we can do right now, sir,” Donovan explained. The man, an exo engineer-in-erze who seemed to be in his thirties and in good shape if incongruously balding, opened his mouth as if to berate the officers further, but his wife put a rebuking hand on his arm and smiled at Donovan apologetically. She was Hardened as well, slightly pudgy, also with Engineer’s markings. “Thank you for being here, Officer,” she said. “My brother-in-law is a stripe; I know you’ve all been working really hard. I want to say that we appreciate what you do.”

  “Thank you, ma’am,” Donovan said. The husband looked appropriately chastised and busied himself opening a packet of animal crackers for their daughter, who appeared to be three or four years old.

  “Do you know if there’s a long delay in Hardening applications these days?” the woman asked Donovan, looking anxiously at the line of people still forming behind them. The office had reopened, so at least people were moving now.

  “I don’t know, ma’am,” Donovan said. “You’ll have to ask inside.”

  “I’m sure we’ll have some sort of priority,” her husband assured her, in a tone of voice that suggested he damn well expected that to be the case for a dual-exo family.

  The mother bent to roll up her daughter’s sleeves before the girl could get crumbs on them. “Alissandra just turned four this month. Barely made the age cutoff for this application submission window,” she told Donovan. “I don’t know what they’re saying in any other erze, but in the Engineer erze there’s talk of evacuations. It’s frightening.” She shook her head, her hair swinging from side to side. “I’ll feel a lot better once the whole family’s Hardened.”

  “How long’s it take, normally, to schedule a Hardening?” Donovan wondered aloud to Jet as they drove back to the Round that evening. “Six months? I’ve got to think the Liaison Office is running behind, so even assuming everything goes well, that little girl won’t be an exo until next spring. Those parents figure being Hardened means they’ll all be protected, but won’t it be too late? The zhree will have already made all the evacuation decisions for Round Three by then, won’t they?”

  “Who knows.” Jet was in an uncharacteristically gloomy temper. “What good is it for you to be worried about that? We’re not in the Engineer erze and we don’t know those people. You can hope they make it, but that’s about all you can do.”

  “Ninety thousand people, Jet,” Donovan said. “That’s nothing. That’s a fraction of the exos around the world, to say nothing of everyone else.” Their patrol skimmercar navigated through heavy traffic to the Gate 5 checkpoint. Normally, the guard waved them straight through, but security was extra tight now. Even SecPac officers had to pull over and verify their exocellular body signatures. A crowd of people pressed against the checkpoint’s metal barricades, arguing with the guards, demanding to be let in. Donovan overheard one man loudly insisting that he had a current worker pass that he’d simply misplaced, and someone else pleading that she just needed to get in for a few hours to visit her sister.

  “Residents and permanent workers with erze markings and valid identification only,” the guard shouted. “No exceptions. Read the notices!”

  “They think it’s safe in here,” Donovan muttered, pulling his hand out from under the reader as the status light turned green. Jet nudged the skimmercar through the gate and they continued into the Round. “We can’t protect everyone in the Ring Belt as it is, and the way things are going, it’ll only get worse when the zhree leave.” Soldier Gur’s plan to evacuate a small population of exos was not yet public knowledge, but Donovan suspected it wouldn’t take long for rumors to find their way out of the Round and spread into the general population. Once people learned of evacuations they would be excluded from, fears would skyrocket even further.

  “You’ve got to wonder how many Sapience sympathizers are waking up to what ‘Earth for humans’ actually means.” Jet pulled the skimmercar up to the house. “You don’t really think you’re in trouble with Soldier Werth, do you? I’ll come with you to the Towers if you want. Just give me a minute to go to the bathroom and grab a granola bar or something from the kitchen.”

  Donovan shook his head. Maybe he was imagining it, but since the night he’d snuck out to see Anya, the night Jonathan had been murdered, Jet seemed to be staying a little closer. “You don’t need to come,” Donovan told him. “What can you do anyway?”

  Jet shrugged. “Offer moral support while you get your ass handed to you. Look appropriately guilty for not being a better partner and keeping you out of trouble.” He broke into a slow, sardonic smile, and Donovan snorted.

  “This isn’t CRP,” he said. “You’re not obligated to get chewed out with me.” He added more quietly, “Or to stick around just for my sake.”

  Jet’s smile faded. “I’m not moving out, D, if that’s what you’re talking about.” He shifted his weight and looked down. “Vic was right, it’s not a good time. Especially not now when no one knows what’s going to happen with this whole drawdown and evacuation thing.”

  Donovan nodded slowly, unsure what to say to that. So many things were messed up, and he couldn’t help but wonder if Jet resented him for being one additional source of worry when there was already enough to worry about. “I should get going,” he said. “It’d be better if you stayed home and knocked off our reports so we’re not up late again finishing them.”

  Jet couldn’t disagree. Donovan drove to the Towers and parked where he could find space, then walked quickly across the ground floor of the central tower, shortcutting over to the eastern barracks, where Werth and the main contingent of his Soldiers in Round Three resided. Donovan dodged zhree and humans alike hurrying to and fro. The Towers were bustling with nervous activity and the woven metal walls seemed to hum at a high pitch with the musical mingled speech of many anxious voices. Ever since Soldier Gur had arrived and the withdrawal edict had come down from the homeworld, the Mur colonists had been in a state of near frantic preparation. Even if the drawdown would take years to complete, it was no mean feat to organize an orderly departure from a planet after more than a hundred and thirty years of occupation.

  “Donovan!” He’d almost reached the other side of the main tower when a familiar trilling exclamation caused him to turn. Nurse Therrid’s fins fanned in greeting and he came over to clasp Donovan’s hand. “I haven’t seen you much lately. Although,” hummed the Nurse in a more considered tone, “that’s generally a good thing.” Nurse Therrid specialized in treating exos, and Donovan had been under his medical care entirely too much last year. On top of that, Donovan had flagrantly disobeyed Therrid, punched him in the eye, and locked him in a room. It had taken nearly two months for the Nurse to forgive him, though Donovan figured it could’ve been much worse. Therrid could’ve reported him to Soldier Werth—but he hadn’t.

  “What are you doing here, hatchling?” Therrid asked.

  “Soldier Werth called me over to the barracks. What about you, zun Therrid?”

  Therrid held up a computing disc. “Delivering this to Soldier Gur.” The Nurse’s fins twitched in a slight wince as he said the name. Apparently, Gur had returned from his travels around the planet. “I was asked to provide a report containing the health status, medical history, and genetic profile of every single exo in Round Three’s jurisdiction. Every exo in West America, Donovan. Do you have any idea how long it took to compile this?”

  Therrid’s body sagged slightly, then one of his yellow eyes gave a nervous blink as he noticed two of Gur’s Soldiers walking past. He lowered his voice. “I had to assign every exo into a tier based on health and age. You and Vercingetorix and most of your close erze mates will be fine,” Therrid assured Donovan. “You’re Tier 1—healthy, with many reproductive years ahead of you, eighth-gen
eration exocels, and high erze ratings, even accounting for a few blemishes here and there. Some of the other exos, though, older ones or those with health problems or injuries …” the Nurse trailed off, troubled. Donovan shifted uneasily; knowing that Therrid had been pulled into the selection process made the evacuations seem far more real and disturbing.

  The gently bulging egg sac on the underside of the Nurse’s torso suddenly caught Donavan’s eye. “Zun Therrid,” he exclaimed, “you didn’t mention you were brooding.”

  Therrid was quiet for a moment, then he sighed in a low hum. “It’s best if I don’t become too optimistic. The first brood is always the most uncertain. It takes fourteen months to produce eggs and six more months for them to mature to hatch readiness in the Nursery. I don’t know what the withdrawal schedule will be for my erze and when I’ll be expected to leave Earth.”

  “You could hatch your clutch elsewhere, couldn’t you? On Kreet.”

  “No,” Therrid snapped, his fins jerking with an abruptness that Donovan had rarely seen in him. “Brooding and hatch rates are a finicky thing. They won’t happen if the conditions aren’t right. There needs to be a certain level of gravity, atmospheric oxygen, and nutrition. I wouldn’t reach Kreet in time to brood there properly. I don’t think I could anyway, since the homeworld would be foreign to me. If we leave Earth soon, my body will simply break down and reabsorb my unhatched offspring.”

  “I didn’t know that,” Donovan said, uncomfortable now and worried his ignorant questions had offended the Nurse. “I’m sorry, zun.”

  “You should continue on your way, Donovan. I don’t want to hold you up from reporting to your erze master.” Therrid tapped the computing disc against the edge of his hull as if reminding himself of his unpleasant task before he walked away with heavier steps than before, some of his eyes strategically closed to avoid looking at Donovan as he crossed the floor.

  Guiltily, Donovan watched him go. In all his angry worries about what would happen to his erze mates and to humans in general, he hadn’t thought much about how the zhree colonists themselves would be reacting to the homeworld’s decision. Many of them, like Wiest, and Wiv, and Therrid, had never known any other home but Earth.

  The barracks were low, honeycomb-like structures situated along the eastern perimeter of the Towers and adjacent to the restricted military landing fields and shipyards. Donovan had been here before—all SecPac officers toured it during training so they would be knowledgeable about the layout of the Towers and its defenses. Donovan went up to the largest of the buildings but came to an uncertain stop when he saw one of Gur’s Soldiers standing by the entrance.

  The foreign Soldier stood battle-armored with all six eyes open, his fins still and flat in an unapologetically aggressive posture that reminded Donovan of a frowning, muscled bouncer outside the entrance of a bar. Staring at the homeworlder’s thin, jagged markings, Donovan felt an immediate sense of dislike rising along with his exocel. Determinedly, he approached the Soldier, halted in front of him, and dropped his armor respectfully.

  Before he could open his mouth to speak, the Soldier whipped out a limb and smacked Donovan in the chest. It wasn’t a hard blow, but it startled Donovan so much that he jumped back. “What do you want, human?” the Soldier demanded.

  Donovan’s armor had sprung up in reflex but barely in time—the blow still stung. “I’m here to see Soldier Werth,” he said, unable to contain the surprise and anger in his voice. The homeworlder didn’t answer. It was obvious he didn’t understand what Donovan was saying. The smack had been delivered in wary disdain, like a man aiming a kick at a stray dog.

  Not for the first frustrating time, Donovan wished that human vocal cords were capable of making the sounds of the Mur language. He pointed at himself, then at the entrance to the building—any dimwit could understand that. The zhree looked skeptically at him, then called out to a couple of Werth’s Soldiers walking past. “You two—this human seems to want to get inside.”

  “Then let him in,” called back one of the passing Soldiers, annoyed. “How many times do we have to tell you? The humans inside the Round aren’t dangerous.”

  “It’s not hard to requisition yourself a translation machine,” muttered the other.

  The foreign Soldier drew himself up. “You frontier dwellers are staggeringly lax at supervising the natives.” His voice vibrated with sneering authority. “You will escort this human where it needs to go.”

  The two Soldiers bristled, their armor thickening over their hulls, but they held back from openly defying someone with Gur’s markings. “As you say, zun,” one of the Soldiers said curtly. He gestured for Donovan to follow him inside.

  Donovan glanced back over his shoulder with narrowed eyes, rubbing the bruise that was forming on his chest as he followed his escort into the barracks. “Thank you, zun.”

  “Insufferable homeworlders, acting as if they run the place,” the Soldier muttered in a hum. “All the while complaining about the texture of our algae and jumping at the sight of every human. Where are you supposed to be going?”

  “Soldier Werth asked me to see him, zun.”

  The Soldier had eyes of a lighter yellow than most zhree; the nearest two fixed on Donovan more closely and his annoyance turned to interest. “I recognize you. I was at the algae farm standoff last year. You’re Donovan Reyes.”

  “Yes, zun,” Donovan said, surprised. Not all zhree were good at telling humans apart.

  The Soldier’s fins riffled in satisfaction. “You saved those two Engineers and their humans-in-erze. I was skeptical when SecPac insisted on trying to send in a negotiator, but you convinced the hostiles to back down. You must have high social rank among humans to be so influential.”

  Donovan choked back a laugh. The unusual circumstances of his family life would be too complicated to explain to the Soldier. “I’m nothing special, zun.”

  They passed through several of the barracks’ large communal living spaces. Soldiers on sleep shift were dozing in wall niches, one or two eyes remaining disconcertingly open. A group of other Soldiers bantered while performing weapons inspection and maintenance; a few of them paused to watch curiously as Donovan’s escort led him toward the large chamber in the center of the building—Soldier Werth’s quarters and briefing room. Both man and zhree stopped just inside the entrance of the room and dropped their armor. “Zun Werth, Donovan is here to see you,” said the Soldier.

  Werth was standing in the curve of a semicircular console that wrapped nearly two hundred and seventy degrees around him, with different screens displaying an overwhelming array of information. Werth’s many eyes opened and closed as he shifted his attention between them. “You’re late, Donovan.”

  “I’m sorry, zun,” Donovan began.

  His zhree escort beat him to the explanation. “He ran into one of Gur’s Soldiers.”

  Soldier Werth’s fins shifted in a slow grimace. “Thank you, Wylt,” their erze master said. “You may go. And have Wiest scrounge up a few more translation machines for the benefit of our friends from the homeworld.”

  In the Mur language, the word friend as humans understood it was only used to refer to amicable relationships with zhree of other erze. Werth and Gur were the leaders of two different erze but since both were Soldiers, the polite and hospitable thing to do would’ve been to refer to the visiting homeworlders as erze mates (though they were not technically so) or erze comrades. Werth’s use of the more distant word friend was a nuance not lost on Wylt or Donovan. They glanced at each other in surprise.

  “Yes, zun.” Soldier Wylt left.

  “Come closer, Donovan,” Werth ordered. He paused what he was doing, setting all six limbs onto the ground as he fixed his attention on the human. “Commander Tate tells me that you have some very strong opinions about the evacuation plan, which you shared with your erze mates at the most recent briefing.”

  Donovan remained standing at attention in front of Werth, his exocel still lowered. “It’s
not out of erze to express one’s opinions among erze mates, is it, zun?”

  He had a suspicion his response came across as cheeky, but Werth merely continued looking at him. “I value initiative in humans. Your commander has been arguing with me since she was practically a hatchling, and I appreciate that it has made the working partnership between zhree and humans stronger. Eventually, however, we must align on the best course of action for the erze.”

  “I don’t see how selecting and evacuating the younger and fitter exos is the best thing for the erze.” Donovan did his best to keep his voice calm. “You’re asking some stripes to leave their erze mates behind to save themselves. That doesn’t make any sense. It’s the opposite of what these markings mean.”

  “Those markings,” said Soldier Werth, “are my markings.”

  “With respect, zun,” Donovan said, “you don’t own what they mean.”

  There was a long beat of silence between them; Donovan could no longer keep his armor from layering nervously. Soldier Werth’s fins were still, his expression grudging. “Sometimes I forget,” he said at last, “how closely humans can resemble their biological progenitors in temperament. You are clearly the offspring of Dominick Reyes. It’s time you heard the truth.”

  Soldier Werth tapped on a section of the console in front of him. His pincers manipulated the controls and an image sprang into three-dimensional form over the console’s projection pad.

  Was it … a space station? A ship? It was some sort of spacefaring structure, but it was unlike anything Donovan had ever seen, even in pictures. The massive cruisers and transport ships he was familiar with were sleek and cylindrical. The bodies of fighter craft were spherical, rotating freely within diamond-shaped wing frames. This holographic monstrosity was irregularly shaped, with all sorts of pieces connected seemingly haphazardly, so it was impossible to tell if there was an intended front or back or top or bottom. Some sections looked to be ancient and battered, others appeared new and constructed from entirely different metals. The thing was clearly not meant to ever take off or land. It looked like something that had not been designed, but had grown, like an amoeba or a cancer.