Space: Above and Beyond 1 - Space: Above and Beyond

by Peter Telep

  Except one.

  He sneaked a look at Shane. She chewed, swallowed, and kept blowing her bangs out of her eyes. He studied her full lips, almost doubting the fact that he had kissed them. She'd been right about him: he didn't know how to deal with women.

  She could teach him.

  But if he forced himself on her, he'd receive a beating just shy of paralyzing. Were boxing still a legal sport, she would be a featherweight champion.

  Hawkes had had many girlfriends and had lost them all. Even In Vitro women found fault with him. He couldn't understand what was wrong. Either he moved too fast, too slow, said the right thing, the wrong thing, arrived too late, too early or—and this one had shocked him—had not worn matching socks. How could a woman dump him for that?

  After dinner, he caught Shane as she was replacing her tray and tossing away her trash. He asked if he could speak with her. She looked at him a little strangely, but agreed. They ambled out of the mess hall and onto the tarmac, where Hawkes paused and looked at her.

  He figured it would be a good idea to begin with an apology for what had happened on the way to Mars. Though he'd heard and seen other people do it, he wasn't sure how to form the exact expression or make the words sound right.

  "What is it?" she asked, brushing her hair off her shoulder and probably growing a little impatient with him.

  "I'm sorry?" Wrong. It wasn't supposed to come out like a question.

  "Are you?" she asked, raising her voice even higher than he had. "For what?"

  "You know..." Across the tarmac, the heat haze made the shapes of the hangars fluctuate. He wished he could look at her.

  "Cooper. If you're sorry, then you have to be sure." If honey had a sound, that sound was Shane's voice.

  "I am," he said. "I, uh, I need... some help."

  She circled to face him. "It's polite to look at a person when you're talking to them."

  "See... that's... no one really taught me... I mean the school they sent me to was crummy. They didn't wanna spend a lot of money on tanks back then."

  "How do you want me to help you?"

  "You know..."

  "No, I don't know."

  Blood rushed to his head, and he wiped his sweaty palms on his hips. He took a few steps away from her. "I know you and I will never... but one day... I... I don't know how..."

  "Are we talking about love? Sex? Or what?" she asked, shocking him with her frankness.

  "I know all about the sex part," he confessed. "I'm not sterile like a lot of the others." He bit his lip and lifted his gaze to meet hers. "How do you fall in love? And how do you keep someone?"

  At first she looked embarrassed by his questions, but then she seemed to ponder them, squinting into the sky. Finally, she lowered her gaze and shrugged.

  "You've never been in love?" he asked.

  "I don't know."

  "So, I guess you've never been with someone for a long time."

  "That's difficult to say."

  "Why?"

  "It's very complicated, Cooper."

  "Can you explain it to me?"

  "Not really. It's hard."

  He grinned. "I know. But at least now I know one thing."

  "What's that?"

  "I'm not alone."

  Hawkes and Shane joined West and the rest of the recruits. The Marines loitered on the vast field of tarmac outside the hangar, watching the silhouettes of planes draw twenty-five degree angles across the burnt orange tableau as they returned to the distant runway.

  Most of the planes rolled in the direction of hangars on the other side of the base, but Hawkes found his gaze glued to one that was apparently headed their way. Indeed, the jet drew closer, and Hawkes identified it as an SA-43 Endo/Exo Atmospheric Attack plane, a Hammerhead like the one he'd flown the first time in the simulator. But the simulator had done little justice to the magnificent piece of machinery that gleamed before his eyes. As the shadow of the plane swept over him, he heard Bartley shout, "Assemble. Sergeant Bougus is here."

  After moving into the cool shade of the hangar, Nathan came to attention with the others.

  Bougus strode in and assumed his usual position before them. "Today, you have been assigned your SA-43 Endo/Exo Atmospheric Attack jets. You are now members of the fifth air wing, fifty-eighth squadron."

  It took all of Hawkes's limited though intense training to keep him from jumping into the air and waving a list. Bougus would go thermonuclear were Hawkes to exhibit that kind of behavior. Still, a few of the others reacted with half-stifled gasps. He heard Wang whisper, "Yes!"

  Bougus, surely expecting excitement, let the minor outbursts go unpunished. "Your current orders are to take forty-eight hours' leave."

  And that brought on a collective moan from the recruits.

  "Sir, two days, sir?" Damphousse asked.

  West stepped forward. "Sir, ship us out, sir!"

  Shane cleared her throat. "Sir, why have we been on accelerated training if we're not going to be used, sir?" The sergeant was three seconds away from detonation as he locked on and crossed to his target: Shane. But then his face softened and the countdown ceased. He took a deep breath before speaking. "Other than what you found last week, we have no idea what lies ahead. We still know basically nothing of the enemy. Numbers. Tactics. Weapons. We've got some hardware, but nothing's been assimilated. That is why we have been losing—and losing badly—in every battle of this war." He paused to make eye contact with each member of the squadron. "Don't be in such a hurry. Trust me. The war'll wait for you."

  "Sir, what are we supposed to do for two days, sir—besides worry?" Stone asked.

  "My advice? See your families. It could be for the last time. Go." He clicked his heels and executed a perfect salute.

  Hawkes and the rest returned the sergeant's salute. "Dismissed."

  As Bougus marched off, Hawkes abruptly found himself with nowhere to go. He crossed to the doorway of the hangar and leaned against a warm metal support strut. He listened to West and Shane, who had paused behind him.

  "You gonna see your sisters?" he asked.

  "I don't think they want to see me."

  "I never told my folks I was joining the Corps. I don't know if I wanna be there for that reaction."

  "They'll want to see you."

  "You wanna be witness to that?"

  She must have agreed, for they left together, and as they did so, Hawkes realized that he envied West. Yes, the guy still had a few trace elements of Mr. Hotshot in him, but for the past week he had walked instead of strutting, spoken instead of ordering, and smiled instead of sneering. What West had that Hawkes lacked was the ability to talk comfortably with Shane. Hawkes wasn't sure if the guy was making his move on her, since West seemed preoccupied by the face on his photo tag. Then again, that woman might just be dead. West was probably, however it was done, coming to terms with her loss. Now he and Shane were going to his house. Someone had once told Hawkes that you don't bring a girl home to meet your parents unless you're really serious about her. He could never make that connection.

  An SA-43 rolled slowly out of the hangar next door. The pilot appeared from the shadows, his helmet in the rook of his arm. Lettering painted below the Marine's cockpit identified him as Lt. T. C. McQueen, and Hawkes recognized the man as the Angry Angel who'd sat by himself at Asteroids. There was something else about him that Hawkes suspected. He started toward plane and pilot, playing out his hunch.

  McQueen was doing his walk around, checking seals and tire pressure, opening up compartments to read the gauges within. The Marine did not acknowledge Hawkes. The pilot wasn't rude, just busy.

  He watched McQueen, and as he did, he was reminded of the stark truth that from here on out the battle would be real, not simulated. If he made a mistake he would die. Simple math.

  Then, wanting to bang his foolish head against the hull of McQueen's plane, he thought about his death, about who he would die for. He would die for a country that had treated with him hostility a
nd prejudice all his life, for a country that had created the horrible In Vitro program in the first place. He would die for people like Davis, Otto, Tatum, and Shell, the animals who had attempted to hang him.

  In the lingering heat of twilight, Hawkes felt cold. Somewhere along the line he'd gone wrong. He had decided not to get himself booted out of the Corps and had gone along with the program. He even loved the flying. But he wasn't supposed to love any of it! All of it had been a sentence laid down by a judge who had had an aversion to the truth. The Marine Corps was a place to do his time. Heroes wound up like Pags.

  Once abandoned, the old feeling of rebellion was back with vengeance. He'd find a way to get out of going. He would. "I'll never get in one of those," he told McQueen.

  Without looking at him, the pilot said, "Ten of us tanks were with the Tellus colony."

  I knew it. He hadn't sat alone at the bar for nothing. The other Angels hadn't wanted him around. Yet he's a fool, about to join them and risk his life... for what? Nothing.

  "Ten tanks, huh? Only makes the aliens just as bad." Hawkes put a hand on McQueen's shoulder and pulled the pilot away from his plane. He fixed the guy with a penetrating stare. "I'm not gonna die for them."

  McQueen nodded as though he understood everything. Perhaps getting the Marine to see the light was easier than Hawkes had thought.

  Then the pilot removed Hawkes's hand from his shoulder. "Who would you die for?"

  The question jarred him. He already knew who he wouldn't die for, but was there anyone—anything—so important to him that that person, that concept, was worth his life? He'd had no one, had always been alone in the world. Friends had come and gone. He could weigh the question all day. Maybe it didn't have an answer. Shaking, torn, he spun on his heel and stormed off.

  By nightfall, the flat desert of tarmac was a distant memory. He retreated down a dark road paralleled on both sides by clusters of oaks, pines, and sago palms. Crickets conversed about the heat of the past day, and above their din, the mighty rush of jet engines intermittently struck a painful chord. By morning, the war, the Corps, all of it, would be out of his life forever.

  eighteen

  The farmhouse was roughly 1,800 kilometers north of the base, nestled among the green hills of a New England town appropriately named Farmingville. The home had been in Nathan's family for three generations. The Wests took great pride in their little piece of Americana, and Nathan was sure that he or one of his brothers would carry on the tradition. Save for the trio of mini satellite dishes that had been mounted on the roof a half-dozen years prior, the place had remained unchanged for as long as he could remember. Sure, Dad would have the house painted now and again, change the flower beds, put the light-pink impatiens here, the darker pink begonias there, but he was a man who relished stability and routine.

  Presently, however, there were new additions to the house, ones that made Nathan hesitate at the foot of the driveway.

  "What's wrong?" Shane asked, smoothing the wrinkles out of her green uniform.

  He took another look at the yellow ribbons tied to the front porch. "I guess I was kind of hoping to tell them myself. They must've talked to Kylen's father...."

  They were but halfway up the drive when the porch's screen door flew open. Nathan's fourteen-year-old brother John ran across the porch, disregarded the steps and jumped onto the concrete, shouting, "Nathan! Nathan! Mom! Dad! It's Nathan!"

  Nathan extended his arms to hug his brother, but he'd forgotten that John was at that age where hugs are simply not acceptable manly behavior.

  Grinning ear to ear, John grabbed his hand and gave him a thumbs-up shake. "I told everybody at school how you're gonna be a pilot up there," he said, tilting his head to the sky.

  A figure appeared behind the screen door and lingered there. Though the person was cast mostly in shadow, Nathan knew it was Mom. Slowly, the door opened and she slid from behind it. She crossed to the edge of the porch and stood at the top of the steps, grabbing a round wooden column for support. She had probably just come from work, as she was still clad in office attire that accented her grace and sophistication. Yet now, Nathan had trouble picturing her as anything else but a pale mother sadly seeing her boy as a man for the first time.

  He released John's hand and moved toward her. He climbed the steps, and before he could say anything, she pulled his head to her shoulder. She trembled, and he thought she might cry.

  The screen door opened once more. Nathan looked up and saw his father. "Mom, Dad, John. This is my friend, Shane Vansen."

  Shane smiled. "It's a pleasure, Mr. and Mrs. West."

  John jogged back to Shane and gave her the onceover. "You're a pilot too, aren't you?"

  Shane nodded.

  "Dinner's almost ready," his mother said, and doing a poor job of disguising the fact that she was choked up, she turned from him and headed back into the house.

  Nathan rose onto the porch, took his father's hand and shook it. "I was gonna give you a rock I pocketed on Mars, but it never got through quarantine."

  Dad's lips came together. He'd never seen the man more doleful. "Come on inside."

  He stood there, not following his father but thinking twice about complying. It was safe to guess that the entire visit was going to be a gloomy, depressing reminder of just how much his parents despised his decision to join the Corps. All his life Nathan had shunned conflicts. When his parents had fought, he had run into his room and hidden beneath his bed. He was too big for that now, figuratively and literally, yet the same desire to flee persisted.

  Shane came onto the porch, and though he knew she could read the tension in his family, she didn't seem moved by it. She gestured with her head toward the door.

  Before they could enter, Neil, Nathan's seventeen-year-old middle brother, came out with an expression of deep concern.

  "Hey, Neil. Shane, this is my brother Neil."

  Neil put his back to the screen door, blocking their entrance. "The TV said we're about to begin another battle," he uttered gravely.

  Nathan exchanged a dire look with Shane. They went inside, heading swiftly for the television.

  In the living room, Shane, Nathan, and his brothers sat on the sofa before the 162-centimeter flat-screen TV mounted on the wall. A special news report was on. A female reporter stood before a hangar that swarmed with activity. "I'm here at the U.N. Task Force headquarters at Vandenburg, California, receiving the latest reports of the mobilization of the Russian Kiev starship carrier. They have joined the battle lines with the French carrier Clemenceau and the U.S.S. Colin Powell."

  Neil picked up the remote and thumbed down the sound. "I heard the alien fighters are made of an unknown metal. That we can't harm it."

  "They only started reverse engineering the one we found. That's just a rumor," Nathan said, keeping his gaze on the screen. The picture switched between the too-pretty anchor in the studio and the reporter in the field, and for the moment Nathan was glad Neil had killed the sound; he could live without the banal questions posed by the anchor.

  "Kylen's brother told us—"

  Nathan's glare cut off Neil's sentence at the knees. He rose and started out of the room, listening to their voices behind him.

  "Don't worry," Shane told Neil. "This time out we'll beat them."

  "How do you know?" John asked.

  "Because this time they're going up against the 127th, the Angry Angels. They'll knock the enemy into Andromeda."

  But Shane didn't sound too sure of herself.

  Turning down an old, welcoming hall, Nathan found the bathroom and locked himself inside. He put his face close to the mirror, trying to see if his pain was visible. He looked all right. He remembered when he and Kylen had stood before the same mirror. They had told each other how they were the perfect heights for each other, she slightly shorter than him. Yes, they had been the perfect couple.

  Only a spirit stood with him now.

  He left the bathroom and went into the kitchen. Dad stood
at the stove, stirring his stew with a wooden spoon. Mom was at the cupboard, taking out glasses and placing them on the counter. Nathan went to the table and collapsed into a chair. "Any word?"

  Dad didn't look back at him. "Kylen's father was told it had been... difficult to... identify the bodies. They don't know, Nathan."

  Out of the corner of his eye, Nathan thought he saw someone move into the dark dining room that adjoined the kitchen. Probably Neil or John spying.

  Mom took a plate from the cupboard. She brought it down toward the counter then suddenly smashed it to pieces. Collapsing onto her elbows, she was fraught with more pain than Nathan had ever seen in her before. But she still held it inside. Dad went to her, slid his arm over her shoulders. She wrenched away from him.

  Nathan's heart raced from guilt. He had to say something and blurted out, "There was nothing I could do."

  "You could have talked to us," Dad shot back.

  "I knew what you would have said. And I didn't want to hear it. I enlisted because I had no choice."

  Mom erupted, coming to him and beating her fist on the table. "No... No... Now you have no choice!"

  Nathan closed his eyes and flinched, but held his seat. He didn't have the guts to look at her. "As a colonist, you never would have seen me again—so what's the difference?"

  "You'd be alive!"

  "I'd be dead!"

  "Your mother means that as a colonist your life would have been about creating life, not taking it," Dad explained, his tone a notch more composed than Mom's but still nowhere near normal.

  With courage and the justification to back it up, Nathan opened his eyes and regarded father. "So, now it's about saving lives. Yours, Mom's, Kylen's..."

  "Son, you can't believe that she's still alive."

  "I have to believe."

  He hated the moment almost as much as he did the aliens. Nowhere to run. He needed to run. Get away. Go. Leave this alone. Run. Run. Run.