by Weston Ochse
I did, holding my hands up, fists tight, shoulders loose.
“Now watch what I do.” He stepped just past me, turned and pushed. I found myself on my butt, wondering how the hell I got there.
“I found your hole and stepped into it.”
I raised an eyebrow, not knowing what he meant.
He reached down and pulled me up. His hand felt like a brick. He positioned me like I’d been, then explained. “Look how you’re arrayed on an axis.” He pointed to my front and back feet. “You’re balanced from front to back. Now see this?” he said, pointing to the space between my feet. “That is your hole. Listen, imagine a triangle. Your front foot is at one corner, your back foot’s at the other corner, and my entry point into your hole is the other corner.”
I saw the genius of it. “That’s for front and back, yes?”
His eyes took on a playfulness. “Pretty much, but…”
“What’s the catch?
“Let’s try it and see. But this time, keep me from going into your hole.”
I got back into position and so did he. I waited, loose on my feet. I’d had my share of fights and had an impressive set of wins. But that was because I couldn’t quit. I watched Charlemagne bounce on his feet. I noted the scars on his face and head, as well as the ones along his knuckles.
He feinted towards my front hole, and I turned to the right, blocking it. He backed away, bouncing back and forth on his feet like a prize fighter. Then he feinted towards my front hole again. I barely managed to turn when he launched towards my exposed back. I spun back, realizing when I presented my front hole to him how he’d tricked me. He stepped in and pushed me over with a finger.
Pretty much, but…
Yeah, now I saw it.
I laughed as he pulled me back up.
“Do you do that in the EXO, too?”
His eyes brightened. “The Cray are no different. They each have holes to exploit.”
“You know that sounds gross, right?” Asterix said, watching us with his arms crossed.
His sister punched him in the shoulder. “Grow up.”
I ignored them and invited Merlin to join us. Soon we’d worked up a sweat, practicing stepping into each other’s holes—balance disruption, where have you been all my life. Everything was going well until Nance was called to the cockpit by the crew chief. He spent a few moments in there, then I felt the aircraft turn in a wide circle. I desperately wanted to know what was going on, but I even more desperately didn’t want to be in the military anymore. I let Charlemagne school Merlin while I watched and waited. Finally Nance came out of the cockpit. He gestured for me to come forward and join him.
When I got to him I asked, “What’s going on?”
Worry shone in his eyes. Sweat beaded his brow. “Come and take a look.”
He led me into the cockpit. It was tight, but there was enough room for both of us to bend down and look out the windscreen.
Leviathan. Bigger than any aircraft carrier—more like the size of five city blocks. Slightly oblong, it had a front—if that was the front—like a manta ray and the rear was rounded. I’d never seen one before, but had heard of their existence. One of the Yupik men had told a story in the warmth of the long house about seeing one a hundred miles north of Savoonga. He’d said that a family of polar bears lived on it. I noted that the surface was mostly dry, probably because it hovered above the water by several feet. This one didn’t have a family of polar bears. It had much, much worse.
“Are they what I think they are?”
The pilot nodded. “Cray. We’ve counted thirty-seven.”
If one of the Cray got close enough to the C-130, its EMP burst would turn us into a flying rock.
The co-pilot seemed to understand this, and kept glancing worriedly at the pilot.
“Which way is it heading?”
“Same as us,” the pilot said.
Which meant that the Cray that had attacked the village had most likely not been coming for me, instead trying to make it to the Leviathan.
“How far are we from Savoonga?”
“Two hundred nautical miles.”
“And how fast is the Leviathan traveling?”
“Our radar tracks it at thirty-three knots.”
“That fast?” I asked.
“That fast,” the pilot replied.
A warning light flashed. The co-pilot pointed to the radar.
“One, two, three Cray are airborne.”
“That’s it then,” said the pilot. “Back on course.
He pulled the C-130 out of its racetrack, and put it on a heading back towards Chukotka.
I watched for a moment as the three red dots began to recede, only they weren’t receding as fast as I would have imagined.
Finally, I asked, “How fast are we going?”
“Four hundred twenty miles an hour,” said the co-pilot.
“And how fast are they going?”
“One hundred and fifty miles an hour.”
My jaw dropped. I’d never known a Cray to achieve even half that speed. I’d noted back on Savoonga that the ones which had attacked had seemed larger. Now I knew why. These weren’t drones. These were something else entirely. These were reconnaissance Cray or worse… hunter-killers.
Show me a hero and I’ll write you a tragedy.
F. Scott Fitzgerald
CHAPTER SEVEN
ONCE BACK IN the hold, Nance pulled me aside. “Listen, sir. You should really be the one in charge.”
I shook my head. “No reason to be. You’re doing just fine.”
“But this doesn’t make any sense and it feels weird. You outrank me.”
“I used to,” I said, smiling. “Now I’m a civilian. I don’t outrank anyone.”
Nance was about to say something else, but stopped. I could see him arguing with himself about whether or not to keep going. My curiosity was piqued.
“Out with it.”
I saw the way he looked at me.
“Seriously,” I said. “Say what you want to say.”
“Captain Ohirra said that you might be reluctant because of everything that’s happened.”
I grinned, but there was no joy in it. Everything that’s happened. Code for you’ve killed far too many of your own people. I swallowed back a retort and said, “Here’s how I look at it. We’re both fighting for the same thing—the survival of the team and the survival of our planet. I’m doing it as a citizen, much like those American farmers and settlers did during the Revolutionary War. You’re doing it as soldier, recruited, trained, and readied for war. If I was alone I’d be in charge of myself. But now that I’m with you, I fall under military edict. You’re the senior military person on the team so you’re in charge. Me, I just happen to be an expert in killing things.”
Yeah. Both Cray and my own men and women.
“It’s been a long day. We have about four hours and I need some shut-eye. So if you don’t mind, Corporal…”
He stared at me a moment, and then sighed. “Carry on,” he said, playing the game.
I found a spot on top of the pallet. Charlemagne was pointing out different things on the EXO to Merlin. Asterix and Obelix were still practicing the sullen teenager routine. Nance went to his own EXO and began to PMCS it. And I was already fucking tired of it all. I laid back and rewound the conversation I’d had with the young corporal. I’d made all that shit up on the fly. Ohirra had me dead to rights. I didn’t want someone else to die, at least not under my watch. Not that I was going to let anyone else realize my reasoning.
I slipped into a fitful sleep.
My dead lived on in my dreams. Of all things, they played poker. Except instead of being themselves, they were dogs. More specifically, the velvet dogs playing poker painting come to life.
Thompson was the bulldog.
Michelle was the Lassie dog.
Olivares was the German Shepherd.
Mikey was the hound.
Stranz was the Doberman.
> And McKenzie, fittingly, was the Scottie.
I watched like a fly on the wall as they played, talking about me.
“He gave us a St. Crispin’s Day speech,” Stranz said. “It made me want to die even faster.”
“He was always good as speechifying,” Mikey said… the same Mikey who’d evaporated in a cloud of mist. “In fact, you know you’re going to die when he starts talking.”
“Happens every time,” McKenzie said.
“Oh shit,” Thompson said, “He’s watching.”
All eyes turned to me. I felt an uncomfortable shiver as they regarded me, the canine eyes suddenly alien and intrusive. Their gaze held me in their grasp until finally Olivares said, “Go fish.” Then they all laughed uproariously, returning to their game and playing some odd version of poker, Go Fish, and old maid.
They talked about the best places to pee and the best cuts of meat. They talked about chasing balls, and then Michelle waxed long about the sheer joy of chasing cars: barking at them, then running towards them only to have them flee in utter terror of her. When she was done, she broke into song, singing killmekillmekillme to the tune of Culture Club’s Karma Chameleon.
I forced myself awake. I must have been sleeping deeply, because my mouth felt like twelve miles of hot desert road. For a moment, I forgot where I was. Staring at the ceiling of the hold in the back of a C-130, I didn’t know if I was going to Iraq or Afghanistan. Was I a sergeant or a lieutenant? What was my mission? I couldn’t remember any of it. My mind was as empty as a wide, flat plain.
I let my eyes slip closed once more, then awoke with a start.
Olivares stood over me.
“You going to sleep all day, troop?” he asked.
Jet black hair cut into a high and tight. Pock-marked cheeks like Tommy Lee Jones and a switchblade smile. He’d always been a better soldier than I was. The only thing I’d ever done better than him was that Michelle had chosen to be with me.
I yawned and stretched. “Man. I was having one hell of a dream,” I said. Sitting up, I noted I was in my old army fatigues. I glanced beneath me and saw that I’d been sleeping on a pallet of MREs. I tried to describe the dream, but it was fleeting, on spider silk. Something about walruses and the sea. I remembered an orca whale and almost being eaten. I shook my head to clear it and when I did, the dream went away entirely.
“Where are we?” I asked Olivares as I stood and shook the sleep from my legs.
“Somewhere over Texas.”
I nodded, then noticed that other than the pallet of MREs, there was nothing else in the hold. Not even any other soldiers. That couldn’t be right.
Then I stared at Olivares. We hadn’t met until OMBRA recruited us. The first time I’d laid eyes on him was in the underground training facility in Wyoming. The last time was at Fort Irwin, right before he’d taken a squad to Las Vegas to—
“What’s going on?” I asked.
Olivares smiled. “I was wondering when you were going to ask.”
“Am I still asleep?”
“Like a babe in the womb.”
“Who is this? You can’t be Olivares.”
“What, you don’t believe in coming back from the dead?”
“Seriously, what is this shit?”
Olivares, or whoever the hell it was pretending to be Olivares in my dreams, stared at me for a moment. Then he said, “It’s been a long time since we talked, Mason.”
Then it hit me—Thompson. I’d first met the boy when he’d become part of our team back in Alaska, after the invasion but before Kilimanjaro. He’d been a drummer in the army band before they’d turned him into a stone cold EXO killer. Then he’d volunteered to be a Human Machine Interface Device or HMID. After I’d become a fungee, then been cured, my brain had somehow rewired so that I could mentally communicate with the HMIDs. In fact, it had been Michelle who had been in my head helping me understand, right up until the point I’d killed her. They’d believed the hypocrealiacs had intentionally programmed the ophiocordyceps invasionus fungus to not only infect other species, but to allow their brains to be used and controlled by another alien species—whatever had been in the HMID-like black box beneath the Hollywood Hive.
“I thought I told you to fuck off, Thompson.”
He made the Olivares simulacrum grin again. “Long time no brain invade.”
Thompson had a way of eavesdropping, then forcing his communications through my brain. In fact, that he and Mr. Pink had used me to kill the supposed ‘master’ beneath the hive was what cinched my decision to leave OMBRA far behind. Not that I didn’t mind killing aliens, but it was the being used against my will part that I couldn’t ignore.
“What is it you want?”
“Nothing now, but later… I’m going to have something for you.”
“How are you communicating?” A terrible thought came across. “Have you been with me the entire time?”
Olivares shook his head. “You were pretty isolated there.”
“That was my plan.”
“I’m bouncing this signal through the ship’s communication array as well as three UAVs.”
“Why now? Is it because you missed me so much?”
Olivares gave me a strange look, almost like disappointment, but tinged with something I couldn’t figure. “You might be surprised how much you’ve been missed.”
“Oh, I suppose Mr. Pink has been pining away for me all this time.”
“Something like that.” He paused, then asked, “Do you remember when we were together in the metro tunnel beneath the hive?”
“You mean when you were in my head and I was in the tunnel being sniffed at by a guard dog Cray? Yeah, I remember that.”
“Do you remember what you asked me then? The question I didn’t answer?”
I threw myself back in time. All I could recall was how terrified I’d felt carrying the nuke into the back door of the hive like I was delivering a pizza. “No, I don’t.”
Olivares nodded. “Think about it then. See if you can remember what it was I wouldn’t answer.”
“Why not just come out and say it?”
Olivares shook his head again. “Once I say it, it can’t be unspoken.”
Now I was really confused. “That pretty much sums up everything someone says.”
“Not if you really think about it.” He depressed a button and the ramp began to lower. The interior of the hold was now filled with the sounds of rushing air. He walked to the edge of the ramp and pointed down. “This is where the magic happens.”
Down below? Where’d he say we were—Texas? I was about to ask him what he meant, when he said one last thing.
“Watch out for the Russians. They’re close.”
Then he jumped. Instead of falling, he landed on a cloud, then found another and leapfrogged out of sight.
Fucking dreams.
Now how was I going to wake the fuck up?
If you kill enough of them, they stop fighting.
Curtis LeMay
CHAPTER EIGHT
TURNS OUT, I didn’t have to figure it out. Nance shook my shoulder and I snapped awake.
“What is it?” I asked, sitting up and making sure that this was the real C-130 and not the dream version.
“We’re an hour out. Need to give a mission brief.”
I wiped my face with my left hand and started to stand, but he put a hand in the middle of my chest and wouldn’t let me. For a brief moment, I felt heat bloom in my face, then I relaxed as I saw the concern in his eyes.
“What is it?”
“You were mumbling when you slept.”
I wiped my face again. “Dreams. They never stop, you know?”
He looked me in the eyes, then said, “You were saying ‘killmekillmekillme’.”
I frowned as the image of Michelle dying in my arms slapped me across the face. I couldn’t help but close my eyes, but the image stayed. I blinked hard, trying to see something else, but the image remained superimposed over Nance’s
concerned face. I’d thought I’d gotten over it. I’d barely thought about her or anyone else in the last few months. Diving into the subsistence life of the Yupik had occupied every waking breath. Now look at me.
“That wasn’t me saying it,” I said, my voice suddenly raspy.
“But it was you. I heard it.”
“No, I mean it was my—” What should I call her? We hadn’t really been boyfriend and girlfriend. We’d only been with each other once, but our love ran bone deep. “She was the woman I loved. She asked me to kill her and I did.” Seeing the look of shock and confusion in his eyes, I added, “She became one of the first HMIDs. She was miserable.”
Nance’s reply was stony silence. He stared hard at me for what must have been a full minute. “Have you talked about this with anyone?”
I shook my head. “Who’s there to talk to? We all have problems.”
“We don’t all have the same problems. There’s always someone to talk to.”
I grinned. “Sounds easy.”
“It could be. Worked for me.”
Now it was my turn to look hard at him. What was it in his past that haunted him? We all had something now that we’d been planet-jacked. But more and more it wasn’t something we did, but something that we saw, or something we were unable to do... like save our families and our loved ones from the destruction of the Cray and the fungees.
“Do you know how the original member of TF OMBRA were selected?”
He shook his head.
“Unlike now, where they take anyone with a heartbeat, back before the invasion they were looking for extra special soldiers. Mr. Pink tracked me down on the Vincent Thomas Bridge. I was trying to commit suicide like that film director, Tony Scott.”
“I’ve met a lot of people who tried to commit suicide.”
“I have as well. But we’re not talking about a lot of people. We’re talking about all of us. Every one. The whole damned unit. Imagine a unit where every member has done and seen such terrible things that we all tried to off ourselves. That was us. That’s who we were. And why did they do it? OMBRA claimed that there was something in our brain chemistry that made us better against the invaders.”
