Grunt Hero
Page 22
“Then how did you get here?” I asked. “Were you dropped off?”
“I was born in your system,” Alpha told me. “I am a clone. Watchers identical to me have been in your system for over three thousand years. Bravo was a clone also. He was a Thinnie and the driver.”
“And after all that, the only time you crashed was in 1947?” Ohirra asked.
“Oh no, we’ve crashed quite a few times. Some of us have even been worshipped as gods. But that ends when the new clone is prepared by the automated system and sent to recover us. I would have been recovered had my clone discovered where I was, but you Earthlings are very good at hiding things.”
“How fast can the Umi fold space?” Ohirra asked.
“Your choice of verb is helpful. It takes a Viper on average six minutes to fold space and you know our distance limitations. An Umi, on the other hand, is capable of folding space every twenty-three seconds. Our only advantage is that their ability to travel distances limited to .36 sectants.”
“So you can go farther but it takes you longer where they can fold quicker but can’t go as far,” I summarized.
“It makes chasing them very difficult. Knowing their destination is our only sure strategy.”
Charlemagne shook his head. “And to think they traveled all this way just to have offspring, just so they can leave and do it all again. Do you even think they realize what they’re doing?”
“Oh, they realize it all right,” said Alpha. “They just don’t care. And to be fair, the original Khron, those who seeded all of these worlds, didn’t care as well. Sure, they wanted to ensure the continued existence of their species, but they certainly placed us in a position over which we have no control.”
“How do they do it?” Stranz asked. When all eyes went to him, his face turned pink, “I mean, procreate. How are little Umis born?” He shook his head, now beet red. “I mean, you said we should be worried about them, so I figure the more we know the better, right?”
Alpha nodded. “Umis would be classified as asexual parasites. They procreate by a combination of fragmentation and endodyogeny. Phase one is when a piece of the Umi fragments. What’s left of the original Umi withers and dies over time. Phase two is when this fragment produces two smaller daughter fragments, which then consume the original fragment. The thing is that they need your water to do it, as you say, but your water is too cold. Water in the breeding ground must be at a temperature of at least one hundred and seven degrees on your Fahrenheit scale to stimulate fragmentation and endodyogeny. Before the invasion, your highest noted water temperature was ninety degrees and that was in Indonesia.”
“Wait a minute,” Merlin said, jumping into the conversation for the first time. “What do these Umi look like?”
“At the end of their life cycle, when they are ready to give birth, they appear to be immense organisms. In space they can appear to be asteroids. In your oceans they could appear as islands. They can reach miles across.”
Merlin looked at me. “The rising water, the melting ice, this was all part of it. You know who the Umi are, don’t you?”
I stared at him for a moment, and then it hit me.
“The Leviathans,” we said simultaneously.
“We saw some near the Arctic,” I said. “Near where Merlin hails.”
Alpha’s eyes narrowed. “Not good. Things are progressing faster than I would have expected.” Seeing our obvious desire for him to continue, he added, “If the Umi are in the frigid waters of the Arctic, then they’ve already spawned. No telling how long it will be until the offspring are ready to be transported to space. We need to find some way to move.”
Then an idea struck me. Ten minutes later, I was outside and uploading a video we’d created of Alpha calling to the Predator for help in his own language. I duplicated the audio and set it in a broadcast loop on all frequencies so anyone monitoring would hear. Then I took command of the navigation controls and sent the UAV to Odessa, Texas. At this point, all we could do was wait.
Once we tested the efficacy of the strange bioblock with Pearl’s broken EXO and determined that it did deliver power and didn’t make the EXO explode, I had everyone jack their EXOs into it for full charge. For morale, I also urged them to get out and clean themselves up. I know that my suit smelled like a pair of gym socks, so I took the opportunity to refresh myself.
I was aware there was a message waiting for me, but I put it off for as long as I could. Finally, with nothing else to do after we’d redistributed all of the ammunition, I climbed back into my EXO and gaze-flicked play on the message. It was in two parts. One was an audio and the other was a video.
Mason, this is Thompson. If you’re receiving this, then I am dead. I have one last bit of information to provide before the asteroid hits. The HMID network is officially gone. The ’Crealiacs used our neural connections to network their targets and used them to vector the asteroids. We should have seen this coming. This was definitely our fault. But one thing we were able to do was break into an encrypted message sent from the Chinese to NUSNA. Although the message itself was enigmatic, they intend on partnering forces to try to help defend against something that they refer to as the Spawn. Since they are in league with the ’Crealiac, the Cray are going to leave them alone. This may or may not be significant to you. I just want you to be aware. Now grab your popcorn, sit back, and watch what happens when a ninety meter asteroid impacts my forehead.
The message ended and the packet closed.
Reluctantly, I gaze-flicked play on the video. It must have come from the UAV because the perspective was moving away from Fort Irwin at high speed. I could just make out the shape of the cantonment area and the road leading from it past Painted Rocks to Barstow. After about five seconds, the asteroid entered the picture from the upper left and anticlimactically smashed into the center of the cantonment area. Dust and debris rose in a dark halo that spread outward at impossible speed, past the outer perimeter, sweeping across the open desert, past Painted Rocks, enveloping Barstow, then Yermo. All the while, the view got further and further away as the UAV traveled to my position.
I closed my eyes, not wanting to see anymore, but the impact and its terrible halo replayed in my mind. The more it played, the sicker I felt, until finally I had to run to the door and hurl myself outside. I tore my faceplate aside and vomited into the dirt.
We must be willing to let go of the life we have planned, so as to have the life that is waiting for us.
E. M. Forster
CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE
NIGHT FELL WITHOUT any contact. All we could do was feed ourselves and remain prepared to move. Charlemagne sat with Earl, talking in hushed tones. Olivares and Chance had their heads together. It was clear now that they’d become lovers while I’d been away. Ohirra sat alone, as did Stranz. Both kept their eye on Sykes. Liebl insisted he remain outside so I didn’t bother replacing him. We just made sure he had food and his EXO was charged.
Merlin and I sat together on the front steps of the dispensary, staring into the night. Stars winked in the clear sky. I was well aware that I might never see this view again and was determined to take it in. From somewhere, a cricket chirruped.
“I was thinking about what you said to Black Hands Woman,” Merlin said, breaking the silence. “About how it’s disrespect to feel sorry for yourself when someone you love dies… how you should respect that they died so that you might live.”
“Yeah,” I didn’t feel much like talking, but Merlin hardly ever spoke more than a sentence or two. In fact, I’d been on hunting trips with him when he’d never said a single word. So when he did speak, it usually meant he needed to convey something important or come to an understanding. “What about it?”
“I don’t think that’s always true.”
I glanced at him. “Okay. So tell me what you think.”
“I think there are soldiers like you and Charlemagne who that applies to, but it doesn’t apply to civilians… like the people of my village who
were doing nothing but surviving, living life, when the Cray came and killed them. I think it’s okay to mourn them. I don’t think it’s disrespect to feel sorry that you won’t be around them that they won’t be around you.
“I also think it’s a matter of perspective,” Merlin continued. “If you were to die saving me, I would mourn you. I would feel sorry for me that you weren’t around because you enlightened my life. But I feel that way because I am a civilian. I am not a soldier. What you said about feeling sorry for yourself and disrespect applies to soldiers, people whose intent is to lay their lives on the line for others. Not civilians.”
He was silent long enough that I knew he was expecting a reply. Without looking at him, I said, “You’re probably right. I’ve been a soldier for so long I’ve forgotten what it’s like to be a civilian. The fact is, we don’t have time to feel sorry for ourselves in combat. When we do, it becomes debilitating… self-defeating. I’ve been under fire at times and been blinded with flashes of my squad mates dying over and over, crippled with convulsions and barely able to move. It’s taken well over a decade for me to come to terms with it. You, on the other hand,” I turned to him, “never intended to become a soldier. It wasn’t until war came to you that you were forced to.”
“I wasn’t forced,” he said. “I chose.”
I flashed to my last re-enlistment two times ago, standing in a field beside the Pech River in Konar Province, Afghanistan. By re-enlisting in a war zone, my bonus was tax free. Not that I cared to spend the money; it was just something people did. The Pech River Valley was synecdoche for Afghanistan. It had previously been inhabited by Afghans who spoke the Dardic language Nangalami. They’d lived there for hundreds of years until Safi Pashtuns displaced them during the Soviet Occupation. And now, during the ISAF occupation, Taliban from Pakistan were trying to displace the Safi Pashtuns. I’d been attached to a platoon to protect the artillery guns at Camp Blessing. Instead of setting up a defense, we went on the offensive, constantly on patrol, checking villages for the presence of young men between the ages of sixteen and thirty-five, then interrogating them, especially if they were from out of town. We knew there was a house where they were storing weapons, but we weren’t allowed to go near it because of a woman and her two children who lived there. Command was afraid they’d be killed if it was discovered that we knew about the weapons. Likewise, we couldn’t just drop a bomb on the place or they might become collateral damage. Ultimately the Taliban positioned a sniper in the house to fire at us every time we left Camp Blessing and every time we returned. This went on for fifty-one days. Each day we’d request to return fire and each day it was denied. I hadn’t been in charge then. I was just a corporal, but I remember Schmid getting shot, then a few days later Lee got it, then after that Sandburg took a round in the head. It ricocheted off his helmet, but it scrambled his brains. He began humming the Battle Hymn of the Republic and wouldn’t stop. Every waking moment Sandburg hummed that damned song that the Civil War rebels had called their anthem, and every day we were still getting shot at.
We became a jittery mess. We felt safer out in the valley than entering or leaving base. Finally our platoon sergeant couldn’t take it any longer. He faked fire orders and sent a 155 artillery round into the center of the house. We got the sniper. The weapons cache blew to high heaven. We also killed the woman and her two kids. As much as I hated being fired at and as much as I hated the Taliban thumbing their nose at us about their weapons cache, I loathed the fact that the woman and her two children were dead. When I close my eyes I can still see the two boys, five and seven years old, kicking around a beaten old soccer ball in front of their mud hut while the mother sewed blankets out of old rags to be sold at the bazaar. The first time I woke up in a cold sweat was the first time I dreamed I was one of those kids and died in the explosion. I had that dream every night of that deployment, and it didn’t go away until I’d redeployed and a doctor gave me Ambien.
I wasn’t sure why I thought of that just now. I guess because the poor woman and her children were a lot like the people of Savoonga. They didn’t choose war. War chose them.
“I’ve also been thinking about the origin story of the Khron,” Merlin said. He hadn’t noticed the cold sweat that had beaded on my face so I wiped it away. “It seems as if both the Umi and the Khron were always destined to meet. After all, they both required the same conditions within which to live. The problem was that for whatever reason they couldn’t leave each other alone. You have to wonder. Did the Umi arrive on that first home world with all these other species, the Cray, the spore, the Sirens? Or did the Khron continually attack them, necessitating the symbiosis of these species?”
“You mean, did we cause the problem to ourselves?” I summarized.
“Yes, and when I say ourselves, I mean the first Khron.”
“You’re suddenly very philosophical, Merlin,” I said. “What’s really going on?”
“I’ve come to realize some things.”
“Go on.”
“First, I am not a soldier.” He shook his head. “I actually suck at it. Those mechanical dogs destroyed the spidertank you gave me. I should have been able to defeat them easily, but I was overwhelmed with sensory overload.”
“That sort of stuff happens in battle.”
“Does it happen to you?” he asked.
“Well, no, but I’ve been in combat off and on for the last fifteen years.”
He stared at me firmly. “Because you’re a soldier.”
“Okay, I get it. What’s the second thing?”
“Revenge isn’t who I am. I’m angry for what happened to my people, but revenge isn’t what I feel.”
“What is it you feel?”
“This goes back to our beliefs. Do I believe this happened because I killed the Orca? Do I blame this on Raven? No, but I do believe there is a balancing in the universe that we cannot ken. Maybe we just don’t understand it.”
“So you’re saying that the Cray are the universe’s agents of action.”
“I’m not sure what I’m saying, but I know in my heart,” he said, pounding his chest, “that to fight against the universe is not the right way.”
I didn’t agree with Merlin at all, but then we didn’t share the same belief systems. I couldn’t count how many times I’d heard the phrase It’s God’s will, when I was growing up, usually when something bad happened to someone. We can’t begin to understand what God’s plan is, others said. This had always enraged me, especially when someone said it with regards to a dead or hurt child, or some travesty that could have been avoided. Half of the continent of Africa was filled with starving families, disease run amok, and child soldiers chopping off the arms of innocents—but it was God’s will. This wasn’t so different than what Merlin was saying. It was a struggle not to argue with him, but to ruin his belief system was to ruin the man.
“Anything else?” I asked.
“Yes, one more thing. There has to be someone left.”
I yanked my head around and stared at him. “What do you mean?”
He waved a hand to the sky. “All the soldiers, all the fighting, all the Khron versus Umi eternal war. After all that leaves the planet, there has to be something left. There has to be people left to rebuild, to keep the story alive.”
This was the sane version of what Saxton had been trying to say. It began to dawn on me where he was going.
“I think I’m going to go home,” he said finally.
And there it was. “When?”
“Tomorrow morning.”
“How do you plan on getting there? Utah is a hell of a long way from Prince Edward Island.”
He shrugged. “I’ll do it the old-fashioned way,” he said. “I’ll walk.”
“All the way home?”
“Hopefully.”
“But your leg...”
He shrugged, holding his father’s aangruyak. “This will be my third leg. My father and his father before him will help get me home.”
r /> I sat and thought about it, and the more it rolled around in my mind, the better it felt. I’d felt an awkward responsibility for Merlin ever since I’d taken him from Savoonga. And he was right, he wasn’t much of a soldier. If he stayed, it was more than likely he would die. We all might die for that matter. Did he realize this? Was that why he was doing this, out of self-preservation? Out of fear? But as soon as I asked myself those questions I also knew the answer didn’t matter. Everyone has to come to terms with their own mortality and their own place in the universe. Ever since I’d first strapped on a tactical harness, I’d known I was made for combat. Merlin was made to lead. My guess was that his tribe was lost without him, or at the very least, would benefit from his return.
I held out a hand. “I wish you well, my brother.”
He slapped aside my hand and grabbed me in a bear hug.
“You as well, brother.”
He stood and turned to go back inside. “I’m going to tell the others. I owe them that much,” he said.
I watched him depart, then returned my vigil to the sky. My heart was wide open and felt airy with anticipation. A battle was coming. The end game was near. I was itching to be a part of it. The very idea of the great unknown exited me. Everything that had transpired since the moment Mr. Pink had recruited us came down to this—everything in between had been merely steps to understand, to survive, and to prepare. Those of us who were left were the very best and it was going to take all of us to win the day… if there was a day to actually be won.
I sat like that until midnight, chilled by the night air, shivering on the steps. Only then, did I go back inside where I found a place to bed down. Once I warmed up, I fell asleep and dreamed of two boys playing soccer until the Umi came and changed their lives.