by Weston Ochse
And there it was. The reason they’d brought us all together. They knew we wouldn’t take their shit, and they knew we’d question their authority, which is why they’d made sure we were all clustered in a small group away from our divisions… away from our forces.
Now I did turn. “What do you mean by behavioral protocol, you bug-eyed troll? 3964, can you explain this to us? Wasn’t it you who told me that these NIDs were safe?”
The Khron clone looked uncomfortable and he stared at his feet.
The Gliese Khron stepped forward and the EXOs parted, allowing him to move through their line. He stopped ten feet away and pointed at me. I could see the very human rage I’d inculcated. “You must be taught a lesson,” he said as the NID translated.
“Oh yeah? Teach me, Obi-Wan Kenobi.”
Pain suddenly stitched through my skull as if a thousand tendrils were electrocuting my brain from the inside out. I fell to one knee. My jaws were clenched. My eyes were closed. I forced myself to a standing position and lifted my right arm and extended it towards the Gliese Khron.
The pain suddenly shut off.
I gasped, then managed to say, “If you ever do that to me again I will kill you where you stand.”
“Behavioral protocol is necessary for uncooperative Khron species who are unwilling to defend their planet.”
“Unwilling to defend our planet?” I lowered my arm and looked around me. “Who the hell do you think you have here? A pack of Cub Scouts? We’ve been defending our planet from the beginning. Where the hell have you been? One step behind every step of the way while we’ve been at ground zero fighting the aliens.” To the assembled EXOs, I said, “If he tries that again we commit to suicide protocol.”
More than a few eyes widened. Begun with Strategic Air Command Nuclear Detonation Officers back during the Cold War, suicide protocol was used after detonation and allowed for each officer to simultaneously kill the other. We’d never had to do it during the Cold War, but it looked as if we might just have to do it now.
“What is this suicide protocol?” the Gliese Khron asked.
“Try that bullshit pain behavioral protocol and you’ll see. You want us to fight the Umi? Then let us fight. But if you do that one more time, we’ll make sure you have nothing to fight with. You see, all of my friends here understand and are dedicated to each other. Fuck the Earth. We fight for ourselves.” I walked up to an EXO and put my arm around him. “This is my brother and I fight for him.”
“Say it loud, brother,” Casper called from the back.
“Many of my brothers here have live feeds open and are broadcasting everything back to the remaining EXOs. If you try and jam the feeds, our grunts will revolt. If you try and stop our recording, we’ll revolt. And if you try and treat us as anything less than equals, we’ll implement suicide protocol.” I marched up to the bug-eyed troll. “Savvy?”
This time the pain hit all of us.
I went back to one knee as spiders with razor-blade legs discoed through my brain. It took every effort but I managed to stand. Something I’d realized earlier was that by changing our weapon’s systems to a straight arm actuator, they eliminated the ability for us to kill ourselves by shooting ourselves in the heads. But that didn’t stop us from shooting someone else in the head. As I stood, I raised my arm and pointed it at the man I’d just called my brother. I could see the maddening pain in his eyes as he managed to do the same to me. I stared into the barrel, knowing that any second a flechette might pierce my skull, and I welcomed it. Out of the corner of my eye, I saw everyone else doing the same. Every EXO was engaged, promising immediate and permanent loss of any fighting force the Khron believed themselves to have.
The pain evaporated.
I gasped as I lowered my arm. I took three deep breaths, stepped forward and kicked the little fucker in the head.
He flew back, his goggles flying away and revealing red, bugged eyes. He didn’t move after he hit the ground.
I roared with anger. “Did you not hear me? Did you not believe?” I pointed to Khron 3964. “You! Explain yourself.”
He shook his head. “I don’t have the knowledge. We have been watching Earth. We only know of Earth.”
I shifted my finger to the Thinnies. “One of you Thinnies. Explain this behavioral protocol. Explain your deceit.”
“It is necessary. Sometimes species are unable to understand that there is a great plan in motion and that they are but parts.”
Now I’d heard it all. Bullshit general speak.
“Don’t give me that We just don’t understand the grand plan speech. You’d better do better than that. Here’s a straight question. Did you invoke behavioral protocol on the Eridani Khron?”
“Affirmative.”
As I expected. “What about the Gliese Khron?”
“Affirmative.”
“Has there been any Khron species who has not had the behavioral protocol used on them?”
After a moment, “Negative.”
“So you’ve had to induce pain in every Khron species in order for you to get them to fight. Is that affirmative?”
“Affirmative.”
“And why is that?”
“They questioned our tactics.”
“And how are those tactics working so far?”
“We’ve achieved moderate success.”
I laughed and crossed my arms. “Is that so? How long has this war gone on?”
This time silence.
“As I expected,” I said, shaking my head and aware that I was on multiple feeds. There probably wasn’t a single Khron on the planet who wasn’t watching me. “We thought you Khron were superior because of your Dunkin’ Donuts spaceships and your plasma cannons and your cool tech, but you’re no better than any of us. In fact, I could argue that your behavior has demonstrated a serious lack of understanding of fundamental tactics. Why did you leave the drop ship unprotected?”
“We were advised of an adolescent Umi in the southern Caribbean.”
“Advised how?”
“Encrypted message intercept.”
“That was convenient. So why take all the Vipers?”
“We weren’t sure what size force we’d encounter.”
“And what size force did you encounter?”
“The adolescent Umi was alone.”
“What’s that?”
“The adolescent Umi was alone.”
I rolled my eyes so hard I could almost see behind me.
“Yo, Casper.”
“Yes, Mason.”
“Can you explain to them what happened?”
“Easy peasy,” Casper said, spitting in the dirt before stalking towards me. “Classic decoy. We already know that NUSNA is in league with the Umi. To lure away defensive forces, the Umi gave up something they knew you wanted—an adolescent Umi. They cut off the arm to save the body. They allowed you to kill it so that NUSNA could come and reduce your capacity to stop them from lifting the rest of the adolescents from the planet.”
The silence was deafening.
I clapped Casper on the back, then asked, “Did any of you consider this?”
“We did not.”
I was about to ask why not, then it hit me. Clones required a memory download prior to activation or they’d only have the memories which were saved prior to the mission. That meant that unless a clone returned from a mission, the surviving versions would have no memory of what happened. They’d only know it was a failure. No lessons learned from the battlefield. No best practices to be added to TTPs. They wouldn’t have learned a damned thing and wouldn’t even realize that their tactics were a failure. And the Umi knew it!
I started laughing as I walked among the massed EXOs. I patted several on the back and shook a few hands. Some of them laughed with me. Others smiled. Even more eyed me warily, certain I’d gone off the deep end.
Finally I stopped. “Last question,” I said. “How many Khron have successfully left a planet after combating the Umi?”
And there it was.
The reason for failure.
It was right in front of them the entire time, only they never knew it.
No matter how many people you kill, using a machine gun in battle is not a war crime because it does not cause unnecessary suffering; it simply performs its job horrifyingly well.
Sebastian Junger
CHAPTER FORTY-ONE
I EXPLAINED MY hypothesis to everyone. Once they understood, defeat supplanted any hope they might have had that we’d win the day. While the Umi had evolved in its strategy and tactics, the Khron had used the same tactics every time and failed. They were the classic child repeatedly touching the hot iron, only not knowing why his fingers were burning. Stop touching the fucking iron—stop using the same tactics—is what I explained.
Instead of continuing to piss in everyone’s Wheaties, I let them know that there was still hope. “We have forces. We have willing fighters who will go into combat if we have a cohesive and effective strategy. We just need to come up with that strategy. Let me and a select group of Khron Earthlings sit down and mull over your plan and see where the strengths and weaknesses are. The good thing is that the Umi have every expectation that we’ll fall into their traps just as you always have. What we have on our side now is that knowledge. We can capitalize on it.”
I grabbed Casper, called in Ohirra, selected ten more OMBRA Khrons, then dismissed the rest. Everyone was ordered to get ready. I also requested that Alpha join us. His special healing nanites had him hale and healthy again. I had a special mission for him. We were linked into the Khron beach heads located in Sify, Congo, and Primovera de Leste, Brazil. They’d suffered similar losses because of attacks from UMI-coopted human forces. A former Congolese warlord was the first one to figure out the clone memory tangent, but he thought that I should be the voice of the group. As far as the beach heads in Russia and China, both were completely wiped out. We now had more or less a third of the force we’d envisioned using, so we had to treat each EXO and Viper like it was a rare commodity.
Once we began looking at what the Khron had planned, we were aghast—frontal assault followed by a rear assault. Three waves of failure, especially in the face of the Umi’s brood ground defenses. We reviewed Viper feeds of the area and counted nine Cray hives surrounding Sydney Harbor, where more than a dozen Umi were preparing to be lifted into space. If each hive had a thousand Cray we’d be facing nine thousand Cray. Our total number of EXO fighters was nine hundred. Ten to one odds. Rorke’s Drift all over again, except this time we were the attackers. Add to that there were Chinese and Russian anti-aircraft weapons bristling around the outer ring. We couldn’t attack by land. We couldn’t attack by sea. We’d have to attack by air. It seemed utterly hopeless.
Then Ohirra came up with an idea that might actually work, although it was about as desperate an attempt as anyone could imagine. We spent the next nine hours planning and synchronizing. The timing was going to be tight, but we had little choice. Once we finished, I went to my team and back-briefed them. They’d already eaten rations and had their helmets off and hanging at their sides. I ate as I spoke. It was only then that I discovered that not only had the division leaders around me enacted suicide protocol, but every friendly EXO on the planet had done the same after viewing the pain. Evidently the Khron had never encountered this before. That my actions had a planetary-wide acceptance was a little stunning. Too often I felt like I was just another dumb grunt. I guess even dumb grunts have their day.
Then I shared the video feed of Sydney Harbor with my team. The city itself had been destroyed by the damaging black vines that delivered the spores. I focused the feed on the nine hives.
“I’ve been inside and destroyed two of these hives before. It’s not going to be pretty. Each hive has a queen that produces more and more Cray every day. She’s the size of a tractor trailer and is the center of the hive universe. Without her, the hive ceases to exist. The only way we’re going to stand a chance against such overwhelming odds is to take each one of them out.”
“The problem is we can’t get to them from beneath,” Ohirra said, “Which is how Mason did it on both occasions.”
“If we can’t do it from beneath,” Stranz asked, “then how are we going to… oh shit.”
I nodded. “From the air.”
Charlemagne didn’t look convinced.
Chance was only half listening, staring out over the Texas plain. I was going to have to talk to her before we went on mission.
“But isn’t it going to be crawling with Cray and anti-aircraft rounds?” Stranz asked.
“That it is,” I said.
“Then how?”
I left the question hanging.
“I do not see how this thing is possible,” Charlemagne finally said.
“Oh, it’s possible all right. Our plan is far better than anything the Khron came up with.” I focused the feed so that they could see the lines of humanity stretching from the hives on into Sydney and beyond, all the way into the country, down the M1 and across on the A4. Hundreds of thousands of people, men, women and children. Grandmothers and Grandfathers. Brothers and sisters. All standing in line waiting to be eaten, controlled and pacified by the Umi. Here and there bodies lay by the side of the road, starved, exhausted, dead. “When I was in L.A. the hive mother consumed eighty-four humans a day. In ten days, that’s eight hundred and forty bodies. In a hundred days, that’s eight thousand and four hundred bodies. That hive was barely active. These hives are a furious chaos of activity. They are preparing for attack. Current estimates are that each hive mother is consuming two hundred and twelve humans a day. That’s nineteen hundred and eight citizens of our planet each day. In a week that equals thirteen thousand three hundred and fifty-six people consumed. In a month that’s fifty seven thousand two hundred and forty people. While I’ve been talking, nine people have been eaten. If any of you’ve wondered what we’re fighting for, look at them. Look at these people being eaten alive by some giant alien slug in the middle of an impregnable hive.”
“But how?” Stranz pressed. “How are we going to do it?”
“Ohirra, you tell them.” I got up and walked over to Chance. I patted her on the shoulder. “Let’s take a walk,” I said.
She glanced up, then climbed to her feet and followed me.
Small clusters of EXOs were doing the same thing we were doing—briefing the plan and having last words with their squads. As division leaders, we had little belief that we’d survive the battle. Mission first was the call of the day and all the leaders were making sure that everyone knew this was our one and only chance to get back at the Umi.
Several hundred Vipers were parked where the beach head had once been, while a dozen or so buzzed overhead, patrolling against another possible NUSNA attack.
After about a hundred meters I said, “I’m probably the only one you can talk to about this.” When she didn’t respond, I added, “After all, who else do we know who killed someone they loved?”
This stopped her in her tracks. By the cant of her head, I could tell she didn’t believe me.
I nodded solemnly as the memory of Michelle and who she’d been and become washed through me with toxic finality. I didn’t dare look at Chance as I said, “She was my girlfriend at the Mound, then she went and volunteered to be one of the first HMIDs. The only thing that remained her was her mind... mostly.” Her crazed voice shouting
KILLMEKILLMEKILLMEKILLMEKILLMEKILLMEKILLMEKILLMEKILLME
scorched me enough to make me wince. When I recovered, I glanced at Chance with eyes wounded from the memory. “She wanted me to kill her because she was ugly and couldn’t stand being who she’d become.” I hesitated, then simply said, “So I did what she wanted. I killed her.” I wanted to laugh like a maniac, run in a circle, and hurl my clothes into the air. Anything... anything at all as long as I didn’t have to remember those final moments. “It’s not something I’m proud of,” I said in a q
uiet voice.
“But she asked you to.”
“Yes.”
“Then you did as she wanted.”
“It still doesn’t help.” I shook my head to get a little of the craziness out of my eyes.
Chance looked at me and chewed her lip. “She must have loved you terribly.”
I laughed. “She did everything terribly.” I sighed. “And me, as well.”
“Francis and I were never that close, but we were working on it.” She flipped her hand toward the ruined drop ship. “Even in the face of all this bloody bullocks.” She shook her head. “Then I had to go off and shoot him in the back.” She shook her head again. “And do you know what makes it worse?”
“What?” I asked.
She was about to speak when she stuttered, then threw her hands against her face and sobbed.
I reached out to touch her, but she pulled away. Not knowing what else to do, I just stood there.
After a few moments, she cursed and said, “Aren’t you going to hold me?”
I stared at her, then put my arms around her. “Sorry,” I whispered.
“It’s okay. I don’t know what I want.” She pushed away from me and wiped her nose. “Know why I’m crying? Because I was going to make a blasted joke about killing him, because that way it might be funny, right? But it’s never going to be funny. It’s never going to be anything. We’re never going to be anything because I killed him.”
I stared at her sternly. “Have you seen Stranz’s arm?”
“I heard you did that.” She grinned half-heartedly. “Was it because he didn’t salute?” Then she rolled her eyes. “See? I did it again. I can’t help it. Whenever I get scared, I joke. It’s my defense mechanism.” She took a deep breath. “Francis told me that an Umi took you over. How did it feel?”
“Awful. Terrible. Every bad word you can think of times a hundred million. I saw my body doing things over which I had no control. You know how it feels.”
She looked away.
“You were used. Nothing more than a tool of the aliens we’re trying to kill. If anything, it should piss you off and make you want to avenge Francis’s death.”
