by Scott Moon
“Fire Team 1, tighten it up for the river crossing. We may need to help each other out. Chaf, take point,” Kevin said, plunging into the water with his team.
“Isn’t this where the three unknown armor weirdos crossed?” Edwards asked.
Kevin was thinking the same thing and trying to remember if rivers had tides or otherwise changed depth. SMC battle armor sealed against the environment, including water, but would sink. It would take a long time to drown.
“It’s not so bad,” Chaf said, voice labored as he pushed perpendicular to the current. Despite the flat, passive look of the water, it was moving fast.
Kevin wasn’t short, but the river was up to his armpits and driving him sideways a meter each time he took a step. The Nix hadn’t seemed to go in this deep or take this long to cross. Edwards was up to his chin and barely moving forward.
“Chaf, Edwards — we need to link up,” Kevin said. “Edwards, fight the current and try not to get pushed downstream. Chaf, go with the current so we can get to Edwards.”
Long moments later, the three of them combined their strength and dragged each other onto the riverbank. He looked back and saw several Recon squads racing toward the opposite riverbank.
“Priest, this is a bad place to ford,” Kevin said.
“No choice,” Pries said. “Recon, bring it in tight. Spear formation. Link up and let’s build momentum. Delta Squad, continue as planned.”
“Roger that,” Davis said as his marines emerged farther upstream. He called several times for Lovejoy and the rest of the platoon, receiving no answer on any of the combat links. “K. C., get after it. Fast as you can go.”
“You heard him,” Kevin said to his team, already racing ahead.
“We’re on the heading, Kevin,” Chaf said. “What do we do when we get there?”
Kevin didn’t answer because he didn’t know. “Almost there.” He found a natural cut in the hillside and bolted through feeling confined, fearing ambush, wondering if he had led his team to something bad.
He emerged in an odd gully-meadow with brilliant white and pink flowers. Three Sirens turned over the body of a Nix, handling his huge armored limbs as though he were an alley dog killed in a pit fight — an asset of negligible value.
“Two hundred meters,” Chaf said. “What do we do?”
“Form a wedge on me. We’ll approach with caution and keep them in sight until Recon catches up. This is their mission.” Kevin said the words without actually moving.
“Okay,” Chaf said.
“Okay,” Edwards said.
Carefully, they advanced.
“Negative, K. C., go around. The Sirens are not the mission. The Nix ship and Doctor Robedeaux is the mission. Fail and we will have DU battle troopers and Void Trolls invading Earth,” Priest said in his helmet earpiece.
Kevin changed his team’s direction, seeing the Recon units already moving around the gully meadow and high speed. He raced to stay ahead of them, thinking Priest’s declaration made little sense.
He wanted to catch the Sirens and demand the twins back. With pulse-pounding frustration and need, he struggled to do his duty. Once, as they neared the suspected location of the Nix ship, he looked back and saw two of the Sirens dragging the giant Nix warrior by his feet.
Priest and his Recon marines surged ahead and cursed as they ran through a minefield.
“Careful,” Kevin said as he directed his team nearer the other units stopped for two reasons — to avoid stepping on mines and to watch the Nix ship launch.
Lovejoy and the rest of the platoon entered communication range. “Davis, report.”
“Watching Recon units tiptoe out of a minefield with minor casualties, I think, and letting a Goddamn Siren trio escape. You see the Nix ship, Lt?”
“I see it. Set up security and relax. I will be there soonest. Lieutenant Lacy, Captain Kingstar ZIC, and Captain Iowa ZRC are en route.”
KEVIN watched Gunnery Sergeant Robert Priest, PhD, part time SMC drill instructor, stare for a long time at the contrail curving higher into the upper atmosphere. Brookhaven weather matched his steel eyes and warrior bearing. Without his helmet, he reminded Kevin of historical marine pictures. Grasslands and lakes stretched away to the east. Mountains loomed twice the height of anything on Earth to the west and south but dwindled toward the north. Clear skies made a dome of atmosphere holding the expansive panorama around the Starship Marine Corps. Veterans like Priest and the 343rd Marauder Recon marines stared wordlessly at the sky as though the nearly invisible spacecraft meant something.
“You listening, K. C.?” Priest asked.
“Yes, sir.”
“That’s good, K. C.” He turned, looking down on Kevin for once because he was standing on a large flat rock unique to the foothills. “You’ve heard Davis cursing the Nix. Do you have any idea what they are?”
Kevin shook his head and felt like a jerk. He wasn’t a kid or a recruit who didn’t know the proper way to answer an NCO.
Priest hesitated, studying him for a second. Even now after Kevin had been tested in combat, his former drill instructor was checking his gear and preparing to set him straight.
“Davis has been obsessed with the Nix for longer than I can remember. Where he heard about them, I have no idea. You did all right today, so I’ll share. Some grunt started calling these aliens the samurai giants, because that is more or less what they look like, except they’re eight feet tall — and have extra arms just like the Sirens.”
Speechless, Kevin’s eyes glossed over as he remembered the fallen Nix and the Siren killers. The scene hadn’t made sense to his tired and overwrought brain. Priest’s description fixed some puzzle pieces.
“I think they look like the Sirens, but the Sirens are smaller and female,” Priest said. “Hard to tell with the organic masks, if that is what they are.”
“They’re women?”
Now Priest shook his head. “They look female, sometimes, like a female goddess of war and death might. And it is a mistake to imagine them as samurai from space. Don’t do it. The official designation, or official as it gets with commando super secret bullshit, is Amaterasu. The Siren and most non-human races call them the Nix, best we can translate.”
Kevin waited, minding his situation and the terrain around them as Priest had trained him in boot camp.
“I’ve seen Nix up close,” he said. “Once.” The statement sounded near a confession. “Don’t know if you are up on your Japanese mythology, but Amaterasu is some kind of sun goddess. That works, because they fight like gods and shine like gold when they come at you. Our scientists don’t like energy weapons, laugh at the implausibility of them, especially plasma launchers. But the Amaterasu attack like a swarm from hell.”
Kevin studied the veteran, wondering if he was drunk or on pain meds. He’d never heard the man ramble.
Sergeant Craft repositioned Alpha Squad of Zulu Infantry Company, 1st Platoon. Delta looked to Davis and Priest, checking for a change of orders and, upon seeing there were none, remained in place. Craft’s people supported the other units. In the corner of Kevin’s awareness, he realized that Bravo and Charlie were too spread out, but that was Lieutenant Lovejoy’s job. The intermingling of his unit and Recon was tangling the chain of command more than Kevin liked to admit. It seemed simple in the classroom, but now the units were as mixed as were their objectives.
He couldn’t stop thinking about the three figures darting across the river delta to Lake 029 toward the strange ship that was now leaving a fading contrail high in the atmosphere. At the time, Kevin didn’t realize what was wrong with the scene. He had put it down to distance and his fatigue. Now he realized that they had been much taller than humans and their armor pulsed with light around the seams. Maybe there was a good reason for the brilliance of the stranger’s gear, but it seemed like ornamentation.
“Who is Doctor Robedeaux?” Kevin asked.
Davis chose this moment to re-enter the conversation, his gaze still unfocus
ed and aimed toward the Nix ship. “Ah, the doctor.”
Brookhaven seemed alive all around them despite the bombardments of the previous twenty-seven hours.
“Tell him the rest of it,” Davis said.
Priest looked at the sergeant, then sat on the rock, motioning for Kevin to join him. Davis went with Chaf and Edwards to filter freshwater from a nearby tributary.
“No one except Doctor Robedeaux knows for sure,” Priest said. “So treat this as equal parts rumor, guesstimation, and quasi-factual.”
Kevin controlled his breathing, thought of his family, and considered all that he had been through since running from Raf’s thugs after Arthur tried to negotiate a contract with the criminal.
“The Nix and the Siren belong to one race with a caste system stronger than anything humans can understand. Sirens rule, each one of them a god over the Nix brutes. The Sirens — those we have encountered so far — are always female. Most people, including Davis, speculate the Nix are male and basically a slave gender.”
“How could giants be kept as slaves?” Kevin asked. “The dead one I saw had weapons and armor fused to his body.”
Priest stared at him in wide-eyed amazement. “You saw that?” He shook his head. “That makes sense. The group I ran into were moving fast and trying to kill me. Maybe I didn’t get as good a look as I remember.”
“Why do the Sirens take human children?”
Rail-guns chattered in the distance, only audible because the bombardment had stopped. Priest massaged his forehead as he looked down. “Ask Doctor Robedeaux.”
“I am starting to not like this guy. What is he doing with the Nix?”
“Long, classified story.” Priest stood. “No one understands anything about Robedeaux or our policy regarding the man. My mission briefing advised that if we caught him this time, it would stop a major DU offensive. Don’t get distracted by Sirens and their slaves. The Dissident Union is our problem right now. If they are willing to use Void Trolls, they’ll do anything.”
Kevin had seen the Void Troll propaganda but had a hard time believing most of it. “When are we going up against the trolls?”
Priest swallowed hard, then moved his jaw as though he wanted to activate his helmet. “Not soon, if we’re lucky.”
28
Legacy
KEVIN slept fitfully that night. Dreams pressed him against his bedroll like a meteor had not only landed on him, but gotten stuck there for eternity. He struggled to breathe. He fought to stand and chase the twins as a frightening assortment of aliens hunted in every direction. A doctor stood on the horizon, his form black as shadow, eyes blazing with malevolence. Void Trolls ten times their normal size scooped up children and tossed them into their mouths as Sirens laughed and Dissident Union leaders blamed the old nations of Earth.
Laughing and crying at the same time, he understood it was impossible to see any of this with his face pressed into the dirt that suffocated him.
But such was the way of nightmares.
He saw a Nix warrior dragging Ace and Amanda-Margaret away from an injured Siren.
Void Trolls swarmed through a Siren city, killing everything that moved. Nix warriors landed on huge asteroids, delving into tunnels to root out Void Trolls without mercy.
A Dissident Union wizard cast spells on the Void Trolls to control them with words from fairy tales and bad video commercials.
This is a stupid dream. Everyone knows wizards speak Latin-Elvish.
Amanda stared at him, which made no sense because she was miles away and the night was black as hell, and his face was still eating dirt.
“Wake up,” Davis said.
Kevin opened his eyes, didn’t move, didn’t try to breathe, didn’t allow himself to think. Five seconds later, he began his father’s calming meditation and pushed everything from his mind. Most of the headache pain followed the images into the lockbox of his soul.
Davis seemed a hundred feet tall from Kevin’s vantage point. Concentrating on the feeling of his feet, then his lower legs, then his upper legs, he worked his way to his neck without allowing thought or tension into his brain. He focused on his family name, meditating until he felt as though he had slept the night before.
“Damn, boy. You wake up slow. You need to be ready to fight at a moment’s notice,” Davis said, holding out a hand.
Kevin grabbed the calloused, scarred flesh and accepted help to his feet. “My grandfather told me I would need to wake up ready for anything.”
“And you didn’t listen, apparently,” Davis said as he walked toward an unknown task in the camp.
Kevin watched the man work with confidence, glad the conversation hadn’t continued. He didn’t want to explain what he would be like without his father’s meditation to drive away his night terror.
Lovejoy and his protégé, a dark young woman intelligent and skilled enough to be his boss in a year, moved through the camp checking readiness. Kevin wasn’t long removed from basic training and AIT. Corporal Kyle Yang had forced them to recite the chain of command and he didn’t remember any platoon-level officer having an assistant.
Kevin lay across his armor, then commanded it to deploy. In seconds, the suit sealed around him. He stood, checked his systems, and stood ready for inspection with his helmet under one arm. Chaf and Edwards allowed their helmets to hang off their backs like a lot of the experienced, less formal soldiers did. Grandfather Brandon had always been holding his helmet in pictures. Kevin emulated his hero as he reviewed the repairs he had made from the previous day.
Lovejoy and his assistant stopped to check him and his fire team. “Looks good, Connelly.” He moved on, but his assistant remained fixated on Kevin.
“Are you related to Brandon Connelly?” she asked. Her nameplate read Davenport. The insignia on her armor marked her as a second lieutenant. With dark almond eyes and walnut-colored skin, she was the most exotic and beautiful person he had seen on Brookhaven — reminding him of the families in the 350 to 360 buildings of GKC.
The curiosity of her gaze excited Kevin. He hid the exhilaration and marveled at her aura of extreme competence. “Yes, ma’am.”
Smirking without giving offense, she shook her head. “That is just like Brandon. He never told you what he did in the SMC?”
“He did, ma’am.”
She narrowed her gaze for several long seconds. “Not everything, I think.”
“Trina, are you coming?” Lovejoy asked.
“Yes, Lieutenant,” she said. Then to Kevin, “Try not to ruin the family tradition.”
“What was that all about?” Chaf asked as she walked away.
“Don’t worry about it,” Kevin said, reading orders on his arm screen.
“Any update on Foster?”
“Are you worried about him?” Kevin asked.
“Well, sure.”
Kevin looked up Foster’s file and saw he would be out of service for another two days. “Looks like he will be back in a couple of days.”
Davis relayed orders from Lovejoy. First Platoon moved out in squads to search the area where the Nix ship had been concealed prior to launch, finding nothing. Compared to the previous day’s action, moving across an alien world was less interesting than basic training no matter the colors of the rising and setting sun reflecting off the lakes to the east.
“Rally on my position debriefing,” Davis said on the squad link.
“You heard him,” Kevin said. The fire team moved without urgency. Combat armor, in terms of movement, was classified as semi-powered or partial assistance gear. The main weapons of each suit required a lot of energy to work their rail guns, which were much more powerful than the MSRG designed for personal use by non-armored personnel. Precious little remained for locomotion. During AIT, Kevin learned combat armor carried its own weight and a little more. The computer systems improved running coordination and increased strength, but when it was all said and done, a day in the field was exhausting.
Kevin looked at the sky where
the Nix ship disappeared the day before. Brookhaven felt huge and more real than the city where he grew up.
Second Lieutenant Ktrina Davenport moved up behind Kevin’s position. He kept his attention on his assigned zone, resisting the urge to look over his shoulder or re-task his camera view to watch her approach.
“Private Connelly,” she said.
“Yes, ma’am,” Kevin said.
“Anything to report?”
“No, ma’am.”
Silence.
“You have a question, Connelly?”
He hesitated, going over the active checklist of his responsibilities in his head, then asked without looking at her, “How do you know my grandfather?”
“I don’t. My father knew him. Brandon was a good marine. Brave as hell and loyal. A bit of an idealist in the end.” She sounded like she might say more but didn’t.
“Why are you with Lovejoy? I thought you had to be a captain to have an aide.”
She patted him on the shoulder. “He was a captain. Some habits die hard. And he has a certain way of looking at problems. Someone high in the chain of command sent officers to him for mentorship.” She talked on a link Kevin couldn’t hear, then on his proximity link. “Don’t forget why we are here. This is a conflict between us and the DU. Having said that, it seems we overlooked some strife between the Nix and the Sirens.”
“What kind of strife?” Kevin asked, certain she would not answer.
“The Nix are in open rebellion against the masters, which is peculiar and dangerous. Someday I will tell you about the Siren-nix Chrysalis and how they procreate,” she said.
Kevin waited for more, but she started to leave. “Good luck with your mentorship,” he said.
She came back and smiled so he could see her face through the visor. “I am moving up in the ranks. I’ll remember you, K. C. Connelly.”
29
Side Mission
MORNING and what the veterans called second-day syndrome came down hard on the SMC, enlisted and officer alike. Security patrols worked shorter shifts. The company occupied a temporary camp, cleaning weapons, attending to wounds, and adjusting orders down the chain of command.
