by Richard Fox
Hoffman looked over at Ely.
“That’s actually…pretty solid,” Hoffman said. “We go from building to building. Slow and steady. You see any movement, you tell me and let me handle it. Follow?”
“Roger. What is this place? I don’t see any cows or anything. Don’t smell them either,” Ely said as he crouched slightly and shuffled behind Hoffman.
“Harvester camp. These places aren’t always occupied. When that bunch of exiles said they’d been hit recently, I hoped this place would be empty, but look,” he said, tilting his head at a dumpster full of flies and garbage. “Geist let their soldiers come out and hunt as a reward.”
“They hunt people? What—how is that a ‘reward’?”
“Blue building. Go.” Hoffman hurried across a gravel road and put his back to a prefab building. Muffled voices came through a window. Ely shuffled forward and turned, jumping his back toward the wall.
Hoffman shot a hand out and almost stopped Ely’s momentum. There was a thump against the wall.
“What was that?” came from inside.
Hoffman put an arm around Ely’s neck and forced him down, then pushed him into a crawl space under the building.
“Sorry, sorr—” Ely froze when Hoffman squeezed his shoulder hard enough that he winced.
They heard a window open and a man belch.
“Probably another damn raccoon.” There was a hock and a glob of spit hit where they stood a few seconds ago.
“Find it,” an inhuman voice said. “I know of a recipe.”
“You find it.” The window closed and Ely heard the muted conversation continue, followed by laughter. A rat scurried by and ran down Hoffman’s back.
“Command post,” Hoffman whispered and pointed up. “Their vehicles should be on the other side. Stop screwing up and follow me.”
The two moved forward, pressing through a space so tight that Ely considered taking his helmet off. The thump of footsteps above sounded heavy. Ely wasn’t sure how many men were up there, but he guessed at least three.
Ely reached forward for a handhold and stuck his fingers into a decomposing cardboard box covered in cobwebs. Something warm and furry scattered out as a nest of rats went wild, screeching and hissing. Ely snapped his hand back to cover his mouth and got a nose full of cobwebs and something rank. He gagged and his head bumped against the building.
“There it is again!” came from above.
“Smoke it out,” another voice said as a foot stomped over Ely.
“We’re here for another day. You want to smell tear gas the whole time?” The conversation drifted forward.
Hoffman nudged Ely with his heel. Ely wiped his hand against his cloak and gave a thumbs-up. The Strike Marine started moving again.
“Bingo.” Hoffman stopped a foot from the edge. Ely looked where he was pointing to something covered by a black tarp away from a few parked vehicles.
“I was hoping it would be a tarp.” Ely gave Hoffman a thumbs-up. Hoffman shook his head.
A door banged open and boots stomped down stairs.
“Let’s go! Styles hasn’t made his quota yet.” The set of boots stopped in front of Hoffman. The Strike Marine readied his pistol. Ely became increasingly aware of the tight space he was in and fought back panic.
“Styles! Tok! The rats are moving east. You keep screwing around and we’ll have to go into the deep woods to get them.” There was a pounding on the wall.
The boots were metal and thick, just like the armor worn by the guards that had taken Ely from Phoenix.
“Slow-ass bastards.” The man bent down and peered into the crawlspace. He was chubby and dark-skinned, and his bald head was so perfectly shaved that his scalp caught the light. Hoffman’s pistol snapped and the back of the collaborator’s head exploded into a bloody mist. He collapsed to the ground and twitched, his boots jangling in the gravel.
Hoffman grabbed him by the collar and hauled the body under the house. Another pull and Ely was face-to-face with the dead man, the neat hole in his forehead leaking blood. His eyes quivered, looking in different directions, and there was a sweet smell that made Ely gag.
A trill came from the building and Hoffman cursed.
“Get the tarp off and run pre-flight!” The Strike Marine hauled himself out from under the house and charged into the building.
Ely crawled past the still-twitching corpse as all hell broke loose above. There were heavy footfalls from Hoffman as he ran inside. There was a snap from a gauss weapon and bullets shot through the floor, kicking up dirt and rat feces into a fine cloud all around Ely.
Ely found a whole new motivation to get moving and spat out from under the building. He choked on the dirt and rolled onto his back. The walls shook as a fight continued inside. Ely wiped his face and pulled himself up next to a jeep. Throwing his camo cloak over one shoulder, he ran to the tarp, which covered something that looked a bit bigger than the rest of the parked vehicles.
He ripped the tarp away and uncovered a life pod—not a small one like he’d arrived in—one meant for at least five sailors, usually deployed on larger ships.
“Really?” Ely scratched his helmet. “Hoffman, there’s no pre-flight to do! Hoffman?”
He turned back to the building, which had gone eerily silent.
Hoffman and a lanky figure broke through the wall and landed on top of a jeep. Hoffman rolled off and landed hard a few yards from Ely. His cloak was in tatters, his gauntlets red with blood.
The other figure fell between the jeeps and Ely lost sight of him.
Hoffman shook his head, then reached back for the gauss rifle locked on to his back.
A Dotari leaped onto Hoffman and the two went rolling across the gravel. The Strike Marine lost his grip on the rifle and it stayed at the point of impact. The Dotari was half-in, half-out of the same dark-green armor as the other collaborators, but his claws were bared and, trilling and screeching, he struck at Hoffman.
The Dotari’s beak struck at Hoffman’s throat, but Hoffman blocked it with his forearm. The screen and computer housing cracked as the bite squeezed like a vise.
“Kid!” Hoffman punched at the Dotari, but the alien blocked it with his gangly limbs.
Ely ran for the gauss rifle and grabbed it by the barrel. He adjusted his grip and raised it overhead like a club.
The impossibility of the situation slowed him down. He’d only ever known the Dotari as friends, loyal allies that fought beside humans ever since his father and the Breitenfeld saved them from the Xaros. Their Armor died beside the man he was named for at the final battle of the Ember War. Now they were the enemy.
Ely hesitated.
The Dotari glanced at him, Hoffman’s arm still held fast in his beak. Even though it was an alien, Ely recognized the hate the Dotari had when he met its gaze. He swung the rifle down and cracked it against where the Dotari’s quills met its skull.
The alien squawked and released its bite on Hoffman. Slamming his hands on the alien’s chin, Hoffman got a hand full of quills. A sharp twist snapped the alien’s neck and Hoffman yanked it off him.
Breathing hard, Hoffman pulled his helmet off while Ely stood there, trembling. Hoffman took the rifle out of his hands.
“Why didn’t you just shoot him?” Hoffman asked.
“The…gene thing? No?”
“No.” Hoffman shook his head and went to the life pod. “I got the other one before he could call for help. We’ll be out of here before they know something’s wrong.”
“Why…” Ely pointed at the dead Dotari, “why was that one trying to kill you? They’re our friends.”
“Some are ungrateful pricks.” Hoffman flipped a panel down from the side of the escape pod and flicked a finger at a control panel. “Come on, Big Boss. You have to come through for us just one more time.”
The screen came to life and Hoffman looked down at his ruined forearm computer. “Figures.” He squinted at the control panel and pecked at commands.
“Haven
’t you seen Last Stand on Takeni?” Ely wagged a finger at the Dotari. “Don’t they still have that movie, Mr. Hoffman? Why isn’t this one our friend? Dotari,” he made a knife hand and shook it to punctuate his words, “are supposed to be our friends.”
“Undo the slave bolts on the other engine,” Hoffman said. “Almost done.”
“I want an explanation!” Ely choked back tears. “Dotari…humans!” He gripped his hands together.
“Because the Geist came for them too,” Hoffman sighed. “And when a fleet of battleships is over your planet and they say ‘join or die,’ guess what the Dotari from the Golden Fleet decided to do? They joined! You think I’m happy about this? Me and Valdar are the ones that pulled them out of deep space and saved the rest from the phage. Me sitting here going over ancient history ain’t going to get us off planet. Now undo the slave bolts or I’ll kick your ass so hard, you’ll make orbit that way!”
Ely turned away from the Dotari and jogged around the life pod. He threaded two fingers into a bolt hole and twisted as he pulled a metal slug out a few inches. He repeated the task three more times and a hatch opened.
“Get in,” Hoffman said and closed the control panel.
“Normally,” Ely said, touching his brow, “escape pods go from orbit to dirtside. And in case you haven’t noticed, we’re—moving! I’m moving!” He scrambled into the pod before Hoffman could reach him.
The life pod was musty, the straps on the seats frayed. Hoffman stuffed his helmet into a webbing beneath one seat and pulled a control arm down as he buckled in. Ely did the same as Hoffman mumbled and pecked at the controls.
“Problem?” Ely asked.
“The script is too small…got it.” Hoffman pushed the control arm into the housing as the hatch closed and there was a pop as the pod pressurized. “Ibarra Corporation special design.” Hoffman braced himself against his seat.
A wave of nausea rolled over Ely as grav engines spun to life. He yelped as the pod flipped over and shot into the heavens. He shouted as the g-forces smooshed him into his seat and he went on the worst ride of his life.
He could’ve sworn Hoffman was laughing the entire time.
****
“If I ever meet your pop, I won’t tell him you lost your cookies.” Hoffman floated at one end of the life pod, his elbow over his mouth, his other hand batting away little gray globs floating about.
“You could have warned me.” Ely held up a small suction device that captured more blobs with a slurp.
“Yeah, but then I wouldn’t have seen that look on your face. High-g acceleration ain’t no fun. You ever had to make planet-fall in a Tactical Insertion Torpedo? Even Armor hate those damn things and I had to do it in last-gen power armor.” Hoffman twisted over and slid open a panel. “Good news, this thing’s still loaded with emergency rations. Let’s see…we’ve got spaghetti-flavored nutrient paste…and tuna.”
Ely snagged the last droplet and snapped the collector into a magnetic housing. He looked out a porthole and at Earth’s night side. The glow of cities and connecting highways traced the coastlines and mountain ranges.
“Everything looks so normal from up here.”
“Space has that effect. The larger view never seems that bad, but the closer you look, the worse it is. Geist have been relocating colonists back to Earth for years. Mars is abandoned. Same with Luna and the Ceres domes. Geist give everyone just enough food and shelter to survive, then put them to work doing labor that construction bots could handle just fine. Everyone down there’s in prison, waiting for whatever the Geist decide to do next.” Hoffman twisted the cap off a tube of paste and squeezed a bit into his mouth.
“What were you doing for so long?” Ely asked. “How’d you manage to slip away and—wait a second. Why did we have to walk all night to get to this pod? Why wasn’t it right there waiting for us where you killed the guards on my air car?”
Hoffman pushed his foot against the hull and thumped against a seat. He strapped a belt over his waist and interlinked his hands behind his head.
“Because there was a screw-up.” Hoffman closed his eyes. “Big Boss had this life pod fabricated during the Geist attack. I thought it was for him to get off world when the Ibarrans showed up, but he chose to stay and organize the resistance. So this thing sat in storage somewhere in Kansas until we made the call to get you out. The transfer order went through, but the meathead making the delivery sent it to BC-landing-zone-two-A. Your air car suffered a fortuitous grav engine failure near BC-landing-zone-two. Oops.”
“Dad would call that a SNAFU,” Ely said. “Then he’d go on about how ‘proper prior planning prevents—’”
“‘Piss-poor performance.’ He’s right about that. But when you’re running a clandestine resistance under the watch of tech-advanced alien overlords, there will be some hiccups along the way. When that happens, we adapt and overcome. The Strike Marine way.” Hoffman looked through a porthole. “We’ll have line of sight soon. Sure hope she’s good and ready. Hungry?”
“Still a little…” Ely touched his stomach and scrunched his nose. “How can you…you killed a lot of people back there. I whacked the hell out of a Dotari. How can you eat and sleep right now?”
“Didn’t you see the elephant in Terra Nova?”
“I had my share of close calls, but I didn’t hurt anyone. Or—”
“It’s war, kid. I’ve been at it a long time. Kesaht. Rakka. Naroosha. Vish. Killing the aliens isn’t hard. But offing people, even when they’re tube scratch like a Miguel or a Shannon, that’s different. You can get used to it after a while, but that ain’t exactly a good thing. Their faces aren’t the ones I see when I close my eyes.” Hoffman hooked a thumb under one side of his pectoral plate and it snapped up. He drew out a small stack of dog tags on a beaded chain.
“My militia had a hundred men and women in it when the Geist attacked. We were down to eight when the surrender order came. If the boss hadn’t cut into my comms and asked me to take position…” He flipped through dog tags and stopped at one. “Opal would never have stopped fighting. That’s how he was built. He was a lot better man than me in a lot of ways.”
“Sorry.” Ely reached into his collar and brought out his own dog tag. “This was on me when I came through, but I don’t know where I got it. Does have my name, date of birth, religion and ident number.” He tugged the chain one way and the other, moving the tag around like a fish at the end of a line. Fractals glinted along the tag’s surface.
“That’s weird.” Hoffman frowned at him. “What’s it made out of?”
“What’s it…supposed to be made out of?” Ely asked.
“Aluminum, for tradition’s sake, but aluminum doesn’t glitter.”
Ely took the chain off and pushed it toward Hoffman, who plucked it out of the air. Hoffman pressed his thumb and forefinger against the tags, sniffed them, then tried to bend them.
“Hey,” Ely protested.
“They’re thicker than regular tags, and they ain’t aluminum either.” Hoffman floated the tags back to Ely.
“Maybe Terra Nova decided to get with the times and advance the technology.” Ely put the chain back around his neck and tucked the tags into his shirt.
“Weird,” Hoffman said again, and a red light flashed on a control panel. “Let’s hope this is good news.”
“Hope is now a method?” Ely floated over and braced himself against the hull.
“We’re in an unarmed potato on a ballistic course to the Crucible. If the sensor scramblers weren’t working, we’d have eaten a couple plasma shots by now. So hope is a pretty decent course of action.” Hoffman double-tapped a screen and Masha appeared. She was in a computer stack, the camera very close to her face.
“Talk to me,” she said.
“Principal secured and in decent shape,” Hoffman said. “Just the two of us.”
Masha’s face fell for a moment. “Compromised or did they go clean?”
“Clean as a violent death can be,”
Hoffman said. “Other than our egress being dropped at the wrong goddamn site, killing Commissariat at two different locations, and running into exiles, everything’s going exactly as planned.”
“Hate to disappoint you, but there’s been a wrinkle,” Masha said. “The Crucible network was severed at Aachen. I can’t leapfrog you to Bayonne until the Geist repair the gate, but when they do that, the Crusade will static the entire Edessa system. There being only two of you makes the life-support equation a bit better…”
“Just get us to the Crusade, Masha,” Hoffman said. “Anywhere.”
“It can’t be anywhere, knuckle dragger. I drop you in a system under siege like Aachen or Corfu, you’ll either die in the fighting or be recaptured, and we’re not doing this again. Not because I’ll be annoyed, but because we’ve lost all our tools to make an escape like this.”
“But aren’t we on course to the Crucible?” Ely asked.
“Let me see him,” Masha said and Hoffman moved out of the way so Ely could take his place. “Ah…look at you. So young and innocent. Your mother know you’re here?”
“Hello to you too,” Ely gave her a little wave.
“I really hope you’re worth it.” Masha shook her head. “I need a couple more hours. There’s a troop ship scheduled to jump from Ceres. I can slip you through with that transfer, but you can’t be floating out in the void—too much traffic, and the Geist’s sensors will pick you up if you’re in the lanes. I’m redirecting you to the bolt hole.”
“Masha,” Hoffman said, taking Ely’s spot with an unceremonious shove, “there’s too much risk of them—”
“All I have are bad options,” she snapped. “And I’m choosing the least bad that I can. Plus, you’ll have time to make one last pickup. Can’t leave him there, Hoffman. Even if he is on ice.”
“What…that actually came through? I thought it never got past the planning stage.”
“I didn’t update you because the team that got him in got taken out as soon as they made it back to Earth. What you don’t know you can’t give up, no matter what they do to you,” she said.
