by M. R. Forbes
"I've heard that argument before," Gabriel said, suddenly tired of talking about it. "We were headed down to the mess. Do you want to join us?"
"Maybe you've heard the argument, but I don't think you're listening to it. You're as stubborn as your old man." She smiled as though she was giving him a compliment. "Personally, I don't think either choice is that great. Unfortunately, they're the only choices we have."
"So which one do you prefer?"
"Fight or flight? I don't know. My heart says fight. My head says flight."
"You always like to take both sides."
"Because every story has two sides. You should be open to the one you don't agree with some time. You want others to be open to you."
"Only when I'm right."
Miranda laughed. "You're impossible. Come on, I'll grab something with you."
"Let's go, Wally, " Gabriel said. "Time to eat."
Gabriel walked side-by-side with Miranda down the corridor, while Wallace ranged ahead, pausing at the doors to sniff the food behind them. They took the central elevator up to the base of the main saucer, diverting to Delta Park. The park was the station's main recreational area, a one thousand square meter expanse of artificial greenery that did its best to substitute for the real thing.
"Other than the business with the Council, how is your father these days?" Miranda asked as they left the park. "How long had it been since you saw him last?"
"Six months," Gabriel said. "He's, I don't know, well enough? It's hard to say. He spends most of every day medicated and lost in his head. For all intents, he might as well be dead already."
"That's a terrible thing to say."
"The only reason he isn't yet is because he's still waiting for us to win this war. It's all he has to keep him going. My mother believed in God and Heaven, and I know he wants to join her there. The only thing he cares more about is the promise he made to see this through."
Miranda was silent for a few seconds. "It's kind of sad, isn't it? Everything that's happened to him?"
"Yes. You can understand why I'm so against giving up the fight. I also don't believe in giving up on the people that we abandoned."
"Abandoned? That's not fair, is it?"
"My father said he abandoned them. They ran away in the Magellan instead of helping fight back. He's always said it was the one order he regretted following."
"Fight how?"
"Any way they could. Or, in the words of my father, 'wrasslin' with their bare hands until they sank into the bayou.'"
"Your father always had a colorful way with words."
"He still does when he's himself."
They reached the entrance to the mess. Captain Kim was coming out as they were going in, and he paused ahead of Gabriel, smiling and saluting.
"Captain St. Martin. Daphne told me you were back."
"Soon," Gabriel said, dropping the salute and taking his friend's hand. "I heard you almost blew up the station again."
Soon laughed in his deep voice that belied his petite frame. He was just over five feet of fast-twitch muscle, though his spiked hair gave him another few inches. "Lies. Nothing but lies. I almost blew up our quarters. The emergency seals would have closed us off before we could take anyone with us."
"Well, I'm glad I had a station to come back to."
"Yeah, I heard you were on Alpha. I'm sorry, man. At least you made it back here alive. Sturges said you took some nasty damage on that last run."
"It was close. It wasn't the first time. You know how it is."
"I sure do." Soon clapped him on the shoulder. "I've got to run. I'm due for a slipstream drill in thirty. I don't get to skip another rotation to fool around with my wife."
Soon's smile disappeared as he realized the meaning behind what he said. Gabriel felt the twinge of old sadness creeping up, and he forced it back down.
"It's okay," he said instead. "If it were up to me you'd be retiring to keep the population going. We could use some more good pilots."
"Thanks, Gabriel. I only need about sixty more runs to catch up with you."
Gabriel was sure they wouldn't have sixty more runs. If they were going to be leaving Calawan, they would pour every available resource into refitting the Magellan. With the weight of the entire colony behind the effort, he imagined it wouldn't take more than a few months.
"See you soon," Miranda said. Soon rolled his eyes at the old joke and walked away, pausing to pet Wallace's head before continuing.
Wallace wandered over to Gabriel's side, his eyes fixed on the inside of the mess. There were nearly one hundred soldiers inside, seated at the simple tables with a bland stew in front of them. At least they had some real food today.
"That's one of the people we're saving if we leave," Miranda said. "You know if we stay he's more likely than not to die skimming Earth's atmosphere."
"I know," Gabriel replied.
If he could change things, he would. He didn't want anyone else to have to go through what he had, or what his father had.
Some things were bigger than a single person.
Some promises couldn't be broken.
TWENTY-TWO
"You asked to see me, sir?" Gabriel said, standing in the open doorway of Colonel Graham's office on Delta Station.
Graham looked up from his tablet. His office was an out-of-place aberration compared to the rest of Delta Station. His desk was custom printed and painted, meant to resemble wood as closely as possible. His chair was cushioned. He had three paintings hanging on his walls, carried from Earth in the Magellan. The artist had never been famous before. They were all priceless now.
A second cushioned chair sat opposite him. He waved Gabriel over to it.
"Have a seat, Captain," he said. "I want to talk to you."
Gabriel tried to judge the topic by the Colonel's tone. Graham could be a gruff man, but he could also be very kind. He was somewhere in between.
"Yes, sir," he said, taking the seat, keeping his posture rigid.
"Relax, Gabriel," Graham said, closing the door with a tap on his pad. "This is off the record."
Gabriel let his limbs slouch slightly. "Is my father okay?"
Graham smiled. "He's fine. This is about the other day when you stopped by with Major Choi to see me."
"I apologize if I was out of line, sir," Gabriel said. "You know my emotions get the better of me sometimes."
"First, I said this is off the record. No 'sirs' required. Second, you weren't out of line. You spoke from your heart, and I respect the hell out of that. It's one of the best traits you inherited from your father."
"What's the worst?" Gabriel asked. He already had a feeling he knew the answer.
"Your stubborn determination. Which can be a good quality, too. If I had to pick another one, it would be that you don't shave as often as you should."
Gabriel ran his hand along his chin, feeling the prickliness of it. He had been in the gym when he received the Colonel's summons and rushed to get himself together.
"In any case, after you left my office I had a long conversation with Major Choi. I'm not saying I agree with you. Not yet. I do want to hear more about your experience."
"You have the data recorder," Gabriel said.
"We do, but I haven't heard the contents yet. I wanted to get your perspective first-hand."
Gabriel told Colonel Graham about the mission, starting from the moment he left the slipstream, and ending when he re-entered it. Graham leaned forward when he related the part about the enemy starfighter destroying its own satellites, interested in every detail Gabriel could give him.
"Was there anything about the weapon that seemed strange to you?" Graham asked.
"No. It seemed like a standard plasma cannon to me. Except when the bolts hit the satellites, they blew as if they had no armor at all."
"Incredible. Fifty years, and it's the first time anyone has seen anything like it. Is it coincidence or providence that you witnessed it right before the Council is set to mee
t about what to do with the colony?"
"I don't believe in fate," Gabriel said.
"Neither do I," Graham replied. "But I do believe in God, and that's the question that's keeping me up at night. I thought I had made up my mind about leaving, but then you dropped that bomb on me, and now I'm not so sure."
"If there is a God, why would He let the Dread kill billions of innocent people?" Gabriel asked. That was the question that had often kept him up at night. It was the reason he asked for luck and kept the crucifix as a charm instead of a religious symbol. His mother had faith, and look where it had gotten her. "And don't say He works in mysterious ways."
"Freedom of all His creations. Including the Dread. That doesn't mean He's happy with what they've done, or that they won't pay for it when they die. I had thought maybe He had other things in mind for us, that this new planet would be an Eden. I'm not the only one. That's what the Council is calling it. Did you know that?"
"No."
"It is. Anyway, my heart says we should stay. My head says we should go."
"Spaceman Locke said the same thing. If you're spiritual, what does your spirit say?"
Graham was silent. He stared at Gabriel as if he could find answers there.
"The Council is convening tomorrow. I'm going to be taking a transport down to Alpha to attend. I want you to come with me."
"Why?"
"Faith. I want you to talk to the Council."
"So I can get myself court-martialed?" Gabriel asked.
"If God wants us to stay and fight, He'll send His message through you."
Gabriel wasn't about to attribute his passion to someone else's will. "Do you really believe that?"
"I do."
"Then I guess I'll see you tomorrow," Gabriel said. "Is there anything else, sir?"
"No, thank you. You're dismissed."
Gabriel got to his feet and saluted before turning on his heel and heading out the door. Colonel Graham could call it providence if he wanted to. He could claim it was the work of an all-powerful being, and who knew? Maybe it was. He'd been having that argument with himself for years, and it always ended with his mother and his home world lost. How did Graham, or his father for that matter, manage to stay with God when God hadn't stayed with them?
He was sure he would never know.
TWENTY-THREE
"Are you serious?" Diaz asked, pushing past Donovan and opening the door to a hairline crack.
She pulled it closed a few heartbeats later, turning to look at him.
He knew what she had just seen. The small control room for the drainage system was sitting in the corner of an expansive area beneath the Dread's impenetrable cocoon. Looking up, he had seen the dark carapace made visible by an organic light that seemed to run in jagged lines along it, a bluish-white illumination that accented ridges and dips and extrusions on the material that he had never witnessed before.
Ahead of them, he had seen what he assumed was a machine of some kind. It was large and dark and made of a compound he didn't recognize. It was as though they had taken liquid oil and molded it into parts, and then assembled those parts and connected them with more of the dark material in tubes and channels that gave the entire thing a menacing and lifelike appearance.
He had heard it humming while the door was open, and had seen how the ground seemed to vibrate below it. That was all he had taken the time to absorb before his fear had made him close the door again. He had no idea if there were any Dread in the area, and now that they had managed to get into the city, he found himself scared of the idea of seeing one of the aliens. If they did, they would be the first free humans to lay eyes on them.
"I don't know what to say," Diaz whispered. "Or if we should be scared or excited."
"Excited?" Donovan asked.
"This is a pretty incredible opportunity. No one has ever been inside before."
"You don't know that. It could be no one has ever been inside and made it back out."
"Well, we're inside, and whether we choose to be scared or not, there's only going to be one way out." She pointed at the door.
"I'm trying not to be afraid. It isn't working that well."
"I'm with you on that, amigo."
They stared at each other in silence. Donovan tried to get his nerves and his breathing under control. They were going to have to go out there. It wasn't like they had a choice unless they wanted to stay in the control room and starve. Except he doubted that would happen either. The Dread hadn't destroyed the building or the drainage system. In fact, it was possible they were using it for something, which meant they were no safer here than out there.
"You still have your knife?" he asked.
Diaz laughed. "What good is that going to do against them?"
"None if they're armored. We know they use clones for at least part of their army, and the clones are just like us."
"Actually, they're just like each other. Literally. And better armed."
Donovan forced a smile. The trauma they had already been through was making them giddy. He could feel himself shaking, his frayed nerves begging for release. He struggled to get them under control. He was still the CO of this unit, even if it only consisted of one other soldier. It was his duty to lead.
"Then we'll have to be sneaky. We're t-vaulters. We're good at that. How's my shoulder?"
Diaz circled behind him to check it. "It looks like it stopped bleeding. How does it feel?"
"It hurts. I'll live. Come on."
Donovan returned to the door, slowly pushing it open a third time. This time, he opened it enough to stick his head out and take in more of the area.
The machine right in front of him was only one of a dozen identical devices, arranged in a circle around the center of the massive space. What looked like thick cables ran from each of them to the middle, where a large platform rose to the top of the structure in an hourglass shape of bundled cord. As before, he could see the ground vibrating beneath and around each of the machines. The cords leading to the ceiling were shifting as well though the effect wasn't as noticeable in the air.
What he didn't see were any other life forms, alien or otherwise. They were safe for now.
"What do you think it is?" Diaz asked, following him out of the room.
They stayed close to the small, cement building, tracing its walls to the rear. The side of the alien structure was only a dozen meters away at the back and gave off a faint odor that Donovan had never experienced before. It was sweet and rich; a pleasant smell.
"It may be their power source," he said. "Or one of them, anyway."
"What do you think would happen if we destroyed it?"
"Probably nothing good for them, but considering we only have a utility knife? I don't like our odds."
Diaz nodded, and they moved toward the wall. When they got close enough, they both reached out to touch it at almost the same time.
The material was cool to the touch, smooth and solid as steel or iron. Leaning in for a closer inspection, he could see tiny veins of various shades of gray moving through it and along it. He didn't know if they were intentional or simply the coloration of whatever it was made from. The other thing he noticed was that the shape of it was uneven. Not only were there sharp ridges in seemingly random places in the material, but there were also gentle slopes and valleys that he would never have noticed without running his hand along it.
"It's amazing," he said.
"It's also the death of humanity," Diaz replied.
Donovan removed his hand. "Do you see a way out?"
"There," she said, pointing to a break in the material a short distance away. "It looks like a corridor."
"Let's try to stay in the shadows as much as possible, and hope they don't have an alarm."
Diaz smiled. "I bet they don't expect anything to get in here. If we had a little bit of C-4, we could blow this entire area, no problem."
"We'll be sure to come back with some."
They made their way across t
o the adjoining corridor. It was much smaller in scale, ten meters high and wide. It was also darker and more foreboding, with the bluish light filtering from the ceiling in regular intervals and casting the chitinous material in an eerie light. The hallway ended a few hundred meters back, forking into a pair of adjoining corridors.
There was still no sign of life. The only noise to be heard was the soft humming from the machines behind them.
"I feel like this is a good time to say something witty and inspiring," Donovan said. "Nothing's coming to me."
"Let's try not to die," Diaz said.
"Good enough."
TWENTY-FOUR
Donovan and Diaz navigated through corridor after corridor, taking random turns to the right or left fork based on educated guesses of which direction they were facing and which direction might lead them out of the Dread city, careful not to move in a way that would bring them back to where they had started.
An hour passed with no sign of anything beyond the dim hallways, which all began to look identical after a while. The only sound was the light slapping of their bare feet on the cold floor. The only comfort was the fact that they weren't alone.
They had spent years in the shadow of the massive alien base. They had spent years in hiding, fearful of what lay behind the black walls. Only now they were behind the black walls.
And there was nothing.
For Donovan, it defied expectation or explanation. Where were the Dread? From the outside he had assumed the aliens were thriving beneath their protective cocoon, taking advantage of the humans they had enslaved. It was common knowledge that they had come to harvest humanity's genome, to splice humankind's DNA into their own as centuries of scientific rather than sexual reproduction had destroyed their diversity and left them weak and riddled with illness. It was understood that they had rounded up people by the thousands, testing them for compatibility and quality and using those who matched their criteria for specific applications like the identical bald soldiers.
