by M. R. Forbes
"Yousefi?" Michael said. "The one you told me about?"
"Yes."
"He looks taller in person. Maybe we can dance first?"
Katherine tugged Michael by the shoulder. "You hate dancing."
"I like it better than meeting Admirals."
"Major Asher, is it?" A voice asked from her left. Katherine turned toward it, finding Vice President Nelson standing beside her.
"Vice President," she said, giving him a light curtsy. He took her hand, expertly kissing the back of it.
"Since you're here, I assume you were selected?" he said.
"Yes, sir," she replied.
"Good. I was worried the American contingent would wind up getting shut out."
"That would have been against the rules."
He smiled. "You know how rules are, don't you, Major?"
Katherine made a split-second decision to decide she knew what he was talking about. "Of course, sir."
"Are you going to introduce me to your husband?" Nelson said, looking at Michael.
"Uh. Not husband, Mister President. Mister Vice President, I mean. Just. Just a friend." Michael smiled, his face turning red.
"If I weren't a married man, I would thank you for that," Nelson said, laughing. "Roger Nelson." He put out his hand.
"Michael Stickley," Michael replied, hesitant to present his clammy hand to the man.
"A pleasure." Nelson reached out and took the hand anyway, shaking it. He moved close to Michael as he did, but Katherine could still hear what he said.
"If you want her, don't let her leave without saying so, son."
Michael's color deepened even more. "Yes, sir," he muttered, glancing uncomfortably at Katherine.
She was amused by the whole thing. There was no possibility of that happening. She was married to her career, and he was married to his technology.
Nelson turned back to her. "I know you'll do us proud, Major."
"Yes, sir," she replied.
Vice President Nelson wandered away, replaced a moment later by Rear Admiral Yousefi.
"Major," Yousefi said.
"Admiral," Katherine replied, coming to attention and saluting.
Yousefi smiled. "At ease, Major. This is a civilian event. Besides, you're forgetting the new regulations. The UEA settled on bowing, remember?"
Katherine returned the smile, relaxing her posture. The fledgling oversight group had wanted to change things up a bit to better integrate the various members of the armed forces from all of the member countries. One of their bright ideas had been to homogenize formal military greetings to a bow instead of a salute. She had no idea how they had come to that decision, but it was proving to be a hard habit to break.
And that wasn't the only one. Applicants to the program had come from nearly every branch of nearly every military around the globe, with the unintended consequence of creating a level of confusion in organizational structure and ranks that had yet to be ironed out. After all, there were no Majors in the Navy and no Admirals in the Air Force, and yet here they were.
"Yes, sir," she said. "Admiral Yousefi, I want you to meet my friend, Michael."
The Admiral turned to Michael, who put out a slightly shaky hand that had recently been wiped dry on the back of his pants.
"Admiral," Michael said.
"Please, my name is Ben," Yousefi replied, taking Michael's hand.
"Nice to meet you, Ben," Michael said.
"Likewise. Your friend Katherine here is quite talented, isn't she?"
"She used to have a stack of trophies in her room to prove it," Michael said. "Running, swimming, karate, violin. Is there anything you're bad at, Katherine?"
"I'm not much of a dancer," Katherine said.
"Really?" Yousefi asked. He put out his hand. "Do you mind if I ask you to prove it?"
Katherine glanced at Michael, and then at Yousefi's hand. She had been hoping to get through the night without getting out on the floor, and she had just said the exact wrong thing to accomplish that mission.
"I've never known you to be shy, Katherine," Yousefi said. "Besides, it will make a good photo op for the media."
"I can picture the caption now," Katherine said. "Admiral uses pilot as floor mop."
Yousefi laughed at that, pushing his hand forward a little more. Katherine bit her lip and decided to take it.
"That's better," Yousefi said. "Shall we-"
His voice was drowned out by the explosion.
5
It echoed across the crowded room, the force knocking Katherine to her knees, while Yousefi crouched down over her, instinctively trying to protect her. She turned her head, looking for Michael, finding him on the floor his hands over his head. She was relieved he was okay.
People were screaming and crying, and smoke was rising from the corner of the room.
What the hell was going on?
"Are you hurt?" Yousefi asked.
"No," she replied. "We need to help these people."
"Yes."
They stood up. She could see now that part of the window had been blown out, and there were at least four people on the ground who weren't moving. Others were injured and bleeding, their faces covered in debris.
"Michael," she said, leaning over him. "Are you okay?"
He uncovered his face to look at her. She could see the fear in his expression. He didn't say anything. He didn't have to.
"It's okay," she said.
Was it?
The elevator doors opened, and a squad of soldiers poured into the room. They were wearing U.S military issue tactical battle armor, ready for a fight.
Had someone been expecting this?
She saw Vice President Nelson getting to his feet, surrounded by Secret Service. He had been close enough to the blast that he had blood and debris on his clothes and face, but hadn't been hurt himself.
"What's happening he-"
He didn't get to finish his sentence. The soldiers opened fire, heavy slugs tearing through the secret service and the Vice President, who flopped backward like a dead fish.
Katherine felt the fear rise into her throat.
"Stay down, don't move, whatever happens," she whispered to Michael.
The soldiers swept into the room, scanning it. Katherine reached down and pulled off her heels, holding onto one of them. With enough force, the stiletto would make a serviceable weapon.
She expected the soldiers would corral them, stick them in a corner and hold them hostage. They wanted something or they wouldn't be here.
She was surprised when they started shooting into the crowd.
The deafening roar of gunfire, the thumps of bullets hitting flesh, the screams of the wounded and dying. The entire floor turned into an instant war zone. Katherine had never been on the ground during the Xeno War, but she could imagine this was something like it. Fortunately, they were obscured behind a table and away from the others. She glanced back, finding Yousefi under the table behind them, hovering over his pregnant wife. He saw her looking and held up a gun that he had produced from somewhere. He put it on the floor and slid it over to her.
She understood why he didn't want to get involved. He had a baby to think of. She picked the gun from the ground, only moments before one of the soldiers appeared over the table.
His eyes widened as she swung the weapon toward him. He scrambled to bring his rifle to bear, his surprise making him slow. The tactical armor covered most of his body. It wasn't covering his face. The bullet hit him square in the eye, punching through and into his brain. He dropped in an instant.
"Get under the table," she said to Michael.
He immediately began scrambling for it on all fours.
The other soldiers hadn't noticed her in the commotion. They continued advancing on the gathered crowd, shooting into the press. How many heads of state were already dead? How many of the most important people in the UEA had been killed?
And who had organized it?
It's true there were people op
posed to the Alliance, and to the construction of the Dove. Plenty of people didn't want to make allies out of former enemies, and they certainly didn't want to be tied to them in a common goal. It was stupid as far as she was concerned. An alien ship had crashed on their planet. That meant there had to be more of them out there, and who knew if they were friendly? It was true that nothing that could be construed as a weapon had been found in the wreckage, but maybe that ship had been a scout. The possibility couldn't be discounted.
She circled the table quickly, kneeling next to the downed soldier and grabbing his rifle. There weren't many people still moving, and the soldiers were shifting their attention to the rest of the room. A woman near the back tried to make a run for it and was gunned down a moment later.
Katherine watched the soldiers, running back toward the elevator when they weren't looking. She dropped behind a buffet table, coming to one knee and using it to balance the rifle. She had managed to get behind the soldiers, who were fanning out to search for the remaining survivors.
She started shooting.
Bullets tore into the soldiers, hitting them in the back where the armor wasn't as thick. They raised their own shouts of pain and alarm, three of them falling before the rest could spot her. She had been hoping to catch them all. The table wasn't thick enough to protect her.
She felt a pang of sadness as she watched the muzzles of the soldier's rifles flare, only instants before the bullets began raining in on her. Her entire life had been spent in preparation to travel to the stars. She had survived countless combat missions, she had made it through the grueling training, and now only weeks before she was going to be gunned down at a party, of all things.
She felt the warm pain of a bullet hit her in the leg. Another hit her on the side, and she fell over onto her back. She couldn't believe she was going to die this way. So was Michael. She was even more scared for her friend. She had convinced him to come with her. He should have been at home playing Xeno Troopers.
She struggled to get back to her feet. She couldn't just let him die like this. She ignored the pain in her side, and the feeling of warmth spreading from the wound, her blood soaking through her dress. She managed to get to her knees.
They had stopped shooting at her. Why?
She reached up, planting a hand on the table and willing herself up. Her vision was getting cloudy, and everything was starting to spin.
"Michael," she said weakly, the confusion making it hard to grasp the situation.
The soldiers. They were on the ground. All of them. Four new soldiers were standing near the blown out window, still attached to their rappel wires. They were wearing similar armor, all of it black and unmarked. Their weapons raised to point at her.
The lead soldier put his hand out, and the weapons lowered. The emergency stairwell doors swung open, and people began flowing in - more soldiers and medics.
Someone took her by the arm. A woman.
"Someone get a kit and a stretcher over here, stat," the woman shouted. "It's going to be okay, Major."
"Who?" Katherine said, barely able to speak.
"Stay calm. You've lost a lot of blood. We'll get you fixed up."
"How?" she said, to confused for anything else. The world was getting hazy around her.
"Launch the Goliath," the woman said. "Find Mitchell."
"What?" She put her hand to her head, finding a slick of blood. She hadn't noticed the bullet that hit her there. "I don't understand."
"It's okay, Major. Find Mitchell."
"Who?"
Everything was getting dark, and nothing was making sense.
"Mitchell," the woman said again.
Then everything disappeared.
6
Reggie stared at the ceiling. He was in bed, under the blankets, trying to fall asleep. It had always been elusive. It had always been difficult. There were so many nights when he had given up completely, throwing his sheets onto the floor and rising nearly naked in the cool air, standing in the center of the room and staring at the wall.
Why?
He didn't know.
He knew his name wasn't Reggie. Beyond that?
He was in a hospital. A mental hospital. He had been there for a long time. He was sure he was supposed to be there because he was certain he was crazy. How else could he explain why he spent so much time staring at nothing? How else could he understand why the last twenty years of his life had been spent in a haze of distorted emptiness, where the only thing that seemed real were the nightmares?
Was he unable to sleep because he was afraid of them? Did he stare at nothing because he didn't want to face the truth of his existence?
He had spent twenty years asking himself the same questions. Twenty years trying to grasp at who and why he was. So many wasted days. So many sleepless nights. What good had any of it done him? He was nobody, and he had nothing.
His eyes fixed on the plain white paint, tracing it with precision, searching for the chips and cracks he knew were there. He had spent so much time staring at this wall that he knew every inch of it, every flaw. In many ways, it reminded him of himself. A blank canvas, but one with cracks that couldn't be covered over.
Did he stare because he saw his reflection there?
He blinked. Once. Twice. The third time, he held his eyes closed tight before releasing them, opening them like he was firing a gun. He caught sight of something in his vision, and he tried to catch up to it. A dark trailing edge to whatever it was he had forgotten. As soon as he got close enough, it danced away.
He glanced down at his arms. The skin was rough and puckered in spots, the remaining scars from a number of grafts and stem cell treatments. He could still remember what they had looked like in the beginning, the burns sinking so deep they had at one point considered amputation. The twenty-third century, and they were ready to treat him as if it were the nineteenth.
They didn't hurt too badly anymore. Or maybe he had just gotten used to the pain. The doctors had always told him that they were the reason he couldn't remember. That he had been so traumatized by whatever had caused the burns that his mind had shut it out, along with everything else. He didn't believe them.
There was a reason he couldn't remember, but he was certain it wasn't that. He had become so accustomed to the burning sensation in his skin, even all of these years later, that he barely ever noticed it anymore.
A few days earlier, he had told Father John that he was waiting. Then his mind had changed in a way he had never experienced before. His dreams, his nightmares, had entered his waking thoughts, the wall between them breaking down and all of the darkness raging in. The priest had seen it. He knew by the way he had reacted, almost falling over and killing himself to escape. Somehow, Reggie had managed to push the tide back, to force himself to calm down and breathe.
Slow.
Steady.
Father John had been back, of course. The old man was too determined to save his soul to let one episode like that chase him away. He had asked about his thoughts, and Reggie had pushed him back the way he always did. It was better that nobody else got involved. It was better if nobody else got hurt.
That was the crux of it. The bottom line of his nightmares. Death. Destruction. Everything he cared about turned to ash in silent flame.
And always at the center of it, a voice. A soothing, comforting voice that had turned more and more caustic over the years.
"Find her," it said. "You have forever until tomorrow, but not forever until the end. You'll know when the time has come."
It was a statement that had haunted him in the beginning, as he tried to work out the meaning. It had puzzled him, confused him, taunted him, agonized him. It had brought him to fits of anger and rage and frustration. It had left him sobbing on the floor.
In his nightmares, he was in space, surrounded by explosions and wreckage and debris. The Earth hung below him, calm and unaware. The ships sat above him, the tips of their pyramid-shaped bows pointed at her, with gl
owing balls of death building on the ends.
His brother was gone. His companion was gone. His friends and comrades were all gone. He couldn't remember their names or their faces, but he could feel them in his gut, and he could feel the punches again and again every time he saw them die.
Was it real?
It felt real. It felt true.
He was certain he was crazy.
He dropped to his hands and feet on the floor, resting his body in plank position for thirty seconds, before rising and falling, pulsing out a quick rhythm of push-ups. He stopped when he reached one hundred, standing up and letting his breathing relax. His body tingled from the exertion, but he felt strong. After thirty seconds, he repeated the motion again.
He had made sure to continue the routine from the time his arms had been healed enough to stand the pain. It was familiar to him; something so ingrained that he knew that somewhere, sometime, he had been trained to do it. He had to keep his body in shape. It became more important as he aged. He was still fit, still strong. He needed to be, even if he didn't know exactly why.
He had seen the news earlier. He had noticed it for the first time he could remember, as more than a buzzing in his head, as more than a distraction. His dreams of starships weren't completely insane. He knew one had crashed on the same night they found him. Maybe that was the cause of the nightmares? But that had happened thousands of kilometers away from where he was, so how could those things be connected?
He also knew that they had built one of their own. A starship. They were calling it the Dove, a symbol of peace for the whole world. Was the violence in his mind a warning? Was humankind not supposed to reach the stars?
"Find her," the voice had said. A young girl's voice. Who was she? "You'll know when the time has come."
The news report was about a special event where the inaugural crew of the Dove would be announced. It was supposed to be a big deal, a bright spotlight on what a combined world could achieve. It had fallen apart to violence, to a group that called itself the AIT. Anti-Interstellar Travel. Apparently, they were radical Earth protectionists who preferred that humans remained grounded and invisible to whatever had owned the ship that had crashed all those years ago, the one they had named XENO-1.
