by Richard Fox
“Marine, if that’s the worst thing that happens to you on this planet, consider yourself lucky,” Hale said.
****
Orozco shifted against the Mule’s co-pilot seat. He’d had to dump his armor plating to fit in the seat, and the bank of blinking buttons that he wasn’t allowed to touch only made him more and more nervous as the flight continued.
“Hey, Lafayette,” he said to the Karigole in the pilot’s seat in front of him, “you really think there’s an island full of your people here?”
“I believe you are attempting small talk.”
“I’m getting bored and there’s this big red button that’s tempting me to push it.”
“Buttons are not toys, Sergeant Orozco. I need you to monitor the capacitor charge levels from the co-pilot’s seat, not send us crashing into the ocean. Speaking of which…”
“Thirty-seven percent.”
“To keep your mind occupied, I refuse to believe that there are more Karigole on this planet. My Centuria and I chased such rumors for years; all proved fruitless. I made my peace that my people will die with Steuben. To believe otherwise is to re-invite suffering that I have already defeated,” Lafayette said.
“If you don’t believe it, then why are you going to the island?”
“Steuben kept the pain. He keeps it out of hope, and that hope is why we are on this fool’s errand. Tell me this: how do you feel knowing that Mentiq maintained a sizable population of humans as livestock?”
Orozco felt a surge of anger in his chest.
“I want to rip his diseased lump of brain matter apart like you two did to that Kren asshole on the Naga. How else can I feel?”
“Understandable. Is it true that humans once kept vast tracts of land dedicated to maintaining livestock of their own? How is it you can have so much hatred for Mentiq for behavior similar to your own?”
“What? People aren’t cows or chickens, tin man. Big difference. Have you ever seen a cow before?”
“I observed some outside Phoenix. They were graceful, majestic, with long manes of flowing hair. I understand humans used to ride them into battle.”
“That’s a horse. There are some wild herds ranging between Phoenix and Maricopa. Cows are bigger, dumber animals that crap all over the place.”
“And you would eat these cows?”
“Not for a long time. Back in the twenties some genius invented NuMeat. Tasted identical to beef, chicken or fish, but it was all made from plants. Bunch of meat-lovers swore they could tell the difference between the original and the imitation, but they failed a blind taste test every single time,” Orozco said.
“And humans stopped large-scale meat consumption after this came on the market?”
“Not right away. Thing was, the NuMeat was cheaper—a lot cheaper—to produce and ship. Some of the big fast-food chains switched over and people started buying the NuMeat. Grazing land got turned into farms, lots of meat producers went out of business, price of real meat went up, more people bought the NuMeat. Market forces.
“There were still some people that had to have the real thing. My abuela, she wouldn’t touch the fake stuff, made my grandpa spend lots of money on the real thing. But he,” Orozco laughed, “he just bought her the NuMeat and swapped the packaging. Spent the rest of the money on his mistress.”
“You find it amusing that your progenitor was unfaithful?”
“A Spaniard’s heart is like a forest, Lafayette. There’s always room for another tree.”
“I will never understand humans. Prepare to land.”
A small island several miles long crested over the horizon, a mass of fungal trees dark against the water and red sky.
“No sign of any electricity. I’ll set down on the far end,” Lafayette said.
Orozco gripped his armrests as Lafayette nosed the Mule higher over a line of trees then dipped into a small clearing. The Mule landed gently and Lafayette shut the craft down.
“I’ll get the shroud over the ship. Meet me outside,” Steuben sent.
Orozco got out of the co-pilot’s seat and opened a locker holding his armor plates.
“That won’t be necessary,” Lafayette said. “I doubt there’s anything here.”
“Is there some Karigole equivalent for ‘better safe than sorry’?”
Lafayette cocked his head to the side. “We say, ‘It is more desirable to kill an enemy with your bare hands than from a distance.’”
Orozco shook his head and donned his chest plate.
****
Lilith sat on a wooden bench on the covered patio that ran across the back of the college. She watched as waves crashed against the nearby shore, light from Mentiq’s city shining like a moon frozen against the horizon.
She held her necklace in her lap, her fingers rubbing along the edges. A teardrop fell across the deep-blue jewel in the center.
The sound of heavy footsteps approaching startled her. She sat up straight and wiped her face across her shoulder. The youngest of the Marines, Yarrow, stood in the doorway leading back to the ballroom. He said words that had no meaning for her.
“I don’t understand,” she said.
Yarrow touched a box on his throat.
“Sorry, how’s this?” he asked.
“Better. Interesting technology. My aunt worked on something similar for the temple, creating translation protocols for races that Mentiq would contact…” she trailed off and looked over at the distant city. “He wasn’t going to enlighten those races, was he? He was going to consume them, or make them like us—” Her hand flew to her mouth and she dry heaved.
“It’s not every day you get your whole universe upended like this.” Yarrow sat on the bench next to her.
“I don’t think you really understand how I’m feeling right now,” Lilith said.
“Oh? Couple weeks ago I found out that I’m not a real person,” Yarrow said.
Lilith turned to the Marine and pressed her lips into a thin line. She reached out and ran her fingertips down the side of his face and along his jawline.
“You seem plenty real to me,” she said.
“That’s up for interpretation. I’m a proccie, a procedurally generated human being. Ibarra—I’ll explain him later—grew my body in a tube and put my consciousness, which came from some sort of computer simulation, into it. I didn’t even know until Lieutenant Hale told me. Up until a few months ago, everything I thought was my life was a big old fat lie.” Yarrow put his hands on the edge of the bench and leaned back.
“Why? Did this Ibarra create you to be…livestock?”
“No. That’s what the Toth want me and the other proccies to be. That’s why they attacked Earth. I guess Ibarra made me to fight the Xaros. There weren’t many of us left after the invasion, and the drones will come back…can’t say I blame him.” Yarrow shrugged.
“No one asks to be born,” Lilith said. “At least you have a sense of agency with your life. You haven’t been tricked into a belief system like me. You do have the choice to be a Marine? To fight?”
“Do I?” Yarrow looked across the ocean. “I never thought about it. Not that there’s anything else to do on Earth. Everyone is focused on rebuilding the planet and surviving the next wave.”
“You know what’s odd?” Lilith sat forward and tugged at her bottom lip. “One of the younger students, a biology savant, received his calling the last time the kadanu came to see us. He was to figure out a way to accelerate human growth. Fetus to adult within days. He was so excited for the challenge, decades of work ahead of him…”
“Sounds like Mentiq farmed out—sorry, phrasing—a lot of projects to this village. What did he have you do?”
“Cracking an ancient device’s source code. Several generations of our scientists have worked on the device. First, we trained it to do simple things like utility management, then progressively more advanced computations for energy shielding and quantum field calculations for jump engines…” She looked to Mentiq’s city. “H
e must have it there. The energy shields are only a few hundred years old. It didn’t exist until my ancestor completed his calling for the shields.”
“Is everyone in this village as brilliant as you are?” Yarrow asked.
Lilith blushed. “No. We’re tested throughout childhood for aptitude and ability. Those that aren’t gifted in any particular area are…taken to the city. Some become kadanu. Most are never seen again.”
“And you…you know this ancient device well? Can you operate it?”
“Hmm…I suppose. I’d need direct access. My lab is firewalled off from the island network. I could only share code with researchers in the temple or on the other islands,” she said.
“One second.” Yarrow switched off his voice box and opened a channel to Hale. “Sir?”
“Go,” Hale said.
“It’s Lilith. When we go to Mentiq’s city, I think we need to take her with us.” Yarrow conferred with his lieutenant for a minute as Lilith tried to listen in.
“What’s that all about?” she asked once Yarrow reactivated his voice box.
“Lilith…do you know how to fight?” he asked.
“You mean,” her voice dropped to a conspiratorial whisper, “violence?”
Yarrow nodded.
“No, that’s forbidden. No one would risk their ascension, or anyone else’s, by putting life or health in jeopardy. Why do you ask?”
“We need your help. Will you come to the city with us and help us deactivate the probe—the ancient device?”
Lilith dropped her chin to her chest and turned away from him. “I’m no warrior, not like you. What good will I be?”
“We can handle the fighting, don’t worry about that. We’ll need you to drop the shields on the city if we can’t find an easier way to kill Mentiq,” Yarrow said.
Her head snapped up and she stared at the Marine.
“You’re going to kill Lord Mentiq? What about the rest of the village? The Lan’Xi came to us with the Karigole, and every last one of them were purged for the actions of a few who tried to tell us the truth. They catch me over there…”
“We’ll get you all out. I promise.” Yarrow touched his gloved fingers to her hand.
“Are you going to protect me?”
“You have my word.”
“Then I’ll go.” She stood up and ran her hands over her tunic to smooth it out.
“So do you have a boyfriend?” Yarrow asked nervously.
“A what?”
“Nothing! Let’s get back to the lieutenant before those kadanu show up.” Yarrow pushed against the bench, and his augmented muscles snapped the old planks with a crack. The bench collapsed beneath Yarrow and he fell on his backside.
Yarrow sprang to his feet and dusted himself off, glancing at the wrecked bench.
“I’ll fix that later,” he said.
CHAPTER 14
Orozco moved through a wall of tall ferns, their sway the only sign of his passing so long as his cloak was active. A field of low grass stretched ahead of him in the garnet-hued light from the night sky.
He took a step forward and crushed a puffy mushroom that ejected spores all over him.
“Blast it.” He bent over and tried to brush the dust away.
“You know we’re trying to infiltrate through the island. Using stealth. So as not to be discovered,” Steuben said.
“Yeah, I got that part.” Orozco unsnapped a fern blade and swept it across his legs, knocking more and more spores into the air, which adhered to his armor and gave him a ghostly pallor.
“I wasn’t sure. A Toth menial in Mentiq’s city can probably hear you blundering around out here,” Steuben said.
“How about we keep moving?” Orozco shook out his Gustav and walked across the field. “You see my weapon? You think I care about subtlety? No, give me a line of sight on a pack of Toth warriors and I’ll—”
The ground gave way beneath him and Orozco got off half a shout before he crashed into a thicket of sharpened sticks. He fell against the dusty ground and tried to move. The broken tips of wooden stakes were stuck between the armor joints around his shoulder and waist. He pried the wood out and gave thanks that his armor managed to protect him from the primitive trap.
He looked around and saw a decaying body impaled just above the ground, the stakes running through a skeletal rib cage and skull. The body looked human.
“I’m OK. Steuben? Lafayette? I need some help out. Guys?”
There was no answer.
He heard footsteps approaching and three lithe figures ran up to the edge of the pit. Orozco saw their outline against the nebula sky, all hairless humanoids holding crude weapons.
“Uh…hi.” Orozco waved to them. “You guys are Karigole, right? Know a guy named Steuben?”
One of the figures drew back a bow and shot an arrow. It hit Orozco in the chest and bounced off his armor.
“Really? I’m here to help, believe it or not.”
The sound of clicks and whistles came from the tallest of the three. One of the others picked up a large stone and lifted it over his head. He reared back and hurled it at Orozco, but it stopped in midair just as it left his grasp, dropping to the ground.
Steuben dropped his cloak and the three attackers backed away, brandishing their weapons. Steuben removed his helmet and spoke in the same clicks and whistles. Weapons lowered and one of the three reached out to touch Steuben on the side of his face. The figure looked up at the much taller Steuben, and Orozco saw the face of a younger Karigole.
One of the juveniles turned and ran away.
“Excuse me? Little help here?” Orozco said as he got to his feet. The side of the pit was packed dirt and didn’t look like it could support his weight.
“Here.” Lafayette, de-cloaked but still wearing his helmet, reached into the pit.
Orozco lifted the handle of his Gustav to Lafayette and held on to the weapon as the cyborg easily lifted him from the pit.
Orozco looked over his weapon and brushed dirt away.
Steuben was still talking to the pair of shocked Karigole, who looked young to Orozco’s best guess.
“What’re they saying?” he asked.
Lafayette plucked the voice box off Orozco’s throat guard and plugged a wire into it from his gauntlet. A moment later he passed it back to the gunner.
“—heard stories about the last Centuria, but we never believed it. Just an old geth’aar tale to give us hope,” one of the younger Karigole said.
“How old are you?” Steuben asked. “Have you been through your second passage?”
“I’m twenty turnings. Theol is nineteen. She should have hers before mine but…no one wants the passage anymore,” the Karigole said.
“Why?”
“You should talk to Bishala. She’s our eldest geth’aar, our matriarch. She can explain things fully,” Theol said. She was as tall as the other, and with a slighter build. Both wore ragged cloth crisscrossed over their bodies and bound by cords of rope around their waists.
“Come,” she said and pointed across the field.
Steuben walked between the two Karigole, but Lafayette held back.
As Steuben and the others pulled ahead, Orozco kept pace with Lafayette and asked the Karigole, “Why aren’t you…I don’t know, happy?”
“Karigole society, in whatever manner it has survived here, is different from what I’ve experienced in your culture. There are things I do not expect you to understand,” Lafayette said stiffly.
“Then help me out. I don’t want to do something stupid like insult a household god or have to fight one of you to the death because it’s time to get frisky or something like that,” Orozco said.
“I am dead,” Lafayette said and Orozco stopped in his tracks. “By the geth’aar’s definition, I am too damaged to serve as a parent and must be pushed out of the clan. Our genetic makeup is a bit different from yours. The strength and health of a Karigole parent at the time of conception is passed on to the child. If a Kari
gole father has a broken arm or some other trauma, the baby may be born with a weakened limb or even lame. The geth’aar do not allow such weakness in the clan.
“By rights, I should have been left to die from my wounds after the Xaros disintegration beam took so much from me. But, the Centuria thought we were the last…an exception was made.”
“They’re not going to like you because you’ve got battle scars?”
“Scars are of little consequence. Damage that could be passed on to a child is another.”
“But you don’t even…” Orozco glanced at Lafayette’s crotch.
“Irrelevant to the geth’aar. They are superstitious and hidebound. It is best not to try to rationalize it. Come, we’re falling behind.” Lafayette started walking again.
“What’s a geth’aar? It isn’t getting translated.” Orozco saw a group of low grass huts in the distance.
“It is our third sex. Your language has no acceptable concept for them so the voice box lets the word through unfiltered,” Lafayette said.
“Third? Are there more?”
“No. Male, female and geth’aar. The geth’aars receive the sperm and ovum from the mother and father, then carry the baby to term. Geth’aar births are very rare, and they have a high status in our culture,” Lafayette said.
Orozco frowned. “If they’re so rare…then how…wait…”
“Our men and women marry and raise the children, but the geth’aar are something of a community asset. Clans form around two or three geth’aar, protect them and care for them, and the geth’aar give birth for the clan,” Lafayette said.
“Huh. And I thought human women were complicated.”
“The geth’aar are often the longest lived of any of us. But if a fertile cycle passes without them becoming pregnant, they run the risk of becoming very ill and dying,” Lafayette said. He stopped in a patch of tall grass at the edge of the village. Children ran out of huts and swarmed around Steuben. Older Karigole, skinny and not as tall as Steuben, formed a cordon around the warrior and the children.
