by Richard Fox
“Nothing, she’s from China. That’s what Chinese people look like,” Standish said. He passed the girl to “Nag” Ma and stepped out of the way of another slowly approaching shuttle.
The girl stared slack-jawed at Nag’s face as the pilot carried the little one back to the rest of the civilians.
+It is time for me to leave.+
“What? First off, good. Second off, why?”
+My programming requires immediate termination on the event of capture or a successful alteration of my coding. I transferred my final report to one of the data crystals. The unit you have in the Crucible will find it most useful.+
“No! No, no.” Standish pressed his palms to several different places around his head, trying to keep the probe from escaping. “You can’t just self-terminate like that. I was just beginning to like you!”
+Deception detected. You served a valuable purpose in aiding my escape. The Toth used me to create incalculable damage across the local galaxy. I will not risk falling into hostile control again.+
“I’m human, not hostile. You can be our guest, no need to work. We have our own probe for all that. He’s great. Just wait until you meet him.” Standish watched in horror as a glowing flame emerged from his forearm. He swiped at the probe, but his hand passed right through it.
+Farewell, Standish. Thank you.+
The probe floated through the force field and sped away in a flash of light. Standish watched as its blur shot toward the system’s green star.
Standish’s shoulders fell.
“What was that all about?” Yarrow asked as he came up to his fellow Marine.
“You know what, new guy? Sometimes this galaxy can be a real son of a bitch.”
****
Valdar kept his eyes closed as the light of the wormhole flooded his bridge. He felt his ship rumble as the wormhole collapsed and the light faded away.
“We’re through,” Ensign Geller said from the conn station. “Welcome home, everyone.”
Valdar opened his eyes and saw the gigantic crown of thorns that was the Crucible jump gate. Individual thorns moved and bent against each other.
“Titan Station hailing us…it’s Admiral Garrett, sir,” the signals officer said.
“Stand down from action station. Patch me direct to the admiral,” Valdar said.
“Isaac,” Garrett said as his face popped up on the inside of Valdar’s visor. “Glad to have you back, and in one piece? Did you make it to Nibiru?”
“We made it, sir. Mission accomplished. Mentiq is dead and the Toth overlords are more interested in fighting for the scraps than anything else right now,” Valdar said. “We need to dock immediately and off-load civilians.”
“Civilians? Did you bring home another bunch of strays, Valdar?”
“Human beings this time, prisoners. All descendants from a Toth visit to Earth thousands of years ago,” Valdar said.
“All this will play great in Phoenix. We’ve needed some good news since the Toth showed up. I’ll get you a berthing on Titan in just a minute. Anything else to report?”
“We also picked up some Karigole on Nibiru.”
“I thought there were only two left.”
“Now there are only forty-nine left. Seems Mentiq kept a few after the near xenocide. Steuben asked that we set them down somewhere in the Serengeti, maybe old Kenya,” Valdar said.
Garrett rubbed his temples. “Now I have to find a home for the Karigole…fine. I’ll make that happen. Tell Steuben to be patient.” Garrett winced. “Anything else?”
“My ship is undamaged. One Marine MIA, presumed dead.”
“Rohen?”
Valdar nodded.
“Unfortunate, but expected. Stand by for your berthing. Garrett out.”
Valdar unbuckled his restraints and stood up. “XO, you have the bridge,” he said to Ericson. “Let me know when we’re about to dock.”
“Aye-aye, captain,” she said.
Valdar made for his ready room and found Hale, still in his armor, waiting outside the door. His godson’s face was stony, but his eyes were on fire. Hale followed Valdar into the ready room.
“What’s troubling you?” Valdar asked once the door shut behind them.
“You knew. You knew about Rohen, didn’t you?”
Valdar went to his leather chair and sat down. He motioned to the open seat on the opposite side of his desk, but Hale didn’t move.
“I did. He wasn’t to tell you about his…condition unless a viable opportunity presented itself. Which I’m guessing it did as we’re having this conversation.”
“Why?” Hale ran a gloved hand over the stubble on his jaw. “Why would Ibarra make something like him? And you let him on the ship? You should’ve refused, sent him back to Ibarra’s proccie farm to be made whole, give him a chance to survive.”
“It’s not that simple, Ken.” Valdar wanted to tell Hale he’d no choice. Ibarra had all the details of his involvement with the true-born movement that nearly gave the proccies to the Toth. Valdar knew if he strayed from Ibarra’s orders what he’d done would come to light. Valdar would lose his command, his rank…and Hale.
“You put everything at risk to rescue the Dotok from the Xaros.” Hale pointed a finger at Valdar. “You couldn’t just stand by and let them die, but that’s exactly what you did with Rohen!”
“Don’t blame him,” came from beneath a pile of clothes.
A shirt floated up from the mess, then slipped away to reveal a metal ball. Ibarra’s hologram materialized around the ball.
“It was all my idea. The mission needed an insurance policy and Rohen was it.” Ibarra walked across the room and leaned against Valdar’s desk.
“If you still had a neck, I’d strangle it,” Hale said.
“Get in line, pup. Now, tell me, did your team kill Mentiq without Rohen’s fail-safe?”
Hale’s face went red. “We hit him, blew a leg off. That should’ve been enough to convince the Toth to stay the hell away from our planet. And if Rohen hadn’t poisoned Mentiq, then we could have wiped them all out from orbit, right?” he asked Valdar.
“It would have been a tremendous risk,” Valdar said. “Our capacitors had barely enough energy to open the jump gate. If I’d have fired the main guns, we would still be in Nibiru, dodging whatever Toth ships survived the civil war.”
“There you go.” Ibarra raised his hands. “Rohen’s the big hero…” Ibarra got up and leaned toward Hale. “But you didn’t have the guts, did you? You weren’t willing to order him to give himself up. He had to run off, didn’t he?”
“I don’t send Marines on suicide missions,” Hale said.
“Don’t get all righteous with me. You put your life on the line when you signed up, same as the rest of your Marines. It’s up to commanders like you and Valdar to best utilize your resources, even if that means certain death. Rohen was a weapon, one that knew his purpose. He’s the same as all the rest of the proccies. They exist to beat the Xaros when they return and they will die by the millions. They might all die if that’s what it takes to keep humanity going. As soon as you grow up and realize that you might have a—”
Hale slapped the holo projector. It careened off the bulkhead and shattered.
“He’ll just send another one,” Valdar said.
“Still. It felt good,” Hale said. He nudged his foot against a chunk of the sphere. “What’re we becoming, Uncle Isaac? We’re creating armies of disposable heroes. We depend on some alien probe from an alliance that let the Xaros drive us to the edge of extinction and betrayed us as soon as it suited them. This isn’t…this isn’t what I know. What humanity should be.”
“I’ve got a flight deck full of civilians.” Valdar punched a button on his desk and a camera feed showed the villagers, all eating food from the ship’s stores. Children laughed and ran across the deck as parents looked on, concern writ across their faces. “Civilians you saved from…God knows what fate waited for them. Certainly better than what they had befo
re.
“Then we’ve got the Karigole. Karigole you saved from extinction. We may be changing, but that was inevitable. Earth is part of a much larger, much more dangerous galaxy. We have to adapt to it. I’m going to keep fighting for what we were, what we still are in our hearts, but things will change,” Valdar said.
“You’re starting to sound like Ibarra.”
“He is a snake, but in the end he just wants us to survive—and survive on humanity’s terms, not some far-off collective’s ideals of what they want us to be,” Valdar said. “It won’t do us a whole lot of good to fight him every step of the way.”
Hale turned to the door, then paused.
“I’m going to see to Rohen’s personal effects. Will you ask Chaplain Crowe to perform a memorial service?”
“I will.”
Hale nodded and left the ready room.
Valdar felt an ache in his heart. Even though he’d sold his soul to Ibarra to keep Hale in his life, he still felt like he was losing his godson forever.
CHAPTER 23
Dust billowed around Torni as the Mule rose into the air. She looked down at her hands. Red blood from Hale, Bailey and Yarrow ran from her fingertips up to her elbows.
“Sarge? Is that you down there?” Standish asked over the IR.
“Standish, you’re a good Marine. Take care of everyone for me,” she said. Dotok men, those that chose to stay behind, closed around her.
Her perspective shifted. She was on top of a boulder with Minder, watching the memory play out. Watching her self was surreal and made her a bit sick to her stomach.
“What is this? Why are we here?” she asked Minder.
“We’re not having the success we need. The armada will leave for Earth very soon. I’ve chosen a rather unorthodox method for breaking through to your blocked memories. It will be…unpleasant for you.”
“I can’t…I can’t remember much more after this. The banshees are coming.” She pointed to the edge of the mesa. “We fought…then…”
“Then the memories we have from your scan ends. I am sorry for this, Torni. Truly. It’s the only way.” Minder vanished.
A howl that sent a chill down her spine echoed over the mesa. Her memory-self passed a gauss pistol to a Dotok man, then leveled her rifle. She tried to get off the boulder but her feet were locked in place.
“Minder! Let me help! I can’t just watch this happen!”
The first banshee ran up the road and veered toward the Dotok and her memory-self. It went down with a single shot from a gauss rifle. More banshees scrambled up the road, a flood of claws and burning eyes.
The banshees tore into the Dotok, ripping them to pieces with wild fury.
Her memory-self swung the rifle like a club, crushing a banshee’s skull. She unsheathed her Ka-Bar blade and stabbed wildly.
Torni felt the blow that sent her memory-self into the dust. Blood poured down her face. Ribs broke as a kick connected to her side. Torni fell to her knees and reached out to herself. A banshee stomped on her arm and her elbow snapped with a wet pop.
“No! Minder! Stop…please!”
The attack stopped, but the pain remained.
The mass of banshees stood still and then armor plates peeled away from the banshees and flew into a swirling mass. The plates grew bright, so bright she had to turn her eyes away. When she looked back, the General was there, tendrils of energy snaking out from the seams of its armor and hands.
Her memory-self backed to the edge of the mesa, then jumped off. She felt the General’s hold on her, felt the terror as the alien brought her close. The General glanced to the sky then held an ephemeral hand to her memory-self’s head.
Everything froze.
“Minder?”
The world shifted around, and Torni found herself inside a banshee. The hulking thing’s breathing echoed in her ears as time shifted back into gear. The General shot away in a burst of light, the empty armor clattering to the ground.
Her memory-self tried to crawl away from the banshees.
Torni felt her host lumber forward, its claws clicking into a single point. It pulled its arm back, then rammed the spear into the other Torni’s heart. The banshee lifted her into the air and Torni felt her own life’s blood run down the claws.
The other Torni grasped at the claws impaled through her chest. Her mouth opened and shut as blood gushed over her lips. The dying woman went limp, then slid down the claws. The banshee flung the body into the dirt and turned away.
Torni came free of the banshee and stood over her own corpse.
“No…” She fell to her knees and reached out and gently touched her body. “I’m dead? This can’t be.” She sobbed and covered her face with her hands.
“I’m sorry, Torni. This was the only way,” she heard Minder say.
She took her hands away. The gas giant planet of Qa’Resh’Ta spread around her, a horizon that went on for thousands and thousands of miles of swirling pillars of gas and lightning strikes.
She was on the sled. Stacey Ibarra’s hologram watched as Hale touched the crystalline form of a Qa’Resh, the two communing before the alien removed the entity from Yarrow. She remembered now…she remembered everything.
Minder stood off the side of the sled, floating in midair.
“There’s still some residual changes to the memories, but enough to get what we need,” Minder said. He looked to the sky and saw a giant blue star paired with a small red dwarf at the center of the star system. “A unique gas giant, binary star system. Yes, we’ll find them soon enough.”
“And then what?” Torni got to her feet and looked away from the memory-self watching Hale.
“Then we will end this conflict. Just as I promised.”
“If I’m dead, then where am I? Is this hell?”
“I don’t have that answer.”
“Am I like Ibarra? My soul trapped in a machine?”
Minder brought them back to the glade. He watched as tears went down Torni’s face. His mission was now complete. It was his duty to end her simulation, report his findings to the master, and accept his fate.
He froze Torni with a thought, then compressed all the data he gathered into a deep memory bank, one too insignificant for the master to bother checking. He suppressed the last few hours of the simulation’s memory and sent her back to Coronado Island.
Minder reverted to his singularity form and reached out to summon an ephemeral…then hesitated. The report wasn’t complete. Some areas of the scan were still hidden. It couldn’t share this with the master, not yet.
My final work will be perfect, it thought as another long-hidden emotion came to the fore.
Doubt.
CHAPTER 24
The sun sank into the Pacific Ocean, the riot of reds and yellows splaying out through the horizon and through distant clouds.
Orozco, Standish, Bailey and Egan lay on beach chairs, all wearing swimsuits and obnoxiously loud shirts, watching the sun bid farewell for another night.
“You know,” Standish said, stretching his hands over his head, “I can get used to Hawaii. Maybe if they ever let us muster out, I’ll—”
Bailey shushed him.
“What? You think—”
Orozco beaned Standish with a pebble from the sand beneath his chair. The rock bounced off the side of Standish’s head.
“Hey! Do you know what’s been going on in there lately?”
“Do we want to know?” Egan asked.
“Where’s Gunney? Hale?” Orozco asked.
“You want them to be here?” Bailey asked.
“No, just don’t want them sneaking up on us.”
“Gunney’s getting his new leg in Phoenix. Hale’s doing officer things. Probably learning about our next mission to go and wrestle the Great Chicken of Garabula IX…or something.”
A robot with wide feet to better traverse the sand came over, a silver tray with four coconut shells with straws and tiny umbrellas in its arms.
“Your drinks
,” the robot said. It handed a shell to each Marine and walked away. None of the Marines took a sip.
Orozco looked over and watched as the robot turned a corner.
“Clear.”
Standish reached under his chair and took a bottle of rum out of a bag. He poured a generous amount into his coconut shell and passed the bottle to Bailey. She took a swig straight from the bottle before adding more to her shell and passing it to Egan.
“No alcohol while on shore leave…my pasty white ass,” Standish said.
Orozco topped off his coconut and sent the bottle back to Standish.
“To Rohen,” Standish raised his drink. “Good Marine. I wish he was here to share this with us.”
The Marines raised their cups and drank.
“Good shot. Brave man,” Bailey said.
Egan took a second sip and winced.
“Is it me, or is this really strong?” he asked.
“You’ve got no tolerance, proccie,” Bailey said. “Try not to spill your drink when you pass out. More for me.”
“Where’s Yarrow?” Orozco asked. “I thought we were going to get him laid.”
A peal of a woman’s laughter came from the beach. Lilith ran through the sand and splashed into the surf, Yarrow followed a few feet behind her. The two kicked water at each other before swimming off together.
“Kid’s doing just fine on his own,” Standish said.
****
The village looked to have everything his people would need. Ibarra’s construction crews had built homes for each family, all with their front doors centered on the geth’aar’s residence at the center. A small fabrication shop could build everything the village would need, from clothing to household items. Old holo videos that Steuben and Lafayette had carried over the centuries gave the fabricators a decent idea of what a Karigole home needed.
Lafayette, standing atop a small hill overlooking the new settlement, took in the Serengeti plains. Herds of wildebeests and a family of giraffes lounged around a watering whole. There were lions in the tall grass; he could see their thermal signature skulking toward a lone wildebeest. The predators were of little concern, not when each Karigole had a sonic alarm on their person to ward off the animals and warn of their approach.
