by Chris Lowry
“Lick ain’t found ‘em yet.”
“That’s what we thought about the last place.”
Lt agreed with him, but kept it to himself. He had thought they were secure in the last compound they visited, but a Lick convoy showed up while they were there and bombed the place to hell.
They used a special kind of concussive weapon that knocked people out. Humans were taken captive, including one of his own men, Lutz.
The suits made the twenty kilometers float by. Lt couldn’t remember feeling so good, so strong and rested, his entire life. It was like the nano inside of him gave the boundless energy of a five year old.
The woods thinned out as they approached the mountain. He could see signs that the culling was on purpose, trees cut to ground level stumps. The ageing of the wood told him it had been years ago.
He stopped on the edge of a bare spot and studied the incline.
“You see them?” Babe asked.
He nodded, then realized Babe might have compromised peripheral vision in the helmet. He checked his own as he said out loud.
“I see ‘em.”
He held up a hand and waved, motioned the four armed men toward them.
“Step out so they can see us, hold up your hands.”
“Like a surrender?” Waldo snorted.
“Ain’t gonna hurt us if they shoot,” said Lt. “But minimize our threat level. I think them shooting us would get our parlay off to a bad start.”
“Don’t move,” one of the men called down to them.
“Do we look like we’re moving?”
The men approached on opposite vectors so they could create interlocking fields of fire if they began shooting. Lt was at the tip of the V.
“Who are you?” the first man asked as he got closer.
“What are you?” one of his companions asked.
“We are the answer to your dreams, boys.”
“I dreamed of Jeannie,” said the first man. “Not some goon in a suit.”
“Who you calling a goon, asshole,” Babe muttered.
He hefted his stick against his shoulder.
“Babe,” said Lt. “Let’s play nice with our hosts.”
“Babe? You’re the Babe?” the second man asked.
“King of the home run derby,” Babe answered.
“Are you the Kid?”
“Don’t fucking call me the Kid,” said Bonney.
“Go get Holcomb,” the first man said to his companion. “He’ll sort it out.”
He lowered his rifle as the second man ran back to a black gash in the mountain next to a rock. They watched him slip into the darkness, and that’s when Lt noticed.
“Smoke,” he said.
It was faint, a hazy smudge against the mountainside, but now that he focused on it, he could tell what it was. Smoke coming from a hole in the ground.
“Where’s your compound?” he asked the first man.
He got no answer though. The man watched the gash in the rock, eyes moving back and forth from the men in armor to the hole and back again.
After a few moments that seemed to stretch like hours, the second man slid out of the darkness, followed by another.
Lt watched Holcomb descend the path down the side of the mountain, and calculated the distance based on his size. He must have been a large man once, but his shoulders were slumped now, by age, by command, by the weight of responsibility for keeping this patch of the human race still alive.
He turned a thin face toward Lt.
“You the leader?” he asked.
“Are you?”
“This man says you’re Lt William Bonney.”
Lt lifted up a gloved hand and popped open the visor on his helmet.
“That’s the name my Momma gave me,” he said. “I think my daddy thought it would be a good joke.”
“Bonney, you’re wearing tech suits.”
“We are.”
“No one has seen tech suits in years,” said Holcomb, staring at the men as if he didn’t believe them. “Not since the aliens landed.”
“We’re upgrading,” said Babe.
Holcomb looked at the stick on his shoulder.
“I thought you carried a bat?”
“Lost it in a fight,” said Babe. “I’m on the hunt for a new one.”
“Good luck with that,” Holcomb crossed his arms over his chest. “What brings you to my command?”
“We’re recruiting,” said Lt. “High Command has a message.”
“I hope it’s not any of that join up and we’ll work together bullshit, cause if it is, you can go sell it somewhere else.”
Lt eyed the compound leader for a moment, measuring him. Holcomb locked his eyes on the squinty ice blue one’s glaring at him and returned it for equal measure.
“This ain’t a sales call,” said Lt after a moment. “This is a courtesy call. Did High Command send me out here to drum up support? Yeah, they did. But am I going to force you to do anything? Look, you can hide out here on the mountain or you can hear me out.”
“In,” said Holcomb.
“In what? The message?”
“The mountain. We’re not on the mountain. We’re in the mountain.”
Lt looked past him to stare at the gash in the rock. He saw it was in the ground next to the rock, a clever use of shadows and depth to alter the appearance.
“Nice work,” he said.
“High Command put you in those suits to get people in line? Pound on the patriotic drum for God and country?”
“We found these,” said Lt.
“Bullshit. The Licks destroyed the labs.”
“They missed one,” said Babe.
“And if they missed one, there might be others,” Lt told him.
He watched Holcomb’s eyes shift as that bit of news sparked a few thoughts in his head. The compound leader was old enough to remember what the world was like before, if the struggle for day to day survival hadn’t burned the memories out of him.
Lt knew it was all about focus. One of the reasons he was so good at killing Licks, he surmised, was his focus on that singular task. He didn’t worry about the past because it was dead and gone. He didn’t spend too much time on the far future, because it hadn’t happened yet.
His focus on the now made him a good Lick killer.
Holcomb reached a decision, and it softened the hard lines in his face.
“We’re exposed out here,” he said. “Let’s move inside.”
He turned around and didn’t wait for them to follow as he led them up the path.
They fell in step behind him as he led them through the gash in the ground. Inside, it opened up to what looked like a Viking communal hall from a history book.
The earth walls stretched as far back as a football field, sanded tree trunks acting as columns to hold up the ceiling. A long rock hearth stretched the length of the room, benches gathered around it, small flames fluttering the length of it.
Lt could see torches set in the columns and on sconces in the walls. People moved in the shadows, slipping away from the fire as the squad in tech suits marched in.
“You think this tech will lead to more?”
“Maybe,” said Lt. “It’s a possibility.”
"We have a couple of veterans of Mars here who say otherwise."
"Ain't possible," said Lt. "Nobody made it out alive."
"Nobody's making it off earth alive either," said a crusty voice from behind the flames of the campfire. Lt tried to make out a face in the shadows, but couldn't until the man leaned forward.
He had been beautiful once. The memory of it was there, hidden in the lines, creases and scars that marred the structure of his features. Blue eyes dancing with mirth over a sad knowing smile.
"Everybody's going to die," said the man. "Someday."
"Not on my watch," Lt said to his squad. "Nobody dies unless I give the order to do it, got it?"
"You sound like my old commander," said the man. He shifted up with a slight gro
an and limped around the fire.
His leg had been busted, sometime in the past, set improperly, and it showed. His limp was pronounced, a slight thump and drag echoed in the cabin as he walked.
"He was all about orders too."
"You were on Mars?" Babe couldn't keep the skepticism out of his voice.
"We were," a second voice added and stepped into the light.
"Now I like me some big tall tales," said Lt. "My momma told me all about Pecos Bill growing up, and the Arkansas Traveler. But two war torn veterans that happen to be in the same spot and saying the same thing. I have a birthday, boys, but I wasn't born yesterday."
The pretty one laughed, his gray blond hair flopping around his too skinny face.
Now Lt could see the second man as he shifted forward into the light. Younger than the other by at least a decade, maybe more. The left side of his face and head burned, scarred. His eyes looked haunted instead of happy.
Lt figured the injury would make him so.
"We pulled them from the crash," said Holcomb. "They almost didn't make it."
"Three years ago," said the older man. "Mars fell, the last outpost overrun. I think the Lick were on their way here even then. We stole a ship, one of our cargo transports. I thought he knew how to drive."
"I told you, I'm a fighter, not a pilot."
"Not too good at either, were you?" the laughing man said. They could tell it was a joke with the way they teased each other.
"You're the Kid?" he turned to Lt.
"Don't call me that," said Bonney. "Lt will do."
"Lt," the blue eyes travelled over the suits the squad was wearing. "That's first gen tech you're wearing."
His pink tongue worked the corners of his mouth, as he studied the suits.
"The Lick's destroyed all the labs, we thought."
"Yeah, we thought too. Turns out, we got us a Doc who survived and he knew where one was."
"You have a doctor," said Holcomb. "We have sick he can help."
"Ain't that kind of Doc," said Lt.
"He's a Pede," Babe added.
Weber limped closer, ran his finger along the shoulder and arm of Lt's suit.
"The first gen had a bug," he said. "We had to work it out in the field. Your targeting software get glitchy?"
The men around Lt nodded.
"We just flip up the mask and eyeball it."
Weber grinned over his shoulder at Renard.
"Why didn't we think of that."
"Explosive decompression."
"Oh yeah," Weber still grinning. "Guess that's not so important down here."
He circled the squad, his eyes travelling up and down the armor. He stopped beside Waldo and held out his hands.
"Can I check your weapon?"
Waldo gulped and stared at Lt. Bonney gave a fractional nod, and Waldo passed over his blaster.
Weber hefted it in his hands, the grip and barrel nested into his palms like they were custom fitted. He sighted along the top and moved the weight with practiced ease as he aimed at something outside and beyond the wall, visible in his mind, or the ghost of enemies past.
"Can we see the lab?" he asked in a voice Lt couldn't quite place, almost a tremble of fear, as if his request could be denied.
But Lt needed to know. If these were real veterans of the Mars invasion, then maybe they could tell him something about fighting the Lick on earth.
And if they knew secrets, or tactics then maybe he could kill more Licks.
His burning desire. The thing that kept him awake at night. How to kill more. How to kill them all.
"We have two more stops to make."
"You can't travel," said Renard.
Weber chuckled.
"You're not the boss of me," he snickered and Renard gave him a tired half smile. Lt realized the muscles on the left side of his face might not work so well anymore.
"He's my commander," Renard explained.
"Even out of uniform," Babe asked.
"Babe? You ain't gonna do what I say if I don't have a uniform on?" Lt busted him.
Babe stuttered and looked around for help.
"You're not in uniform right now, Lt. I was just- they're retired or-"
"It's alright Babe," Lt said. "I figure if I say something worth doing, you’ll listen."
"We're not retired," said Weber. "We were just MIA. Now you found us."
Lt watched the two older men for a moment, considering the implications of escorting them through the woods.
"Alright," he told them. "Ruck up. Don't fall behind."
He left the two men to gather their gear and turned to Holcomb.
"High Command’s gonna want to know your answer.”
Holcomb stared at Lt with a blank expression on his tired face. The lines from worry had carved deep canyons in his skin, mountains of concern turned his shoulders into almost broken slopes.
Staring at the suit, Holcomb stood a little straighter.
It wasn’t much, not an iron rod of certainty, to be sure.
“I suppose the time for hiding is over,” said Holcomb.
“Some of us haven’t been hiding at all,” said Babe. “We’ve been taking the fight to them.”
“We couldn’t afford the cost.”
“We don’t have money either,” Babe snapped back.
“He’s not talking about money, Doofus,” Oakley answered. “The cost in lives.”
Lt nodded as he stared around the compound. The long low hutch was filled with faces, gritty, scared, orange in the flickering hearth fire that stretched through the middle of the communal room.
These people had gone to ground, literally. The hutch was half buried in the side of a hill, camouflaged to be hidden from overhead patrols. They had burrowed into the earth to hide from the invaders, intent only on survival.
Lt wondered what that had cost them.
Not just in terms of manpower, and bodies, but in spirit.
He wasn’t much of a student of history, hell, school seemed like a long lifetime ago before the Lick even came.
But he knew history was peppered with people willing to fight. Willing to revolt against aggressors, willing to stand up for something.
Freedom, he called it, though it went by a few names.
It was a concept, some would say even a myth. He remembered the government’s power over the media before the invasion, the way groups of people could control others with commercials and editorial pieces. Hell, even the news, which was supposed to be unbiased, turned out to have an agenda.
All of it was gone now, supplanted by one need. Survival.
But the Lick wasn’t going to let them survive.
The Lick wanted them dead, and his home planet all to themselves.
Freedom meant not letting that happen.
Lt stared into the flames, mesmerized by the way it made shadows dance across the faces of the people staring at him in the suit. Darkness and light, flickering movement.
They had spent too long in the darkness. Three years.
Now it was time to show them the light and lead them out in it.
Drag them if he had too.
It was the only way humanity could survive.
CHAPTER SEVEN
Jake stared at Renard across a campfire in a clearing. Babe and Waldo stood sentry beyond the meager light cast by the fire as Oakley tended the rabbit on a spit.
“You keep staring at me like that and I’ll think you fancy me,” said Renard.
Half of his face looked youthful, smooth lines not yet gone to wrinkle. The other half was healed scars, burned tissue from the top of his cheek and back. It tugged at the corner of his mouth and gave the eye on that side a droopy look, despite the sparkle hidden behind.
“You were on Mars?” Jake asked.
“I was.”
“They sent prisoners to Mars,” said the boy. “That’s why we lost.”
Weber resettled on the ground, his back against a tree as he searched for a comfortable spot
.
