by Jack Hunt
“It didn’t fail,” Ambassador Powers said.
“Oh please. You are so full of yourself. To think the same diplomatic tactics used on Earth can be used on other planets. Diplomacy is not a part of this species, Reid. It never has been, it never will be. They know nothing but war.”
Reid shook his head. “If you honestly believe that, then do you really think they are going to let you walk out of here?”
“I don’t think. I know.”
“Then what deal did you make? What are you getting out of this?”
“What do I get?” He walked around Reid’s team eyeing them as each kept their weapons on the militia around them. “Well that’s the million-dollar question, isn’t it? By the way, Reid, you look a little short on men. Where’s Viper? Bulldog? Phantom?”
Reid’s eyes drifted. Phantom wasn’t among them. Had he gone AWOL? That wouldn’t have surprised him. But then his eyes looked to where Bulldog was. His body was gone.
“Ah it doesn’t matter.”
Draskan passed in front of Reid and glared at him. He was like a chained lion, just waiting to be unleashed.
“You know as well as I do, Reid, the UEDF doesn’t give a shit about you or me. We will just go the way that all vets have before us. Given a handshake, a pat on the back, and perhaps a shiny medal and then we’ll have to fend for ourselves on Earth for the remainder of our days. No compensation. No government assistance. But oh, we will have the admiration of Earth.” He shook his head. “Admiration. You and I, Reid, are just a number. We will have served our purpose and what thanks do we get? Have you seen the way the UEDF treats their vets?” He glanced over at the ambassador. “Oh come now, Ambassador, surely you should know more than anyone. How is your father? Oh that’s right, he was shoved aside, told to keep his mouth shut about the mass genocide committed on planets that refused to cooperate with Earth.”
Reid shook his head.
“Don’t you shake your head at me, you self-righteous prick. You know as well as I do that we weren’t on Lawanda to create peace, we had our orders. If the Echobi hadn’t attempted to kill off the Lawanda people we would have. Lawanda wanted no part of us, but oh, we had to save face, make it look like we were there to help them. And then you went against my orders.”
“They drew first blood,” Reid said casting a glance at Draskan.
Draskan seethed. “He was my son.”
“And your son killed someone else’s son,” Reid replied. Draskan moved forward with all the speed of an Olympic athlete, and slammed a fist into Reid knocking him back against a cabin. Chaos erupted as Reid’s team pointed their guns at Draskan.
“Whoa! Wait,” Kane hollered. For a few brief seconds it was like a Mexican standoff.
Kane tossed a hand in the air. “Wait! I’m not done speaking.”
Draskan sneered and pulled back as Reid spat blood on the ground before him.
“Reid, the Lawanda people would have died, whether it was by our hand or by the hand of the Echobi. It just so happened we were caught in the middle.”
“Caught in the middle? You left our people there to die just so you could live. You’re a coward.”
“Don’t test me, Reid,” he shot back.
“So? You going to leave us here to die like you did the others?”
“Hell, Reid, you weren’t even meant to make it this far.”
Reid lunged for Kane and Kane smashed him back with the side of his weapon. They were so outnumbered, the Echobi could have killed them there and then, but there appeared to be a need to see through whatever deal they had made with Kane. He stared down at Reid, as Reid attempted to catch his breath. Blood trickled down from the side of his forehead.
“Oh Reid, it didn’t have to end this way.”
He snorted and wiped blood from his lip. “You didn’t know about the location of the chancellor until she told you, did you?” Reid said.
“No, and I knew the ambassador wasn’t going to give it up without a little motivation. So, I had to give her that.”
Reid stared at him with a look of astonishment. “You had my team killed on purpose. It wasn’t an accident. You sent them in a helitank knowing full well they were flying into a hot zone. You did it just so you could get that information out of her?”
Kane smiled. “Getting classified information even as a captain is a bitch. And I sure as hell wasn’t going to have the Echobi kill her. Now if she had just told me before leaving for Drozleon, well, things would have been very different.”
“You son of a bitch.”
Kane sucked air in between his teeth. “Well, shall we…” he motioned off to the right of him and two craft appeared where there had been none. “Surprised? Oh, your sensors didn’t pick it up, as they are Lawanda craft. Another reason why Earth will fall to the Echobi, and why many other planets have. They will never see them coming. But, it won’t matter. We will get to live. Well, I will.”
It made sense now. The Echobis didn’t attack the Lawandas simply for the sake of it. They wanted their technology. The Lawandas were the only known species with craft that couldn’t be picked up on sensors. That’s why Earth wanted them as allies. That’s why the Echobi wanted them dead. As Kane began to walk away, the reality was sinking in.
“You have Earth’s defense codes, don’t you? You are going to give the codes to the Echobi.”
Kane spun on his heels and had a glint in his eyes.
“Nothing gets by you, does it, Reid?”
“They will kill billions, Kane.”
Kane ambled over and stood in front of him. “Reid, Reid, always the patriot. Man, it must be hard trying to please Uncle Sam all the time. Listen, whether it’s me giving them the codes, or someone else, eventually it will happen. Earth will fall. At least this way, I get to live.”
“Does Katherine know?”
He chuckled. “Of course not, but she will and she’ll thank me for it.”
“The fuck she will,” Sophie said spitting in his direction only to be yanked back by an Echobi.
“Sophie.” He made a tutting sound. “What a disappointment. You were always too much like your father.”
Reid looked on in astonishment. He couldn’t believe he was the same guy he had grown up with.
“What happened to you, Logan?”
Logan was walking back to the craft.
“What happened to me? Well, I’m sure the UEDF would notch it up to PTSD. Anything to push the responsibility and blame away from themselves. We can’t have the UEDF being tainted, now can we? That actually might cause a decline in enlistment. No, Reid, I just know when to fold the cards.”
He waved his hand in the air to let the others know it was time to leave.
“Let’s go.”
Draskan’s men strong-armed the chancellor of Drozleon and the ambassador towards the craft along with many of his men. They left behind fifteen militants. Kane glanced back briefly before entering the craft.
Draskan approached Reid a second time. He stared intently at him and for a brief second Reid thought he was going to kill him.
“Let them go. You want me, fine. I’m here but let the others go,” Reid said.
Draskan cocked his head from side to side. “Strange how your species would give their own life for another.”
The Echobi weren’t like that. At least from what Earth knew of them. They felt little emotion towards their own kind the way humans did for each other. Perhaps that’s what made them so ruthless in battle.
“So is this where you kill us?” Reid asked.
“Soon. Right now, we leave now for Trillium. Chancellor Kenji will speak before our people and those who have opposed will join us. I will take my rightful place and Kenji will die along with your ambassador. Then, our people will invade Earth and destroy your planet. Then, and only then will I return and take you apart piece by piece. I’m going to take my time with you and savor every scream.”
He got so close to Reid that he could smell his rancid breath. Draskan
turned to one of his men. “Have fun with the rest but don’t touch this one, he’s mine.”
Reid could tell how eager Draskan was to inflict punishment upon him and yet that could wait. He had him where he wanted and now he would finish what he had started with Earth.
He turned to leave and then stopped. “Oh, and don’t touch her.” He pointed to Sophie. His eyes flicked to Reid. “You are going to watch your daughter die before I take your life.”
As Draskan headed to the waiting craft, his soldiers began stringing up those left behind: Priest, Skinner, Sophie, the Echobi refugees and lastly him.
His pulse raced as he watched the craft take off and disappear over the top of the mountains. This was it. This was where he would die. Kane wasn’t just betraying him, he was throwing all of Earth under the bus.
Billions of lives would be lost.
Chapter Twenty-Three
Reid shook his head despondently. The operation was never about saving the ambassador but about striking up a deal with a species to save Kane’s own skin. Draskan wanted the chancellor and Kane wanted safety. He was right about one thing though. The Echobi would have eventually invaded Earth but without the codes to Earth defense, it wouldn’t have been easy.
The codes were held by three people in the UEDF. It was unknown who those three individuals were but if Kane had managed to get his hands on them, someone was helping him.
But who? Right now, it didn’t matter.
One by one they were strung up using vines from the trees. Wrists locked together over their heads, they hung a few feet off the ground. The fifteen Echobi militants that stayed behind were about to begin doing what the Echobis did best — torturing them one by one. Reid would of course would be left alive for Draskan but the rest were fair game. He looked over to Sophie who was strung up beside him.
“I’m sorry, Sophie.”
“For what?”
“Failing you.”
She shook her head. “You didn’t fail me.”
“You wouldn’t be in this mess if it wasn’t for me.”
“Dammit, when are you going to allow me to make my own mistakes? I’m here because I chose to join. You can’t protect me forever. I knew the risk in joining.”
Reid’s eyes drifted over to where Bulldog’s body had been. He couldn’t understand it. Where did it go?
“Skinner, Bulldog was dead, right?”
“Yeah, Lt.”
An Echobi soldier came along and jammed the butt of his gun into Reid’s gut. “Shut the hell up.”
Along with Priest, Skinner, Sophie and himself were sixteen refugees, some were women, and others kids. But it didn’t matter to Draskan’s militia. They killed without mercy. Anyone who assisted Earth was a traitor.
As they finished hanging up the last one, one of the Echobi soldiers pulled a plasma blade from a sheath at the side of his leg and tossed it from hand to hand with a look of glee on his face. The method of torture was never the same. Some cut a person multiple times until they bled to death, others they beat, some had body parts cut off and fed to them, and sometimes they would slowly crush their enemies or skin them alive. The worst was when they inserted Drozleon creatures into body orifices and the person was eaten alive from inside.
By the looks of it the soldier had a taste for skinning.
As he approached a woman at the far end of the line, she muttered something to the soldier in her native tongue, and then spat in his face.
The soldier wiped his cheek with the back of his hand, grinned and then stepped forward and began to cut her from neck to groin. Reid winced at the sound of the horrific cries. He thought he had thick skin and had witnessed all manner of atrocities but this was unbearable.
Long before he joined the UEDF, he had only once heard a scream that made him feel sick to his stomach, and that was when his uncle took him hunting at the age of thirteen. Unless a bullet was used, breaking a rabbit’s neck was considered one of the most common and apparently the most humane ways to kill them. Perhaps it was, if done right. He could still recall the image of his uncle wrestling to break that rabbit’s neck and the scream it let out.
And yet it paled in comparison to the scream he was now hearing.
The militant was killing one of his own people and yet by the look on his face they meant nothing to him. When the scream ceased, he looked over and saw the aftermath of the soldier’s handiwork. His stomach lurched and he tugged at his restraints hoping to get loose but it was useless. They knew better than anyone how to prevent their enemy from escaping. The others looked on eager to take a turn, some sat chewing leaves from the aparchi tree. It was like caffeine on Earth but far more powerful. Aparchi leaves contained a stimulant that could make them feel good for up to twenty-four hours and with a war on the horizon, they were taking advantage of the moment.
Priest was off to his left and praying, asking God to forgive him for his sins. Reid had never really given much thought to the afterlife, if there was one at all. He lived each day of his military career with a sense that if his life ended, that would be it. If there was life after, he assumed it couldn’t be much worse than the one he had come from.
Skinner yelled obscenities at them, almost coaxing them to finish him next. He was as crazy about death as he was about life. Though he had to wonder if it was death he feared or frustration that he wasn’t getting some of the stimulants they were consuming.
Another soldier moved on to the next refugee, though this was only a child. He couldn’t have been more than ten years of age. Sophie shouted in hopes of gaining his attention.
“Hey! Hey!”
“Sophie.”
“He is going to kill a child.”
He wanted to say that the militant wouldn’t do it, that it was just a fear tactic they used but it wouldn’t have been the truth. Reid had come across the bodies of Lawanda children that had been massacred. He had seen what they had done to them and the bloodied mess they left behind.
The soldier paid no attention to Sophie’s pleas. The child began to sob, and a woman beside him screamed for the soldier to show mercy as he raised a blade to the boy’s throat. Just as he was about to slice him the soldier let out a cry, and staggered back.
Wrapping him around him faster than he could react was an Rwing.
“Viper?”
The moment he said her name, seven rounds were fired, one after the other with barely a second between each one. In an instant, Reid felt his binds snap as he fell to the ground. Another Rwing came sweeping into view and hit another Echobi soldier and began to coil its way around the body and break bones.
Reid looked down to see the vine had been shot through.
“Phantom?”
More gunfire erupted, though this time from the left side in rapid succession plowing down the Echobi soldiers as they scrambled for cover and tried to make sense of what was happening. In front of Reid an Echobi soldier collapsed dead, his weapon slipped a few feet away. Reid dived for it and turned in time to see one attacking him. He unloaded round after round. Now loose from their binds, Sophie, Skinner and Priest joined the fight and took cover behind cabins.
As Reid moved into position, out the corner of his eye he saw Bulldog attack a soldier, driving two plasma swords through its stomach and lifting it high in the air. When it slid off, he glanced over and winked, then dashed for cover.
“That limey bastard,” Reid said turning and unloading a round, then another. Several of the refugees were cut down by the soldiers but the rest were fighting back using whatever they could get their hands on. Reid rushed across a section between two cabins and dived as an explosion went off nearby. Dirt and dust filled the air making it hard to see anything. The noise of gunfire masked the sounds of cries. With his back to a cabin he looked across and spotted Viper jumping down off one of the cabins onto a soldier. She drove her daggers into its neck, and threw another Rwing at an approaching Echobi. It hit its target and began to crush the soldier like an anaconda wrapping its prey.
“Viper, you’re alive?”
“The last time I checked, yep!” She flashed him a smile and then broke into a sprint across the village, tossing plasma daggers with all the precision of a world-class knife thrower. He saw her drop to her knees as a soldier came at her. She slashed his legs and went into a roll and was back up again running like it was nothing. Reid was about to get up and move into another position when a soldier collapsed beside him. Startled, he turned and noticed he’d been shot in the head. Reid’s eyes flicked over the horizon. He couldn’t see where the shot had come from but he knew who it came from — Phantom.
“I got your six, Lt.”
He scoffed. “For a moment, I thought you had gone AWOL.”
“What, and let you steal all the glory?”
He was catching on. It didn’t just matter if you saved people in the military. If you died in battle, on Earth they would honor you and you would be forever remembered as one of the greats.
A flash of color off to his right.
Reid pulled a cluster grenade from his armor and lobbed it through a cabin window after spotting a soldier rush in there. A second later, an explosion took the roof off. Even though the Echobi soldiers killed several refugees, all over the village they were dropping like flies as confusion and assaults occurred at every angle.
Eventually there was silence.
Reid peered out from behind a cabin door after taking his last shot.
Bulldog was the first to walk out into the clearing, followed by Sophie, and then Priest and the surviving refugees. Several of the cabins were ablaze and smoke coiled into the air. Skinner soon joined them and then as Reid came out, Viper and Phantom appeared from different areas of the camp.
“Okay, someone want to tell me how the hell you two are still alive?” Reid asked.
