Aquaria Burning

by Finn Gray

  “Very well. Commander Laws is appointed to the position of admiral,” Lina said, as if hers were the final word.

  No one objected. Lina felt taut muscles relax. At least she had countered Val’s first move. But she had no idea what her sister was playing at, and that annoyed her.

  “Thank you, Majesty.” Laws rose from her seat and bowed deeply, a much greater show of respect than Lina had expected.

  “We have complete faith in you, Admiral.”

  Laws nodded. “We need to make a decision about the prosecution of this war,” she began. “Reports from the surface are sketchy, but I see little hope for victory. Our forces and facilities are crippled. Even if we could defeat the Memnons, their widespread use of nukes has poisoned our planets for decades to come. Maybe longer.”

  “What are you basing that projection on?” Sasaki asked.

  “Soria. How long has it been since it was nuked, and yet it remains uninhabitable.”

  “What are you suggesting?” Graves asked. “Abandon our home?”

  “We need to determine if Aquaria is worth fighting for,” Laws said. “If the worlds have been reduced to a nuclear wasteland, what is the point in fighting? But I think we need more intel before we make such a bold decision. We also need to be alert for any further Memnon strikes. If they gain control of the bases on the surface, they have access to ships. They could make trouble for us.”

  “Is there anything down there that’s big enough to take out one of our girls?” Fremantle asked.

  “Obviously we’re talking smaller fighting craft, but if they managed to mount nukes on them, they might try suicide runs. We need to be prepared for anything. Remain on high alert. Don’t let any craft get too close.”

  “Admiral, a large number of ships have gathered in a spot halfway between Hyperian and Thetis,” Janna Levin said.

  “Is this more of your doing, Vatcher?” Laws asked.

  “It is not.”

  “What sorts of craft are we talking about?” Laws said to Levin.

  “As I said, civilian vessels, travel cruisers, industrial barges, all sorts. Basically everyone who was engaged in their usual commerce when the Memnons struck. I think we should take steps to protect them. Depending on how bad conditions are on the ground, those ships might end up being all that remains of Aquaria.”

  “Agreed.”

  “What about the people on the ground?” Lina asked.

  “We’re still getting intermittent communication from contacts on Thetis and Hyperion,” Graves said. “The battle is not lost but it’s bad on both planets. People are trying to evacuate, but many have been shot down. Most don’t even make it off the ground. The Memnons had sleepers in all the spaceports, and they sabotaged as many ships as they could. Beyond that, details are sketchy. We have no idea how the marines are faring, other than every major base has either been nuked or is in the midst of a mass revolt.”

  “Admiral,” Sasaki said, “I’m currently in orbit around Thetis. I’ve dispatched every Mongoose under my command to scout the surface, look for bases or cities that are holding strong.”

  “I’ve done the same for Hyperion,” Scott added.

  “On who’s authority did you make that call?” Laws demanded.

  “Mine.” Vatcher piped up. “I was admiral at the time, so it was well within my power to make that decision. We need intelligence and the Mongoose is a recon craft.”

  “You were a busy man in the few minutes that you held that post,” Lina said. She didn’t really see a problem with Vatcher’s decision, but Graves was visibly angry.

  “You should recall them immediately,” Graves said.

  “I fail to see the problem,” Vatcher said. “If the only reason is that the order came from me and not the admiral…”

  “We should be working together.”

  “What’s done is done,” Laws said. “I would have issued the same order. At least now we have a head start. Once they’ve made their scouting run, we can hopefully assess whether or not there is anything we can do to affect the outcome of the fighting on the ground. But in the future, we will communicate on this sort of thing. What else do we need to cover?”

  “Admiral,” Graves said. “It occurs to me that the satellite defense networks could create a problem. We’re beyond the range of either at the moment, but if we call for an evacuation, the Memnons could turn our defenses against the refugees.”

  Laws nodded. “The Thetan network has been destroyed, but we have to assume the Memnons will attempt to gain control of the grid on Hyperion, and that means seizing the command center on Crab Island.”

  “Reinforcing it is not an option,” Fremantle said. “We don’t have the numbers to make a difference.”

  They all fell silent. Finally, Laws addressed Graves. “Dom? What do you think?”

  Graves scratched his chin, heaved a sigh. “Nuke it.”

  At this somber proclamation, the commanders let their heads hang for an instant. All except Vatcher.

  “Admiral, I can send in a Mongoose squadron armed with nukes,” he said.

  “Negative,” Laws said. “Graves, you handle it. I think a single craft will have a better chance of slipping in without drawing notice.”

  “I’ll see to it,” Graves said.

  “Commander Graves, we’ve received a distress call that I think you will all want to hear,” Cassier called from his station at the communications console.

  “Distress call? From where?”

  “Glavine 2. We received a brief, garbled message, and then nothing. Haven’t been able to raise them since.”

  Lina knew that Glavine 2 was a military space station orbiting a small, uninhabitable planetoid at the outer edge of the solar system. That, however, was the full extent of her knowledge.

  “Patch the vid through so the admiral and all the commanders can see it.”

  Two seconds later, the image of a panicked-looking officer filled the screen.

  “…under attack. The…” Static interrupted the feed, then the image flickered back to high resolution. “…massive. We can’t stand up to them. … We believe it’s the…”

  The image flickered, and the vid ended.

  Lina looked at the others. Clearly, they all knew what it was they faced. A massive fleet was headed their way, and only one enemy made sense.

  The Memnons were coming home.

  Chapter 12

  Soria Hyperion

  Rory awoke slowly. As his eyes adjusted to the gloom, he saw himself enveloped in a cloud of smoke. For a moment he thought he was dead and floating through clouds up to the heavens. Then the memory of the fight with the tree came back to him. He recalled the oddly-scented smoke, the strange man on the ground. He remembered falling. His heart lurched and he immediately wiggled his fingers and toes, just to make certain they still worked.

  He sat up, every muscle in his back screaming in protest. His head swam and he fell back to the soft earth.

  “You’re all right,” a gruff voice said. “Just bruised all to the hells. Lie still. I’m cooking up something that will relieve the pain.”

  He turned his head in the direction of the voice and saw the man he’d spotted from up in the tree. The fellow now hunched over a small fire. Thick, minty-smelling smoke poured from beneath a small cook pot. It looked as if it had been scavenged from an Imperial Marine Corps mess kit. Rory’s eyes took in the strange sight.

  The man was clad in dirty, ragged clothing that had been mended until it looked to be more stitch than fabric. Strips of cloth were wound around his cracked boots. He wore a cloak that appeared to have been cobbled together from a variety of irregularly shaped squares of fabric. He wore his iron gray hair in a braid and his long beard was tied every hands-length or so with a piece of cord, the end tucked into his rope belt. He was white around the temples and his face was wrinkled, his skin leathery, but he was solidly built and moved with an air of self-assuredness.

  “Who?” Rory cleared his throat and tried aga
in. “Who are you?”

  The man turned his gaze on Rory, eyes sparkling like yellow topaz. “I’m the fellow who saved your asses, that’s who.” He returned his attention to the cook pot, the contents of which he was stirring with the tip of a knife.

  “Marson’s alive?”

  “The albino-looking fellow? Yeah, he’s okay. He hit his head on the way down and needs to sleep, so I’m letting the smoke do its work. It has a calming effect, you see. Even makes you drowsy. Although its effect is stronger on trees than on people.”

  Rory took two deep breaths and rolled over onto his side, propping up on one elbow. “That’s why the tree let us go? The smoke calmed it down?”

  The man nodded. “Things are strange in Soria. Some of the plants behave like animals. Gods, some of them practically are strange amalgams of the two.” His eyes drifted up toward the branches that sheltered them from the sun’s last rays.

  Rory gasped, realizing he now lay beneath the very tree that had tried to kill him. He tried to scramble to his feet, but a wave of dizziness passed over him, followed by a generous helping of nausea as every bruised bone and muscle in his body screamed in agony. He doubled over, retched, and slumped to his knees.

  “Settle yourself down,” the man said. “Even if it weren’t for the smoke, the trees will leave you alone as long as you stay out of them and don’t try to cut them down.”

  “I feel like ass.” Rory managed to work himself into a seated position facing the fire.

  “You have good reason. Not only did you have yourself a nice fall, you got stung by a poison oak.”

  “You mean that tree that dropped the yellow acorns on me?”

  “The very same. The acorns won’t kill you unless you’re stupid enough to eat them, but they’ll sure make you feel like shit if they touch your skin.”

  Rory moved his hand to the back of his neck and was surprised to find that it felt completely normal. “It was puffed up and bleeding earlier.”

  The man shrugged. “I put a poultice on it. It’s easy enough to deal with if you know what you’re doing.” He lifted the pan from the fire. “Here,” he said, holding the pan out.

  Instinctively, Rory leaned in, lips pursed to take a sip.

  “Good gods! Are you stupid? This water is boiling.” The man pushed him back. “Just breathe in the damned steam.”

  Rory knew he should have felt embarrassed but the pain and exhaustion that were currently waging a war for control of his body rendered him incapable of feeling shame. He closed his eyes and inhaled deeply. The steam smelled like peppermint, and seemed to wash through his body in an icy wave. Relief immediately surged through him. His pain began to dissipate.

  “Keep breathing,” the man instructed. “The first hit is a false high. It’ll take a few minutes for it to really work.” Rory did as instructed. As the pain faded away, a sense of profound weariness rose to take its place. He felt as if gravity had doubled; his body wanted to sink into the ground.

  “Good enough for now. I’m going to heat this back up and take care of your friend. I’ll need your help with him.”

  Rory stopped himself from saying, “He’s not my friend.” It was true, but to say it aloud was childish. Besides, he doubted this man gave a rat’s ass. He moved slowly to where the pale young marine lay sleeping. Following instructions, he tented his hands above Marson’s nose and mouth while the man fanned the steam in the right direction. The sleeping man’s breathing became slow and deep. Rory thought he could see the muscles in Marson’s face relax. The concoction was doing its trick.

  “Do you have a name?” Rory asked when they’d finished tending to Marson.

  “I do.” The man lapsed into silence.

  Rory rolled his eyes. “If you don’t want to tell me, just say so, smartass.”

  “I’m not giving you a hard time,” the fellow said. “It’s been so long since I said my name aloud I almost forgot what it was. The price of growing old in a radiation-soaked hellscape, I reckon.” He forced a flinty smile. “The name’s Oates. Like what horses eat, except with an e.”

  “I’m Rory Waring.” He held out his hand to shake but Oates ignored him so he let it fall to his side.

  “You’re a marine.” It wasn’t a question.

  “Yes. I mean, I’ve completed my training. We were finishing up our final course when the nukes started going off, so I haven’t been sworn in or anything.”

  “Nukes.” Oates grimaced. “I heard them going off in the distance. Who’s fighting who this time around?”

  “It’s a Memnon uprising.”

  “Memnons?” Oates gritted his teeth. “What do they have to do with this?”

  “As it turns out, not all the Memnons took to the stars after the war,” Rory began. He told Oates as much as he knew. The Memnons had infiltrated every sector of society, every level of government, even the military, biding their time until they rose up in a coordinated rebellion. “Most of the major cities have been destroyed. Same with the military bases. All of them nuked.”

  Oates rolled his eyes. “They’re going to turn the rest of Hyperion into more of this.” He waved his hand in a circle. “Soria’s been a world all its own since the Memnon War. The last one, I mean. I guess the whole planet will go the same way soon enough.”

  “How did things get this way?” Rory asked.

  “Radiation, mostly. Caused mutations in DNA, then those mutations mutated, and round and round we go.”

  “You said it was ‘mostly’ the radiation,” Rory said. “What did you mean by that?”

  Oates looked as if he were about to speak, but then he shook his head. “Nothing. Just a bad choice of words. I’m not a, what do you call them? I’m not an orator.”

  Rory knew the man was holding something back, but who was he to demand answers from their rescuer? He owed the man his life, as did Marson. He changed the subject.

  “I assume you live here.”

  Oates nodded. “Not much of a life, but it’s what I’ve got.”

  “Were you born here?”

  “No.” Oates began rummaging in a battered backpack, offering no further comment.

  “Ever thought about leaving?”

  “Yes.” The man found what he was looking for—a purple fruit the size of his fist. At least, Rory thought it was a fruit. He’d never seen one quite like it. Oates began peeling away the tough skin, and Rory caught a whiff of a plum-like scent.

  “That smells good. Where can I get one of those?”

  “You shouldn’t eat anything that grows wild here if you can help it. Most of the radiation dissipated long ago, but levels remain higher than are safe for human consumption.”

  “We were issued meds,” Rory said. “What about you? Radiation doesn’t affect you?”

  Oates shook his head, then took a bite of the purple fruit. It crunched like an apple. Thick juice oozed from the corners of his mouth and into his copious facial hair. He chewed thoughtfully, gazing into the distance.

  “We were treed by an armored monster. What the hells was that thing?”

  “I don’t know if it has an official name. I call him Boris because I’m pretty sure he’s the mutated descendant of a wild hog.”

  Rory contemplated this. Why didn’t the world know about this frightening and fascinating world? Why the coverup?

  Silence fell between them. Oates didn’t seem interested in conversation and Rory had grown tired of peppering him with questions only to get little or no answer in return.

  He retrieved his own pack and found a protein bar—a gelatinous square infused with bits of dried fruit. He downed it in three bites and washed it down with two swallows of water from his canteen. When he finished, they roused Marson. The young man was confused, but seemed none the worse for wear.

  “So,” Oates said as Marson began to eat, “you want to tell me what you two are doing in Soria? It’s not the sort of place people visit by choice.”

  “The Memnons shot down our transport. We were headed to
a secret base here on Soria,” Rory said.

  Oates flinched at the mention of the base. “You’re going to Stone Mountain?”

  “You know of it?” Marson asked around a mouthful of protein bar. Clearly he’d also seen the man’s reaction.

  “Yeah, I know about it. What do you plan on doing when you get there?”

  Rory shrugged. “Get help for our friends. We need a transport, get them to a medic.”

  Oates winced. “I’m sorry to tell you this, boys, but you won’t find any help at the base.”

  “Why not?” Marson asked.

  The old man flashed a mirthless grin. “Because that base is, and has always been, under the control of the Memnons.”

  Chapter 13

  Somewhere at the edge of the Aquaria System

  “Holy mother of the gods can you believe we got out of that alive?” Teddy said. He still couldn’t believe they’d managed to escape the Memnon fleet. Although his heart ached for those who had perished at the Glavine outpost, having escaped certain death had him feeling higher than any drink, drug, or woman ever had. “You know what, gents? Next shore leave, I’m going to find me a girl from the Peacock Islands and…”

  “Teddy Bear, what in the hells are you talking about?” Sherr shouted. “Everyone we served with is dead!”

  “Come on, have a little respect,” Shepherd added sofly.

  Teddy swallowed hard. “Look, guys. I know the score. I just wanted a moment where I could just enjoy the feeling of being alive and pretend there’s not a massive Memnon fleet heading for home.”

  “Sorry to be a wet blanket-tosser,” Sherr said. “I just needed to blow my top.”

  “Vesuvius, that one wouldn’t even make the list of your top one hundred eruptions,” Spartan said.

  “You’re right. I owed them all a bigger meltdown than that. I’m just… numb.”