by J. S. Bailey
More footsteps and the creak of a door indicated the pair’s departure.
Ashi’ii’s pulse thudded. It was bad enough having Haa’la kill Haa’la, but having humans kill Haa’la was an abomination she wasn’t willing to accept. The damned Verdants must have done some recruiting on Earth since her last run-in with them.
She let out a breath and climbed out of the washing machine, switching her comm back on as soon as she was upright. “Pip-pip! There should be no further delay. Attack the Verdants as soon as you’re ready.”
Dalton began to fidget once Carolyn and Errin’s groups departed. He’d played a few battle video games as a child, but the key difference between a game and reality was that the game gave you multiple lives. Blow yourself up, you get a fresh start a few seconds later, nothing to see here.
The street below teemed with anxious people who seemed more terrified at the so-called “friendly” Greens that had come to help them than the prospect of being butchered by Haa’la. Dalton paced the roof of the station as Sikh Highlander continued their music recital, wishing he had something inspiring to say to the crowd, many of whom may be dead by sunset.
He just wasn’t an inspiring person. He’d never had much to say, even back in those days when he grew flowers in a greenhouse. You didn’t have to say anything to flowers. You watered them, made sure they got enough sunlight, and clipped them when the time was right. Darneisha dealt with the customers far more than he ever did. She’d always seemed to have the right words to say, like a font of wisdom and politeness that never ran dry.
A long-forgotten memory dredged itself up suddenly in his mind, and it took him far away from the plains of battle, back into the happy past.
Kendra and Imani had sat on the floor playing with painted building blocks one evening while he and Darneisha relaxed on the sofa with the news screen on. A reporter had been giving grim updates from a violent dispute over on Rama Seven, where three nations were beating themselves into a bloody pulp for reasons not apparent to any outsiders. Theories about the origin of the skirmish abounded, but the war had been going on for so long at that point that nobody could remember what started it. Now they just fought because they could.
“Why are people fighting?” Imani asked, tears in her eyes as the screen showed images of body bags lined up in rows.
“I don’t know, honey,” Darneisha had said, drawing her daughter close to her side and giving her a squeeze. “But the important thing to remember is that sometimes there are good people fighting back to make sure there’s never any fighting again.”
“Do the good people die, too?”
“Sometimes. It’s sad, but they do it so someone else’s life might be better.”
It had been a lot for a six-year-old to take in. It was a lot for anyone to take in, really, especially when you were the one ordering the good people to fight back and die.
Dalton resisted the urge to lean over and vomit. Why couldn’t life be like a video game?
A video game . . .
He remembered something.
He held the bullhorn in front of his face again, wishing for a moment that the music blaring over the town wasn’t quite so loud. “You need to construct barricades!” he bellowed. “Block off streets to seal yourselves in!”
The building shook, ever so slightly. He peered off to the west and saw a rising cloud of smoke. Since it did not seem to be harming him at the moment, he chose to ignore it and refocused his attention on the citizens and plants gathered below.
“In fact,” he went on, “we can build them in a way that funnels the Verdants in toward us. Then we can trap them inside and deal with them. I need people on roofs with boomstones!”
Feeling almost gleeful, he rushed back down the stairs and into the station. He tore a map of Richport off the wall and snatched up a magic marker on his way out the door.
Panting, he stopped outside the station and spread the map out on the ground. He knew these streets better than he knew the backs of his own hands, but he needed to show everyone else his plan.
He began marking barricades here and there, designed in such a way that would draw the Verdants in toward them, like herding field beasts into the slaughterhouse. Errin and their group would need to provide an impetus to get the Verdants moving, but Dalton didn’t doubt that it could be done. This plan made sense.
“Errin!” he barked into his comm unit. “Are you there?”
“Affirmative! We’re in sight of the Verdant ships. We can see a few dozen Haa’la from here, but I don’t know how many are still inside.”
“When I give the signal, take your group and charge them. Drive them toward Lily Street with everything you’ve got. We’ll push from the other end and trap them in the middle, and our people on the roofs will take care of them.”
“I didn’t know we had people on the roofs.”
“We will soon. Stand by.”
He finished marking all the places where the barricades should go and then held up the map so the people nearest him could see it. “We need to install barricades in these precise locations! Use your automobiles, your kitchen tables, anything that will make it hard for anyone to get through—then report directly back to me once they’re in place. And everyone whose last name starts with M needs to get up on the roofs here, here, and here.” He paused to draw in a breath. “We’re going to trap them and rain boomstones down onto them until they’re dead. They’ll never even realize what hit them.”
Chapter 25
As the citizens of Richport scurried off to form barricades after examining Dalton’s map, fewer and fewer humans remained in the street. The Greens that stayed behind towered over the scant humans who’d opted to linger with their giant flamethrowers, ready to incinerate the plants at the first wrong move.
Dalton didn’t want to look at the Greens, nor could he take his eyes off them. It was no wonder the first settlers on Molorthia Six had mistaken them for great, bloody trees. The Greens here stood so still it was like their feet had grown roots, anchoring them into the street.
While he waited for the barricades to be moved into place, he checked in with Carolyn. “Any updates?” he asked.
“The ship we were monitoring exploded a few minutes ago,” she said dryly. “You may have noticed?”
Dalton’s heart stuttered. “Chumley was supposed to be disabling that ship, not blowing it sky-high.”
“He may have set it to blow on a delay and got out before it ignited.”
“May have?”
“I haven’t seen him.”
If Chumley had still been in rodent form, Carolyn may not have spotted him at all from her vantage point, and Dalton fervently hoped that was the case.
He decided to change the subject. “What are you doing now?”
“I’ve split my group in half. Some of them are still in the riverbed, and the rest of us are moving in closer to town to get a fix on the Haa’la again.”
“Let’s focus on the Verdants,” said Dalton. “They’re the ones planning on murdering everyone.”
“Have you alerted the other cities?”
At first, Dalton couldn’t think of what she was talking about. Other cities . . . ? Oh. Other cities. Right. “I’m on it,” he said, and hurriedly dialed Annaliese up in Paris.
“Annaliese?” A static hiss was just barely audible beneath the sound of Gurmeet and Lennox’s music. “Do you copy?”
“Dalton! Last I heard, you’d disappeared!”
“No time to explain. Richport is under attack.”
“Oh my God! Is it the Greens?”
Dalton scratched an ear. “Um, no. The Greens are actually helping us.”
“Is that music?”
“Ignore it. Some of your missing people are up in a Haa’la mining base.”
“I’m having a hard time following this.”
Dalton didn’t think he’d really have the time to explain every last detail to every other sheriff on the planet, but he had to remind himself that nobody else knew what was going on here. “Aliens called Haa’la built an illegal mining base up in the forests. They’ve been burning the forests to drive out the Greens. A bunch of eco-warriors called the Verdants have just landed to kill all the other Haa’la and the humans as well. They’re here in Richport, and if we can’t stop them, they’ll destroy every settlement on the planet.”
Her tone turned sour. “Why the hell would they do that?”
“It doesn’t matter why! Just get your people mobilized, and maybe send someone to go rescue your people from the base, if the Verdants haven’t destroyed it yet.”
Annaliese said some choice words. “Thanks for letting me know,” she said, and the call ended.
Dalton had just dialed up Janelle in Cloud City when several of the inert Greens loitering in the street straightened and fanned out as if creating a line of defense. He couldn’t suppress a shudder as he watched them move—it reminded him too much of that day in Piney Gulch. He ought to give himself an award for not blacking out again already.
Why would Greens want to help humans? Shouldn’t they be on the side of the Verdants?
Were these Greens being nice?
The earsplitting music fell silent.
Amplified whispering issued from every siren speaker.
“That’s all the songs I know.”
“We started on ‘God Save the Queen’ a few weeks ago.”
“But we never finished it!”
“We could start over from the beginning?”
“But my hands are tired! Oh gosh, do you think everyone can hear us?”
Dalton forced himself to breathe. In the distance, he could hear the sound of blaster fire.
Shapes and colors spun behind Chumley’s eyelids. He forced them open and winced—it felt like weights had been tacked to them.
Smoke wafted through the air above him. He coughed and rolled over onto his side. He lay on a patch of rocky sand that felt about as comfortable as you’d expect. Shouts and heavy bootsteps drew his attention, and he watched dazedly as a gaggle of veiled figures marched past him with blasters raised.
They gave him no notice.
He sat up and looked down at himself. He wasn’t wearing any clothes.
Why wasn’t he wearing any clothes?
He strained to replay the most recent events. He’d been in his flat looking for suitable worlds on which he could hide from the police, and then . . .
Oh.
Right.
He shifted back into hamster form as another group of Haa’la rushed past, armed to the teeth with blasters.
I blew up their ship. He giggled, or he would have if he hadn’t been a hamster. I blew up their ship!
He still had four other ships to take care of, though. It would take him too long to run there like this, and running there in the nude would draw unwanted attention, so he would have to find some clothing.
His nose quivered. If he could find some laundry hanging out to dry somewhere . . .
The sound of many blasters firing in quick succession made him twitch, and yet another batch of Haa’la came through, yelling what was probably profanities. They didn’t appear to be organized, like a true army would be. This was what happened when you handed weapons to a bunch of angry miners: mayhem.
Honestly, Chumley couldn’t see how anything good would come of this day. There was no military on Molorthia Six; it had never needed one. Colony worlds usually didn’t until they got invaded for the first time. Then it was all, Hey, we should organize a formal government so we can organize a formal military, and within a few generations the former colony would just be a regular world that more pissed-off people split off from to go settle their own uninhabited planets. It was like the circle of life, or something.
Chumley’s tiny, furry body backed up against the side of a block of flats as a troop of what could only be the Verdants came into view. They wore armor and carried guns that meant business, and they shot down three of the Haa’la without batting their eyes. Not that Chumley could see their eyes; they were wearing helmets. They also looked about the height of skyscrapers, but that was to be expected since Chumley was currently small enough to fit inside a teacup.
One of the surviving Haa’la squeezed off a shot that hit one of the Verdants in the helmet, which sparked and crackled as if it had been electrified. Another Verdant cut down the remaining Haa’la as the one with the damaged helmet tore it off their head and threw it to the ground in disgust. Long, black hair spilled over armored shoulders, and Chumley blinked his hamster eyes in astonishment.
He had seen this woman before. And he was fairly sure her name was Naomi Schwartzman.
She stared down at the fallen Haa’la, her face as stern as Chumley had seen it on the day she gave her little speech in the town square. “That’s five of them down, at least,” she said, sounding almost bored. “Pity we can’t get this done any easier.”
Chumley hardly heard as one of her companions replied to her. If this was Naomi Schwartzman, then the Verdants might be on the humans’ side after all! The Verdants must have picked her up from whatever city she was supposedly inspecting at the moment. Would they have had the time to do that, though? Of course they had; Naomi was here.
He couldn’t disable the Verdant ships if they were actually here to help the humans. Since it was now pointless to remain in hamster form, he shifted back into himself and held up his hands in a sign of peace.
“Oi!” he shouted. “Ms. Schwartzman!”
She and the other Verdants turned and stared at him, probably wondering why he wasn’t wearing anything.
“Who the hell are you?” she asked, coolly.
“It’s . . . I’m Chumley Fanshaw. The deputy here. Remember? You gave a speech in front of the whole town just the other day.”
She gave him a blank stare, and then smiled.
Chumley tried not to notice that her companions had their weapons trained on him.
“You think I’m my sister,” she said.
Chumley felt his heart hammering faster and faster. “You’re not Naomi?”
“Naomi is four years younger than I am. My name is Magdalene.”
“I don’t understand.”
“Don’t you?” Her eyes sparkled like black diamonds. “We suspected that Nydo Base Corporation was running operations somewhere in this sector. Naomi knows what I do and dragged Frontier Care United out this way to spy on things while the Verdants were otherwise engaged.”
Chumley tensed. “What do you mean by that?”
“She means we were busy bombing Horgon Base on Mendiron Two,” growled a helmeted man beside Magdalene.
“Does that mean . . . ” Chumley gulped. “That Frontier Care United is a sham?”
“Oh, it’s a real charity.” Magdalene shrugged. “Naomi and I have always been close. She tells me her secrets, I tell her mine. The day after she landed here, she sent me a message describing the wildfires, but it wasn’t confirmation enough that Nydo Base Corporation was responsible. But when a Nydo cargo ship reentered the Leeprau System about thirteen hours ago with Molorthia Six registered as its planet of origin, well . . . ” Her lips twisted into a dark smirk. “Luckily we’d just arrived back from Mendiron Two. We restocked our supplies and headed straight here.”
“You’ve come here to save us, then. From the wildfires, and the attacking Greens, and the Haa’la miners?”
Neither Magdalene nor her comrades replied. Her expression didn’t even change, so Chumley tried a different approach. “It would help us all to know that you’re on our side. We can even leave the fighting to you since we’re not experienced.”
“You really are a sad little person,” Magdalene said, looking him up and down in
disgust. “I contacted Naomi when we arrived, and she’ll be requesting emergency evacuation for her team if she hasn’t already. Now we have a job to finish.”
Chumley was on the ground running away in hamster form half a second before blaster shots rang out again.
Indignation burned within him as he rushed around a corner and tucked himself beneath a vehicle parked outside a two-story adobe building. So, two sisters, each fighting for the frontier in their own way: Naomi, who supposedly wanted to better human colony worlds, and Magdalene, who wanted to purge those worlds of foreign inhabitants.
The Schwartzmans must have had very strange family reunions.
He remained under the vehicle a few minutes longer. Nobody found him, and he began to feel lonely as more blaster shots and cries of agony filled the air.
I’m scared, Gran, he thought. I’ve made a mistake in coming to this planet, haven’t I? I thought I might evade the authorities here, and now I’m going to die in a great, bloody battle. No one will ever know what happened to me, or even remember me.
A body thudded to the ground next to the vehicle. It was a human being, wearing sand-colored clothing that smoldered from the shot that had brought them down. He could see no other details, but he knew without a doubt that this was a citizen of Richport whose only mistake had been in defending their home.
The shots moved off toward the distance. Chumley crept out of his hiding place, scanned the street, and shifted back into his normal shape when he saw the coast was clear for the moment.
He knelt beside the body. They appeared androgynous, with closely-cropped hair and eyes glazed over in death. Blood seeped from the front of their shirt and stained the street.
They weren’t even holding a weapon. The only thing clenched in their hand was a key. Chumley pried it from their grip and examined the keychain, noting it had the number “2C” stamped on it.
