by C H Gideon
The airlock above them disappeared into the murky darkness, leaving them surrounded by Zeen insectaurs as they descended.
Fortunately, the shaft was not endless, and at its bottom was a flat circular patch of floor with a single insectaur waiting in the center. During the entire descent, Xi kept one hand firmly on Deep Currents’ pod while the other clutched what could very well be humanity’s only lifeline.
Beside that insectaur was a chassis not dissimilar to the one Deep Currents had employed aboard the DC03, but this one seemed more refined and robust.
Xi and Galvis let go of the pod three meters above the floor to drop and gently land while Deep Currents’ pod slid smoothly into its new receptacle. The Vorr’s track-driven undercarriage sprang to life, and as it did so, Xi eyed the Zeen standing before them.
It seemed identical to the rest, but its isolation beneath the tower of its fellows clinging to the shaft above made clear it was indeed different.
Deep Currents’ comm came to life with an auto-translated voice like the one Xi remembered from Shiva’s Wrath, and she realized the Vorr would act as translator for this exchange.
“You Terran,” came the voice, using the same simplistic, broken verbiage as its predecessor.
“Yes,” Xi replied, stepping forward, “I’m Terran. You’re Zeen,” she continued before gesturing to Deep Currents’ pod. “That is Vorr.”
“Vorr brave,” the Zeen said, repeating the words of the insectaur Xi had communicated with on Shiva’s Wrath. “Vorr food. Brave food not symmetrical. Vorr help Zeen. Vorr help Terran. Vorr ask Zeen help Terran. Terran brave?”
“Yes.” Xi nodded with conviction. “Terrans are brave. And Terrans are not food.”
“Terran symmetrical with Jemmin?” Zeen asked.
“No.” Xi shook her head firmly. “Terrans are not symmetrical with Jemmin.”
“Jemmin infect Terran,” the Zeen said, causing Xi’s already strained nerves to tighten further. “Jemmin infect everything. Terran Jemmin food. Zeen take Jemmin food. Zeen eat Terran.”
“No!” Xi blurted in objection, dearly wishing she had brought a sidearm since it looked like she might be forced to defend herself in yet another “diplomatic” exchange. “We will never be food to the Jemmin. We want to stop the Jemmin.”
“Empty words. Need proof,” Zeen challenged. “Bad food still food. Stupid food still food. Obedient food still food. Jemmin need food. Jemmin trick food. Jemmin make food obedient. Terran obedient food.”
“You want proof?” Xi snapped, stepping forward and producing the shell-like device given to her by the Zeen she had met on Shiva’s Wrath. “This is all the proof I’ve got, and if it’s not enough? Eat me!” she snapped, fully aware of the double entendre.
The Zeen stepped forward, extending its delicate pincers to pluck the item from her fingers. It silently took the thing and tucked it into a crease in its torso’s armor plates. Xi suspected the device carried some kind of data record that would take the Zeen some time to peruse, but it took it less than three seconds for it to step back and splay its limbs in a gesture identical to the one she had seen back on Shiva’s Wrath.
“Terran brave. Terran not food,” the Zeen intoned as the mass of insectaurs lining the shaft overhead rippled with movement. “Terran not symmetrical with Jemmin. Vorr help Zeen. Zeen help Vorr. Vorr help Terran. Zeen help Terran. Vorr, Zeen, and Terran symmetrical.”
At that last bit, a great, glowing triangle appeared on the floor beneath their feet. Spanning nearly the entire thirty-meter-wide floor of the shaft, one side of the triangle was a faint bluish hue. As Xi looked around, she realized the Vorr’s pod-lights were no longer green but had adopted the same blue as that line of the triangle. It seemed the Vorr, a race of ocean-dwellers, would be represented by the color blue.
Another side was a fiery red, and this was the color Xi suddenly saw emanate from the shaft above her. The Zeen insectaurs themselves seemed to glow, and together they created a column of smoldering red that stretched far beyond Xi’s sight. The Zeen color was to be red, and it was one humanity had long associated with wrath and vengeance.
The third side was a throbbing pale white, which she assumed represented the relative fragility of humanity. It was perhaps also suggestive of humanity’s fading purity in the face of Jemmin interference, but the truth was that Xi had never been good at discerning the messages in metaphors.
But the choice of red, white, and blue had unmistakably been made in deference to Terran culture, which had arisen like a phoenix from the ashes of the so-called American Experiment. On the backs of frontiersmen, entrepreneurs, adventurers, and even criminals like Xi, the Terran Republic had proudly carried the legacy of Earth’s Western Civilization to the stars. Even those cultures which did not directly affiliate with America’s legacy were nonetheless irrefutably influenced by its rugged individualism and its belief in liberty as the most fundamental human principles.
Like a torch borne from one continent to another, the flames that fueled the Terran Republic’s survival in the vast emptiness between the stars had first been lit thousands of years earlier on Earth. Nurtured and protected at every turn, what had begun as mere embers had grown to a bonfire that showed no signs of dying down.
And now those flames were about to return home.
“It is done,” Deep Currents declared. “Our species stand together in common cause. First, we safeguard our homes from the Jemmin apocalypse. And then,” the Vorr turned toward Xi, who felt a thrill at hearing its next words, “we end Jemmin.”
Epilogue: Fly Me to the Moon
It had been twelve hours since the wormholes had gone dark, and Colonel Jenkins was down on the drop-deck helping make repairs to the two companies of mechs still aboard the Dietrich Bonhoeffer.
They had no idea how long it would take Xi to bring the Zeen to New America 2, and Jenkins knew he couldn’t spend another moment on the bridge listening to Colonel Li deal with the rising level of chaos in the star system. Elements of the 8th Fleet had been stationed at the Nexus-side wormhole gate, including a pair of dreadnoughts, and those ships’ commanders were predictably rallying all nearby forces into a defensive posture.
Li had admirably sidestepped the rendezvous orders with half-truths and outright lies regarding the Bonhoeffer’s condition, but it was only a matter of time before Admiral Wallace, who was in charge of those ships, would decide the good colonel was openly defying orders.
“Hand me that torch, Blinky.” Jenkins gestured to a micro-burner after isolating the offending bit of debris in Blink Dog’s front left leg’s hull joint.
“Yes, sir,” Miles “Blinky” Staubach acknowledged, scrambling to the bench with every ounce of enthusiasm Xi had described in her recommendation that he be given his own mech. He returned with not just the torch but also bearing the magnetic tongs Jenkins would use to remove the misshapen hunk of metal. “Here you go, sir,” Blinky said, his eyes fluttering open and shut in classic extra-pyramidal symptoms of someone on heavy doses of anti-seizure medications. His seizure condition was what had caused him to fall into Jenkins’ lap. Blinky had applied to dropship pilot’s school, but Fleet had medically disqualified him from their program due to his condition.
The real bitch of it was that the meds actually made Blinky more stable for neural uplinks, not less. In classic ossified bureaucratic fashion, Terran Fleet had passed Blinky over, and they’d done it because, frankly, he didn’t look good enough on a parade line.
“Thanks.” Jenkins accepted the torch. He fired it up and began cutting little pieces off the debris so he could maneuver the clamp into place and remove it.
“Colonel…” Staubach began with that hesitant note Jenkins recalled hearing in himself when he was a wide-eyed recruit. Not that Staubach was ever wide-eyed due to his neurological tick, but he seemed every bit as nervous as Jenkins recalled himself being at the onset of his career.
“Yes, Corporal?” Jenkins acknowledged after Blinky faltered.
> “I just… I wanted to thank you, sir, for giving me a chance, sir,” Staubach stammered, causing Jenkins’ lips to curl in a well-hidden smile as he wondered if he had ever sounded this uncomfortable.
You bet your ass you did, Lee, he thought as his smile widened.
“I know my condition should have precluded me from receiving the link implants,” Blinky continued, “and I know they’re limited. I just wanted to say that I won’t let you down, sir.”
“Clamp,” Jenkins said, finishing with the torch and passing it to the younger man. Staubach gave him the clamp, which he affixed to a corner of the debris before sliding down Blink Dog’s leg and putting his boots back on the deck. “Chain.” He gestured even as Blinky was running back with the chain they would use to extract the broken piece of gear.
A few minutes’ worth of silent teamwork later, the ruined hunk of Blink Dog’s armor was out of the way. After two hours of laborious, tedious, but much-appreciated grunt work as far as Jenkins was concerned, the recon mech was ready for Koch’s people to do the hard work of replacing its actuators and inspecting the mech’s forward frame.
“Good work, Corporal,” Jenkins congratulated. “I thought we’d be another hour on that one.”
He could see the anxiety on Staubach’s face following his non-reply, and Jenkins had difficulty keeping a straight face. It wasn’t that Jenkins enjoyed seeing the other man’s discomfort, but like all military traditions, projecting stoicism was a key part of setting a winning example for the up-and-comers.
In the face of the other man’s earnestness, Jenkins finally relented. “Corporal, when I look at your jacket, I don’t see a walking medical disqualification for the TRMC dropship pilot’s program. I see one of the most intensely devoted and capable young men the Legion has the privilege of fielding under its banner. I see someone who earned the highest possible marks on every applicable aptitude test, and who impressed the hell out of his CO during his first, second, third, fourth, and fifth tastes of combat against two different enemies back on Shiva’s Wrath, neither of which the bookies would have given us half a chance to whip. You played key parts in those engagements, and you earned this command,” he finished firmly, putting a hand on Blink Dog’s half-disassembled frame before continuing.
“When I look at you, I don’t see someone with a disability. I see someone with extraordinary ability who Fleet let slip through their fingers because he’s got an unsightly tick. And unfortunately for you,” Jenkins said with a grin, “I’m going to push you so hard every single day that you think you’ll break like a Solarian’s fingernail just for rolling out of your bunk in the morning. But if you’re somehow still standing after I’ve punched myself out and thrown everything I’ve got at you, I’m going to dress you up like a French poodle and parade you in front of those admirals who thought you weren’t good enough to pilot one of their dropships. And you’re going to do it with your callsign embroidered on your beret. How does that sound, Blinky?”
Staubach’s eyes grew moist, and for a long moment he stopped blinking, and his lip began to quiver instead. The young man nodded graciously, smiling as tears ran down his cheeks. “Like a fucking dream, Colonel.”
Jenkins clapped the young man on the shoulder. “Good man. Now clean this mess up.” He waved a hand at the debris they had spent the last two hours removing from Blink Dog’s hull, most of which had been Jenkins’ doing. “It’s a goddamned pigsty around here.”
Blinky wiped the tears from his cheeks and nodded smartly before saluting. “Yes, sir!”
Jenkins returned the salute with a wry grin. “Carry on, Corporal.”
Jenkins was just about to move over to Roy to see how Chaps’ efforts were going, but before he took the first step, his wrist-link chimed.
He accepted the incoming link. “Jenkins here.”
“Li here.” The Bonhoeffer’s CO greeted him with a rare, awestruck note in his voice. “She’s back…and you need to see this.”
Jenkins made his way to an interface terminal and entered his command authorization, which let him see the ship’s direct sensor feeds. His eyebrows rose in surprise at what he saw two light minutes from where the Bonhoeffer rested in high orbit over Durgan’s Folly.
A moon like no moon any human had ever seen before.
But despite the gravity of the situation, a single thought resonated through Jenkins’ mind so clearly, so powerfully, and so perfectly that he couldn’t help but throw his head back and laugh.
Heads swiveled in his direction and concerned looks came over the faces of some of the Bonhoeffer’s deck crew. He knew he should show some restraint, but it was too rich. This was the kind of thing you only got to laugh about once in your entire life, and he wasn’t going to miss it.
“It takes a moon,” he shook his head in comical bewilderment, wiping a tear from his eye, “to attack the Moon. How’s that for symmetrical?” He chortled. “You can’t write this crap; it has to actually happen.”
“Colonel?” Li’s voice came over the wrist-link, although it was clear he was only half as concerned as some of the people down on the drop-deck.
“It’s nothing, Colonel Li,” Jenkins said, regaining control and verifying that Xi’s coded authentication had indeed been transmitted from the newly-arrived moon. “Operation Antivenom is a go, Colonel Li.”
“Confirmed,” Li acknowledged. “We’re breaking orbit.”
Jenkins swept past the assemblage as the battered Dietrich Bonhoeffer gently pulled away from Durgan’s Folly. He couldn’t help but grin as he looked around, seeing the faces of men and women who would ride with him to change the fate of human history for better or worse. They didn’t know if they could succeed. They didn’t know if they would survive. But they did know, with every fiber of their being, that they were ready.
“We ride for Luna One,” Jenkins declared in a voice that echoed through the drop-deck, causing the crew’s spines to stiffen and heads to nod in eager anticipation.
They were warriors to the last, and their resolve made him proud to be Terran as he embarked on the most insane mission of his career. It would be one for the history books, one way or the other, and Jenkins was going to lead them into those books the only way he knew how: hard, fast, and straight for the throat.
He nodded approvingly, and his eyes snagged on Blinky’s as the young man looked at him with a measure of trust Lee Jenkins would do his utmost to deserve. He took a step toward the young man, who braced to attention and caused the rest of the deck to do likewise in unison. He was more humbled by their support than he could express with words or gestures, so he didn’t offer a single one. He stood there looking at each one in turn and feeling their bond tighten with each passing second.
They were ready. He was ready. That meant there was just one thing left to do, and that was to sound the charge.
“Let’s go save Earth!”
The End
Author Notes - Craig Martelle
January 8, 2018
You are still reading! Thank you so much. It doesn’t get much better than that.
I’ve just returned from a long trip over Christmas and New Year’s. The winter solstice in Fairbanks, Alaska is harsh. Too much darkness. Too much cold. So we usually take a short trip to Hawaii or somewhere warm. Since my son married into Australia and my grandchildren are Australian, we now to get to go down under, where it’s more than warm. It’s summer.
We spent a full week in Adelaide, South Australia. We love it there! Plus my son and his family are there so that makes it easy. Family, friends, and a clean and pleasant city. We did more touristy stuff this time and it was great. The Zoo, the Botanical Gardens, and the Adelaide Gaol. They were all righteously fun. So many flying foxes, aka bats hanging in a small area between the zoo and the botanical garden. It was crazy seeing the tree filled with the massive creatures. They were probably the size of a squirrel, maybe a little bigger. Most impressive.
It was a little warmer than last year, but still nice. I
got a good suntan, using enough lotion to keep from burning. While in Adelaide, we hosted a luncheon for over thirty Australian authors. I was humbled by the way they came to see Michael Anderle and me. We spent most of the time talking about our stuff, but we tried to get people involved for the last hour and I think that made it a big winner.
Then we traveled to Bali for a three-day author’s conference. I was running the show so it was a bit stressful for me as I wanted to roll out the red carpet for everyone and make them feel like it was the best and most personal conference ever. Comments following? How about, “This has changed my life.”
Then we came home after about twenty days on the road. I was ready to be home, but there was one minor issue. When we landed in Fairbanks, it was -38F. It was 85 with 95% humidity when we got up that morning.
At least our friend Uncle Alex did a curbside pickup so I only had to shuffle about twenty feet through the cold. It still was a crushing blow. But then we ran back to his house and picked Phyllis up, so all of us came home together. Thank you, Alex!
While I’m thanking the good people who helped me, I’ll shout out to Jane Hinchey for being the point man in Adelaide for the luncheon. Jane, Lucie, and Yudhanjaya helped in Bali to make sure that was a great show. Lucie’s husband, Paul was a dynamo and helped me in so many ways that I never expected.
For Metal Legion, my insider team, Kelly, Micky, Jim, and John once again made sure this was a great book before we turned it loose with the Just In Time readers. I like delivering ultra-clean books to the team so the last few typos jump out of the page while they are enjoying the story.
Which I hope you did. This is a great story once again that brings some of the formidable capabilities of the Metal Legion to bear on a determined enemy. In the end, we believe in the strength of the human spirit to persevere.
