Grunt Traitor (41 page)

Lovely,
I said, seeing Michelle in my mind’s eye.

I regretted that she wanted to die, but it was her choice, Mason. You did the right thing.

And you? Do you want to die, Thompson?

Absolutely not. This was... is... the best thing to happen to me. I’ve always wanted to be a hero. I’ve always wanted to make a difference. At first I was too small, but when I froze in Africa, I discovered I was too scared for combat.

You ended up making it work.

Only because I didn’t want to disappoint you, Mason. My fear of you not liking me was greater than my fear of dying.

And now?

Now I’m where I’m supposed to be. I’m a modified Gen I, with the capacity of a Gen II. This stuff comes natural to me. And now that you’ve been changed by the spores, we can communicate, as I can with any of the Cray or fungees.

Wait... you can communicate with the aliens?

I can communicate with the Sirens and the Cray as well as each and every fungee. You should remember, inside the fungees they’re perfectly normal.

We ran through several groups of them. We thought the master might be using them for processing power.

Almost right. They’re my doing. I brought those fungees together. Think of each group as a remote server, or even a static IP address. Moving from one to the other keeps the Master from finding my location. I’ve been communicating with the other HMIDs, and we’re starting to work together.

So what are we going to do?

You’re going to deliver the nuke to the Master.

I can’t possibly get past all the Cray by myself. And now my team is in no shape to help.

On the contrary, we’re going to walk right up to the Master, say hi, then poke him in the eye.

We
?

Yep. I’m going with you.

But how?

Think of me as a hitchhiker of the mind.

As easy as that?

Oh, you have no idea how hard I’ve worked for this moment.

Now what?

Now you say a few last words to your team.

The white faded, returning me once more to the Metro station platform. EXO lights formed a glow around the area, and the ground was an awful red.

Blood.

Too much blood.

Oh, hell.

Victory at all costs, victory in spite of all terror, victory however long and hard the road may be; for without victory, there is no survival.

Sir Winston Churchill

CHAPTER FORTY-NINE

S
TRANZ WAS DEATHLY
pale as he lay on the platform, his suit discarded, his eyes shadowed. Ohirra was out of her suit, checking the tourniquet. Any concern for the spores had gone by the wayside as she needed to attend to Stranz’s wounds. I smelled burned flesh and noted that smoke was drifting slightly from Stranz’s stump. Sula stood a few feet away, her minigun still spinning. They must have used the heat from the gun to seal the blood vessels. God, how that must have hurt.

I stood facing them.

Part of me wanted to still shoot them, to kill them. I recognized the Master’s will. But another part of me, the part controlled by Thompson, wanted to run to them.

Choose your words carefully
, came Thompson’s voice.
I don’t know how much it can understand, and I have limited control.

Ohirra turned towards me, fury and worry doing battle on her face.

Sula regarded me with fear.

The Master was keeping me from feeling the guilt I knew I should have been experiencing. Knowing that it should have been there was enough to keep me grounded and realize what a terrible thing I’d done. I was the worst sort of grunt: a traitor. First I was a traitor to OMBRA, then to Dupree, then to the New United States of North America, and finally to my own grunts.

The punishment for being a traitor used to be hanging.

I vowed then and there that I would discover a way to pay for what I’d done. Whatever it took, I would pay.

“Mason, why did you do it?” Ohirra said. “Stranz loved you like a father.”

“I did what I had to,” I said. “You need to head to the stadium.”

She regarded me for a moment. “Are you in control?” she asked.

“The game begins in ninety minutes. You don’t want to miss the opening pitch,” I said, hoping the alien Master wouldn’t understand what I was doing... and that Ohirra would.

“Ninety minutes,” she said, glancing at Stranz. “I’m not sure if we can make it.”

“You have to,” I said, wishing I could go over to Ohirra and give her one last hug. “It’s bottom of the ninth and two outs.”

“Who’s at bat?”

“Thompson.”

Her eyes widened slightly, then she nodded.

I wanted to go to these people. I wanted to touch them, to hug them, apologize. Instead, I walked woodenly to the nuke, disarmed it, then resealed it inside the Faraday cage container.

I watched as Ohirra got back into her suit. After a few moments, she picked up Stranz and held him like a child. She turned to me, her eyes unfathomable. Then she and Sula turned, leaped off the platform onto the track, and began jogging east, away from the hive and back towards Dodger Stadium where the helicopter was waiting.

They left me in darkness. I stood there, praying silently that I hadn’t killed Stranz... that I hadn’t added his name to the list of my men who had died because of something I’d done or said. Then I turned on the flashlight, dragged the nuke to the edge of the platform, put my arms through the straps, and struggled into it. At one hundred and twenty pounds, the weight staggered me, but it wasn’t more than I’d carried before. The trick was to carry it high on the back and keep a forward lean. I struck out, heading west down the track, with Thompson as my co-pilot, and a deep understanding that I was about to pay for my sins.

Violence, naked force, has settled more issues in history than has any other factor.

Robert A. Heinlein,
Starship Troopers

CHAPTER FIFTY

W
HAT’S IT LIKE
, living as you live?
I asked Thompson.

It’s like being the computer instead of the operator. Remember back in the days before the alien invasion? Remember when you would sit down at a computer and go to the search engine and find all the information you could possibly need? Well that’s what it’s like for me, except I’m not the user on the computer. I
am
the computer. I have all the information. I have everything at my access. I have the potential computational power of every living being on earth. I can reach out and I can touch everybody who’s been infected. I can access them, I can communicate with them, and I can interact with them.

Do you feel any pain?

I’ve been rewired not to feel pain.

I continued marching into the throat of the beast, vines waving in the light like worms as I passed.

Do you feel anger?

Yes.

Do you want revenge?

Yes.

Do you feel love?

No answer.

I continued marching forward. My flashlight seemed to create the path rather than illuminate it. I kept between the rails, my steps uneven as I tried to hit the middle of each cross beam.

I thought about video games and how they’d replaced playing cards for soldiers in combat. When I’d first been assigned to FOB Shank in Logar Province back in 2012 as part of the 173
^rd
Airborne Brigade, I was put in charge of the night shift perimeter patrol. There was an ISAF patrol and a US patrol, and I was part of the US patrol. My job was to ensure my two squads complemented the efforts of the ISAF forces. When we weren’t out on shift or patrolling, we were inside playing video games.
Call of Duty
and
Halo
were the favs. Having logged thousands of hours on each game, I usually sat back and watched as my men mowed down hordes of enemies and aliens without regard. There’s an addictive joy in combat action, even when it’s simulated. It’s the same joy that adrenaline junkies indulge by base jumping or free climbing. The irony was that walking night patrol with NODs, worrying that every bush or rock might hide an enemy or an IED, was far more dangerous than playing the video games... but the games were what provided the greatest rush.

I stopped cold when I thought I saw something at the edge of the light. I turned the beam towards it and revealed a Cray facing me. A sentry, like those Olivares and I had seen in the volcanic tunnels beneath Kilimanjaro. We’d been able to sneak around those and kill them thanks to their blindness in the dark. I realized it was too late to even try and get around this one as it began to move towards me.

I went to draw my pistol when Thompson stopped me.

It won’t harm you.

It was on me in a flash, face poised next to mine as it tilted its head and regarded me with its multiple eyes.

Just as a video game separated the killer from the killed, I was aware that the EXO had separated me from the Cray, leveled the playing field. Standing here, merely human, even with a nuke strapped to my back, I felt insignificant next to the huge creature. Even as it brought its claws towards my face, I knew it could rip right through me. It took all my measure to keep from running.

Easy, Mason. It’s just curious.

Maybe it can be curious twenty feet away.

Don’t like being the bug, do you?

What the fuck does that mean?

Under the microscope, or in the hands of a child. Didn’t you ever pick up a bug and look at it real close? Now you know how it feels.

If I survive this I’ll never pick up a bug again.

That’s the spirit.

The Cray circled me and began to fiddle with the nuke. I stepped forward, then turned. I held out my hand and waggled a finger at it. “No, no, Cray.”

It tilted its head again.

“Bad doggie.”

That’s almost right. They have the brain capacity similar to a dog. They’re task-oriented, much like an ant or a bee. Once a task is given, they perform it.

What’s this one’s task, to smell my butt?

Pretty much. Welcoming committee.

The Cray began to move back down the track the way it had come.

I felt the Master assert himself and felt the impulse to follow the Cray. Just a singular thought, nothing more, but it was an imperative. I tried to stop myself, pause for just a moment, but my body wouldn’t allow me.

Fucking great, now I’m the video game and someone is playing me.

I’m here. It’s going to work out.

You have a plan.

Of sorts.

Can you break the hold on me?

I think so.

Think
?

Pretty confident, actually.

Have you tried?

Not yet.

Why not try now?

No answer.

My best bud the Cray and I came to a station. The sign read
Hollywood and Highland
, which meant above us stood the Kodak Theater. I’d never been in it, but every Oscar ceremony for the last dozen years had been hosted there. Next to the Kodak Theater was Mann’s Chinese Theater, with all the hand- and footprints out front. I remember taking a girl named Suzie to see
Matrix Reloaded
at the theater. We’d joked before the film, putting our hands and feet in famous people’s castings. We’d laughed at how small Shatner’s feet were and come up with a game called What Would William Shatner Do?

Whatever happened to Suzie, I wondered? Then I remembered. It was a deployment to Iraq. Girls like her didn’t tend to wait for grunts like me, who wanted to go to war all the time. She’d probably found a Starbucks barista or a guy who worked in the mall, trading the danger of living with me for the comfort of living with someone who wouldn’t leave her to go kill something. The irony, of course, was that she’d probably died in the invasion, while I still lived. Either that or she was a fungee.

Instead of going up the stairs into the Metro, the Cray turned left and entered a gaping hole cut into the side of the wall, revealing a tunnel that ran south.