Peace Army (6 page)

“Sir! We’ve…” The man panted, still trying to catch his breath. “We have… been looking for you…”

“Yes, man, what is it?”

“It’s the… the ship.”

Grant stood straighter. He noticed that Mouse did as well. Their attention was fully focused on the messenger.

“The Minith ship?” Grant received a timid nod in return.

“Take your time. What about the ship?”

“There’s… there’s been a… a message from the ship.”

Grant did not wait for more. He was off and running for the Fifth Square.

Mouse groaned, following.

Twenty minutes later, the two top commanders of Earth’s Army entered the Fifth Square and made their way to the command center. They were greeted by a cacophony of frenzied activity, chaotic shouts, and general disarray.

Grant saw Tane at the center of the storm. He tried to get his attention.

Failed.

Got pissed.

“
Hey!”

Grant’s voice boomed across the room.

A shatter of broken glass punctuated the shout as a startled civilian staffer dropped a cup. The commanding voice and the exploding glass had the desired effect. Activity ceased at once and all eyes—some showing fear, others showing excitement—turned to Grant.

“Now. Someone please tell me what the
hell
is going on.” His eyes searched the room and landed on Tane.

“It’s Titan,” the scientist offered.

Chapter 6

Grant rearranged the package under his arm and stepped through the door to their chambers. He was eager to tell Avery the news of the mothership and to share his surprise with Eli. This would be one of the last times he and his son would have to spend together before the arrival of the alien ship, and Grant wanted it to be special.

His excitement was forgotten when he entered the room. Instead of surprising his family, he was met with a surprise of his own.

Their small sofa was pushed to the middle of the room. It was joined by the round table they used for meals. The three chairs they owned were stacked haphazardly on top of the table. They leaned dangerously to the left, just a sneeze short of toppling. But that went almost unnoticed as Grant took in the walls of the room. When he left that morning, the walls were a dull gray, like the rest of Violent’s Prison.

Now they were painted the color of a clear, blue sky.

Avery stood to one side of the room. Her eyes shone with expectation and her hands were clasped together in front of her face. She was obviously waiting for his reaction.

“Woman, what have you gone and done?”

Avery clapped her hands and giggled.

“Do you like it?”

“I… it’s great. But,” Grant stammered, unsure of what to say—finally asking the only thing that came to mind. “Where did you get the paint for this?”

Avery covered the three steps separating them and wrapped her arms around Grant. The excitement splashed across her face showed her pleasure at his reaction.

“You’re not the only one who’s friends with the man who knows how to get things,” she explained. “Tane helped me with the paint. Who else?”

Grant laughed and remembered the package tucked under his left arm.

“I swear, that man can do just about anything,” Grant acknowledged. He set the package down carefully next to the chairs on the table and took a moment to straighten the precarious stack.

“Where’s Eli?”

Grant wasn’t sure how it was possible, but Avery’s smile got larger and she tugged him toward the small room on the right that doubled as a storage area and Eli’s bedroom. A blanket hung over the doorway like a curtain, blocking Grant’s view.

“Eli,” Avery called out. “Honey, are you ready?”

“Just a second, Mom!” Eli replied.

Grant heard the excitement in his young son’s voice and wondered what was going on. A memory arose unbidden—a movie from his childhood about a wizard behind a curtain. As had become his habit, Grant forced the memory down; buried it among the other lost articles of his former world.

A quick glance at the sky-blue walls returned him to the reality—and the wonder—of his new life. Despite everything he had left behind, these two lovely human beings, his wife and his son, made his current life worth living. He would gladly die a hundred times over for an extra minute with either of them.

As if reading his mind, Avery turned him toward her and planted a kiss on his cheek. Grant wrapped his arms around her, pulling her close. He was glad for her presence and for her ability to make him a better human in all respects. Adding color to the gray walls of their apartment, after their discussion a couple of night earlier, was just like her.

He returned her kiss to his check with a tender touch of his lips to hers. The tenderness of the touch grew into something more heated—something Grant had learned to understand and appreciate over the past few years.

“Okay, Mom! Finished!” Eli called from behind the curtain.

“Rats. Will the interruptions never end?” Grant joked. Avery pulled back and ran a hand across his face.

“You hush. He’s worked on this all afternoon,” Avery chided. “And you
will
like it.”

Grant heard the emphasis on the word “will.” It was followed by a downward tip of her chin and a slight raise of her left eyebrow. Grant recognized the look—the one that let him know she would accept no argument or debate.

“Yes, my love,” Grant humbly acknowledged. He knew the rules.

Avery pulled the blanket aside and Grant stepped bravely into—

—a purple room.

Minith purple, to be exact. The color matched the color Grant remembered from the Minith mothership; the color they had used in Treel’s room (
cell).
It was the purple the aliens preferred in their living spaces. Of all the colors Eli could have chosen, he selected the one he knew the best.

“Just like Treel’s room, Dad!” the youngster declared. “Do ya like it?”

Grant felt Avery’s grip on his upper arm tighten.

“Uh… yeah, son. Looks great.” Grant tried to put some excitement in his voice but couldn’t quite make it up that mountain. “Purple, huh?”

“Yeah! Just like Treel’s room!”

Grant tore his eyes away from the purple walls and looked at his son. He stifled a laugh. Eli had as much paint on his clothes and skin as he had on the walls. He was covered in liberal splashes of purple.

Grant suddenly didn’t care about the color. It was what his son wanted, and he knew Eli missed the big alien. Knew it was probably why he had chosen the color. He couldn’t visit Treel now, so the paint was a small way for the boy to be close to someone he considered his friend.

“I love it, son. Did you paint it all by yourself?”

“Mom helped with the high spots. I did the low ones.” Eli’s smile lit the purple room and Grant noticed a top right tooth missing.

“Hey, you lost the tooth!”

“I was going to tell you, Grant,” Avery explained. “But we wanted that to be a surprise as well.”

“Well, you guys are just full of surprises today, huh?” He swept up Eli, paint and all, in a giant hug and swung the boy up to his hip. He was almost too big for the maneuver, but Grant managed.

“I’ve got a surprise of my own,” Grant declared. He winked at Avery. “Want to see?”

“Sure! Is it for me?” Eli shouted and wriggled to get down. Grant held him deftly with one hand and lowered him to the floor.

“Yep. On the table, son.”

Eli ran into the other room and grabbed the package from the table. It was wrapped in plain paper. The stack of chairs swayed briefly and then settled.

“Eli, be careful.” Avery expressed her disapproval at her son’s excitement.

“Here, let me move those before someone gets hurt,” Grant offered. He picked up the chairs and set them on the floor as Eli tore into the package. He pulled out the metal contraptions and set them on the table.

“What are they, Dad? They look like weird shoes.”

“In my time, we called these weird shoes ‘roller blades.’”

Grant was more excited than he could remember being for a long time. He unstacked the chairs, sat down, and picked up the larger of the two pairs of roller blades Tane and his team had built. For never having seen or heard of them, Tane did a more-than-adequate-job of building the wheeled boots to Grant’s specifications.

He had asked for two pairs—one for him and another for Eli. He told Tane to be ready with a third set in case Avery expressed an interest.

“Rolla blades?”

“Roll-
er
blades,” Grant corrected as he kicked off his boots and slipped his feet into the wheeled shoes. “Go ahead and put yours on. We’re gonna take these things out for a trial run.”

“Suh-weet!” Eli pumped his right arm up and down, then plopped down to the floor and tugged at his own pair of boots.

“Grant, are those things safe?” Avery asked. The motherly concern in her voice gave him pause, but only for a moment. He wanted this time to be memorable for Eli.

“Um. Sure, hon,” Grant replied, suddenly unable to look his wife in the eye.

He doubted there would be a need for the third pair.

* * *

Despite a few bruises, they had a blast once Eli caught on and could control his blades. The boy was a quick study, as always. After the first thirty minutes, most spent teaching Eli how to stop safely, the five-year-old could keep up with the easy pace set by Grant.

They spent the next thirty minutes terrorizing and entertaining the soldiers and civilians working in the former prison, none of whom had ever seen anything like the roller blades.

Eli got a kick out of rolling quickly up on unsuspecting individuals and tapping them on the leg as he flew past. The surprised yells and sideways jumps were priceless and Grant soon joined in. Eli would tap-pass someone on the left and, as the stunned person watched Eli roll quickly away, Grant would repeat the maneuver on the right. Grant felt weightless and free for the first time in years as he watched his son weave in and out between the surprised residents of the Outer Square.

Grant called a halt to the tap-pass game after Eli scared a middle-aged woman carrying a tray of dishes outside one of the large chow halls. The result was not pretty. Although she was dressed in the gray overalls of a civilian worker, the biting stare she sent Grant’s way told him she was a soldier at heart. The piercing look held little Peace, despite the mantra she repeated over and over. Grant apologized profusely as he and Eli helped the woman clean up the mess of broken plates and glasses.

Once the mess was cleaned, Grant and Eli sped away from the scene. Grant had his tail planted firmly between his legs. Eli, on the other hand, seemed to think the episode was hilarious. Once out of the old woman’s sight, he laughed and chatted excitedly about the experience and the woman’s reaction to their game.

Grant committed every second of the outing to memory. He hoped Eli would remember this time together with the same clarity and joy that his dad would.

As they headed back to their quarters, they approached one of the boys’ orphanages located in the giant building. Many of the children living there would become the future soldiers of Earth. The transition from kids into fighters was still years down the road, but the fact that it might be needed at all made Grant’s heart ache. It was a situation he both deplored and understood. He deplored the fact that these kids had been abandoned by parents too weak or cowardly to do what needed to be done to save their race. His parents would never have consigned him to such a fate, had they been given a choice. But he also understood that the parents’ weakness was no fault of their own. It was a result of the society in which they had been raised. This was a double-edged sword, and he hated that the Minith had forced them to wield it.

As he and Eli neared the orphanage, Grant saw a half dozen or so youngsters posted outside the entrance. He knew the young groups kept lookouts posted and had always encouraged the practice. This was the first time he had seen them jump into action, though. At a nod from one of the older boys, two of the younger kids ducked into the entrance and shouted a call.

“Eli, let’s stop here,” Grant called out, slowing his pace.

“Okay, Dad,” Eli agreed. He turned his body in to the sideways sliding stop that he was working to perfect and executed it smartly. “Suh-weet!”

Grant smiled and pulled up to the growing crowd of boys. They ranged in ages from five to twelve and were obviously excited at the foreign sight he and Eli provided. It wasn’t often that they experienced anything new or exciting, and two humans—one a boy—riding on wheeled shoes certainly filled the bill. They pointed and laughed, but respectfully kept their distance. Most of them knew who Grant was and, for those who didn’t, the rank on his green uniform let them know he was someone important in the fight against the alien Minith.

“Are you General Justice?” one of the younger boys asked. In response, he received a smack to the back of his head from one of the older kids.

“Of course he is, dimwit,” the older chastised. The look he gave warned of additional violence if the younger boy spoke up again. Grant watched in dismay as the questioner and several other boys cast their eyes to the ground.

“Actually, that’s a darn good, question, son,” Grant replied. The younger boy looked up eagerly and Grant met his gaze with a nod. He then turned his attention to the older boy and looked him in the eye.

“In my day, it was commonly known that the only dumb question was one that didn’t get asked.” It was the older boy’s turn to look downward. It was apparent that he was not used to anyone countering his proclamations. Grant guessed he was the leader of this group.

“I’m General Justice, and this is my son, Eli.”

Eli waved to the group, smiled, and did a perfect 360-degree spin. The boys hooted and laughed. A couple of them turned circles of their own, without blades. Grant heard several cries of “what are those” and “those are awesome” and “whoa!”

“Pretty cool, huh?” Eli asked as he performed another spin.

“Cool?” the leader asked. “Is that what you call them?”