The Darkside War (10 page)

Enveloped by the cold, I slid down through the water, trailing blood. The cold made it easy to just lie back and let it happen.

I struck the bottom, fifteen feet below, in a state of calm.

Fuck this shit,
I thought.

14

“Unfortunately,” said a flat, toneless voice, “I recognize you. I apologize.”

I tried to sit up with a gasp, but the familiar alien petals of a medical pod gripped my chest firmly. The struthiform with the burn scars stood in front of me.

“Should I tell you my name?” it asked. “Would that be fair? I know your name now: Devlinhart.”

I swallowed. It hurt. Something had been shoved down my throat and pulled out. Maybe I'd inhaled some water? I remembered being yanked out by tentacles and thrown onto the mud by a disgusted Zeus.

“I'm Shriek, of the One Hundred and Fourth Thunder Clutch,” the struthiform said. “What was it like?”

“What was what like?” I asked hoarsely.

“Dying,” Shriek said conversationally.

I stared at him. “I don't understand.”

“The Illustrious Leader, our Commander Zeus, left you in the mud without medical attention for a half hour, where you drowned due to inhalation of water when he yanked you out too quickly.”

“The fuck?” I struggled to get out of the pod, suddenly feeling trapped and claustrophobic. The memory of water rushing up through my nostrils and gagging me filled the back of my head. “How long have I been here?”

“A few days. I had you sleep. Your arm is unable to visit; they are too tired. They've been made to run a great deal.”

I groaned. “Zeus.” If anything had thawed with the arm, it would be frozen again. They would hate me now.

“Far be it from me, a simple rebuilder of broken tissues and bones, a low-ranking survivor who failed to die defending my home, to criticize a great leader like Zeus”—the alien glanced down at a readout—“but such instructing might be considered by some, though it is not my place to say this, somewhat callous and wasteful of life. Luckily for you, I am here.”

Shriek leaned forward and delicately tapped my nose with the tip of a finger claw. I jerked back and coughed.

“Yes, lucky for you,” the struthiform mused. “And soon you'll be healthy enough to go back to training. And you, too, will be alive and full of vigor, ready to experience what it will be like to lose your own home world. Congratulations on not dying; the Arvani appreciate it.”

I shook my head. “Lose our home world?” That didn't make any sense. “The Conglomeration is light-years away. That's why we're going to be shipped far off. Why our volunteers have yet to come back.”

“They are light-years away. But what are light-years to beings like the Pcholem, who run the Accordance's starships? They live in the Great Ships, skipping from star to star. And for the Conglomeration, a light-year is a few months' journey. Look at my scars, human. They're closer than you think. If they found you like we found you, from all the noise you broadcast out to the suns, it will not take them long to come sniffing around to see if your genetic stock will add value to the Conglomeration. I wonder what they will use humans for. I'm told my kind were rapidly evolved into package delivery systems.” Shriek held up wing hands and looked at them. “I hear we can fly again now, even though free will has been bred out. I wonder if there is any joy in flying on your own.”

Alarms wailed through the sickbay. Shriek snapped around and looked over at another pod. Someone flailed inside it, spitting blood as the head jerked back.

Shriek ran over, waving wing hands and pulling up holographic interfaces and controls. Another struthiform joined him. I watched as they moved furiously around. Aliens, and yet the flurry of doctors around a hurt patient an all too recognizable activity.

Then silence fell. A pale face slumped back in the pod as the machines all withdrew. I stared at the unmoving body on the table.

“Who was that?” I asked. “Who
was
that?”

“Don't ask that,” Shriek told me. “You know you shouldn't ask.”

Another struthiform checked my pod over, and then released me. I stood by the open bio-mechanical petals, looking over at the cluster of aliens around the limp human body.

“Go!” one of them ordered me firmly. “Now.”

I cleared out of the sickbay, slowly walking back through a silent mess hall. The arms' bunks were empty. I found mine and lay down in it, shaken.

I hadn't achieved anything with Ken. I'd shoved the arm into even more trouble. Zeus had an eye on me. It was all a mess. And what for?

Just to survive? I'd watched someone die in a pod that had more medical technology in it than most of Earth had before the invasion. More medical tech than most people still on Earth had.

That shaved head had just lolled. A stranger, but maybe someone I could have met, or gotten to know, while training here.

Was it better to not know their names?

Because we're just cannon fodder for some upcoming clash of two alien civilizations?

I curled up into a ball and shivered. “Fuck.”

There was no way out. There was no coming back. I'd been fooling myself. The only way out would be the same way I came, I thought. I remembered landing at the base. The lunar vehicles sitting in rows near where the elevator had stopped.

If I wanted out, I would have to get out.

I had to get ready to get out.

I sat up, looked around, and realized I had nothing to take with me. There was no “getting ready.”

If I wanted to live, and not die in some alien war or right here in training, I needed to walk away now.

But going AWOL on the moon was going to be hard. And as soon as I got to Tranquility City I would have to get a message to my parents to run so they could survive, too.

+  +  +  +

The lunar rovers, blocky and ungainly on their oversize balloon tires, looked like silvered alien beetles on wheels sitting in pools of shadow. Instead of massive compound eyes, there were cab windows. And awkwardly jointed arms folded across their fronts were mechanisms that kept the passengers inside.

The rover nearest the bay airlock opened up when I tapped the door handle, swinging up over my head with a hiss. I jumped in and pulled it shut behind me.

“Okay, that's halfway there,” I said aloud. In the cab, what was clearly a key hung from a hook near the dash of somewhat familiar physical controls.

There weren't a lot of vehicles for humans to operate; the industry had been taken over by the Accordance. But I'd been in a few. Seen enough shows. I felt I could run this.

They'd left the keys in the ignition, I thought. Idiots.

I checked to make sure they had human suits inside the locker by the door. I didn't want to make it all the way to Tranquility City, then get stuck because I couldn't sneak in through a quiet airlock.

There was a human-compatible suit in a baggie. I put my own bag of energy bars and liquid food bubbles next to it.

Back in the seat I started puzzling over the controls. I found the language swap screen and watched the panes of information around me reconfigure into English. Alien glyphs shifted into readable figures and icons.

And I would have to figure out how to trigger the vehicle airlock from here to get out onto the lunar surface.

Sitting still, poring over the read me files, I jumped in place when a fist smacked the glass right by my left thigh. “Shit!”

Amira stood in front of the rover, expression inscrutable.

Shit.

15

“You can't open the airlock yourself,” Amira said, brushing past me. The rover door shut behind her and sealed with a soft clunk.

“I've got the help files up,” I told her. “I'm figuring it out.”

We sat down in the two cab chairs, looking out toward the vehicle lock.

“That was a statement, not a question,” Amira said.

The entire rover jerked forward. “Got it,” I muttered. Just a test, to see if I had it figured out. I could drive the damn thing now.

“The doors require an authorization code,” Amira said. “Why do you think they left all the keys inside?”

Damn. “Wait, how do you know they left the keys in?”

“I snuck back here the first night. Took a look around. Always know your landscape. And your exits.”

“But you didn't leave,” I said.

“Not then.”

I looked anywhere but at her. Thinking. Then I stabbed the controls forward. The rover lurched on, picking up speed. “I watched a recruit die while I was in the sickbay,” I told her. Knowing what I knew about Amira, about that nano-ink, if she'd been in here and there was a code, she knew it. “How many more are going to die? That struthiform, the scarred one: It calls itself Shriek? It told me about its dead home world. That the Accordance is slowly losing and falling back. And what are we going to get, for dying for them? Will they leave Earth, finally? Am I crazy for wanting to run?”

“I'm not going to open that door for you. You have no idea how stupid this idea is, do you?”

“I'm not going to slow us down. I know it's on manual now, so as long as I'm pushing these controls we're headed for that lock.”

We stared at each other.

I continued, “If you're in the rover and we crash into the wall, you're going to have to come up with some kind of story.”

Amira didn't reply. But the massive locks split apart, the gentle thrum of their separation accompanied by a steady rumble and the high-pitched whistle of escaping air.

I let go of the controls and we ground to a halt, half-in and half-out of the locks. The inner door was closing quickly behind us to prevent more air from getting out. I had been holding my breath. Amira was shaking her head.

“I'm masking everything. Including the damn loss-of-air indicators you just set off. By the time they notice what happened, we should have at least a day. You have food with you, water? Suits in the locker?”

“Yes to all three. Do you want to use a suit to get out?”

“No. Take us out.”

I stared at her. “You're coming with me?”

“Without me you won't even make it out of the base's perimeter without setting off every zone alarm out there. Come on, let's go.”

Still unsure, I gently moved the rover the rest of the way out. The outer metal maw closed behind us.

My eyes adjusted to the vista of gray hills and pitted craters in the gloom of distant lights. I eased us out and away.

Amira muttered directions to me, guiding us around craters and the bases of hills as she used satellite data to map a course that wouldn't get us stuck somewhere.

“You did the right thing at Tranquility. I like that. But this? A very stupid idea,” Amira said. “I just wanted to put that out there.”

I'd been tense, waiting for something like that. “It's the only idea that guarantees we don't die in some pointless, far-off, alien war.”

“It's a stupid idea for
you
. Your family will pay the ultimate price if you go AWOL here.”

I flushed. “Maybe they should've thought about that before becoming terrorists.”

“Oh, come on.” Amira shook her head. “Even you don't believe that. Protestors, irritants, problem makers. Yeah. But your parents weren't setting off backpack nukes in downtown Atlanta to take out Accordance oversight buildings. And you're lucky to have them. Some of us aren't that lucky. But there are others who will pay a big price if you go all the way with this.”

“Who's that?” We dipped into a crater and the tires kicked up dust. It hung in the air behind us for an eerily long time.

“Your arm, asshole. Zeus isn't quite right in the head as it is. What do you think happens to everyone after we're missing? Zeus may be an alien, but I can still spot a sadistic, disaffected shit who's abusing command easily enough.”

“That's not an argument for me to go back. I'm done with it. I'm done with it all,” I said grimly, looking out over the blasted lunar landscape. Now that we were ten minutes away I'd flicked on the lights. Driving near blind, depending on Amira's instructions and the instruments, had been a bit unnerving.

“It's a good thing I have a strong survival instinct,” Amira said. “Because I wouldn't want to be back there when the shit hits the fan. You might toss them under the bus, but you're not taking me down with you. No one drags me down. No one.”

A long stretch of flat lunar plain opened up in front of us. “Look,” I started to say. But I didn't get to finish arguing about whether I was dragging her down or not. Amira slid out of her seat and jammed a baton up against my neck. “Hey!”

Lightning struck me. It leapt through my spine, up and down my ear, through my head, and out through my nose. I tasted ozone so deep in my sinuses, I breathed, spit, and coughed it.

My entire body spasmed, then seized. I tried to scream but managed only a gargle and fell over onto the floor.

Amira let me hit it, my head bouncing off the metal floorboards. She squatted next to me as I struggled to breathe. Every cell inside me ached and protested. “I survived the Pacification, Devlin. I fought Accordance on the street. I helped lure their foot soldiers in to kill traps as a child. I kept people on the block out of their systems. I kept one step ahead of them for a long, long time. And now that's over. So understand me: I have no love for Accordance. But I can't have you fucking us all over, particularly me, because you had a bad few days and need to mope. Understood?”

I managed a moan.

“At the very least, I'm saving your ass. You know your tattoo and rank, here on your arm, you know they have a transponder buried in them? It lights up on a ping; that's how I followed you. Wanted to make sure you didn't do anything stupid. Lucky me. But we have to head back before someone realizes you're missing. I can only delay and hide our little unauthorized lunar hike for so long.”

She pulled out a couple zip ties. “What . . . ,” I managed.

“For your own safety,” she said, and zip-tied my arms to my legs. “Don't want you getting jumpy.”

“Are you going to turn me in to Zeus?” I demanded sullenly.

Amira sat down and turned the rover around, heading right back for the camp. “As I said, he's a sadistic fuck. I wouldn't do that. But if we get discovered sneaking back in, I'll shove your zip-tied ass out in front of me as chum for that tentacled shark. Got it?”

I swallowed. “Got it.”