This Starry Deep (4 page)

At least at first. By the time they knew better, I would be off and slipping through space. I accelerated hard and thought about how I intended to clean this mess up without letting Mom and Dad know about it.

Chapter
4
– Meanwhile

THE SCOUT SHIPS SAT docked comfortably in place. The pilots sat around and bragged, telling tales about how they had grabbed up each specimen right from under the noses of the locals. They told stories, to each other and anyone else who would stop, heightening their skill and determination to phenomenal levels.

They cheered and drank and drank and cheered. They celebrated and knew that they had earned the right. Thanks to them, the fleet could go on and their race could survive.

Meanwhile, in other parts of the fleet, scientists carefully analyzed the data brought back. They dissected new specimens and ran tests. Though they didn’t boast, working long hours, each one of them planned their nights out for later dates when they could sit and quietly tell stories of their work. They, too, wanted to strut and impress. But first, like the pilots had, they needed to prove themselves, yet again.

Another world, another set of data to pore over. They worked as quickly as the pilots. Efficiency could not be overrated. Time was against them, as ever. Still, they did their work and passed it on, with only one word stamped on the cover of their reports: Acceptable.

The reports landed on the desks of generals and field leaders. They took the baton of information and ran with it. They were well trained, each one hiding their impatience at useless delays.

The fleet moved on with purpose.

***

The planet Tenzil sat fat, blue and green in space. It rotated on its own axis, as well as rotating around its primary star. Tenzil whipped through space, just like millions of other planets did.

On its surface, life varied. Different landmasses held different cultures, each a strain of the other, and all looking quite similar to someone from the outside who simply didn’t know better.

Without understanding the nuances of Tenzil’s life forms, one could easily mistake it for a planet conquered by one life form at the expense of all others. Taking it further, from space, the cultures - each of which considered itself unique - looked so close to each other that the differences became local color.

Wars hadn’t broken out on Tenzil in centuries, though each faction still held itself up as the true and right one. They worked together under a green sky, pregnant with ghostlike algae that floated through the upper winds, giving the planet a hot, humid atmosphere.

When the scout ships first came down onto Tenzil, the locals dismissed them. While familiar with space travel and life on other systems, the entire existence of aliens still seemed, to most, like the concern (or ramblings) of a select few. A few factions even resorted to blaming neighboring factions for making the whole thing up in an effort to destabilize global politics.

Into that mindset the fleet descended. Tenzil, to its credit, caught on quickly but still scoffed a bit. How do you, they said, thinking themselves smart, invade an entire planet? It was a question posed by the fleet itself once. But then they remembered that they weren’t invading: they were harvesting, and that was a different game altogether.

The attack ships screamed down into the planet’s atmosphere, sending whorls and eddies of algae spiraling out of control. They rushed down - no warning or preamble given. Then they opened fire.

The ships could outfly anything on Tenzil, and they knew it. They targeted defense positions across multiple land masses for simultaneous destruction. Before Tenzil knew what hit it, the fleet had laid waste to their defenses. It didn’t take long after that.

Mountains were leveled, simply to see how fast they would crumble. Natives were gathered up and dissenters shot. Cities were razed to the ground as quickly as fields were set on fire. No one bothered to contact any of the governments on Tenzil, no one offered surrender as an option or even announced an intent. They effortlessly came down from the blackness of space and opened fire on anything that seemed worth firing on.

Some of the attack was distraction. Some designed to negate any force Tenzil could muster. The pilots grinned in their ships, opening throttles wide as their engines bit air, and let themselves enjoy their work. They knew, though, that their destruction wasn’t the point of the exercise. The harvesting was.

Two out of every three people on Tenzil found themselves being loaded aboard large transport ships and flown back to the body of the fleet. That third person in each statistical group only found themselves shot, crushed, burned or otherwise killed. If they had known what awaited the others, they might have even considered themselves the lucky ones.

The ones who ended up on the transport ships were packed in like so much waste, crammed and shoved hard. They broke limbs and lost meager lunches when the acceleration hit, the transport ships lifting off toward the main fleet. At the other end they were dumped out onto wide floors, cold to the touch. Then they were herded and pushed, into processing plants. The sound of gears, the feel of searing heat, and the vibration of heavy machinery were the last things they remembered.

Tenzil went dark within three days. The fleet stayed another two, cleaning up and ensuring they had gotten every life form worth getting into their processing plants. Satisfied, the fleet gave everyone two days off, knowing from their advance scouts that they could afford it.

The fleet leaders also knew that such luxury would not always be the case. The deeper into the systems they went, the less time they would have. Word would spread, and they couldn’t stop it. They also couldn’t stop their trek or alter their path. They knew it as certainly as they knew that Tenzil’s unwilling sacrifice had ensured that the fleet would last a while longer.

Before they left for good, they paused to give thanks to Tenzil for providing life for them. Solemnly, all forms of celebration ceased on order, and the entire fleet stopped to give thanks for their boon. Not one of them took it lightly.

Hours after the thanks were given and the fleet had restarted, the advance scouts went off again, even as the longer-range scouts returned. The short-range scouts sought the next system, not even stopping to welcome the long-range scouts home. They launched and continued their trek across the galaxy. Soon enough, they reasoned, the time for celebration would come again.

Chapter 5 - Jonah

MY HAND RESTED lightly against the rough bark of a tree. I trailed fingers along the surface, letting the rough ridges implant their sense memory in my mind. I told myself I stopped here to feel that tree, to remember it. Not because I couldn’t run anymore.

My right knee bitched at me, throbbing blindly. I had run a sprint into the woods, a few miles from the house, as part of my workout. Working off lunch, I told myself. Working off anger was the truth. I resented the hell out of being called. In the past I would’ve vented it, fought and railed against it. These days, I moved off into the woods and got my aggression out.

Sometimes, though, my aggression got me instead. The sprint started fine, and I reveled in the force of my legs pumping under me. Then, as it did when pushed too hard, my knee buckled. I didn’t fall. I didn’t go down on one knee. I just limped, at speed, to a nearby tree.

Which is where I stood. I wasn’t even winded. I drew a deep breath anyway, tasting the clean air, and then exhaled. I forced my lungs to deflate as much as possible, good spacer technique, and held myself there. No air, nothing for the body to work with. I held it, and then I held it some more. My chest started to burn, but my will was stronger than my flesh. I waited until I felt lightheaded, just the start of it, and then allowed myself to inhale again. Not deeply: normally.

I had been out about three hours. Before I left, Shae and I talked for a while, quietly. We agreed that we would call Mills back and maybe work out some sort of advisory plan. We could suggest some people to replace us.

My fingers worried at the bark unconsciously as I listed names in my head: Hendricks, Shaffer, Turk, Grayson, Tucker, Dansk, Glurt, Dugan, Po’Leen. All dead. All under my command at one time or another. Together we’d made the best insertion team anyone had seen.

Each of them, after a time, got unlucky. Over the years they’d joined up, each one replacing another irreplaceable officer. Over the years, each had met the same fate. Fighting for something bigger than themselves, they’d fallen while under my command. Shae and I were the only ones left.

It made me wary, some nights. I didn’t drag myself over coals for them - no nightmares of lost comrades for me - but I still felt their losses one by one. I counted them, on the bad nights, the way some men count sheep. Who was left, damn it all, to do this job? New kids, people I hadn’t met yet. It was that simple, and I forced smooth the rough edges of the truth that threatened to rankle.

I reached down, instead, and felt my knee. Bits of bark flaked onto my leg and I puzzled for a second before stopping to glance at the tree. Gaping rents in the bark showed me exactly how much those deaths did bother me. I brushed my hand off, wiping it across my chest, and reached for my knee again.

Swollen, but serviceable. I decided to risk another sprint. I got maybe fifty feet before the knee gave out again. My wordless rage scared a nearby bird or two. Retirement I could deal with. It was, I realized, safe. Safe was acceptable. I had done enough and more than earned my rest. The betrayal of my body, however - that burned and ate at me like a fire.

I started to walk back home. There was nothing else to do. It was getting dark, anyway. Soon working off lunch would become missing dinner, and Shae was going to grill some steaks.

I walked, keeping a normal pace. About an hour out, the sky flashed white for a second. Several sonic booms sounded off at once and I stopped to listen and watch. I couldn’t make out the ships in question - they rose too fast. Their engines didn’t sound familiar, either.

That kind of flash was a scatter tactic, a way to keep people from pinpointing you on their systems or with their eyes. There was no reason for it unless you were going out of your way to be untraceable. Generally it only worked with a cluster of ships, to confuse the enemy as to which ship went where. Good for double-blinds and switching out payload vehicles. Useless for what looked like two ships.

I couldn’t tell where they launched from, exactly, but it had to be within fifty miles of the house. Shae would have picked them up and scanned them. I figured she’d let me know what they were when I got in.

They might’ve been coming from the house itself, and maybe Shae was in trouble, but we’d each had a sub-dermal panic tracker installed years ago. It hadn’t gone off, so I didn’t worry. She could, I knew all too well, take care of herself. And the house, with any sort of warning, was a small fortress when need be.

I kept walking, picking up my pace anyway. My knee complained, but I was careful to move only as fast as I could without crossing over the line to disabling myself. She was fine. I knew it. I didn’t slow down, regardless.

The house looked fine from the outside. It’s when things are quiet, when the picture you see is exactly what you expect, that everything is likely to be wrong. I picked up my pace and, knee be damned, sprinted the last bit to the front door. I rested, leaning against the outside wall of the house, my hand cool against the siding. I allowed myself three deep breaths to recover and then grabbed the doorknob tightly, turning it. The readers in the knob unlocked the door and let me in.

There was no reason for the door to be locked. We didn’t keep it locked when one of us was home. I dove into the house, not taking any chances, and rolled to a stop behind the couch. Nothing moved. Nothing at all.

“Shae!” I called out, trying to decide if I was being foolish or prudent. But I knew. I hadn’t stayed alive by ignoring my gut on things like this. If I looked like an idiot later for my actions, so be it. But if I didn’t…

Well, then, there I was.

There was no response to my shout. I stood, warily, and made my way to the kitchen. Two steaks lay out on the counter. They sat there, on a cutting board, nearing room temperature with every passing second. Damn it all. I couldn’t piece it together, not quite.

I started to search the house. I moved methodically, if carefully. Flung doors open hard and waited, clear of the doorways. Switched on overheads as I went, casting the whole place in harsh, telling light. I stopped in the bedroom and tapped a section of the floor with my foot, hard. A panel swung down and I reached in, pulling out an old gun.

Projectile weaponry wasn’t in common use anymore, wasteful and too dangerous aboard a ship, but I kept one around the house just in case. Most people armored against sonics and minor heat-based weaponry. They weren’t up to a .45-caliber round in the chest. I enjoyed the edge it gave to home security.

But there was nothing to secure. I wandered the house and found it as silent as the night sky. Nothing obvious. Not a single damned thing. The place looked like Shae had simply walked off in the middle of preparing dinner and forgot to lock up behind herself. So sure, if I was crazy, it made perfect sense.

I wasn’t crazy. Not yet. So I moved on to the weapons store, the room that no one, except us, could get into. We had tested the doors against all sorts of munitions, having to redo the walls of the bedroom several times due to the blast radium. There was no way through the door, or the walls surrounding it, if you even knew where it was.

I slid myself down the stairs and hit the lights. Shae had been here, but I couldn’t tell how recently. Nothing seemed too disturbed, which meant she’d come here to take an inventory and think. Still, nothing seemed to be missing.

I checked the lockboxes that took up an entire corner of the room and saw they were still secure. I checked them anyway, my hand running over the ridged metal, tracing years of memory.

I pulled my hand away, growing frustrated with myself, and crossed the room to the small lab we kept. An atmospheric scanner, a heat residue monocle, and a jamming box found their way into my hands without much thought. As I left, I grabbed a small, red metal box and headed upstairs. Lights off and door secured, I went back to the kitchen.

The monocle showed me recent heat signatures, and I watched faded memories of my wife as she had moved around the room. Blurry and fading fast, there didn’t seem to be anything abnormal. I followed her phantom out of the room.

The entranceway. Four other signatures leapt out at me, and by the brightly lit trails of their passage I could see a struggle. Shae’s heat index rose as she took them on, but one of them was crystal: arm raised and unmoving. He fired something. A disrupter, sonics, or worse? I couldn’t tell.

I could tell that whatever it was hadn’t taken Shae out. The specter of her passing blurred off toward the bedroom. Of course, she was going for the exact gun that tugged my waistband down with its firm weight. She didn’t get there. The four figures, their heat dropped noticeably, stood in the entranceway. I saw Shae’s shape on the floor, heat dropped low.

The atmo scanner flicked to life at my command. I thumbed the controls and swept the entire place. Minimal traces of gas in the bedroom. Not enough left to bother me now - it had dissipated quickly, but would certainly have been enough to take her out.

My vision threatened to blur. Whoever they were, they had taken my wife. You don’t do that and live. It’s a simple equation. I studied the shape of the four figures as best I could, working only from their heat residue. Their shape, their armor and basic shape, seemed strange to me. Inhuman.

I thought back to Mills. He said the invaders were, if his reports were right, taking people. If they were smart, at all, they would have known the Government would call us. So why not head here and grab us. But if they didn’t know everything—what if they were
just
loose enough in their research, coupled with being alien, that they thought Shae was me? Or that they figured taking her was good enough?

I grabbed the phone and dialed without looking. The code didn’t change, that was certain. A voice answered, but I couldn’t hold on to what it said. I didn’t care.

“Get me Mills. This is Madison, Jonah. Calling on hot basis,” I said in a simple monotone. I didn’t trust myself to talk above that, not then. Not when they had Shae.

Mills came on quickly, asking me what was wrong, what had been done and pressed me for how he could help. I told him what I knew. He started to fuss and bother, offering suggestions and plans. I cut him off hard.

“Send a ship. You wanted me on this, I’m on it. I need a transport ship, within an hour.”

“Of course, Captain Madison,” he agreed quickly, “I’m sorry it—”

“Save it. Less talking, more getting it done. Jonah out.”

I hung up the phone and stared at it. I wanted to crush it, to throw it through a window, something. Anything that would make me feel better. None of it would, so I put the phone back and went into the bedroom to change.

I grabbed my dress uniform from the closet and changed into it quickly. It felt like coming home, and I would have smiled if I wasn’t so ready to kill. I strode back out and opened the red metal box.

I took out the two things in the box and pitched it back into the room over my shoulder. Stepping outside, I left the door open and stared into the darkened sky. Stars stared back. Soon I would be among them again. For all the wrong reasons.

I uncoiled the holster belt I had taken from the red box and belted it on tightly. Then I hefted my gun, my old friend; the gun that had blasted the foot off of Talkon-Galxos’ President Alfonse, cut through the airlock on the Halgoron battle cruiser, and served me well in a thousand other moments. The gun that had saved my life for years on end.

I lifted the gun and pointed it directly at the North Star, sighting along the barrel. I flicked off the safety and checked the power levels. Satisfied, my thumb clicked the safety back on and I slammed the gun home, deep into its holster. The creak of the leather when the gun settled felt
right
.

“I’m coming for you, baby,” I said to the stars.

I stood there, military straight, and waited. Nothing would move me again, except purpose. Right then, I had only one of those. I waited.