Everything was inextricably tethered to the box in George’s closet. He stood on his tiptoes and let his fingers find the familiar edge of the old shoe box on the top shelf in his closet. He pulled it down carefully and carried it over to the bed where he laid it with quiet reverence. Though it had become a weekly routine, George never lost sight of how important the ceremony of dressing was to him. Clothes made the man.
After a moment of silence, he popped open the lid and withdrew his most prized possessions: his well-worn-yet-still-fresh pair of robin’s egg blue quad skates adorned with rhinestones in geomantic formations. They were his talisman. His key.
A Dr. J poster hung next to one of his namesake, George “The Iceman” Gervin, behind him. They were his childhood heroes. He had grown up wanting to ball just like them. The ritual, however, felt every bit as if he was turning his back on childish things. He was ready. His two-toned blue bell bottoms hugged him tight in all the right places. His sideburns trailed down to his chin. He tucked a pick into his sculpted Afro, leaving only the raised fist that was its handle visible. All that remained were his shoes. He slid the first one on, the familiar wave swept down over him. Before he lost himself, he paused and shouted toward the crack in his bedroom door.
“Going out for a while, momma.”
From behind a curtain of beads that separated the rooms down the hall came a muffled cough and then her voice, weak and half-asleep. “Oh, is it Thursday already? Where has this week gone?”
“Yeah, it’s that time again.”
“Be careful, baby. The war is almost here,” she whispered.
“What you say, momma?”
“You have fun now, okay? Don’t be out too late.”
“Sure thing, momma.” George tried to ignore how tired she sounded. She’d been hustling all day to feed his brother and sisters. He couldn’t help but think they’d be better off with one less mouth around. George returned his attention to the second skate, sliding it on easily. Pulling the laces tight, he rose to his feet. The energy coursed through him. He felt blue electricity. He felt alive. He felt free. Looking himself over in the mirror, George tugged the wide collar of his polyester shirt and watched himself disappear into the person he became every Thursday night. He was no longer George Collins. The transformation was complete. He was Shakes Humphries, the baddest mofo on eight wheels.
§
The Sugar Shack was an oasis in the riot-torn city. No matter how angry folks got, burning buildings and tearing up their own stuff, they left the Sugar Shack alone. It was sacred ground, but it wasn’t a place for heroes. Everything was so dark and gritty in those days, one long shadow drifting into an endless night.
This wasn’t how it was supposed to be, a broken world filled with broken people who reveled in their brokenness. A world populated by anti-heroes, misunderstood villains, and heroes with feet, legs, and torsos of clay, where those who stood tallest fell first. Part of him remembered an echo of how things used to be, of a time where men and women were proud and bold, which confused him because this was all he ever knew. He put it down to a childhood dream, to something he’d read in a comic or seen on the television in his youth. Something he’d lost himself in, lying on his belly in the living room, while momma was at revival meeting.
The street lights burned to life on either side of the street, guiding Shakes in like the open arms of a neon goddess. A few kids ran past him trying to make it home or risk getting the switch for being caught out too late. Though rough, the neighborhood was home. Whether he was George or Shakes, he stood as tall as the world would allow, had always done everything he could to help out his little brothers and sisters. He felt like the ’hood thanked him in its own way by keeping his momma and him safe. But from the moment his skates touched the asphalt, he knew he was being watched. He scanned the shadows, anxious but not wanting to betray his cool. Whatever stalked him waited.
“They’re spying on us.” A man knocked over a trash can in the alley. “With their satellites and drones and eyes in the sky. We can’t hide from them.” Don’t look up. “That’s how they capture your face and run off with it to another world.” The man stumbled toward him. “Can I get a dollar, youngblood?”
“What for?” Shakes knew his answer from the booze on the man’s breath.
“Information about the revolution isn’t free. No one believes me, though. No one ever believes me. Belief is the key.”
“Don’t look up. Got it.” Shakes handed the man a dollar. The old drunk stuffed it into his pocket and offered daps, an appreciative smile, and a slurred “Good looking out.”
Shakes accepted his offerings. “Stay strong, brother.”
Shakes hustled into the skating rink. His name rang out as soon as he entered. The neon pink words Sugar Shack bathed the back corner of the rink. A mural of the solar system covered a full wall of the building, lit up by the cascading lights. George rapped with some of his boys, slapping palms and clutching hands in the secret handshakes of the initiated. The DJ raised his fist in salute, the rhythmic bobbing of his head persistent.
“Our very own star child, Shakes Humphries, is in the house. Show him some love, boys and girls, ’cause this is an aaaaall skate!”
The strains of the Bar-Kays bumped from the speakers. With a series of crossover moves to remind them of who he was, Shakes eased into a groove, and his boys fell in step with him. They soon formed a train, imitating the intricate dance routine of The Temptations in precise lockstep. They made that rink grunt.
A series of figures stepped from the shadows. It took Shakes a few seconds to process what he was seeing. The brother at the front was protected by a hard plastic shell adorned with panels of little neon lights and buttons. Everything was fiery pink. Despite the seeming bulk of the suit, his movements were smooth and natural. Where a face should have been, Shakes saw only his reflection in the obsidian sheen of the orb fastened to the raised neck of the armor.
Who is this dude? Some kind of spaceman?
The others emerged from the darkness, their suits identical but for the yellow color. Each held what appeared to be a child’s toy, like Nerf guns except with hard purple polymer for their carapaces. Despite the resemblance, Shakes knew that playtime was over.
“Sweet Christmas,” Shakes muttered.
Two of them covered the front door, another stood by the rear exit. No one reacted to them, as if only Shakes could see them. Three more emerged from the shadows by the wall of lockers muttering a low chant. “Psychoalphadiscobetabioaquadoloop. Psychoalphadiscobetabioaquadoloop. Psychoalphadiscobetabioaqua-doloop.”
The rink was covered by a thin layer of mist that rose like a flood, reeking of lemon-scented Lysol.
The leader spoke behind his mask, the voice modulated to sound high by an otherworldly theremin. “Your time’s up, sucker. High time you come with us. Make it easy on yourself. You don’t want it getting tough out here.”
The head spaceman fired into the air. The rink erupted in chaos. Tables overturned as people scurried for cover. People tripped over one another, rushing about blindly. Screams drowned out the music except for the throbbing bassline.
A hand clapped down on Shake’s shoulder. He turned to find a fine sister wearing a fox fur coat and pink hot pants, revealing her bare midrift. Her matching pink sunglasses, trimmed with glitter, tucked into her Afro puffs. For all of the surrounding panic, she was ice.
“My name is Mallia Grace.” She held her hand out to him. “Come with me if you want to funk.”
§
Mallia melted, her skin sloughing like wax giving way under its own weight. Shakes raised his hand, but it pooled, rain streaking a windshield in a hundred rivulets. He tried to take Mallia’s hand, but they merged together, their bodies falling into a commingling mess. He tried to hold onto her, find some grip on her reality, knowing they’d mix into a single bowl of cosmic slop to be poured down the drain, discarded and forgotten. He resigned himself to their ultimate dissolution, hoping, maybe this time, the light hanging at the end of the darkness would be kinder …
Shakes opened his eyes. His head pounded, his stomach queasy, but he tried not to throw up on the chair. His throat tight and dry as the pants clinging to Mallia’s behind. And with that image jolting him to full consciousness, he forgot his thirst and tried to find his cool. His chair faced out over a throng of people in the club beneath him. He wasn’t in the Sugar Shack anymore. The place was too packed, too clean. The building seemed like a hollowed-out warehouse. Metal gleamed along each of the three tiers of space like the polished rib cage of a huge beast. Gaudy lighting—fuscia, olive, purple—flashed, pouring over the sea of bodies beneath him. Every last person was dancing, moving, loving, and grooving. Far removed from judging eyes, they were people who knew they were out of sight. Everything was sweating, even the room beaded with condensation from the rising heat. Shakes realized the room he was in was a huge, clear bubble, suspended somewhere above the third level.
The stage was at the far end, the six-piece band on it wove through an uptempo rendition of “Pop That Thang.” A double stack of what appeared to be Marshalls, triple stacks of Ampeg SVTs, a chorus of speakers pulsing as one great wall of music. On a separate stage above the fray was an oversized set of drums—but like no kit he’d ever seen before. Nearly translucent, each pounded kick produced rhythm as color. It had been the bassline that brought him back around, a defibrillator shockwave through his chest. Like the thump-thump-thump of a brand new heart.
He knew Mallia watched him, so he strapped on his cool again and turned his head back slightly. “You didn’t have to drug me. I’d have come quietly.”
All business, she passed on the lingering innuendo. “Oh, baby, I didn’t do a thing.”
“My man, you flat-out fainted. You missed all the action,” a brother in a pink coat and chartreuse bell bottoms said. Stars and crescent moons had been shaved into his head, as if his skull streaked through the cosmos as he bobbed his head. But the rings on his bare feet seemed too affected, as if he were trying too hard to create a look he wasn’t entirely comfortable with. He was slick with perspiration and trying not to show that he struggled to get his breath back.
“Don’t make it sound so glamorous. It got thick in a hurry. We lost one of our own back there, and we don’t have many of us to spare,” Mallia said. “Shakes, Weary Nation.”
Weary gave him a head nod. “You look a little rough. You may have caught some of their steam. That shit’ll fuck you up like a blast of LSD.”
Shakes caught his next words in his throat and turned back in full toward the people below, whooping their appreciation as the tune ended. “Who were they?”
“Afronauts,” Mallia said, with a matter-of-factness to her voice. “But don’t you worry, sugar, the man’s gonna be up to see you in a minute. Just sit tight and it’ll all be explained.”
The lights changed, stayed there, bathing the masses in an otherworldly green. The band wasted little time, the horns bleating out, jumping right into some Tower of Power.
“Aw, I love this song, man. Love it.”
Shakes turned toward the heart of the bubble room, toward the figure striding to the long zebra-print sofa in the middle of it. He was lithe and graceful, majestic in a shimmering golden vinyl jumpsuit that seemed painted on him. The platform shoes he glided in on made him tower like a golden titan.
“They tightened that ass,” the golden man said.
“Yeah, I bet they were stroking on that,” said a man in a buccaneer hat from which long braids snaked. He wore matching buccaneer boots, but the only other items he sported in between were a diaper and a smile. In a long chain of motion, smooth enough to have been rehearsed, the golden man snatched a drink from the hand of the buccaneer, knocked it back, and flung the glass away before reaching the couch. When he got there, he stopped and looked it over like it was offending him, shook his head in disapproval, and turned to face Shakes. The table between them sat low and was covered in LPs. Hot Buttered Soul. Mother Popcorn. Stand! Innervisions. The essentials.
“It’s a fitting tune, ya know? For this situation we have ourselves here. So, I just gotta figure it out. You drunk as a skunk? Maybe you’re loose as a goose? Or maybe, maybe, maybe, you’re high as a fly?”
“I don’t have a damned clue what you’re talking about.” Shakes swallowed the saliva pooling in his mouth from his still-sour stomach.
Hands on his hips, the golden man leaned over the table and inspected Shakes. Something in his face softened. To Shakes, it almost looked like surprise or maybe relief. “Or maybe you’re the real deal.”
He turned to the buccaneer who had taken to inspecting his own muscles in the doorway mirror and shooed him out. When the door closed, the golden man reached behind his back and yanked a string from the vinyl jumpsuit, releasing the hidden girdle built in. His midsection bloomed, a full belly pressing hard against the gold and stretching it to its limits. He sighed and plopped himself down on the couch, throwing his feet over the stack of records and sending some spilling to the floor.
“So, you probably want it straight. You have no idea. Yeah, I can dig that.” The golden man stroked his belly as if in his final trimester, still getting used to his bulge.
“What the hell is going on here?” Shakes asked. At the steel of his voice, Mallia took an aggressive posture, but the strange man waved her off.
“Shoot. You really have no idea who you are, brother?”
“I know exactly who I am. Never been in doubt.”
“No, you don’t. Not even close. You just one of them cats. You practically glow. You ain’t Shakes. Yeah, I know about that name. Know your momma called you George, too. But that’s not how I know you, oh no. No, you are the inheritor of the Funkenstein spirit. Intergalactic Master of the Funk, Emperor of The Groove, Ambassador of The Rhythm, The Heart and Soul of Rock and Roll, Martian Prince Come Down From His High Obsidian Tower on Mount Bump, Dr. Funkenstein. And I’ve been looking for you for a long, long time.”
“You higher than a mug,” Shakes said.
“We don’t have much time.” The golden man planted his feet firmly in the shag carpet, stiffened his spine, and leaned forward.
He was going for serious, Shakes knew, but the whole act played just an inch shy of cornball. It was when the strange man took off his star-framed glasses and Shakes saw it there in his eyes that he shut his mouth and opened his mind.
“I’m tired. Every night I go out there to that crowd, tripping off the music. We’re out there, doing our thing, every night making promises. All about that sanctified testimony. They never ask questions, you know, because they want to believe it. So they believe us, believe the things we say, and we let it grow. When we hit the break, we let the whispers start. ‘I think I hear the mothership coming.’ But I’m just out there faking the funk, man. All hype, no love. Was a time when I could hear that mothership coming, too. But that’s been a long time now, and now I’m an imposter. All because we need them to believe.”
“Believe in what?”
“In all of it. In the mothership connection. The funkentelechy. In the Star Child. In you. Their groove powers us. We want to go home, and we need you to lead us there.” He pointed a multi-ringed finger out to the bouncing masses. “They’re the fuel. You’re the engine.”
Prophetic pronouncements never went down well on an empty stomach. Shakes never thought there’d come a time where he actually craved Sugar Shack’s chili fries. He didn’t know how he was supposed to feel. Hearing the story reminded Shakes of this one time at the barbershop when he was a kid. He’d listen to all the older men, huddled in a corner as if they all belonged to a club he wasn’t a part of, discussing mysteries of life he’d never understand. Mostly women. They’d said things with such certainty, like how ladies loved full beards. All George wanted to do was grow a full beard, to prove that he could hang. But his hair came in patches. He’d study his face in the mirror, lift his chin, examine his soul patch on the side of his face. “Next time you have to go to the bathroom,” the men at the shop said, “dab some pee on your face. Hair’ll come in thick then.” Of course, he believed it. He came out stinking of piss to peals of laughter from the men. Wasn’t often that he was taken for a sucker after that.
“Look here, Agent Double-O-Soul…”
“We can’t explain it to you.” The golden man looked tired all of a sudden. “You have to experience it. I’m into something I can’t shake loose. Mallia?”
“Don’t be scared. You ain’t no punk.” She motioned for Shakes to follow, and he’d follow her shake anywhere.
Mallia led him toward the crowd below them. The buccaneer moved to the golden man’s side, cinching him back up into his suit in preparation to take the stage. When they reached the smaller bubble that would transport them to the first floor, Mallia leaned into Shakes’ ear.
“I can see why he believes in you. The Star Child’s been talking you up, and I didn’t really believe it. But now? Yeah, okay, I’m on board.”
“Yeah?”
“Fo’ sho.”
“How do you know?”
“It’s just one of those things. Can’t explain it. You just know when you know.”
§
The crowd hushed, a track on pause, waiting, breath bated as the Star Child slithered to the microphone like a whispered word, his fingers wrapped slowly around the mic stand, taking it as surely as he would his manhood, confidently, sex everywhere, everyone turned on, and his lips moved, forming the hiss, “Shhhh … y’all hear that,” and they roared their approval that they could, oh yes they could, “I … I think I can … yeah, I think I hear something way, way up there,” oh yes, they heard it too, “it’s out there,” finger erect pointing up toward space, “Can’t you hear it moving out there behind the stars, it’s looking, and oh, it’s powerful, but it needs a little help,” they swayed in anticipation, wanting to know how they could aid the cause, “Oh, you see, the mothership relies on a sense of smell, that’s right, and it needs to pick up your funk,” kinetic, the band hummed behind the Star Child, kept them on their feet, the pulse of the bass not giving them a chance to sit down, their words brought to life, their feet stepping with them, sacrifices to the altar of The Funk, “We need this funk uncut if you want the mothership to find us, children,” their eyes rolling back, their mouths moving, like the Holy Spirit falling down on them causing them to speak in tongues, chanting the words, Psychoalphadiscobetabioaquadoloop, Psychoalphadiscobetabioaquadoloop, Psychoalphadiscobetabioaquadoloop, his voice rising, “No, no, I don’t think you understand how far out there it is,” moving faster, “So far out there, so you gotta Funk it up better than that,” the crowd writhing, building toward it, “I wants to get funked up, we’ve been down here for so long, too long we’ve been trapped in the Zone of Zero Funkativity, so long now, from way back, kings and queens and presidents and cabinets and dictators and real fakers and,” the crowd fed it back, thrumming like an organic bass drum, setting the tempo, “OH MY LORD,” he exploded, the crowd swooned, the chant burst forth, Psychoalphadiscobetabioaquadoloop, Psychoalphadiscobetabioaquadoloop, the words hit Shakes’ ears and found familiarity there, something distant, some far-off place, somewhere proud, the crowd hit its mark, achieving climax and riding it down on the hook of the backing band’s bassline, and the Star Child turned his back to head off-stage with a little more dip to his hip, with a little more bounce to the ounce, picking up a little bit more of what he was putting down, smiling to no one in particular.
They crowded around Shakes off-stage, maybe without meaning to, maybe on purpose, his gravitational pull absolute. Their eyes tracked his every twitch and breath, their gazes filled with something expectant, as if even to watch him was to be enlightened. Shakes flinched but didn’t buckle. Their scrutiny unsettled him, leaving him with feelings of both vulnerability and being creeped out, like having garden gnomes watch him undress. Like they’d scoop him up and slam him down onto an altar at any moment, plug the knife in, and cut a bit deeper, draw some more blood for the good cause. But he had plenty of practice putting on cool that he didn’t have anymore.
“You ain’t from around here,” Shakes said.
“No, we’re not. We’re reality explorers. Funking cosmonauts,” the Star Child said.
“Afronauts. Like the ones that jumped us?”
“No. Funkateers. We’re about peace and the groove. Afronauts, they’re a different school of cats entirely. We all access the groove the same way. Psychoalphadiscobetabioaquadoloop…” The Star Child closed his eyes, lost in a moment.
“… to different effect. They take our message for weakness. They see love and dance as a plague … and they’re the cure.”
“The war crept nearer …” Shakes whispered.
“At this point, no one remembers what incursion into whose space started things. There’s always been a rivalry between the Star Child and Professor Bereft of Groove,” Mallia said. “They’re both Leos.”
“Man, we were like brothers back in the day. We came up together in the same band. We had all these hopes and dreams, wanted to make music no one had heard before. And we were good, too. No one could get with us. Then everything got funked up—and not in a good way. We got caught up. We each had a song to sing, had to go solo, do our own thing. It tore up the group. All anybody seems to remember after that is the hurt.” The Star Child’s attention drifted far away, seeing it all again, feeling it once more. For, as accomplished as he was at faking the funk, he couldn’t hide his pain. “Our reality was obliterated. We pushed through what we could, and whatever made it into this world resonates as things of music, of fiction.”
“There were stories. Rumors of a child, sent down…” Mallia started.
“Just hype.” The Star Child didn’t want to go into it any further, but Shakes could sense something. “All that’s left is dance and rhythm and making love and partying past your momma’s curfew. That’s all we’ve got left, and we’re hoping it’s enough. There are some out there who are attuned to it. Agents of the Funk. Music, love, the groove, it awakens something way down deep and lets them see glimpses of what we were. It lets them dream of what we could be again.”
“We make the music to fill in the gaps, like holes in our DNA. To make ourselves whole again.”
“To believe us into reality,” the Star Child said. “I have a relic from our world that I need to show you. It will …”
Psychoalphadiscobetabioaquadoloop. Psychoalphadiscobetabioaquadoloop. Psychoalphadiscobetabioaquadoloop. Psychoalphadiscobetabioaquadoloop.
The chant seemed to come from all around them. The lights fluttered. Darkness took shape, spaced folded on itself. Silhouettes shuffled in the night. A thick wave like dry-ice fog swallowed the dance floor, riding up George’s legs and into his nostrils. A familiar smell, like citrus-scented disinfectant. Then a voice, like a wiggle in the ear, spoke.
“Citizens of the universe, we are here to reclaim the mothership.”
§
They lie to you, George. You don’t exist. You’re nothing but a pack of baseball cards without gum. You are little more than the liner note drivel, ripped from the ravings of a fringe cult transcribed while riding shotgun on a bad LSD trip. This isn’t the real world. But you know that, don’t you? You aren’t some savior figure struggling to come to terms with your messianic consciousness. Look at you, George, you are a boy, not a man, having a drug-induced dream. If your mother could see you now, you’d be the death of her, George. You know what’s best for you, right? Get a nine-to-five. Get married. Consume. Obsess. Covet. Never question. Never wake up. Never wake up. Never wake…
“… up, Shakes! Hump your ass!” Mallia had him by the wrist, dragging him behind an overturned table across the floor. Through the fog, all around him, he could see the trampled bodies, could hear the screams. His fingers scrabbled over the floor to gain some kind of hold for leverage, but his fingers only found discarded clothing, still warm, and the grains of sand that he knew had once been people. He felt sick, coming down off a bad trip.
“What’s going on?”
“Damn it.” Mallia leaned over, her breasts heavy on his chest, as she checked his eyes. “Their gas is still affecting you. I hoped you would be more immune to it.”
“You’re beautiful.”
“Apparently not.” Mallia palmed a rod in each hand. With a flick of her wrist, they extended into batons. She caught him staring at them. “For defense purposes only.”
“Defending who?” Shakes asked.
“Get up! We need to get you somewhere safe. The Star Child’s using the artifact to hold them off. I don’t know how they found us. They didn’t …”
… think of your brothers, George. Of your sisters. Think of what would become of them without you. Think of your home. Think of your hood. Think …
“… they’re sending everything they got at us.” A bad mama jamma, Mallia leapt into the fray, delivering a round house kick that shook the roof off that mutha. Then she battered him with the batons, twirling them with the ease of drumsticks. “That’s Professor Bereft of Groove’s lieutenant leading them. He must know that we’ve found you. He must know that …”
… you can still have a future. There’s something more out there for you, but you must stop this nonsense. Get back on board with the real thing, George. Get your head out the stars and come back to earth. You need to …
“… snap out of it, Shakes. We’re doing this all for you. You’re the real thing.”
“The words are gone.” Shakes stared at his hands, making sure he had the appropriate number of digits.
“They’re coming out of your mouth.”
“Funk you. They’re not there. They’re not there, I’m telling you.” Shakes trembled. “No, wait, somebody’s in my head.”
“Then fight him.”
Unsteady at first, Shakes rose to his feet, letting Mallia’s voice pull him through the noise. Through the smoke, the screams of the people rushing past as thick and clunky suits of brightly-colored armor chased them. The high squeal of a dozen theremins laughed at them, cutting them down with glee. One of the Afronauts stood there, his fiery pink and purple Bop Gun aimed toward Shakes’ heart. He could sense the smile behind the obsidian orb, hear the cackling of laughter, and the mocking tone of his words.
I am transmitting ideas directly into your reality, crooked and unoriginal. You fell into my grandest trap. Prepare to become the greatest story ever untold.
The muzzle of the Bop Gun flared, but then the Star Child was there. He leapt, waving an object that looked like a flashlight. He screamed. He fell.
But all Shakes knew after that was the light.
Who am I?
Another pointless dream lost in a crowd of pointless dreams. Hunched over in the dark, gyrating, bumping, grinding, in dance to relieve that pressure. The ship. Hurtling through space. The ship was mother. My true mother. That knowing noise, the constant thrum, giving myself over to the music. The dance itself is the most intense rush, taking me out of this world to that place of possibilities. Holy funk, the engine of life and creation, like collard greens, KYs, and cornbread for the soul. Where everything that could happen, has happened, a cosmic conflagration, subatomic rhythms in collision. Where reality is the imaginary story.
I am …
“… waking up. I’m making it up. I’m … cosmically aware,” Shakes said. “Sweet Christmas, this is deep.”
Vibrations poured through his body, a deep soul spasm, and leapt from him into the surrounding walls then reverberated back to him. Panels along the walls lit up. The walls hummed to life. Neon everywhere, blinking to life like the eyes of long-dormant beasts. Somewhere deep within the building, something pulsed to life.
“This building … it’s the mothership,” the dark Afronaut said. Shakes felt his fear through the modulation.
“Look here, Mr. Wiggles.” Shakes turned to the black-clad Afronaut. Its onyx-domed body seemed frozen in time, space-locked. “Y’all think you so slick, so cool, but you nothing but a daggone fool. Everybody’s got a little light under the sun.”
Shakes felt his mind becoming a weapon of love, flexed it like fingers and reached into the Afronaut’s mind. He was struck by the image of maggot-laced meat. Shakes heard the music in his heart, the pounding drum. The bassline kicked through his soul. His feet took off with the groove, skating in a circle about the man. His skates never seemed to leave the ground, round and round he went. Shakes opened his mind, allowing more funk to wash into his soul. He watched it crash down in a great pink wave. A torrent of groove washed out the silt of Unfunkiness, whipping beneath the surface, brushing out the dead and breathless at the bottom.
“No. No more. I hate water. I never learned to swim!” The Afronaut clutched at the sides of his orbed head, trying desperately to claw it open, and collapsed to his knees, then fell forward.
Seeing Mallia cradling the Star Child’s head, Shakes rushed to their side. “If I’m going to be down with you, I’m down to the bitter end.” The Star Child’s eyes grew distant. “I can hear my mother call. I can hear my mother call. I can hear—”
§
Shakes stood within the bubble bridge of the mothership. Earth filled the viewscreen, growing smaller and smaller.
“We’re prepared to leave orbit,” Mallia said.
“I know. I was just taking one more look.” He thought about his momma, about his brothers and sisters. Had they known all along? Would they be safe without him? He couldn’t say, couldn’t worry about it. He shifted and turned to Mallia. “What’s the plan?”
“We find more of the Funkateers, gather our forces. We will spread funk’s glorious message across the cosmos if we have to. Then we’ll bring it straight to Professor Bereft of Groove.”
“In other words, we take it to that sucker.” He nodded, turned back to the blue marble on the screen. “Where’d you learn to fight, anyway?”
“Shortest kid in the band and four older brothers.” Mallia slipped her hand into his and joined him in staring at earth. “It all seems so big. I don’t know where or how to begin.”
Living and jiving and digging the skin he was in, Shakes stretched his mind out, touching so many, awakening them to the possibility of everything. He turned to her.
“Free your mind … and your ass will follow.”
“Citizens of the Universe, do not attempt to adjust your electro-transmitter, there is nothing wrong. We have taken control to bring you this special bulletin.”
“Aw, hell nah.” Hubert “Sleepy” Nixon paused mid-keystroke on the pianoforte. A system of pipes ran from the back of the instrument to the ceiling, steam billowing in mild tufts from the joints. The low, arrhythmic notes slowly faded into a dull echo as he turned to the gleaming carapace of the electro-transmitter with mild exasperation.
A phlegmatic gentleman by nature, some mistook Sleepy’s somnambulant demeanor for muddle-mindedness. Given nuanced consideration, this was rather true after a fashion. Sleepy reached for his pipe, tamped the side to even the spread of chiba leaves, lit them, and inhaled. Holding the smoke in his lungs for the span of three heartbeats, he exhaled a thick cloud of noxious vapor. Only then was he prepared to amble his considerable girth toward the faded tapestry that concealed the descending spiral stairway. Wide-shouldered and bulbous framed as he was, each step creaked under his weight as he slowly made his way into the subterranean hollow. The basement smelled of a privy pit.
“That’s right, today’s mathematics is knowledge. Let me break it down for you: Know the ledge.” A glass-fronted cabinet contained a rotating cylinder that gyrated up and down. A series of antennae lined the top of the device, electricity arcing between them, the charges climbing the spires like tendrils of ivy. Pipes splayed like pleats of a fan, groaned and gurgled as the home kine burned. In the undercity, Fortune—as much as the government allowed—favored a neighborhood possessing a single kine or two, much less a home laying claim to its own. The voice emanated from the darkened corner of the chamber and belonged to the spindly-framed gentleman behind the strange apparatus. Barely seated on the many-times-patched ottoman, was (120 Degrees of) Knowledge Allah.
Knowledge Allah’s strong, handsome face was eroded by despair. His distant eyes had stared into the abyss of anger and hate for too long. A gold band pulled back his thick braids giving them the appearance of interlocked fingers. His thick cravat was tucked into his vest. The difficulty of Knowledge Allah was that one had to decipher the code of his thought language before he began to make any sense. Such a task rarely proved simple while under the effects of the chiba.
“You don’t know who you are,” Knowledge Allah’s self-secure voice rang with steel. “Take on your true name. Arm. Leg. Leg. Arm. Head. You are the original man. You are gods. Yet, you sit there, blind, deaf, and dumb to your potential.
“Few realize who they are, and those that do—and seek to wake the people from their neglected truth—are incarcerated by this grafted government. The Star Child, leader of the F8, is due to be executed in a few days, but none of you could be bothered. The time for revolution is at hand, brothers and sisters. The time is at hand. We only await a sign.
“I exist between time outside time. In the between places. I am the voice of truth in these troubled times.”
The clockwork gears ground to a gentle halt as the spindles of the machine wound down. The electric arcs sputtered, and the entire apparatus darkened. Knowledge Allah stooped from behind the glass cabinet, daubing his sweaty brow with a handkerchief, a smirk of zealotry on his face.
“What the fuck, man?” Sleepy asked, his insistent steps catching up to him as he found himself winded. He eased himself into the nearest chair. Knowledge Allah poured him some brandy from a nearby decanter before pouring a glass of water for himself.
“Are the mysteries I strive to illuminate too deep for you, my brother?” Knowledge Allah clinked Sleepy’s glass with his own then downed his water. He often regaled Sleepy with the idea of forming a band, being the frontman to the capacious Sleepy’s music with the hopes of using their act to spread his message. Like many of their ideas, it collected dust due to inaction.
“The only mystery is my need to get high.” Sleepy ran his pick through his blond-streaked Afro, his beard barely tamed by a comb. His nose was too flat and too broad for his face, as if he’d been punched with an iron. His teeth, likewise, were too small for his mouth. Against skin like burnished onyx, a silver stud protruded from his chin. He puffed out another cloud. “Mystery solved.”
“They set snares that have been prepared for you. Snares meant to lead you from your path of righteousness. You’ve let them cave you.”
“They, who?” Sleepy asked, forgetting his oft-repeated lesson of not asking Knowledge Allah questions. The answers were rarely of any use. However, Sleepy couldn’t help but think there was an undercurrent of derision to Knowledge Allah’s tones, as if the other man stared down the thin beak of a nose at him.
“Your so-called grafted government’s behind it,” Knowledge Allah continued. “The next phase is to destroy us. You think it stopped with Tuskegee?” The Tuskegee Institute. One of the few schools allowed in the undercities. The name sent a chill along the spine at the memory of the experiments done in the name of science. “No, they just got slicker. We don’t have poppy fields. We don’t have dirigibles. We do have wills sapped by opiate clouds.”
“Sounds like we don’t have shit,” Sleepy said. “Speaking of, I thought we agreed on no more broadcasts until we got our act together?”
“The truth cannot go unvoiced.”
“Shit.” Sleepy pronounced the word as if it possessed three syllables. “You one of them long-winded niggas who just like to hear themselves talk.”
“Look at how quickly you let their hate speech drip from your own lips, betraying your own. Don’t get caught up in the game of the 85. We need to—”
“Blah, blah, blah, nigga. Blah. I hear you talking. What I don’t hear is a plan. You got all this ‘righteous knowledge’ … What we going to do?”
“I’m going to free the Star Child.” Knowledge Allah stood up for maximum dramatic effect. “You driving?”
Sleepy remained seated, as the implications of the words reverberated in his mind; their import required a few moments to digest. Knowledge Allah beamed, obviously quite pleased with himself, and wrapped his great coat around himself and nodded topside. Sleepy fastened a cape around his long, blue eight-button coat, the image of a flabby martinet.
Smoke stacks belched poisonous clouds. The oppressive sky, gray as prison-issue uniforms, cloaked their furtive entry onto the streets. The air, redolent with a ferrous rock, was heavy with the stink of coal and sweat. He had bathed for an hour and a half to scrub off any trace of soot from him. Even the poor clung to their dignity. In the shadows of the steam trams of the overcity, a Hansom whisked by, held aloft by rusty trellises. Neither man dreamed of catching a cab in Atlantis, especially at night. A police trawler slowed as it neared them. Other denizens scurried away like rats caught in the light, quick to return to the burrow openings they called home. The pair held their ground, hard eyes unblinking at the passing vehicle. Sleepy spat a black-tinged wad of phlegm. Once out of eye line, Sleepy opened his garage door.
The metal gleamed even in the wan moonlight, polished to a glassy sheen every day. Twin brass tubes formed the body of the car, curving down on both ends stitched together by copper rivets. Headlamps, jutting cans, burned to life. The suspension bounced and lurched in a frenzy of steam belches, jolting them up and down. The bemused pair enjoyed the weight of stares from their neighbors. The 24” rims, whirring fans, continuously shuttered like deployed armor. With a roar, the car took off, spumes of steam left in its wake.
The slow and winding White River neatly carved the undercity in half as the Victorian architecture of the overcity known as Indianapolis gave way to the more dilapidated homes in the undercity the natives dubbed Atlantis. Billboards of smiling, brown faces endorsing opiate use sat next to adverts of money changers offering promises of quick loans. Both preyed on desperation and ignorance. America shone as the most prosperous colony in service to the Albion Empire. With its plantation farms and free labor force, America was the dirty sweatshop engine that propelled the Empire. Even the upper crust of the American social strata were held in tacit contempt by the Albion proper, unwilling to acknowledge how they kept their hands clean. The force of her colonialist spirit had long ago reduced the issue of slavery to a low simmer, and the much talked about threat of an American Civil War never came to pass. With the rise of the automata, however, the economics of the unseemly endeavor proved too deleterious, and the slaves were released.
Those of an African bloodline, no matter how much or little ran in their veins, were relegated to a state of vague emancipation. Not living in the massive, industrial overcities, but dismissed to ghettos—pacified by legalized, free-flowing drugs—a terra incognita somehow lost between the cartographer’s calipers. Or, they were imprisoned.
Viceroy George II, who pandered without shame to the interests of the Empire, currently governed the land. Though high-born and privileged, he was no nobleman but rather a spoiled bloodline of nine generations of insular breeding.
The buildings crumbled into screes of pebbles along rotted sidewalks under an air of imminent decay. Gas lamps produced forlorn shadows from the steeped darkness. Old men huddled in puddles of light, drinking brandy and smoking cigars blunted with opium by wan moonlight. Their garrulous conversation of the most impolitic kind filled the night with the bluster of oafs. A twinge of jealousy at not being able to join in fluttered in Sleepy’s chest.
Knowledge Allah directed him to a two-story brick, Queen Anne home guarded by a wrought-iron fence. The house stood out from the rest of the neighborhood’s squalor as if someone had staked a claim to retake this spot. Drab green with fine terra cotta ornaments and lacy spindles, its conical-roofed turret had fish scale slate shingles. Stained glass sat atop curtained bay windows.
“Whose place is this?” Sleepy asked.
“An inventor’s.”
“He down with The Cause?”
“Do you even know what cause you serve?”
“I was just asking.”
“You assume a lot. The Cause is more than attitude, affect, and wardrobe. You need to be open to the mysteries life offers,” Knowledge Allah said.
“Like what?”
“Like the inventor.”
Knowledge Allah rapped on the large obsidian knocker. The door swung open. A poor simulacrum of a person greeted them with the smooth manner of a well-rehearsed marionette. Its inner workings whirred—pistoning brass and steel gears—over the gentle hum of whatever powered it. Its face—dull, unpainted metal—held no expression and little attempt at humanity. Wondrous and intricate, a flawless design, it projected a knowing discomfort of the other. Sleepy suddenly grew terrified of the mind of its designer. With a mime’s gesticulations, it offered to take their hat and coats and escorted them. Twin lanterns burned in empty spaces as optical receptors, a mechanical stare masking its inner workings. Its disjointed consciousness lacked imagination, the ability to create story, the power to question its being or its place in the greater scheme of things. It moved without the gift of ancestors and the weight of history. At best, it held the illusion of electric dreaming against the cold void of blackness.
Sleepy envied its uncomplicated existence.
The double-door entry opened into the foyer of the opulent home. An elegant, curved staircase separated the living and dining rooms on the right from the library on the left. Walls, alight with whale oil-filled lamps, created an erudite glow. A lone settee perched alongside a fireplace on the opposite side of the room. A deck of cards sat on a piece of silk atop a table. Sleepy cut the deck at random and saw a card inscribed with the number XVI over the picture of a tower struck by lightning. The building’s top section had dislodged from the rest of it; two men were falling from the crumbling edifice. Filled with sudden disquiet, Sleepy set the deck down.
The automaton paused, like a bellboy awaiting a gratuity.
“One nation under a groove,” Knowledge Allah said.
A bank of books parted to reveal a maw of shadows. The automaton withdrew, closing the library door behind it. The civilized façade of the pews of books gave way to the vaulted chamber of the laboratory. Rows of workbenches lined with test tubes, flasks, and beakers gurgling over Bunsen burners. Though a langorous whir of fans vented the air, the room roiled with the cloying smell of steam and coal, hot metal and ozone. A skirling of flutes emanated from a boiler, groaned under the strain of power and settling. A lithe figure bent over a metal frame of eight, jutting arms spinning from a central mass, a mechanical arachnid contraption. Sleepy expected rolled-up sleeves, moleskin trousers, and a grimy leather apron.
Instead, beneath a cap, goggled and draped in a lab coat, the figure welded a few more joints, testing the articulation as the work progressed, lit to a haunting blue hue behind the jet of the torch.
Once the goggles had been raised, the inventor took a step backward and nodded. Sleepy realized he regarded a woman. A green velvet jacket beneath the lab coat, with no décolletage or hint of femininity; the inventor held the bearing of a strict governess. She admired her handiwork and snugged her gloves. Her face retained an aqua tint in the dim electric glow. Wrinkles filigreed the corners of her eyes, belying the youthfulness of her face. A product of miscegenation, she radiated the afterglow of light-skinned privilege, despite her secretive life ferreted away in her laboratory. Upon noticing them, she stepped to Knowledge Allah, and the two clasped hands.
“You’re a lady of odd enthusiasms,” Sleepy proclaimed. He managed to hold his affable leer awaiting an introduction.
“I don’t have time for social niceties.” She ignored his proffered hand.
“Cooking stuff up in the lab,” Knowledge Allah said.
“Just like ‘Yacuub,’ good sir.”
Unabashedly vital, her high cheekbones framed an aquiline nose against her sallow complexion, tea with too much milk—just light enough to be on the fringe of polite society. With a rigidity of face and a hardness in her hazel eyes, she possessed a noblewoman’s airs. She probably had an A-level education, which meant her parents had money or connections. The mirth of aristocracy barely masked an anarchist streak. Her terrible impertinence of dressing like a man covered a repressed gaety to her Victorian effect. She polished her spectacles in a handkerchief.
“’Bout time we got some ladies representing,” Sleepy said.
“He rises in my estimation, Deaconess Blues.” She shook his hand.
“It’s nice to see not all of us had to struggle.”
“Do not talk to me about struggle while you thoughtlessly squander what money you manage to scrimp together on instruments and automobiles worth more than your hovel.” Her wan smile soured to a grim line. “My mother had been a governess, a high rank for Negroes, though she tried to program me with how it was unbecoming for a lady to fill her head with designs and equations. Though no mother would phrase it as such, she wanted me to be vapid and colorless. I had other ideas.”
Though now he whiled away his days as a coal shoveler rather than as an artist or poet, Sleepy never fancied himself an anarchist by any stretch. Not like the deaconess who decided that she, if not the rest of society, was past male supremacy’s notions of womanhood. Her body and mind were hers to do with as she would.
Sleepy pulled a hair from his chin, closing his eyes at the fresh sting of pain.A nervous habit anxious to remind himself that he could still feel. He didn’t know who he was—a man out of place, a crowd of one. Jamaican-born, but England-educated—through C-levels, the bare minimum for a citizen, appropriate to his station—and America employed; a one-man triangle trade. His father was a man of dreams and ideas. And causes. Sleepy joined the struggle in his youth and paved the way for the F8 through civil disobedience. “Life ought to be lived outside of yourself,” he often preached. But Sleepy’s passion for music provided release from his miserable existence, embued with anger and vitality of the dwellers of the undercity; not the staid tones enjoyed by the ranks of nobles. Sleepy tapped percussive melodies lost in the rhythms of his thoughts.
“Am I boring you?” Deaconess Blues asked.
“Nah, I’m just waiting to hear the deal.”
“All in good time.”
Deaconess Blues led them back to the library where her automaton had spread out the accoutrements of high tea. A silver teapot poured a heady brew. The aroma filled the room. A tray of crumpets and other delicate pastries lay before them, as the blank-faced automaton attended to etiquette in Deaconess Blues’ fragile dance of civility. Going through the motions of refined breeding, protocol—appearances were paramount—despite being excluded from upper society.
“Are we all that’s left of the F8?” Sleepy asked. He stifled a rheumy cough, slipping a trail of gray sputum into his napkin.
“I do not know, sir. We compartmentalize ourselves so that no one person knows too much about our organization.” Deaconess Blues tilted her head with a glimmer of maternal concern. “You look troubled.”
“I just don’t know what we’re doing and …” Sleepy paused. “What’s the point?”
“Has it ever struck you that we aren’t as ahead technologically as we should be?”
“Knowledge and the reflection of knowledge equals wisdom,” Knowledge Allah said. “Knowledge and wisdom equals understanding.”
“Then if you knowledge my wisdom, you will understand what I’m saying,” Deaconess Blues said. He nodded as if they shared the same gibberish wavelength. “Knowledge is built on the back of itself. Those who come along later stand on the shoulders of those before them. That great capitalist machine called slavery robbed mother Africa of generations of scientists, artists, and creative minds. Think of where we’d be without that holocaust.”
“We’d have flying cars,” Sleepy said “and show tunes.”
“We have show tunes.”
“We’d have had them sooner, you feel me? What? A black man can’t enjoy show tunes.”
“He isn’t ready. He still needs verbal milk,” Knowledge Allah said.
“Then this meeting is premature. I am … resources. Not propaganda.”
“Time is of the essence. The Cause demanded this level of meeting.”
“My job is to oppose the state,” Deaconess Blues scowled. “I care about the liberation of my people.”
“Your people? You a high yella, bougie dilettante.” Sleepy shifted, uncomfortable with how defensive he sounded. Deaconess Blues remained unflustered. Strains of classical music reverberated from the large horns encircling the room, surrounding them with sound. With another dollop of chiba, the pungent sting of burnt weed sent his mind adrift among the clouds and made him much more receptive to high-flung ideas.
An obviously delicate eater, Deaconess Blues drew a long sip then set her cup back onto its dish. “I’m black like you. I resist. I seek to end the chains and the extermination of all oppression.”
“You don’t talk like a scientist.”
“I am an anarchist, insurrectionist, and a scientist. A scientist searching for knowledge and proof. For truth and meaning.”
“You’re a scientist of God,” Knowledge Allah chimed in with a tone of deference.
Sleepy raised an eyebrow. He wondered if Deaconess Blues was one of the alchemist spirit riders whispered about, those who combined science and the ancient ways.
“With the revolutions in engineering and science and industry, we have yet to see any in our social systems. We might as well dress up the automata in minstrel outfits and paint them with bright white eyes and red bulbous lips for how we are seen.” Deaconess Blues poured herself another cup of tea. She stirred in milk and sugar as her words settled in their ears, their eyes anxious on her, though she was unhurried. “We’ve been promised universal enlightenment, an end to war, and a rationalist utopian … as long as everyone knows their place.
“We are at the intersection of class and race, class and sexuality, and class and gender. Any class reduction will face critical resistance. We have sold our souls in the service of commerce. We toil in the embrace of the machine and become a concubine of industry. So we rage against the machine, and we must take extraordinary steps to defend ourselves. There must develop solidarity among our people, a swell of anti-colonial resistance.”
“I feel you. I’m angry, and I know y’all are angry, too. So, what’re we going to do about it?” Sleepy asked, not one for the intellectual stuff. “Civil disobedience?”
“I’ve no interest in begging for scraps from our presumed master’s table.”
“Let me lay it on you like this: blood for blood,” Knowledge Allah said.
“Now we’re talking,” Sleepy said, stirred from his settling ennui.
“And you know that.” Knowledge Allah outstretched his hand that was received with blitheness by Sleepy, as if he’d finally earned a spot at the table.
“You’d be happy with any militant action,” Deaconess Blues sniffed.
“Blowing shit up is a plan,” Sleepy said.
“I understand your anger and how you may think of blowing shit up—given your coarse leanings—as revolutionary. But it is the beginning of a plan, not one unto itself. There must be a greater vision. There must be a catalyst for change.”
“Niggas are in a state of emergency. Got to start wilding out.”
“You are a ruin to language,” she said with the exacting manner of a spinster aunt.
Sleepy chafed against her civilizing influence. The discussion, though somewhat diverting, left him with the sensation of being out of his depth. Maybe it was Deaconess Blues’ subtle condescension. Or perhaps it was the disconnection between the lofty ideas of the Cause and the practical reality of the people. Sleepy’s views boiled down to pragmatism: the theory of struggle was great only insofar as someone actually was helped. It wasn’t further argument he wanted, but action. “You rebel in your way, I rebel in mine.”
“I dream of different but similar worlds. I dream of one where we’re free, not under the heel of Albion. There is something profoundly unwell in their sense of entitlement.” Deaconess Blues shook her head as if the very act of reflection was wasted effort. Her stiff, stately bearing was the picture of restraint. “Eating their blood sausages and tripe, their raspberry tarts.”
“The Inventor has a plan,” Knowledge Allah said, as if reading his reluctance.
“Oh?”
“The plan is the paragon of simplicity. The local penitentiary …”
“The Ave?” Sleepy asked.
“The Allisonville Correctional Facility is a wretched place. Its serpentine bowels, and those of its ilk, incarcerate a third of our people. Little better than slave pens with us little better than beasts.”
“Including Star Child and the rest of the F8.”
“The Star Child is a powerful symbol of the struggle. Imprisoned for speaking of a better way. Of revolution.”
“But the Ave is…”
“Impregnable? No, its design bears the fruit of the very hubris of its designers. Think of it: a lone spire, defying the heavens like the tower of Babel. All the guards, knights of the realm, gathered there more as symbol than actual need. Were it to come crashing down, our brothers and sisters would be free.”
“Oops upside their head,” Knowledge Allah said.
“Wouldn’t they be trapped?”
“Don’t you see? The same underground shafts that entomb them now also protect them. All we would need is a group of folks to shepherd them to safety.”
“And something to bring down the tower itself.”
Deaconess Blues stood up and strode to the coat rack. Donning a hat and gloves—though Sleepy distrusted the cock of her hat—she announced, “Come on. We need to be armed with a bop gun.”
§
“Citizens of the Universe, do not attempt to adjust your electro-transmitter, there is nothing wrong. We have taken control to bring you this special bulletin.” The attenuated pulse of Knowledge Allah’s voice echoed along the airwaves. “The Albion Empire bloated itself on its own myth—a proud, corpulent pustule of wealth—spreading across the land, a decadent cancer of corporate greed and industrial indulgence all in the name of national pride.
“Washington aristocrats with vested interest in our eternal domination, governing to their interests not ours. The Empire is a corrupt federal leviathan, swollen and lazy, and we are the cheap table legs propping it up. Revolution is inevitable. We are the First Cause. In our tiers of rage, we call for direct action. We resist constituted powers through property damage. We impede the flow of goods and capital, using their system against them and making the cost of perpetuating domination prohibitive. And it is time to co-opt their instrument of military guarantor to break out the F8. There’s a party at the crossroads. Watch the skies. Freedom or Death.
“I exist between time outside time. In the between places. I am the voice of truth in these troubled times.”
Escaped the low ceiling of the undercity. No sunlight, only the arc of electricity from the tram. A city of shadows consuming their bodies as grist to drive the Empire forward. The trio rode in silence following the banks’ scenic greenway to the summer homes of the overcity. They quickly left the shadows of Atlantis to the sprawling suburbs of greater Indianapolis, careful to avoid the constabularies who might pull them over or otherwise detain them for not being where they were supposed to be. Deaconess Blues’ fair skin granted her passage to casual observers. Soon, they reached an immense pole barn structure on property ringed with barbed wire. A mad grin danced on her face as she activated the lock controls via a sequence of numbers punched into an electro-chirographer pad. Gears winched, and the doors trembled before parting. Inside the makeshift hanger was an airship.
From the first day the sight of a bird in flight fired his fancy, man dreamed to one day take to the clouds, to conquer the air as easily as he conquered the land and the sea. Unlike the massive warships of Lockheed or Sir Halliburton, this one did not bristle with armaments. No mighty bombs would drop on unseen enemies or innocent school buildings nor would the blood-soaked dreams of nation states be enforced by it. A ridged watermelon with a hull of black with a red underbelly, gas-filled tubes ran along the outside of the ship and burned to life to ring the ship in a brackish green. A gold ankh, like an uplifted key, emblazoned its side.
“Where did you get it?”
“I am not a lady of unlimited resources …”
“You stole it.”
“We wrested it from the control of the military/industrial complex, who deemed this model a failure and relegated it to a barely guarded warehouse,” Knowledge Allah said.
“Why didn’t you say so?”
“Haven’t you understood, yet? We proceed on a need-to-know basis. You didn’t need to know.”
“One man’s failure is another person’s treasure.” Deaconess Blues climbed a scaffold. “Coming inside?”
The decks of the cabin divided into small rooms, tiny tombs in the greater sarcophagus, connected by tiny ladders Sleepy had little hope of navigating. A network of cables, ropes, and pipes ran throughout like capillaries. Pressure hissed from the valves of the Malcolm-Little engines. Mahogany bedecked the main cabin and retained the reek of stale cigar smoke. A luxurious box, a den of sorts, formed the sanctum sanctorum of noble breeding. A decanter of pear wine sat in the middle of a table spread with finger foods, as another blank-faced automaton whirred out of their way.
Knowledge Allah reclined on a bench, a gentleman of leisure. Deaconess Blues stood before an array of membrane discs and tuning forks, lost behind the steady cadence of whirs and clicks. A wave of nausea swept over Sleepy as he imagined himself squeezing into the small window seat, staring out over the sea of land.
“Wisdom is water. I’m about solar facts. God is the sun. It’s all about the elements,” Knowledge Allah said, a brutal curl to his lips.
“You and your outlandish expressions,” Deaconess Blues remarked with admirable dispatch. “Your peculiar phraseology never tires.” She moved about the cabin, examining the controls with considered elegance.
“The sundial speaks. We prepare to ride as Afronauts.”
“So how does this all play out?” Sleepy asked. “We become the villains they assume us to be?”
“One man’s villain is another person’s Star Child. Do you know how we’re seen? Human chimpanzees. Immature, in need of constant guidance. Emotional, not rational. Unreasonable and easily excited. Without religion, only superstition and fanciful mythologies.” She nodded to Knowledge Allah. “Criminals with no respect for private property. Filthy. Excessively sexual. We are niggers left to fester and shamble in the undercities.”
“Us and the Irish.” Uncomfortable in the awkward pause left by his attempt at humor, Sleepy pulled another hair from his chin and examined the kinky strand against his fingertip.
“Their blue-eyed, blond-haired Jesus used to keep us in our place. We are but noble aborigines. Such is the result of their gradations of mankind. Here I am, too black for their tastes, too white for yours, trapped by their index of nigrescence.” Deaconess Blues manned a station, the controls warming the dirigible to a full-throated bluster, pulsing with steam. Baffles and stanchions, ballasts and air ducts pumped furiously. “Where is our justice?”
“Justice? There is no justice, there is Just Us,” Knowledge Allah said.
“Aluminum and iron oxide are elements of the fabric doping. This zeppelin ought to be filled with helium or another inert gas. However, as our purposes are of a more combustible nature, I’ve filled our little dirigible with hydrogen. I wouldn’t advise any more of your chiba indulgences.” Her stiff upper lip set to grim resolve, she remained unruffled by the chaos springing up about her.
“I ain’t down with no suicide run,” Sleepy said. “This brother don’t go out like that.”
“Yet, our best-trained, best-educated, best-equipped, best-prepared troops refuse to fight!” Knowledge Allah recited with an evangelical fervor and a sneer of contempt. “Matter of fact, it’s safe to say that they would rather switch than fight!’”
“Who’s going to fight for The Cause if our best keep taking themselves out?”
“An arm, a leg perhaps. But not the Head,” Knowledge Allah said.
“I am not one to shrink from such deviltry. Besides, it’s not suicide. We are meant to be among the stars, signals from the heavens, showing others the way home.” Deaconess Blues stepped from her perch to meet Sleepy eye-to-eye. “Nor are we asking you to come.”
“What?” Sleepy’s sated gaze fixed on her.
“We accepted you because we saw your potential. Ancient tribes had truth tellers and history keepers and storytellers. You are like one of those ancient griots. We give you the space to tell stories. Our story.”
“Vainglorious,” Knowledge Allah echoed.
“I detest long goodbyes,” Deaconess Blues said.
Sleepy glanced from one to the other, tasked and dismissed. His lips parted to protest, but no sound escaped. He backed out toward the rear of the deck, ignoring his sense of relief while wanting to feign the injured party. As if he was deemed unworthy to partake in his own struggle.
“You smell that?” Deaconess Blues called out, her skin like luminescent butter. A static charge hung in the air. “The air smells like freedom.”
“Freedom or death,” Knowledge Allah said.
“We fly into glory.”
“Citizens of the Universe, do not attempt to adjust your electro-transmitter, there is nothing wrong. We have taken control to bring you this special bulletin.”
Sleepy raced along the back roads desperate to beat the landing of the mothership. A great shadow filled the sky, the pride of the empire. Clouds blackened into banks of ominous dark swirls by the endless entropy of Night. The wind howled. The gleaming overcities and jutting spires must look so different from up above, Sleepy imagined. Air raid lights filled the sky, spotlights on the stage of the night sky. The dirigible, their Bop Gun, moved with implacable grace, an airborne whale, strident and regal.
“My message is simple. Tonight the Star Child… all of us will be free. By any means necessary. Freedom or death.
“I exist between time outside time. In the between places. I am the voice of truth in these troubled times.”
By the time Sleepy pulled up, a throng of people had gathered, held in check by too few constabularies. The Ave’s tower, impregnable and arrogant, saluted them. Slowly, the ovoid silhouette of the Bop Gun came into full view. The crowd burst into a roar of applause and cheers. As if in response, the behemoth canted forward in a sharp downward arc. Sleepy stared, filled with profound apprehension. The crowd became a pantomime of motion and fury and panic. Knowledge Allah stood before the grand bay window. Backlit, his grand gestures were perfectly visible to the spectators as the ship careened earthward.
He raised a clenched fist. “Vainglorious,” Sleepy whispered.
Everything happened at once, a series of images broken into shards of memory one tried to forget. The roar of the crowd, an exhalation of panic. An explosion. A billowy fire cloud, a phoenix springing toward the heavens. The smell of India rubber burning. Shrapnel of stone. A body, encircled in flames, stumbled two steps then collapsed. Fiery scraps blew about in the night breeze. The injured structure suddenly unable to bear its own weight, the tower collapsed. The terrible crash, thunder flattening the eardrums. Smoke and flame, thick and choking, burning the lungs with each inhalation.
Watching the skeleton of the Bop Gun continue to burn—its tattered shell buckled upon itself—Sleepy waited, carried along by the undertow of the crowd. The constabularies, with their thick night sticks and steel-riveted riot shields, cordoned off the scene. Fear glazed their faces. He spied no one immediately fleeing and prayed that the prisoners had been moved. He feared that they remained trapped beneath the ground, escaping slaves caught in a cave-in. Soon, among the wreckage and destruction, black bodies scrambled from the underground, a stream of ants fleeing their hill. Some of the constabularies fired at the escaping prisoners. Something stirred inside Sleepy. The caustic smoke stung his eyes, his vision little more than watery blurs. Soot-tinged spittle dropped to the ground.
The voices rose into a chorus. Knowledge Allah. Deaconess Blues. His father. Lost in the din was his voice. Sleepy felt the anger. The urge to join the fight. To retaliate. Blinking through a haze of pain, he ground his heel into the desiccated earth and punched the nearest guard, a tacit signal to the crowd to surge forward. The horde spilled in every direction, blind fury, pent-up aggression in search of a target. A mob of chaos, arms swinging blindly, clubs battering senselessly. Sirens sounded. Bodies clambered through barbed wire. In the ensuing mêlée, Sleepy was arrested. To the chants of “Let him go,” the constabularies clapped him in irons, his expression more frustrated than fearful. At the precinct house, the questions came fast and furious. “Who were involved in the organizing?” “How did you get involved?” “How many were there?” “Who were the leaders?”
Sleepy fought his revolutions his own way.
And raised a single fist.
Second Lieutenant Macia Branson leapt into the dark abyss and descended into a purgatory of red tracer fire. The night sky held her close as the air whipped about them, reducing her world to the deadening screech of white noise. She plummeted toward the earth, not knowing where they might land. In trees. In water. Into the midst of a Heathen patrol. All she knew for sure was that they would land somewhere in Holland. She prayed that she would be at least close to her drop zone. She was deployed in service of The Order and had a duty to perform.
The church was mother, the church was father.
A grassy knoll rushed toward her, and she braced for the jolt of impact without looking down. The rush of the ground toward them, despite their training, could still send a jolt of panic through a soldier. Besides, she enjoyed holding onto the peace of the horizon for as long as possible to steady her.
Her knees slightly bent, she dropped her chin to her chest and tensed her neck muscles. The earth slammed into her, her body twisting and bending in automatic reaction, giving in to the crash, a rag doll carried by the current of momentum. She slid down an embankment before coming to a halt. Slogging through three inches of pooled water, she knew what she’d find when she checked her gear. Nothing would work right. Her flight suit was only designed for controlled descents. The best tech went to the evangelical deployments. The rest of the church’s military was left with equipment full of glitches, if not flat-out defective. With so many theaters of operations, the troops’ equipment had been rushed into production and not battle-tested. Like many of her fellow soldiers. Her hard landing smashed the communication relay, and her leg bundle, full of extra ammo and rations, was nowhere to be found. At least the familiar weight of her Stryker XM9 pulse rifle, though it was a generation out of date, comforted her like the embrace of an old friend.
Above her, tracer fire continued to crisscross the night sky, the light of exploding flak almost reminding her of fireworks. Almost. The proximity alert lit up on her rifle.
“Fishes,” Branson challenged.
“Loaves,” a familiar voiced responded softly from the shadows. “Your comlink down, too? Where the hell are we?”
No one was happier to see Prefect Sergeant E. Kenneth Dooley than Branson. Short, quick-thinking, and ugly as a catfight, when Dooley first joined the ranks, the older soldiers took to calling him “Doo-Doo.” That lasted until the first time they saw him in a firefight. He stalked a battlefield with defiant determination, daring the Heathens to hit him.
“I’d guess five to seven miles from our DZ, judging from the firing,” Branson said.
She didn’t bother to check the digital telemetry or maps in her helmet subsystem. Half the time she found the continual stream of information and dogma sermons more hindrance than help. “Which way do we head?” Dooley asked.
“Where else? Toward the firing.”
They both knew it was a bad drop. The navcom signal was down across the board, so they set about cobbling together their unit the old-fashioned way. They spread out, slow and tentative. When unfamiliar soldiers joined them and saw Branson—many replacement soldiers filled their ranks for this mission—a sense of relief lit up their faces. It was as if they sensed they were in good, experienced hands. Other officers complained that she was friendlier with the enlisted men than she was with them. She didn’t care. The front line was where she belonged; she even volunteered for patrols. The uniform meant something to her.
Branson watched with weary eyes as this latest batch of green recruits checked through their rucksacks and readied their weapons. She waited for them to regroup before taking final stock of what the service had her working with this time.
“When are we gonna see some action?” asked a square-jawed, broad-shouldered glamor boy with curly blonde locks. He still stank of military school.
“Who’re you?” Dooley asked, with the casual contempt mixed with pity of a boxer who wholly outclassed his opponent. He had little patience with replacement soldiers.
“The name’s …”
Dooley bit into a well-chewed cigar stump and swished it about in his mouth until it found its comfortable crook. “Stow it. I don’t wanna learn your name. Learning your name is the first step to getting attached, and I sure as hell ain’t getting attached to no replacement. From here out, you’re Goldy.”
“What do they call you, ma’am?” Goldy turned to Branson.
“Second Lieutenant Branson. You want to try to call me something else?” Her stare made him turn away.
Goldy spied the ink along Dooley’s arm. “What’s the tattoo?”
Dooley pulled up his sleeve to fully reveal the image of a woman astride a white horse on his arm. Long, blonde hair covered by a silver helmet, with blazing blue eyes peering from underneath it, she carried both a spear and shield. “A Valkyrie.”
“What’s a Valkyrie?” Goldy asked.
“Collectors of the favored dead. They chose the slain heroes to be taken to Valhalla. If a warrior saw one before a battle, he’d die during it. I want the Nils to always see one coming.”
“You got to be careful with all that myth talk. You don’t want to be seen as a Nil or a sympathizer.”
“A Heath. They’re Nils if they have no gods; Heaths if they worship the wrong ones.”
“Still, choosers of the slain? Nice …” Goldy’s voice trailed off. Dooley had turned his back and stalked off to be about his business.
Branson pretended not to have noticed the interaction by studying the maps on her view screens as Goldy approached her. “How’d it go with Dooley?”
“We’re dutch,” Goldy said, without any trace of irony. “We hit it off swell.”
“Give it time. Newbies have to learn how to slip in between the seams.”
“I get it, ma’am,” Goldy said, obviously bored with the lesson.
“Pack ’em up, we’re moving out,” a new voice shouted out. First Lieutenant Gilbert Meshner. “Mush” behind his back.
Of course, he’d been chosen for this mission. Branson spat.
Meshner wandered through their makeshift camp like a distracted tourist. A mop of black, greasy hair and dead, gray eyes gave his face a grave severity. He was little more than a petty dictator who used vindictiveness in the guise of discipline. Rumor was that, when they’d parachuted into Chiapas, Mexico, a Nil had charged Meshner. By the time the rest of the men got to him, the two had played “kata tag,” and the Nil lay dead at his feet. But otherwise, Mush’d long since developed a reputation for taking long walks away from the action. The men tried to joke it off as Meshner’s luck masking as skill, but no one knew what to make of him.
“We’re marching until high ground.” Meshner eyed Branson with something approaching scorn.
Not a single man stirred. They turned to Branson in a tacit double check of the orders.
“You heard the man. Let’s go, you scrotes!” Branson echoed.
§
The hills of Holland were supposed to be beautiful. The war had reduced them to greenspace ambush sites for the Nils and Heathens. The church embraced a holistic approach to fulfilling her mission: politics, technology, and the military. The Evangelical States of America already ruled their hemisphere, along with parts of Africa and Asia. The United Emirate of Islam controlled the rest of Africa along with Asia. Europe was up for grabs, a self-declared safe haven for atheists and heretics. Not that Branson cared. Nation. Religion. Tribe. Cause. There was always some supposed big idea to fight for, but in the end, all that mattered was that orders were obeyed and the mission carried out.
A dense fog crept along the field, and an eerie silence embraced them. Pulse rifle fire left a distinct odor in the air, a mix of ozone and seared flesh. The smell of death. High ground took them the rest of the night and most of the next day to find. Patrols detected Heathen troops nearby. The men marched in silence, the only sound filling the air, the steady stamp of their boots slogging muddy earth. The waiting was the worst; that was what broke people. The constant state of alert, their minds imagining horrors behind every point of cover. Branson shoved that all aside.
The momentary peace gave her a chance to read up on some of her newbies. Goldy held particular interest. His body was a stew of experimental psychotropics. For all of his country boy persona, he had once been a serial killer with a penchant for skinning young girls before his conversion. Fortunately, the church left nothing to chance when it came to one’s sanctification, even if it had to overwrite existing memories with new ones. Everyone needed redemption from something.
“Where’s Goldy?” Branson whispered.
“Making out with the toilet.” Dooley thumbed toward some bushes. He shifted his unlit cigar to the other side of his mouth as if suddenly aggravated.
“My back teeth were floating,” Goldy muttered, as he caught their eyes watching his approach.
“Tell the men to fix their katas. We attack at first light. 0530. Meshner’s orders.” Branson withdrew her edged bayonet and fixed it to the front of her pulse rifle. The high-tech stuff was good for attacking an enemy at a distance, but the final cleanup was always up close. She would always know the face of her enemy. God have mercy on her soul.
“Tell her what you told me,” Goldy said to Dooley.
“What?” Branson held her gaze on the sergeant.
“Nothing. Just campfire stories that old soldiers tell.” Dooley cut his eyes at Goldy, a silent cursing which he’d vent at some later opportunity.
“I like stories,” Branson said.
Dooley shuffled, flushed with mild embarrassment like a child caught speaking out of turn, which Branson found amusing. “You’ve already heard this one. During the American Civil War, a general kept getting these reports about how his men were afraid to be left for wounded on the battlefield. Not just afraid, but absolutely terrified, especially if they had to lay wounded at night. Try as he might, the morale of his troops kept sinking to new lows every day, but no one wanted to talk about it. The only thing any of them would say was that, if you fell in combat and you wanted to survive until morning, you should hide your breath so no one knew you were still alive.
“One night, after an extended engagement with the enemy, the general walked his line. He often did this after a battle. You know, to pray for his men and clear his head. He saw some movement on the field between the two warring camps. A lone mook. He couldn’t tell if it was Yankee or Confederate, walked among the bodies. In the morning, the medics found the fallen bodies decapitated. Swore it was a woman with a sword.”
“Don’t that beat all?” Goldy asked.
Branson knew the story. She’d heard it many times before. From Meshner. “You and Lt. Meshner close?”
“Not really. He just took a shine to me is all,” Dooley said sarcastically.
“Must be your special brand of charm and wit.”
“Yeah, temper got the best of me again,” Dooley said. “Back in training camp, I threatened to kick his balls into the following week if he gave me any more bullshit jobs instead of letting me fight. There was this long pause. Thought I was done for, either booted out or thrown in the stockade. But he just got this strange grin, like a gator smiling at you. Said I was all right. I kinda took him under my wing after that. You know, we have to raise these lieutenants right.”
“Speaking of our esteemed lieutenant and long walks, where is Mush?” Goldy asked.
Branson’ eyes shriveled the grin on the replacement soldier’s face. Meshner was still their commanding officer and Branson’s job was to enforce discipline among the men. “I’ll go look for him.”
Praise be the blood.
The Blessed Sacrament. Thanks to the sacrament, a combination of human growth hormone and nanotech, she remained about the physical age of twenty-seven and in peak condition for fighting. Truth be told, the wars had begun to blur together. She hardly noticed when one ended and another began. Tour of duty after tour of duty, her body repaired and rejuvenated. “Through the blood we have life,” a familiar refrain, never truly aging, only knowing war. She tried not to think about how many test subjects that the church’s science division had gone through to perfect the gene therapy. Or worse, that they had occasionally remanded those burnouts back to the field. Like with Goldy.
“Fishes.” The challenge sounded with a tremble of nervousness. Meshner’s pulse rifle swung toward Branson, who stood in the shadows. “Fishes.”
“Loaves,” Branson said in a low voice, calm and focused. She tried to speak with as little venom as possible, but she couldn’t always hide the distaste of addressing Meshner. “What are you doing out here, sir?”
“Just checking out the Nils’ lines.”
“I just came from there. Everything’s under control.” Branson staggered a little from exhaustion. Her ARM XS monitoring system pumped stims into her system, steadying her.
“War is a grave matter, the province of life or death,” Meshner paraphrased Sun Tzu.
Branson, not impressed by his book learning, finished the quote. “‘War is like unto a fire. Those who will not put aside weapons are themselves consumed by them.’”
Meshner sucked from a small silver flask. He tipped it in obligatory offer to Branson, who waved it off. Meshner continued drinking. “Do you know what the curse of war is?”
“Sir?”
“The loss of tears. The stress. The loss of so many. The things …” Meshner’s thought trailed off. “Most men drift through life unaware of what they truly are. Only another soldier knows how hard it is to keep his sanity doing this dirty business. What did you do before all of this, Macia?”
“This is all I do, Lieutenant. I find it easier not to worry about the person I was.” She preferred war’s clean and uncomplicated emotions; giving into it, leaving behind idle dreams of family or could’ve beens. Her father was what they called an “indigenous leader,” a colony planting novice-in-training, killed in the mission field. After her parents were killed, the church took her in. The church was mother, the church was father. So joining the Service of the Order was natural. The church birthed her, and war made her in its image.
“Because the person you were might not be able to live with the things that the person you’ve become had to do? Or because you don’t remember anything before the war?”
“That’s the life of a soldier, sir,” Branson said.
§
“Weapons on me. We’re moving out,” Meshner shouted. Once again, the men discreetly glanced toward Branson.
“We’re expecting some of the Nils’ best.” Branson slung her weapon to readiness, not meeting the eyes of the men, treading the minefield of leading while appearing to follow. Morale was bad enough without the men wondering who to follow when the shit hit. Technically, Meshner was the ranking officer, but the First Lieutenant’s role was more administrative. A liaison ensuring that the will of the church was carried out through her military arm. First Lieutenants were usually hands off, opting to work more behind the scenes. They knew the theory of war. Branson and Dooley, they were war.
The land itself struggled against them. Mud sucked at their boots as they marched toward the hedgerows that lined the town’s perimeter. Flak lit up the starless night from a town more than 10 miles away as drones passed overhead. The gloomy woods and endless fog followed them. Isolated them. Sound echoed and bounced back, carried oddly by the whims of the hollow.
They tromped along the base of a hill that hid them from the road above. Meshner held up his fist. Branson cocked her head at the distinct sound of biomech marching on cobbled roads. A lone Heathen soldier. Branson kept one eye on Meshner, the other on her squad. This was the dangerous time for green soldiers. She knew how their hearts stammered so hard they might not be able to catch their breath. Trying to maintain their composure as they stared into darkness. Trying to distinguish between normal and abnormal shadows. Praying that their anxiety for something to happen, anything, just to get the nerve-jangling waiting over with, didn’t make them do something stupid.
Goldy had wandered too far from the squad before they could do anything about it. Maybe he figured he had a better angle to see their situation from his position. Slinging his rifle over his shoulder, he was climbing up the hill to sneak up on the Heathen soldier.
“Hey, buddy,” Goldy said, in a mock-conspiratorial whisper.
The Heathen soldier had little opportunity to react before Goldy’s kata slipped between his ribs. His body crumpled to the ground. Goldy turned to them, pleased with his actions, but failed to notice what Branson had: this wasn’t a lone soldier separated from his unit. He was a lead advance scout clearing a path for the entire tactical unit, replete with two biomechs supporting the newcomers. The stutter of pulse fire shattered the night, muzzle fire like angry lightning bugs in the darkness. Goldy dove off the road.
“Get up that hill, or I’ll have your balls for breakfast!” Dooley yelled, above the whine of charges building to fire, focused light spat out as hot teeth. Dooley roared up the hill, the men quick on his heels.
A shot whizzed by Branson, and she nearly choked on the accompanying adrenaline rush. She tumbled into Dooley’s position and returned fire. “You’re going to get me killed.”
“Not you,” Dooley smirked with a knowing grin. “Not today, at least.”
Dooley’s eyes betrayed his attempt at humor. He was reveling in the slaughter. There were no innocents to consider, no waxing on about misguided soldiers. They were all, “Heathen bastards that had to be killed,” and be they men, women, or children, they would die if they stood between him and accomplishing his mission.
There was something monstrous in Holland that night.
One of the replacement soldiers took a bullet right through his mouth, sending his helmet flying and spilling him to the ground. Branson crawled over him to get to a better position. A battle still had to be fought, which left no time to mourn him. She shut down another piece of herself and wondered how much she had left to shut down.
One of the Heathens broke through their ranks. Branson intercepted him. No matter what The Order preached, there was no honor in battle. Fights were not won by adherence to rules of some imagined, gentlemanly engagement. Violence was the most primal language of humanity. Pain was the universal translator. Branson jammed her right index finger through the Heathen’s eye socket. When he recoiled, she punched him in his genitals with her left. She grabbed her pulse rifle and hammered his head with its butt.
§
The shooting eventually stopped. MK-241 incendiary attacks left scorched trees. Holes pockmarked the earth. Branson prayed that they hadn’t wasted these men on a bloody joyride.
All Branson wanted was to reach a command post, get a shower, and feel human again. Dismissed, she went to check on Dooley.
“How’s the leg?” Branson asked.
“Just practicing to be the dummy,” Dooley winced. He had caught a ricochet, but Branson knew that he wasn’t going anywhere.
“It’s all such a waste.”
“I’ll be patched up and ready to go again before chow time.”
“All for the church to claim another bit of real estate, to justify the use of the sword to fulfill God’s kingdom.”
“Careful. Questions like that might make some think you’re losing your beliefs.”
“The only belief of mine anyone needs to worry about is my belief in following orders. I’m just … tired.”
“Yeah, we all get tired like that sometimes.”
Goldy huddled over a body hidden in the shadows. Branson tried to make as much noise as possible when she walked toward him in order to avoid spooking him, but Goldy whirled at her approach, weapon ready. Branson calmly raised her hands. “A little jumpy?”
“I guess, ma’am.”
“Got anything good, kid?”
“Good?” Goldy demurred, not quite hiding his guilt at being caught. “Souvenirs.”
“I found this.” Goldy pointed to a fallen Heathen soldier. “He’s the seventh body I’ve found like that. Most nowhere near any shelling.”
“Maybe someone’s collecting more … exotic souvenirs.”
Goldy’s face suddenly seemed too young to know the taste of war. “How do you do it, ma’am?”
“Live with the constant fear.”
How could she explain to him that each day was a struggle to believe that life was worth living? That people were supposed to be created in God’s image, that there was a point to any of this?
“There’s no fear on stage,” Branson said. Goldy shook his head, not understanding. “It’s like an actor’s performance anxiety. Our holo-training, all that rehearsal, takes over. Resign yourself to your own death and you can do anything. Especially live.”
§
Branson watched her breath curl languidly in front of her. The cold air stabbed at her lungs like a swarm of needles. The treacherous, man-made forests had been planted specifically as a defensive barrier. The unrelenting shelling reduced her squad to shadows backlit by burning trees. She could barely feel her fingers despite the flames erupting in the woods. A miserable downpour, closer to sleet than rain, left thick, slimy mud that slowed their every movement. The thick fog rolled in, damp and cold, leaving the men disoriented, isolating them in their own private Ragnaroks. The thought of roads seemed like bedtime stories told to give hope to the weary soldiers. The hours might as well have been days.
Branson heard the Devil’s Whistle, the whine which made every soldier’s blood run cold. Drones gave little warning before their attack. “If you can hear the shells, you’ll be okay,” she taught. She hugged the ground, certain that this time a missile had come for her head. The earth trembled beneath her, spitting dirt in its death throes.
Then the shelling stopped.
War held Her breath. After being fired upon all night, the silences proved just as eerie. The earth stilled. Gold flames illuminated the trees. Like prairie dogs, the medics popped their heads up to scan the terrain. They scurried out of their foxholes to tend to the wounded. With diabolical timing, the shelling started again. Bleeding limbs, shorn to their rent bones, lay scattered on the field, bereft of bodies to connect to. The smell of burnt flesh filled the air.
Branson feared for her men. She eyed every fog-dulled silhouette with suspicion, not trusting any sound. At a branch snap, she whirled, finger on trigger, ready to fire until she recognized the man’s helmet. She breathed a sigh of relief. She’d just wanted to get them on the line and through a couple of days of combat. Then they’d be fine. They were good men, only green. The cries of the wounded filled her ears. But even without translation psi ops training, she understood prayers when she heard them.
When the fog lifted, decapitated soldiers littered the field. Bodies strewn about, half-buried in the mud. Blood from friend and foe alike seeped into the soil. Replacement troops puked their guts out at the sight of mangled corpses. Branson inspected the bodies. A hint of suspicion tickled the back of her mind. Many of the wounds should have left some of the men hurt but not dead.
Goldy stumbled about, sure that the last round of shelling was indeed the last. He was young. And inexperienced. And oblivious to the fact that the Heathens had all night to play in the woods with their special brand of toys.
Like sniper rifles.
“Stay down, kid! Keep your head down!” Dooley yelled.
The blast tore into Goldy’s throat. His hands clasped his neck, a thin trickle of blood escaping through his fingers even as the shot cauterized itself. Men returned fire in the direction of the shot. A medic scrambled toward Goldy, not seeing the tripwire. The explosive device threw his body into the air like a discarded toy. The cloud of dust and smoke made it difficult to breathe. The medic struggled to stand up on just one leg. Dooley was the first to reach the still-thrashing Goldy. Branson dashed over to help hold him down as best she could. The medic was already dressing his own leg.
“Medic!” Dooley yelled. He fumbled about his jacket for his emergency aid kit.
“I’m sorry, Sarge. I goofed up. I goofed up,” Goldy spat through his own blood.
“It’s not that bad. Hang on, kid.” Dooley slapped a bandage over it and injected him with morphine.
“Tell me about Valhalla,” Goldy said in his treble rasp.
“It’s a huge palace, kid. Big enough for all of the warriors. All you do is drink, eat, and tell each other lies about your greatest battles.”
“It sounds great, Sarge. I’m tired of fighting.” Goldy’s head fell to the side in a relaxed beatitude.
A signature dull thrum in the ear signaled everyone to scramble for cover. Branson dove into a nearby hole. Its occupant whirled to face her. Each of them brought their weapons to bear.
“Lieutenant,” Meshner said in a flat voice, not unlike a man sitting down for afternoon tea.
“Lieutenant,” Branson responded, matching his nonchalance. She lowered her weapon, but only as Meshner dropped his.
“We’re on hallowed ground.”
“We are, sir?” Branson ducked down at the renewed thrumming and then fired in its direction.
“Tilled with the blood of our enemies.”
“A lot of our blood, too, sir.”
“War has always been with us. She whispers to me. I try to silence Her, but She continues every night. I hear Her voice in the groans left in Her wake, and She only stops when the earth streams with blood. She whispers to me. She told me all about you. Her cup bearer. Always thirsty. I thought you were the one. It’s in our nature. It’s why we fight,” Meshner raised the kata. “The same spirit in which Cain killed Abel. Where we walk, the earth groans with blood in our wake.”
“Something’s not right with you, Meshner.” War did strange things to people. Sometimes Her whispers simply drove men mad. A glint of light from Meshner’s side drew Branson’s attention. A Nil’s dress kata. Her stomach tightened like a clenched fist.
“We’re both orphans of a sort, no family, no name.” Meshner drained his flask, upturning it completely to capture the last drops. “I wasn’t always ‘Mush,’ the paper pusher. I had skill on the battlefield once. Then, one day, the war was done, and I found myself back home. The white picket fence, the possibility of a normal life, was like ashes in my mouth. I had no interest in family. In friends. In any kind of social mask. What I did on the combat field was what I was. Nothing else mattered.”
“There’s blood on our hands.” Praise be the blood.
“I know. Blood that rivers couldn’t wash away,” Meshner said. “So, all we’re left with are our dreams. Mine are of you. It’s always you. The two of us could …”
Branson shook her head, her eyes wanting no part of whatever it was he offered. She had the feeling that he really wasn’t speaking to her at all. She wondered if Meshner had been a burnout like Goldy. Perhaps, before conversion he, too, had struggled against an inner darkness, one that clawed at him just under his surface.
“You have many guises,” Meshner said. “You die, you come back. But I can see you now. Cursed to fight and suffer over and over again. Like the others. We have sown nothing but death and blood.”
“Praise be the blood,” she said. Branson had been to the cliff’s edge of madness herself. She knew how tempting it could be to give in and dive off into the awaiting embrace of the abyss. So many nights she thought she was losing that tenuous grip on her humanity. Every night it seemed harder and harder to choose to remain human.
“As you have sown, so shall ye reap. For now is the time for harvest.” Meshner raised his kata.
Too many times she had lain awake imagining someone trying to butcher her. Her rifle blocked his kata thrust, throwing him off balance. In close quarters the rifle was otherwise useless. His strength superior to hers. Meshner continued to drive the blade down. Fueled by desperation, she found the strength for survival. Up close, the only sounds were their gasps as they struggled. He grunted when her elbow smashed into the bridge of his nose. They were reduced to animals as Meshner grabbed her head and drove his knee into her throat. He tried to get her in a stranglehold. She bit through his hand then butted him in the jaw. She jumped to the side and drew him backwards. She caught him by the head, her fingers gouging his eyes. She pulled his head backward. Planting her foot into the back of his knee, she threw her weight into him as he fell. He rolled over, freeing himself of her. His hand fished about, retrieving his kata. He stood up slowly, his head above the foxhole. A mad, feral smile glinted in the wan light. His blood stained his teeth. His mouth twitched as if itching for a drink.
His head exploded. Shrapnel of bone, brain matter, and blood sprayed her. The sniper round, more missile than bullet, had shattered his skull. His body dropped to its knees, and he fell forward.
Waump. Waump. Waump.
She recognized the sound as well as she knew the sound of her own heartbeat. The Heathens were launching mortar bombs their way.
An explosion, pure concussive force, smacked them like the backhand of God and showered them in a storm of dirt, dust, and stone. All sound became muffled, taking on a looped, distorted quality. The woods erupted in a tumult of fire. A thick haze of smoke rose against the backdrop of flame. Men advanced like ghosts along the horizon. Branson scrambled for cover. Something hot burned through her three times. Her body betrayed her, and her legs began to give out. Blood splayed across fingers she no longer felt. She fell alongside Meshner, burying her face under him to hide her breath. Not every monster was meant for redemption.
Praise be the blood.
A mist rose from the cool waters stretching out in front of me. For all of my training, open water terrified me. I viewed open water the same way I thought of God: majestic and mysterious from a distance; holy and terrifying when caught up in it. My body trembled, an involuntary shudder. The migraine following my regaining consciousness meant I was at least alive. Then I vomited, confirming it. My biomech suit was a self-contained unit long used to handling my various excretions.
Even in the gloom of the graying twilight, my surroundings danced on the nearly artificial aspect of my holo-training sequences. The large fern leaves, a shade too green, undulated in the wan breeze, and water dripped from their undersides to splatter on my visor. My arm clung to a piece of bobbing driftwood, a pillow tucked under it and clutched to in my sleep. Water lapped just under my chin, but my seals were intact. A tired ache sank deep into my bones, and I suddenly felt my true age. Remaining the physical age of twenty-seven every time I re-upped for another tour with the Service of the Order factored into my decision for continued duty. Vanity was one of the many sins I worked on.
I tapped at my wrist panel. The action caused me to slip from my precarious perch. I re-adjusted myself, half-straddling the shard of log, and bobbed in place. The seconds retreated, collapsing into a singularity of eternity as I waited for it to lock onto the beacon of my orbiting ship, the Templar Paton. I used its navcom signal to map my position relative to our colony site. The terrain’s image splayed across my visor view screen. I paddled toward the shore.
Memories returned in fragments. Thundering booms. Balls of light. Clouds illuminated against shadowy skies. Ground explosions scattering people. Heat. The confusion of artillery bursts. Targets acquired. Chasing someone. Shots fired. A shelling run toward me. Bolting across a field. The sudden pressure in my chest.
Falling.
My biomech suit sealed me off from the world, shielding me from the errant breeze or the rays of the sun on my skin. It filtered sound through its receivers, the noise of which became muted when navcom channels engaged. The world appeared to me on my visor, scanned and digitized. Set apart, I was a foreign intrusion, and, like any other pathogen, the world organism raised up antibodies to fight off my presence.
I pushed through the thick canopy of leaves whispering in the breeze. A series of sinkholes replaced the metal cabins where our camp had been. Our fields burned to the ground with methodical thoroughness. Animal carcasses torn asunder by blade, the occasional limb scattered here and there left to rot. Insects worked over them in a low-lying cloud. The ways of death and reclamation were a constant throughout the universe.
Even without the proximity detector, I knew I wasn’t alone. Despite the isolation of my suit, my psi ops enhancements functioned at high alert. A Revisio. Their eyes, too big for their head, their skulls smooth and higher, they studied us with their critical gazes, a mixture of curiosity and mild distain. The Revisio sentry skulked about the remains of our camp with a stooped gait as if he carried an invisible burden. Turning over scrap metal, scanning the rubble, it hunted me. It. Once a mission required judgment protocols, thinking of those about to be judged as an “it” made the work easier.
Despite its deceiving bulk, the biomech suit moved with great stealth. Dampeners reduced its external noise to near nothing, and its movements were as fluid as my own. It no longer mattered that I had lost my rifle. For up close work, I preferred my combat katas.
Though I came upwind of it, the native turned at my approach. It ducked the wide arc of my kata, the edged baton bashing only air. It tried to bring its spear to bear, a lazy gesture I blocked. I spun into it like an unwanted tango partner, thrusting my biomech-enhanced elbow into its gut. I grasped its wrist, praying the thumb lock I had it in was as painful to its physiognomy as a Terran’s. Wrenching its arm up and behind it, I ignored the snap of its bone and held it long enough to deliver another couple punches. The creature slumped in my grip.
“Where?” I asked. This Revisio had no understanding of my language at all. That was why psi ops lieutenants were attached to mission units. Besides security, we provided translation. The metal cap, a socket on the back of my skull, pressed into its place within the suit. Repeating my question, I projected my intent. Spatial concepts were the most difficult to process between cultures. Few saw life the same way. The universe, our place in it, was a matter of perception and perspective. Where did he come from? Where were my compatriots? Were there any survivors? The questions were meaningless, but my intent clear. In the end it was about brain chemistry and interpreting signals. A complex swirl of thoughts bubbled beneath a barrier stifling my efforts. Had it been trained, it would have shut me out entirely. Along with its derisive sneer, I managed to perceive the direction from where it traveled.
The issue at hand became what to do with the native. We entered hostile relations. Once those conditions were met, military protocols were in effect. Casualties were expected.
I would pray for his soul.
My fears for this mission were being realized.
§
This wasn’t how this was meant to be, but this was the only way it could end.
§
They dubbed the encampment Melancholia as the cyan sphere of the gas giant they orbited filled the sky. The name had more of a ring to it than its designation, CFBDSIR2149. The crew cleared a space for this camp along a crest overlooking a lake. Hastily constructed sheds broken down from the self-contained modular sections of the supply shuttles surrounded a central fire. Test batches of Terran agriculture grew outside our camp, green sprouts rising from dark earth. A thick grove of trees, lush with leaves the span of an arm’s breadth, encircled our site. A mist swept across the ground. I longed to take off my helmet and smell the foliage for myself, but that would’ve broken mission protocol. Once deployed to the field, infantry had to maintain preparedness at all times. I patrolled in my suit. I slept in my suit. I wept in my suit.
“Magnificent, isn’t it?” Novice Wesley Vadair pulled his blonde hair back into a ponytail. Three days of beard growth stubbled his long, angular face. His eyes squinted in an involuntary muscle spasm, but no one ever commented on his facial tick.
“What is, sir?” Novices were little more than glorified civilians, but he had mission command.
“The view. The potential. You can practically feel it on your skin. Well, I suppose you can’t.” He slapped my back in an alltoo-familiar way. Not that I felt it within the suit. He meant to convey a camaraderie we didn’t share. “Professional hazard, I suppose.”
He was already tap dancing on my last nerve. “Is this your first colony plant?”
“That obvious?”
“If I could detect excitement levels, your readings would redline.”
“Good. Excitement is contagious.” Novice Vidair began walking, waving an invitation to join him.
“Then, it’s a blessing I’m in this suit, sir.”
“I welcome your cynicism. I’ll win you over, you’ll see. I’m going to do things differently than other colonies. My dad was a planter. I grew up in a colony like this, so it’s in my blood.”
“Familial hazard, I suppose.”
“See? We’re going to get along great, you’ll see. This colony won’t be burdened with dogma. It will be more about community …”
The novice went on to describe his vision, sprinkling it with all of the popular jargon and buzzwords of the day. Community. Conversations. Authenticity. But I knew this story would end the way it always did.
My parents were the vanguard of “indigenous leaders” novices aimed to raise up. They were killed in their colony. I forgave their murderers. At their funeral, I mouthed my prayer over and over. “They know not what they did.”
Other indigenous leaders took me in and raised me. Then I witnessed how such colonies worked from the other side. Coming into our neighborhood, planters demanded that we act like them, speak like us, until there was little left of us, in order to receive their gospel. Eventually, their colony plants dotted the land like grave markers.
I joined the Service of the Order on my sixteenth birthday.
“What do you think?” The novice drew me back to full attention.
“Permission to speak freely?”
“I’ve heard it before. If you didn’t believe that, you wouldn’t be a planter. But planting is what it always is.”
“What is that?” the novice asked.
“A wealthy culture sending out well-intentioned missionaries using the gospel to impose themselves on indigenous cultures to create satellites of themselves.”
“You make us sound like … cultural bullies.”
“It’s a push or be pushed universe, sir.”
“And what’s your role in this process?”
“I’m your pusher.”
I followed Novice Vidair from the settlement into the valley. He spouted the right words, but I had the evidence of history. My own history. Once in the Service, the Order selected me for Jesuit Training School, officer candidacy. I faced grueling studies in advanced mathematics, Latin (because all alien cultures need to be fluent in languages long dead on Terra), stellar cartography, astrobiology, logistics, strategy, game theory, and tactics. Part of me suspected the reason they took such a special interest in me was because I was reclaimed, a story of redemption they could point to. I was that rescued urchin from the streets with a tragic story. They could pat themselves on their backs for having saved me from the fate of my people. My parents.
“They know not what they did.”
The valley was a potential utopia, but I knew that our leaders back home saw only desirable natural resources and a strategically positioned planet. The gas giant, CFBDSIR2149, absorbed most of the radiation emitted by the solar system’s star, lowering the amount of UV radiation, so fewer mutations followed. It slowed evolution, leaving fixed gene patterns. Life took the hand it was dealt and would be required to play for a long time. Whatever life forms that dominated here were frozen midstep on the evolutionary ladder, but the transplanted flora and fauna displaced native species with ease.
“We’re almost there,” Novice Vidair said. “You can see me in action.”
“Sir?”
“What do you know of this planet?”
“It’s the moon of CFBDSIR2149 of the AB Doradus Moving Group. The planet itself is a gas giant,” I said.
“Yes, yes, a rogue planet ejected from its system, cradled by its neighbor. But what understanding do you have of life on Melancholia?”
“I …”
“Look over there. We call them Species A.”
A group of natives milled about a cave entrance. Long simian arms rippled with burly musculature. Thick brows ridged deep, inset eyes. A hulking brute stopped and sniffed about, his protruding jaw set and resolute as if he’d had a bad day out hunting. Picking up a stone, he hurled it in our direction. We didn’t budge. Satisfied, he joined the group of other males guarding the entrance.
“Aren’t they magnificent?” He spoke of them the way I spoke of my cat back home.
Despite their primitive appearance, they were more human than I felt. Stripped of my culture and my people, not much of me remained. I wore the emptiness that came with a life of obligation and duty without passion and meaning. My neural pathways had been re-routed to accommodate the cap. I could sync up with a computer in order to download information, language matrixes, and action protocols in an instant. My physiognomy recalibrated with each tour of duty, slowing my aging process and knitting tired muscles back together. I hated and resented the Order as much as I loved and needed it. The Order gave me life and purpose. The Service left me without scars, physical ones, that is.
“Do they … speak?” I asked. “It doesn’t appear that they have reached the level of development necessary to grasp the intricacies of the gospel.”
“Now who sounds elitist? I’m sure they have some sort of proto-language. If we can teach the gospel to children, we can reach these noble savages. We have an opportunity here, a people in the early stages of their development. With our help, their culture, yes, their entire civilization can be made in God’s image. We will avoid the mistakes of the past.”
§
The colony buzzed with excitement at the caravan’s approach. Taking point, I escorted Novice Vidair. Fraught with possible misunderstandings, first contact protocols were the most dangerous part of the mission. Novices were trained to be opening and welcoming, but service members were trained to watch for and deal with threats. My parents had paid the ultimate price for the short-sightedness and arrogance of novices.
A delegation of four rode beasts similar to hairless horses. Three of them were armed with spears and daggers tucked into the sashes girding them. The last of them wore a tunic of animal skin. This aliens’ musculature was smoother, closer to resembling ours. In my experience, the more a life form mirrored ours, the more nervous I became. Violence was our way, no matter where we found ourselves in the universe. My rifle, displayed but trained at the ground, showed that we had teeth. It helped establish trust as they knew what they were dealing with. Novice Vidair all but applauded with joy at their approach. With every step forward, the novice nipped at my heels. I placed my open hand in the center of his chest to scoot him behind me.
“Greetings,” the head of the processional said. “I am Majorae Ha’Asoon.”
As he dismounted, I processed the sounds through my linguistics database. My cap thrummed while reading and deciphering the intent of his words. I relayed the message’s content.
“I gathered as much. ‘Hello’ is ‘hello’ on any world.” The novice smirked at me with dismissive disdain.
“‘Hello’ is only ‘hello’ if not followed by weapon fire.” My cap continued to process their language. Given enough of a sample with my psi impressions monitoring the emotional intent of their words, the cap sped up, relaying translation in near-real time. I conveyed the greeting on behalf of the novice.
Majorae Ha’Asoon turned his back to me to address Novice Vidair directly. “On behalf of the Revisio, we welcome you. You are not of … here.”
“We are of a far-off planet called Earth,” Novice Vidair said, with the tone of a parent telling their child a fairy tale.
“You, too, can travel the stars?”
“Too? We detected no signs that you had such technology.” The novice glanced toward me to confirm. I nodded.
“We don’t require vessels to travel. We are star stuff. Flotsom carried in the void,” Majorae Ha’Asoon said.
“I don’t understand,” I said.
Majorae Ha’Asoon kept his back to me. “Yet, you recognize us?”
“You look like the natives, the ones we have called Species A. Except …” Novice Vidair said.
“Different. We, like you, are from another world. We, unlike you, have a natural claim to the Derthalen, as we have called them.”
“What claim?” I asked. The steel of my tone caused Majorae Ha’Asoon to shift to his side, keeping me within his peripheral gaze and making a smaller target of himself. His guards moved in predatory lurches. I swung my rifle to my side.
“The right of first. We are children of the blue planet.”
“We detected no life on CFBDSIR2149,” Novice Vidair said.
“Perhaps not life as you measure it. We are … what would you call us? A virus?”
“You look pretty big for a virus,” I said. My cap continued to whir, locked in a processing loop, as if under a cyber attack of some sort.
“Floating unicellular things. I suspect, as you would measure it, each strain you would consider an individual.”
“Some sort of communal intelligence,” Novice Wesley Vidair said.
“This virus business, I still don’t understand,” I said.
Majorae Ha’Asoon sighed. “It’s simple. We were carried here on the backs of asteroids. The Derthalen made for natural hosts. Understandable, since we are from the same star stuff. Once we take over, we mutate and spread. Each generation of the virus is a mutant strain of the last. The course of the infection has physical side effects, too.”
“I noticed. You appear smaller,” I said.
“No, you don’t understand. They … we have evolved.” Majorae Ha’Asoon gestured to his men. “Look around you. We’re not running around naked as beasts. Our form allows us a certain resonance with the minds of others.”
My cap tingled again. The Revisio’s “resonance” functioned as a low-level kind of telepathy. Each of them had the equivalent of my cap, though theirs operated naturally. Communicating with each other, gleaning information from us, interfering with my cap, it explained why they were so familiar with our ways. It also made them more of a threat.
“This is utterly fascinating. We’ve suspected and explored that potential in our own kind. There is so much we could learn from one another,” Novice Vidair said.
“We had hoped you were a peaceful party,” Majorae Ha’Asoon said.
“We are, I assure you.”
“You are well-armed for peace.” Majorae Ha’Asoon cast a sideways glance at me.
“Experience has taught us to be cautious when exploring new worlds and contacting new peoples. Not all missions end … diplomatically.”
I thought of my parents.
It was an Easter Sunday service. A group of “seekers” entered to learn more about the Scriptures. Seekers were my parents’ favorite kind of people to talk to as they were open, questioning, and thinkers. But the seekers were actually members of the tarik, a group of faithful believers from a competing sect, armed with an array of weapons: guns, break knives, ropes, and towels. Towels. Because they planned for a lot of blood. No one told me what happened, only that my parents were killed in the line of duty. But the full truth resided in the reports that I had access to once I joined the Service of the Order. The tarik read from the Scriptures before the assault began. They tied my parents’ hands and feet to the chairs.
“When you oppress the weak and poor of your own world, trampling their freedoms, there are consequences. For the oppressed and the oppressor,” the tarik leader said.
They video recorded their handiwork, which I have never watched despite its still being available in the archives. The power of the stark words in the reports, combined with my imagination, was enough: ritual slicing of orifices, disembowelment, emasculation, decapitation. One hundred thirty-two stab wounds total. You never know what you really believe until those beliefs are tested, in that moment when you put your life on the line for them. My parents believed in a loving and just God. And I forgave the killers. I forgave them.
“If you got business with them,” I leaned forward, letting him see the full bulk of my armament, “you handle it through me.”
“Stand down, lieutenant,” Novice Vidair said. “We’re all about meeting new friends.”
“Yes, heel,” Majorae Ha’Asoon said.
I regripped my rifle, doing my level best to resist the urge to cram the butt of it into his … its … inviting jaw.
“We would welcome a conversation of equals.” Majorae Ha’Asoon made a point of once again turning his back to me.
“Indeed. I look forward to it.”
Majorae Ha’Asoon bowed slightly then hopped on his beast. With a swirl of his hand, he led his men away.
“That went rather well,” Novice Vidair said.
“We need to prepare for an attack,” I said.
“I appreciate your hypervigilance, but that’s not the way to follow up a first contact.”
“Did we not hear the same thing? They are a colony, too. An entrenched one, from what I gathered. And we are a threat to them.”
“Lieutenant, nothing of the sort was said. Perhaps, we can establish a trade of some sort with them. Crops, maybe. We have much to offer them. And them us.”
“I know a scouting party when I see it. They were taking our measure.” I stared at him full on. “And make no mistake, I have killed enough people in the service of the Order to know how this story ends.”
“Then perhaps all of the blood on your hands has made you paranoid. We serve God’s will.”
That was the problem with many novices. They existed in a bubble of privilege. They were used to people deferring to them simply because of their special calling. People were done no favors by being raised up coddled. It made them soft. People needed to fight off things: germs, people, life. It builds you up. If you didn’t … I thought of Species A, the Derthalen as the Reviso called them. Not even allowed to name themselves.
“God’s will or not, this expedition will face troubles. My job’s to handle them.”
“You don’t understand, this could be the miracle from God that we were looking for.”
“Excuse me, sir?” I said, because “What the hell nonsense did you just spout?” would have gotten me court-martialed on the spot.
“You feared that Species A might not be cognizant enough to receive the Gospel.”
“A notion you dismissed.”
“Yes, before we learned of Species B. Perhaps we were meant to evangelize Species B in order to bring the message to both them and Species A.”
“But the Revisio are a virus.”
“Exactly. Imagine the Gospel spread by viral transmission. It would make our task so much easier and our stay shorter. The Lord’s ways are not our ways. Just like our ways have you obeying the orders given you. My orders.”
The Lord sure could bring out the stupid in some folks.
It all came down to the story we lived by. If the metaphor of that story could be changed, the individual could be changed. An ungodly people deemed less than human. Our people, holders of secret knowledge and power, could trade the Scriptures for land and resources. Evangelism encouraged by way of blaster rifles. My blaster rifle. The people traded one sin-soaked culture for another; forced to change their language, their names, their gods, their cultures. Suffer a slow death by assimilation. The story always ended the same way.
“Your … orders.” My set jaw began a slow grind, like I chewed on something distasteful. I peered down my nose at him. “Allow me to correct any misconceptions you may be laboring under: I’m not here to wipe your nose. I’m not here to diaper your behind. I don’t cook, clean, or sew. You think I sings and dances real good, too? You need to get out my face and let me do my job.”
Novice Vidair squinted at me. His facial tick intensified when he was angry. “Lieutenant, you are confined to your quarters for a day.”
“I thought I ‘always’ had permission to speak freely.”
“Until you cross the line. I give some people enough rope for them to hang themselves.”
His order probably saved my life.
§
This wasn’t how this was meant to be, but this was the only way it could end.
§
When I finally returned, they were all gone.
§
I tracked the trail of the attack party back to a series of looming structures, ominous shapes of deeper shadow in the night. I wasn’t even sure what my mission was anymore. I had ignored my action protocols. I hadn’t signaled the Templar Paton, not with a status update or report. I moved on instinct. I couldn’t call myself investigating the native culture, though the biomech sensors recorded and logged everything. Without knowing if my party was even alive, I couldn’t claim to be on a rescue mission. And if they were dead, the Order wasn’t about vengeance.
The Service, however, was all about God’s judgment.
Flexing my arm and wiggling my toes, I tested each extremity to make sure everything still worked. I craned my neck to each side, popping out the kings, certain that I should just name the knots in my shoulders since they accompanied me for so long. The pain focused me on the task at hand: I had bastards to kill. In Jesus’ name.
Having lost nearly an hour finding a suitable blaster rifle, I crouched behind a fallen tree. No breeze moved the leaves. I detected no sounds of birds or any other night life I had gotten used to; as if the structure’s very presence stilled all life to a respectful silence. The main building seemed carved from the very mountain itself. With its massive foundation and heavy fortifications, it could have been a temple or a citadel, the high arch of its entrance and formidable walls meant to convey a mixture of awe and intimidation.
Twin sentries patrolled the main archway. The entranceway lit by a series of torches, illuminating an area leading up to it that provided no cover. Even at full sprint I couldn’t cover that distance and subdue the guards without raising an alarm. I skulked through the dense forest, circling the castle. At its side, a rivulet emptied into the lake below. Perhaps it was simply an underground stream, or a natural sewage line, either way my heart stuttered at the prospect of wading through it to make my entrance.
The force of the water’s current slowed my progress, each lugubrious step an act of determined will. Steadying myself against each tunnel wall, the water rose past my thighs. My visor digitized my surroundings as much as it could through murky dimness. The lights on my biomech suit didn’t penetrate the pitch. The cramped space pressed in on all sides, with no way to measure when my journey would end or if my progress would be halted by watery death. But I kept walking. Faith buoyed my steps. I had to believe in something, have a hope to grasp onto. No amount of faith could still the apprehension that gripped me as the water lapped my helmet. I only had a few more steps before the water overtook me. I couldn’t help but rethink my plan. It made sense why this passage wasn’t well-guarded. Only a fool would chance this.
Water filled the entire passageway. The biomech suit continued to circulate air as the emergency supply automatically kicked in. A timer on my visual display counted down how many minutes of air I had left.
I continued to march deep within the compound. Scant seconds of air remained. Shafts of light stabbed the darkness ahead. I gulped one last breath of air. The passageway opened into a bay of sorts with a grate above me. I punched handholds into the wall to scale my way to the top. I bashed though the metal mesh and pulled myself up. The biomech suit was designed to augment its occupant’s efforts, but the work began with my own exertions. I collapsed, sprawled out along the floor while my re-breather unit replenished itself.
The room was a mechanical closet of sorts. Heat baked the room, a cauldron of molten metal rotated. Levers and switches cranked away. The way the cauldron revolved, its contents’ heat could be used to warm the complex or be hurled as a distance weapon. I left it for the structural engineers aboard the Templar Paton to puzzle out. The floor was connected to the walls, rigged to fall into the antechamber below in case of emergency. Advanced thinking. It began to make sense, even to my simple infantry mind. The Revisio, no matter how advanced, how evolved, couldn’t just drop tech into this world. Life on their own planet precluded them from building anything. To build they had to have, well, thumbs. They were essentially advanced minds. They may have evolved the Derthalen, but it would take a while to get their technology to the point where they’d have the tools necessary to advance their world. But it wouldn’t take long. Within a generation or two, they’d rival us. I could only imagine what they’d do on our world with our tools and technology.
Scrounging a loose bolt, I tossed it against the door. I listened for a few moments before I retrieved it and threw it again. A guard opened the door. I expected as much. It stood watch against anyone going into the room, not coming out. I yanked him inside. Another soul I would have to pray for. Later.
Flickering pools of amber from torches created puddles of shadow throughout the long hallway. The biomech wasn’t designed with indoor stealth in mind; however, it was built to carry armaments. I crept along the shadows as best I could, setting a charge as I went, praying none of the natives decided to turn down this way. I followed the sounds of garrulous chatter and laid two more charges. I may have lacked Samson’s strength, but blowing a support wall would collapse a room or two if it came to that. I hoped my escape wouldn’t come to another trek through the crawlspace. I took a measured breath then plunged into the room.
The room ran the length of a banquet hall, ringed by long tables. Behind them, male and female Revisio wore simple tunics of animal skins. In the center of the room, game roasted on spits. Musicians played in the corner while two women danced. Guards stood at attention by each table. My entrance halted the revelry. I fired once above Majorae Ha’Asoon’s head. My blaster scorched the wall before I trained my weapon on the leader. “Where are my people?”
“Is this more of your diplomacy?” Majorae Ha’Asoon sipped from a tall cup, unflustered.
“You have our diplomat. I, on the other hand, am not …”
“… very diplomatic. Do they not have manners on your home planet? You barge into our great hall uninvited and accuse us in our home.”
“Our rules of etiquette don’t extend to those who lay siege to a peaceful camp, destroy our property, and make off with our people.”
“You talk to us of peace? You come to this world, armed, with no regard for our plants and animals. You comport yourselves in the way of your world, imposing them on ours.”
“As you have with the Derthalen?”
“This is our moon. Our dominion.”
“I’ll ask one last time, where are my people?”
“We have … exchanged ideas. They have been welcomed into our tribe. There have been some … complications.”
“They better be unharmed.”
Majorae Ha’Asoon nodded, and a member of his guard departed. The others shifted positions, not grouping to surround me, but taking up more defensive postures. I eyed the nearest exit. Majorae Ha’Asoon’s attention focused on my weapon, studying my suit with the glint of greed in his eyes.
The guard led Novice Vidair to the area just before Majorae Ha’Asoon. The novice averted his gaze, studying the ground. It had been not even half a day since the attack, but the novice’s belly distended. His face gaunt, flushed with a grayish pallor, his eyelids had swollen shut. Wizened fingers dug into emaciated arms, scratching at the red splotches that ran along them.
“Are you okay, Novice Vidair?” I asked.
“They infected us.” He upturned his hands. Maroon pustules blossomed on his palms like tumescent stigmata. When his eye spasmed, the muscle contraction tightened his entire face.
“We didn’t know what effect our introduction would have on your kind,” Majorae Ha’Asoon said.
“You mean, as you force yourself on us,” I said.
“Your kind no longer embraces change.”
The full implications of what he intimated settled in. Perhaps we had evolved as far as we were able. I swept the room with my rifle, stilling the slow encroachment of the guards. Their movements were subtle, professional. “We resist you.”
“We’re the future. We build. We create. We define. We have no need of your God. Or your Order. We have studied your Scriptures, and one ‘truth’ intrigues us.” Majorae Ha’Asoon returned to his meal. He waved his knife about, light glimmering from its edge. “Your chosen people were called to wipe out nations and peoples before them. That is where we find ourselves, one story destroying the one that came before it. That is the ‘gospel’ message you have brought us.”
I watched the glint from the knife. And thought of my parents.
The first shot of my blaster burned a fist-sized hole in the center of Majorae Ha’Asoon’s chest. My next shot took off a quarter of the nearest guard’s head. I fired and fired, backing toward Novice Vidair. Before I could turn to shove him toward an exit, he leapt on my back.
“Too late for us.” His fists slammed into my neck attempting to divorce my head from my body. My biomech suit shuddered with the impact of his unanticipated strength. “We are joined. Not one of them. No longer us. We order you to join us.”
I reached around and flung him from me as if tearing off a shirt I no longer wanted. Veins thickened and bulged along his neck. Peering with overly vesseled eyes, blood trailed from their corners like thick tears. He raked fingers across my suit, desperate to open a gash.
I raced down the corridor, pursued by a mad clamor of hoots and cries as the guards were let loose from their leashes. Backtracking to the room I entered from, I barred the door and disabled the room-dropping mechanism. My people had been biologically compromised by a hostile contagion. The Revisio had genocidal intent toward the Derthalen. Nothing remained of this mission except judgment protocols.
“They know not what they did.”
I placed my remaining charges around the massive cauldron. Synchronizing the timers, I gave myself a thirty-second window. I no longer cared if that allowed me enough time. God would see me through if I was meant to labor on. I dove for the grated opening into the waiting water. The torrent whooshed me along, flushing me from the compound like so much unwanted waste. The vibrations of the explosion rattled the passageway. I prayed the rough tunnel’s integrity would hold, as the only death I imagined worse than drowning was being buried alive while I drowned.
The hillside shook, its contraction excreting me toward the lake. I dug my biomech enhanced hands into the earth until I came to a halt. The remains of the building collapsed on itself. I doubted there would be any survivors, but I would wait. Each step became more difficult as the extensive damage to my biomech suit caused power loss. Eventually, it would be inoperable. I would salvage what I could, but I needed to send one final report. With my suit compromised and the vector of the Revisio’s transmission unclear, I submitted myself and this world as under bioquarantine.
From the cover of forest undergrowth, I could study Species A, the Derthalen. A pod of them groomed one another, the adults sheltering the young. No one escaped agents of change. If God was already at work in their culture, as we purport to believe, then these people have earned the right to find their own way.
As have I.