Dandelions: Chapter 4 of 9
The dawn was turning the beaten parking lot and the east facade of the ancient shopping mall a molten coral by six a.m. Figures were beginning to move inside the building's lower level, and wafting from the inside was the faint scent of cooking grease as Malcolm prepared the day's breakfast. From the ramp that led down below the lot and building to the parking garage, the rattles of Gerald and Sherry's efforts on the mecha was already starting. When operations began again, having the Cyclones working at top form was a major priority. The problem was that the population had now grown to thirty-nine, which obviously was far more than the arsenal of eighteen Cyclones that the Elms core had arrived here with, even despite any equipment the arrivees came with.
More mecha had been procured through some adept wheeling and dealing with the Terre Haute underground and careful bargaining with their load of goods, but not all of them had been in very good shape. Furthermore, most of them were the old-line variety of the first Invid occupation that could run only on gasoline or Protoculture, the former which the group did not have in any large amount and the latter which was a veritable magnet for Invid. While they didn't want to use them, the logic was that repaired, they could make wonderful bartering material. So Sherry and Gerald had elected themselves to fix them all in preparation for the fights that had to come.
The best news of the two months since their arrival was that down south, below the old university campus, a cache of Icarus Mission supplies had been found. Although it had been a year since the LaGrange Massacre had put an end to the equipment drops the Icarus had executed, the mecha were in excellent condition, and gave them an additional fifteen Cyclones to work with, among them a much-needed Samson. This brought the deficit to only six, which was not quite as dire.
However, the two had their work cut out for them.
To the east, in the yellowing light of the rising sun, a plume of dust rose, turning copper in the glow.
Facing the orange misty tail, outside the east lower entrance on the bench, a young woman in battered REF coveralls sat, the sun turning her porcelain features into fire to match with her long hair and wide eyes.
Her face was carefully immobile, her eyes fixed on the disappearing dust trail until a voice inside called her within.
oooooooooooooooooooo
Malcolm cracked the shell of the egg and laid it into the pan, the white and unbroken yolk sizzling as it contacted the grease. He looked over his shoulder to Gwen. The air was already stifling inside the revamped store which served as the Elms kitchen.
"You can start in on making the pancakes if you like. We're going to need about seventy or about. Gerald eats enough for the rest of them." Silently, Gwen nodded and turned to get the flour and butter. She passed a couple of the new arrivals whom Malcolm had also conscripted, returning with a tupperware bowl, and began the process of mixing the ingredients up. Her continued silence was not unnoticed by Malcolm.
"You okay?"
"Yeah. Just hot." She brushed damp-dark hair out of her eyes and bent to her work, her gaze averted. Eventually, with the same precision as she used in her marksmanship, she carefully poured out several identical-sized pancakes onto the searing griddle. Malcolm concentrated on the eggs but kept her within the corner of his eye as he did so. The interior was a constant din of frying foods, clattering dishware, conversation, and the blast of an old Pink Floyd CD playing in the background. It was difficult to converse, but finally Malcolm felt he had to try and break the frosty wall Rutherford had erected around herself.
"You're pissed because they took Mandy and not you, aren't you?"
She jerked up her head, her eyes simmering, then bent it back down. "'S'none of your business, Malcolm. Anyway, I had kitchen duty slated for this week."
"Kid's not that great a fighter yet. She's going to be better off hiding later, so I s'pose she may as well get her part done while she can. It's nothing against you, Gwen."
She wrinkled her nose--admittedly a very delicate and pretty nose, Malcolm thought to himself. The look in her eyes, however, was anything but.
Oh-oh, Malcolm thought. She doesn't like the mention.
Gerald stomped in then, running a hand though his sweat-damp brown mop. "When d'you think it's going to be done?"
Malcolm groaned. "Keep a leash on the stomach, will you? It's not going to be for another thirty minutes at least. What's our wonderful leader have planned for the day?"
The big man snorted. "Mentioned something along the line of rewiring the security systems to tighten surveillance of the area we're living in. Plus he asked me and Sherry to try to fine-tune the reception in the communications array. You guys, I'm not as sure. I think a supply run to Rantoul is in order for Gwen and Miranda, though, and a tatical review on the current occupation situation for the rest of us in preparation for our return to strikes."
"Oh, fine," Gwen muttered. She gave a vicious slosh to the batter, splashing some onto the heating coils.
Malcolm wrinkled his nose as the smoke wafted up. "What's eating at you?"
Gerald snickered. "Oh, the fact that Loverboy's out where she can't back him into a--oouufff!"
Gwen's foot rocked back down from its lash into Gerald's stomach as the three other cooks' heads whipped up in shock. "Shut up," she hissed, as he curled up in pain. The fair skin was shifting from dead white to red and back, and she was breathing far too hard. "Shut the hell up or by God I'll nail you lower, I swear."
"Gwen!" Malcolm yelped. He tried to grab her arm, but her foot came whipping back and he thought better of it. Suddenly she hopped helplessly on one foot, as the other--the offending foot--was grabbed in a viselike grip.
Gerald's eyes were almost white with fury. For a second, Gwen looked down, and her own affront and frustration drained away in the heat of his rage. He did not seem--human.
Suddenly, he whipped his head against the floor with a bonk. He winced, and his eyes, when they opened again, were sane.
"God fucking damn, woman, that hurt."
Malcolm could only look at the two and realize that there seemed to be things at work that he could not see and probably never would.
"Are you two gonna...?"
Gwen hugged herself. "No. Nah. Don't tell the Lieutenant. Sorry, Gerald. But if you make fun of me like that again--"
Gerald grunted, hauling himself to his feet. "Christ, you've got a foot like an anvil."
Malcolm looked over to the others. "You didn't see this." There were vigorous nods.
Now we're fighting ourselves. We're screwed. Malcolm continued with his eggs and felt Gerald leave and Gwen resume cooking with a leaden heart.
If Gwen's gonna go resent Mandy for 'taking' Kev away, and Gerald's going to do that, we're in deep shit. If it spreads to the rest, we ought to just advertise ourself to the nearest hive and say 'Come and Get It!'...
And with the way Gerald gets sometime...Jesus, that was only the tip of the iceberg. Sometimes I wonder--he really what he says he is?
oooooooooooooooooooo
It was much later.
It was somewhere in that indefinite portion between late night and early morning, when the full moon high overhead blanched the mall and the land around to a greasy silvered blue-black, the world alive with crickets and the occasional rasping cry of a nighthawk fluttering in the star-splattered skies. The night was filled with the life-drenched, timeless silence unique to spring.
Overhead, the slowly moving sparks of the Invid Orbital Hives drifted in malevolent counterpoint, nearly drowned out by the lunar radiance.
It was far past normal curfew for the Elms, but still inside, the flicker of a lantern could be seen as the sentries on duty continued their endless vigilance against attack. Someone with sharp eyes could also see the occasional movement of a figure, still up after all this time, and a fitful light left on within.
More than a quarter-mile away, completely contemptuous of the possibility of ambush, a small figure half-sat, half-crouched on a rise in the ground, surrounded by prairie growth and young trees, looking out over the direction of the forest and the ruined city. The soft night breeze lifted hair untrimmed and tangled, the moonlight turning it to platinum and glinting off the metal of cyclone armor. Barely over the breeze, an observer might have heard soft, trembling sobs.
Amanda Pierson sat, her eyes staring ahead unseeingly, her hands constantly wringing and rubbing themselves, her entire frame shuddering as to break apart.
Please. Tell me it never happened. Please tell me it can't have happened...
oooooooooooooooooooo
They had made good time out of base, and by eight a.m. they were twenty miles away, deep into the forests of the old Indiana border. Ulm said the environment here was as good as any for deer and rabbit hunting, and he was planning on getting some fish in as well.
"Oh course, it's going to be non-radioactive fish. Dennis is gonna love that." Kevin snickered, his Ferret taking the bumps with ease. "Doesn't have to worry about waking up with extra limbs anymore."
Matthew groaned and tried to hit him. Kevin cheerfully veered his Cyclone out of the way.
"Yeah, but we need more along the lines of venison and whatnot. The problem with this time of year's going to be that we need to identify and avoid the does. Bound to have fawns with them." Ulm shrugged. "I just don't like the idea of killing deer period."
Mandy had to agree. While like any other person growing up in a rural area post-Rain she had had to deal with plucking chickens and help with butchering hogs, they were not tasks she had ever liked. Sometimes she wished she had been born back in the last century when one could get it off a shelf.
Matthew clunked along the old, shattered pavement of the roadway, the carrier jouncing awkwardly behind him with its cargo of a battery-operated freezer, their intended method of getting the kills back home in the May heat without their spoiling. Fortunately the Super Saber was not complaining about the extra weight, and the weather promised to be delightful. All three travelers had their jackets and armor off and were feeling the wind of their passage with relish. Amanda readjusted her goggles and raked her hair back, feeling it whip around in tangles where it hadn't been braided to keep out of her face.
Even over the engine rumble, she began to pick up a discordant noise. Eyes widening in horror, she realized what it was.
"Oh, shit, Matthew. Stop it! Not again!"
"Stop what?"
Amanda cringed as a discordant yowl destroyed the pastoral mood.
"Immanuel Kant was a real pissant who was very rarely stable,
Heidigger, Heidigger was a boozy beggar who could think you under the
table,
David Hume could out-consume Shopenhauer and Hegel
And Wittgenstein was a beery swine who was just as shloshed as Shlegel..."
It was a matter of common knowledge among the Elms that compared to all the horrific singers known to mankind, Kevin O'Shea could make them sound good. Amanda howled in theatrical pain as with a free arm swinging and his bright green jacket waving at the end of it like a demented pennant, he broke into the chorus.
"There's nothing Neitzche couldn't teach ya about the raisng of the wrist,
Socrates himself was permanently pissed..."
"Kevin, shuddup!" Mandy yelled at him. He stuck his tongue out and continued in the mistaken belief that volume would make up for talent.
"John Stuart Mill of his own free will
on half a pint of shandy was particularly ill
Plato they say could stick it away
half a pint of whiskey every day
Aristotle, Aristotle was a bugger for the bottle
Hobbes was fond of his dram
And Rene Descartes was a drunken fart
'I drink therefore I am!'
Yes Socrates himself is particularly missed
A lovely little thinker but a bugger when he's pissed!"
There was a blissful silence at the end.
"Is it over?" Mandy asked. Matthew hunched over his Cyclone, shaking in silent hilarity. "That--that was horrible. Gee, Lieutenant, glad you're laughing."
"N-never mind." Ulm gulped, then burst out hooting again. "I've got to make him stop watching those tapes at one in the morning," he said, sniffling.
"And getting into the liquor store, too. There was a whole liter bottle of vodka missing last week."
Ulm wiped his eyes, replaced the goggles, and took a bounce from the road. "No, in my opinon, I think that was Sherry who stole that."
"Then what's gonna explain the fact that this idiot was wandering around last Saturday, smelling like a still and trying to do the Agincourt speech from Henry V? Miranda spent two days making me read that, and I don't think Henry'd do it hanging over the bannister, slobbering and--and unable to remember the next line."
"Ah, but I stole the Smirnoff's from her," Kevin interjected smugly, pulling up behind her and reaching over to swat her on the rear. There was a momentary tussle before he got away, waggling his eyebrows. She glared. "Interesting experience, but I guess I could have done without barfing up lunch the following day. Personally, I think the Branagh version was better."
"Din'cha read it?"
"Oh yeah; that and Comedy of Errors, Midsummer Night's Dream, Romeo and Juliet, you name it. '39 was a great reading year for me."
"Then the Invid blew my library up. Damn, well, such is life." Matthew commented, dragging behind.
"A library?" Amanda said in astonishment. "A personal library?"
Matthew shrugged. "Managed to save it after the Second Robotech War. It wasn't much, really. Lots of Shakespeare."
"When do we stop?" Kevin asked him.
"Mmmf. Another mile or so. We're going to have to walk at least another mile in order to find a spot that hasn't been disturbed by our passage before we start in on the hunting."
"Or disturbed by that noise Kevin's been making. Yuch."
"That wasn't noise!" Kevin complained.
"Yeah, and I'm the Invid Regis. The only thing worse might have been you doing the 'Lumberjack Song.'"
"Hmmm..."
"Don't even think it."
Ulm rubbed his bearded chin, his eyes sparkling. "Yep, definitely time for you to boycott Live At the Hollywood Bowl, I'd say."
Kevin looked martyred.
oooooooooooooooooooo
Amanda lay on her belly in the tall grass, barely able to see over the top and into the small meadow they'd staked out. The lieutenant was lying next to her, both of their faces smeared with mottled greasepaint and feeling sticky and hot in the May sun. The camoflauging musk smelt terrible, but Ulm had said it was second-to-none for hiding human scent. They had been this way for the past half hour, their hunting rifles held before them in a ready position.
Above them, a killdeer cried. There was no other signs of life in the area.
Suddenly Matthew tensed. He carefully raised the comset to his ear and listened to the barely audible noise coming out of it. He nodded, whispered an affirmative, then cut the connection. He raised his index finger so Mandy could see.
Kevin had managed to locate a buck, and was preparing to flush it towards them.
Matthew carefully rose to his knees, followed by Amanda, guns raised.
Suddenly, a crack rang out, and Ulm and Mandy clicked off the safeties on their weapons. Almost before it was done, a brown form exploded out of the woods margin at them.
Amanda got a fragmentary vision of flashing, delicate hooves, small velveted antlers, and a snorting, foam-flecked black muzzle as her perception narrowed and she tracked the onrushing body with the gunsight. There was an isolate, crystalline moment of unity, then her finger contracted on the trigger.
Boom.
Her body jerked as it absorbed the kickback, then the animal twisted and plunged toward the ground as if diving. There was a stunning silence, and the human predator became sentient once more.
Even as they were less than halfway toward where the buck had fallen, Kevin had made his way out of the woods. He managed to reach them as Amanda was staring down at her trophy.
The bullet had taken it in the heart, killing it instantly. The huge eyes were open, not having yet glazed over in death, and a little trickle of blood had mixed with the foam still on its muzzle. It had been a young animal, probably less than two years old. Amanda tried to look for any sense of triumph in her accomplishment and only felt a little grayness.
Kevin knelt and put his hand on the dead animal's head, then inspected the bullet's entry hole. "Good shot, Mandy," he finally said.
"Yeh, I suppose it was." She rubbed at her forehead, getting a smear of gray-green on her fingers. "Guess we need to go butcher it now."
"And get it back to the freezer," Ulm said. "We seem to be making pretty good progress."
oooooooooooooooooooo
Somewhere in the woods, something whirred.
A large bundle of what looked like a bird's nest in the forest canopy shivered, then spat forth a flexible tube, on the top of which pivoted a red glowing sensor, staring blankly.
As it did four times every twenty-four hours, it pivoted on search, doing a routine scan of the area. Suddenly it halted, clicking and focusing in a specific area, where it saw movement of a particular kind.
It stayed that way for a long time, attention on that movement, the tube supporting the sensor array occasionally swaying.
Soon, the rest of the bundle shuddered.
oooooooooooooooooooo
Amanda tried to wipe her bloody hands off on the ground with little success. The butchering was an especially messy business, and she had not especially enjoyed watching the carcass hang by its hind legs in order to bleed it. The remainng business of viscera, skinning, quartering and storing she had liked even less. Although it was now near lunchtime, she had little appetite.
Ulm walked over to her. "You okay?"
"Yeah," she said shortly.
Ulm snorted. "I don't think so. You've been green the whole time." He poured some of the water supply over her hands to get the blood off. "Sorry," he said, apologetically. "I didn't know you were squeamish about it,
or I've--"
Mandy shook her head. "No, it isn't that, really. I'm a country girl, remember? Just that--" she made a face.
"What?"
"Well, it sounds stupid, but what's the difference between the Invid and us, if we both go around killing things? I don't feel much better about doing this and what the Invid are doing."
Ulm sighed. "What's the difference indeed. Welcome to moral debating, hon. If I had an easy answer to that I'd tell you right off. Do you still want to help?"
"Yeah...I guess so. Sorry."
The Elms leader gave her a quick-one armed hug. "Must've been all that philosphy Miranda tries to stuff into your noggin."
"Where's Kevin?"
"Doing his lunchtime meditation thing. Don't bug him. He likes some peace of mind, believe it or not."
"Hmm. Are there any more of those muffins Malcolm stocked us with around?"
"I think so."
oooooooooooooooooooo
The twigs were almost completely shaken off onto the ground by now. What they revealed hung there on the branch for a minute, then began to silently drop.
oooooooooooooooooooo
Kevin knelt on a little rise twenty feet away, his eyes closed and his breathing slowed. Although the fresh breeze occasionally lifted the shoulder-length black hair underneath his headband and ruffled through his black shirt, his expression was completely blank, and for once, at peace. When the torrent of his usual facial expressiveness was switched off, the fine features were undeniably attractive. His hands, limp on his green-denimed thighs, still had traces of deer blood under their fingernails. He'd been that way for over five minutes now. Zazen was good at stilling qualms of doubt, the inner voices of worry that tagged the trails of so many people these particular days.
He let out a deep breath, and then abruptly, his eyes flew open, dilated in worry. Was it his imagination he'd heard something out of the ordinary, or wasn't it?...
Kevin O'Shea had not spent almost six years alive in combat doubting his senses.
oooooooooooooooooooo
Mandy almost bit through her muffin and her tongue, when Kevin abruptly caromed up from his position and said suddenly, "Get your armor on."
"What? Are you--"
"Get it on!" he nearly shouted. Matthew looked up, eyes wide, then dove for his Super Saber. Amanda never doubted Ulm's judgement, and she followed suit.
"Forget the damned undersuit, you don't need it!" Kevin snarled as she fumbled for it, then threw the outer armor at her. She slammed it on, but even as she was finishing, Kevin was already fully armored and straddling the Ferret and Ulm had disconnected the trailer from the Saber. Mandy went for her Forager too, and with the two men waited, engines off.
Three minutes passed, and nothing happened.
Mandy was taking in a breath to second-guess Kevin's alarm. She was tugging at her braid, rolling her eyes, and feeling quite annoyed about the entire situation.
Kevin drew in an abrupt breath, and gasped, his voice so distorted with fear that it wasn't recognizable: "Oh sh--"
And then horror itself was flying straight at them.
Mandy was screaming her head off, suddenly reliving her nightmare flight from the Enforcer, but this was a thousand times worse. She jammed on the ignition and reversed like the damned.
Oh, my GOD!!!
The--thing coming at them was dull gray, a maniac's dream of jointed tentacles snapping, ended with pincers, blunt tips and vicious prongs at their free ends and ended on the other in a bulbous body about four feet long and two feet wide, hovering off the ground as it rushed toward them in dead silence. Out of the center of the body a nozzle-like stalk swayed, ended in the characteristic red sensor eye of Invid mecha.
One of the tentacles at either end, flattened and ended with a spiked bulb so that it looked like a mutant tapeworm, whipped about and aimed directly at Amanda. She slammed on the power, her hair rising on the back of her neck as the huge electric bolt the spike suddenly spat grounded itself where she had been a fraction of a second earlier.
"Turn!" Ulm was roaring over the com net. "Turn and get the hell out of here!"
Although it was one of the hardest things she had ever done to turn her back on the tentacled monstrosity, Amanda complied and attempted the Earth's most extreme 180, her knee scraping the ground and the ceramic armor raising sparks as she did so. She caught a fragmented glimpse of Ulm's and O'Shea's brown and green mecha in front of her, and then beside her as she poured on the momentum.
"What was that?" she screamed.
"That was a Kraken Inorganic!" Ulm panted over the net. "It's a personnel hunter/killer unit. Silent and damned hard to locate. If Kevin hadn't heard it coming through the brush, we'd've been charbroil by now!"
"Let's get out of here!"
"No can do!" Kevin answered. "Love to, but that thing has a lock on our energy output signals now, even fusion. It won't quit following us--you want to bring that home with us?"
"What are we going to do?" Amanda cried.
"The only thing we can do--destroy it, before it gets us!"
Amanda fought down her fear, tried to rationalize how to get rid of the terror following them, and failed. "How?"
"Good question, " Ulm muttered. Her heart, already overtaxed, plummeted.
"We're dead we're dead we're dead..." she chanted in a horrified litany.
"--like hell we are!" Kevin growled. "Matthew, I've got an idea. Remember a couple years ago, when we met some of the James Gang? They were attacked by
one and lived."
"Yeah--" Ulm said. "Are you planning to do what they did?"
O'Shea grunted an affirmative.
"You're going to get your ass killed!"
"It's a chance, dammit! The Ferret's the fastest Cyclone here! I turn on the protoculture engine and lead in on in a circle, you two wait for me to come back around, and you waste it with the missiles. Right?"
"Oh God... Kevin?"
Kevin's voice dropped. "Yeah, Matt?"
"If you don't make it, and we do...it--was good to know you."
Kevin sighed. "Yeah, you too. Mandy...I'm sorry."
"Wait!" she shouted at him.
"I can't! It'll be on us in a minute! Meet me back at the campsite, in ten minutes!"
"Turn off the road, Mandy!" Ulm ordered. "Now!"
He flung the Super Saber off the road, and Amanda followed, crashing into the underbrush.
At that same moment, the characteristic noise of Kevin's fusion engine quit, replaced by the thrum of the protoculture drive. It was a sound Amanda had only heard a few times before among the protoculture-paranoid Elms, during Cyclone-pilot practice.
She shut off the engine along with Ulm, and watched the retreating Ferret. Suddenly, it exploded foward with power it did not have with only fusion propulsion, broadcasting a spectacular radiation as it did so. It was lost in a second.
"Get down!" Ulm hissed.
They dove; in seconds a shadow passed overhead, writhing a Medusa's head of tentacles. It rushed by, following the magnet of O'Shea's output.
A silent eternity passed, then Ulm whispered. "It's taken the bait. It's so busy concentrating on Kevin's engines it won't notice ours on fusion. We've got to get back to the site as soon as possible to prepare the ambush."
Please be okay, Amanda thought. I can't lose you too...
oooooooooooooooooooo
Come on, you gruesome son of a bitch....
Kevin could feel the wind ripping through his unprotected midsection and through the hair trailing out of the helmet as he raced down the ancient highway at full speed, free of the handicap of fusion. He glanced behind him; the Inorganic was hot on his trail, having partially retracted its tentacles for speed. However, it wasn't as fast as he over a flat surface. Good...
Now if he could get enough of a lead-time over the thing, it would be more difficult for it to catch up with him once he got into the trees: there the Kraken would have an advantage. Its design seemed to have been made for close quarter ambush in crowded environments.
My, they've definitely gotten creative recently, haven't they?
Of course, it already had some advantages; unlike him, it wouldn't grow tired, it had no sense of self-preservation, it had no worries about damaging itself, it was remorselessly accurate, and it would never, ever give up.
The only good thing about the entire situation was that he could probably blast the protoculture output quite a lot without getting any extra attention. If the Invid had installed such an Inorganic here, they were either confident it could take care of any disturbances by itself or they didn't come by very often and put this here instead. Well, count your blessings and all that...
He found the trail he was looking for at last. Engines screaming, he went off the road so hard he was actually airborne for a second and came down with a crash, the shocks taking it with enough force to break necks. He went limp in order to take the shock, then crouched over the Ferret like a jockey, urging it on to maximum speed.
A patch of underbrush to his side evaporated, and then he was past.
Shit!
He dared a look down at his watch. Four minutes had passed.
I've got to give them enough time to get set up...
He began to weave, in order to keep the Kraken's targeting system from getting a fix on him, gritting his teeth as he did so. He was, in rough relation, about northwest of where the campsite was supposed to be. He was doing fine so far, but the next part was the extremely dangerous section--he would have to go into the woods itself. He would need every bit of piloting skill he had in order to make it though--even if the Kraken didn't fry or electrocute him, he could end up wrapped around a tree, which would make him every bit as dead as if the Inorganic had done the honors, and it was at any rate its core objective. It would no longer need to worry about him...
And then would go after Matt and Mandy...
NO! He swallowed at the thought and accelerated as much as he dared.
He really wished he'd never seen that old movie with the speeders and the primeval woods.
Third arc, here we go...
Then the underbrush was shattering against his bright green armor, and the scent of the forest clashed with the sour stink of fear and sweat that was reaching him even in extremity. Gouts of mulch rained behind him as the Ferret's wheels dug into the loam. He narrowly escaped crashing against a silver maple only to nearly wipe out against a black oak still scarred with the fires resulting from the Rain of Death...he had to slow down.
His left hand twisted slickly against the clutch as he rutted in a large turn against the soft earth, veering madly against the onrushing black trunks, balancing on the very edge of losing control. His momentum sailed him over a narrow creek and landed him on the far side. Fortunately, here in the shade the underbrush was lighter and less apt to be an obstruction. He snapped over a sapling, only to have another blast sear into a trunk.
Oh, fuck, it's gaining on me! Where am I? Moaning, Kevin silently invoked the deities of several pantheons as he tried to remember on what leg of this hellish race he was on. If he had forgotten the immediate lay of the land, he was very shortly dead... The fine hairs on his hands rose as electricity crackled across his armor--too, too close.
Then bushes smacked against him again, and he was out in the open in a meadow.
Yes! He jammed the throttle as far open as it would go, shooting across the grass as though catapulted. He dared a glance behind him, and saw the hole he had made widen further as the Kraken's body hurtled through it after him across the same clearing they had shot a deer in only two-and-a-half hours ago. Two minutes late already for the rondezvous, two minutes of infinity.
Insects splattered against his faceplate and his armor as he plunged back into the woods again, but this time he knew where the openings were, and exactly where he was going. Kevin's teeth were bared in a primeval grimace as he began the last and most terrible arc, the one that would decide his fate and two other people's with him.
He opened the communication link and managed, "Here I come--it's right after me. Three minutes ETA. Godspeed."
He let go of the clutch and left no room left in his mind other than for survival, not even prayers.
oooooooooooooooooooo
"Here he comes! Get ready!"
The two Battloid suits crouched, tan and olive-green. Mandy could barely think, her mouth dust-dry, her pulse beating in her throat and temples. This quarter hour had seemed to stretch in agonizing leaps and bounds and yet seemed only momentary.
"You take this side of the clearing," Ulm advised. "I'll take the other. He's going to be coming in from the east from all appearances. Go for the eye if you can't get the main body. If you can't get that, try those flat tentacles at either end. Good luck, hon."
"You too, Matt." They took their positions, Matthew finishing fitting the rifle stock to his H-90 for full damage capacity. Then there was only the wait.
And you too, Kevin...
Amanda heard it, a low thrum in the suddenly deathly quiet woods, growing rapidly in volume. Quietly, she armed the GR-103 launchers and their payload of armor-piercers.
The thrum built to a roar.
Amanda tensed.
Then a green shape erupted from the eastern end, wheels blurring for all they had, the armored form on top flattened as though all Hell rode on his heels.
Amanda rocketed to her feet, shouting out the spoken codes to ready the missiles for launch.
And Hell itself exploded into the clearing, a nightmare of tubes lashing and aiming for the prey barely five yards ahead of it. Amanda targeted the staring red eye and the organic gray body, hating in that split second it and everything it stood for.
"FIRE!" she shouted.
"God--NO!" Ulm screamed, as the missiles whooshed away.
Even as she had cried the command, Mandy could see Kevin's Ferret begin to rocket upward and he begin to rise up in his seat in mode transition, and she knew she'd done something drastically wrong...
oooooooooooooooooooo
Kevin knew he had cut things too close for comfort--in the last couple of minutes, he had gained at least two scorch marks on his Cyclone and the Inorganic had been at times a hairs-breadth from having him a shish-kebab on the thing's leading tentacle spike. However, his plan had managed to remain intact--to change modes and rocket away while his teammates took care of the thing.
Unfortunately in the heat of things, he had forgotten to tell the others.
All he could think of when he heard the armor-piercers leave Amanda's launchers, even as he rose and the front farings began their rise to attach to his chest, was: Oops...
The missiles sailed home.
The Kraken's side exploded.
Shrapnel blasted out, one large piece ripping into Kevin's side and hip, where the armor did not protect him. His scream of agony was drowned out in the roar of the Inorganic's combustion, and he lost his seat from the partially-altered Ferret, dashing violently against the ground twelve feet down, where he did not move. The Ferret landed some distance away, its transformation sequence aborted.
Mandy heard nothing of it over her own screams.
Although critically damaged, the Kraken was still doing a grotesque parody of floating, its tentacles lashing around like wounded serpents, sparking random discharges of energy. Fluid was leaking out of the gaping hole in its side. Above it, the eye dunkenly swayed, and for a moment, focused on Amanda.
Ulm pulled the trigger, three times, and the remains exploded into shards.
oooooooooooooooooooo
In the present, Amanda covered her face with her hands, trying not to be sick--she had vomited so many times already that her guts ached.
Oh, but it wasn't that that had done it, not that...
oooooooooooooooooooo
Blood on the grass
And it changed my life
--Seal, "I'm Alive"
"KEVIN!" she shrieked. The world tunneled, the only thing that she perceived not the crumbling remains of the Inorganic, but the figure in the green CVR armor sprawled like a dropped doll. She lunged forward.
"Amanda! NO!" Ulm shouted. She heard his tread coming up behind, but she ignored it.
Oh please oh please no.... I'm sorry Kevin I'm sorry. Don't die!
She was beside his side before Ulm could stop her, loosing the Cyclone from her armor, and crawling forward on her hands and knees to him, crying. He wasn't moving...
"Kevin..." she sobbed. To think his eyes closed forever was too much... She froze, her heart pounding and the sobs choked back in her throat.
One hand began to twitch. A tiny whimper, barely audible, was coming from the form.
"Kevin!" she gasped. After that fall, he was still alive--but there had to be a huge wound from that shard that hit him, maybe from others as well. She slapped out the first aid kit in her boot, and frantically opened it.
"AMANDA, FOR GOD'S SAKE GET AWAY!" Ulm roared. Good--he'd gone to shut off the Ferret's protoculture radiation, it would take him a bit, she thought distantly.
Kevin's head moved. Then, his right leg twitched, prompting a renewed scream of pain from him.
"Wait, Kevin, I'm getting the morphine!"
Her voice seemed to rouse him. Gasping in torment, he managed, "No, Mandy, don't--touch me! Please!" His hands spasmed helplessly on the ground.
"No, I'm trying to help you. You're gonna bleed to death if I don't!" She finally managed to get the ampoule in the needle, then reached down for his arm. Despite his feeble struggles, it was the matter of a second to find the big vein on the inside of his elbow below his shirt sleeve and to inject the morphine.
She did not see Ulm dash up behind, then halt, his shoulders slumping in despair.
Kevin was gasping, the quivers of agony lessening as the morphine kicked in. Amanda gently removed the helmet, wiping the hair out of his eyes. They focused on her, as he moved his head a little, gritting his teeth.
"Amanda," he said deliberately. "Matt's got paramedic training. Get away from me. Let him take care of it. Please..."
"Don't move," she said in response, unwinding the roll of sterile gauze. His injured side was facing upward, good, at least dirt and worse hadn't been ground into it. Hopefully no shrapnel or Inorganic bits were lodged in there. But from the way the black cloth of his T-shirt was growing wet and dark, he was losing blood fast. She had to do something about it before it got any worse. She grabbed hold of the shirt, preparing to slit it with the knife in order to get at the wound. It was wet, warm, and slippery with Kevin's blood, and she shuddered at the touch. However, she managed to get it open and expose his side.
"Oh, no..." he whispered, shivering.
For a few blank seconds, Amanda thought that the dye from his pants had gotten onto her hands. She kept mechanically trying to wipe the wound clean of the stuff, wrinkling her nose at the pungent, odd smell, and finally exposing the seven-inch-long but luckily fairly shallow gouge in his side. She lifted the gauze pad she had perpared to put it on the wound, trying to use her other hand to press the damage closed.
Then she saw the color of the pad where her hands had touched it.
She blinked, then looked back down again.
The substance she had thought had been dye was not only on her hands and smeared on his skin, but on the pad, on the gauze, and she saw it beginning to puddle underneath Kevin's body and trickle out of the shrapnel tears. She lifted her eyes to the tiny needle wound she had made.
It had beaded there too.
Her eyes locked blankly on it, she began to breathe hard, and slid her gaze up to his face.
The blue eyes were wide with anguish that not even the morphine could remove, and fastened on her.
Amanda put her face down in her green-smeared hands, and blessedly the world went away.
oooooooooooooooooooo
Not him...
Her hands were covering her eyes, feeling the tears slide between them, and she shook.
It can't be him...
The same color; the same smell, like warm compost. The same stuff that had burst out of the Enforcer when Ulm had shot it, the same fluid that had leaked out of the remains of the Scout's eye when she had shattered it at Quincy. It had been coming out of Kevin's wounds as well.
Alone in the moonlight, Amanda wept brokenly.
oooooooooooooooooooo
She had blacked out most of the time following that. She remembered fragmented pictures of Ulm finishing the stitching and bandaging, bracing Kevin's neck and spine; the harried radio to base. Matthew splattering what Kevin had spilled over the rest of his armor and exposed skin, then taking chilled deer blood out of the freezer and soaking that into the bandages. A shattered memory of the lieutenant gently shaking her, begging her to tell a story of a Scout and Kevin's proximity to its destruction.
Somehow, she had gone along with it.
She remembered very little after that; Miranda and a couple of new Elms arriving, Ulm murmuring something about "shock" and "trauma" to them, and the others hooking up the freezer and Kevin to their Cyclones. Kevin had passed out in the meantime, probably from blood loss, probably for the best. Disconnected pieces of the long, agonizingly slow ride back to base, while the afternoon whiled on, and an arrival amid an uproar. A rush of activity, questions asked while she droned out the answer Ulm had given her, and a dinner which, shortly after, she had rushed to the bathroom and wrenchingly thrown up, several times.
They had left her alone after that.
And now she was out here.
oooooooooooooooooooo
Kevin was a...
[His hands, gentle on her damaged ankle, as he and Matthew wrapped it up]
was a...
[Another time, fingers on her brow, as she burned up inside with fever]
can't have been...
["John Stuart Mill of his own free will..."]
Kevin was...
[His eyes hollowed with inner worry, hiding secrets he wouldn't share]
[The terrible agony on his face, emerald fluid on her hands]
Kevin was one of them.
oooooooooooooooooooo
She didn't hear the thud of boots behind her until their owner was almost upon her. She jumped, giving a shriek.
"Shhh, Mandy, it's me." Matthew's voice. She was hunched up in a semi-fetal position, shaking, hands over her eyes. She convulsed away from his touch. He ignored it and began to gently stroke her hair as though she were a frightened animal. In time, her shakes slowed, and her posture loosened.
"God...if only you'd stayed away." he said, sighing. "But you cared too much... When did that become a sin?"
"W-why?" she choked out.
Matthew sighed again. "At least everybody else is asleep." he croaked. He sounded exhausted. "What a day."
As though an afterthought, he added, "He's going to be all right. He lost a lot of blood, and he's smashed and gashed up pretty good, but he'll recover just fine."
She shuddered. Ulm put an arm around her shoulders, leaving an arm free to stroke her hair.
"Why? God, this is going to be a story."
Amanda's face was on her knees, her shakes almost gone. He continued the gentle, impersonal strokes.
"It was all a front, you know. Only way we could explain why I had to get to him first when he got hurt. Our culture doesn't allow a lot of male/male interest in each other. Not outside that. We're no more homosexual than you're a man."
"But why?" Ulm could detect the multitude of questions in that one word.
"Lots of reasons, sweetie. Lots of them. Not the least being that some of us might kill him first chance they get if they knew what he was." He stopped, then said softly. "But he's on our side. Believe me. I've known him for six years...and he would no more betray us than I would, or Miranda, or Dennis..."
"Then--then how..."
Ulm sighed. "For that, you're going to have to ask him. That's why I'm out here. He wants to talk to you."
She began to shake again, wringing her hands, trying to get off the alien blood that still coated them in her mind. "No!"
"Mandy, he begged me to."
"I'm not going." The thought of confronting Kevin--whatever he was--was completely unthinkable.
Ulm's voice grew firm. "If you don't, I've been given authority to drag you there if I have to. I'm your commanding officer, remember."
"No!" she repeated again, spitting out the words as the full force of the betrayal hit her. "He lied to me! You lied to me! Why the hell should I care what you want of me???"
Ulm winced at that statement.
"And don't you think that those lies killed us every day we used them?" he asked, his voice filled with pain.
"No--I can't....Don't make me."
Matthew waited silently, for the inevitable reaction to the veiled threat, the If you try I'll tell... It failed to come.
Make the gamble, Ulm, he thought. If you win, you might have another person who understands... He tossed the dice.
He rose to his feet. "Come on." He started back toward the mall, not looking back. In a few seconds, he heard the thud of boot armor behind him.
All sixes. Not bad, old man.
The infirmirary was a storeroom in back of the TV room, still filled in spots with tape and laserdisc shipments that had never been bought. Although it looked as though it could be chilly winters, fortunately it had not progressed to that point yet. The best part, considering the situation, was that it was fairly soundproof.
Ulm quietly slipped inside, Amanda behind him, and he slowly turned up the light on the halogen lantern by the bed. Even with its golden radiance, the sleeping countenance it illuminated looked dead white and sunken. One of the arms lying on top of the covers was bandaged, and both bore the marks of ugly blackish bruises up to his bare shoulders, relics of his fall.
Amanda looked down, frozen. Somehow, the issue of Kevin's alabaster pallor had never seemed more important than now. Was it just his current condition that made it seem more pronounced, or had it always been like that? With a slipping sense of fear, she realized she could not remember. No wonder he had gotten away with it so long.
And she'd even allowed him to touch her... God...
Matthew bent down by the bed. "Kevin...Kevin, wake up."
It took another urge or so, but at last he prompted a muffled noise from the figure on the bed. Grudgingly, the eyes opened. It took them a second or two to focus.
"Muh-Matthew?" the breathy whisper asked. Ulm nodded.
"Feel like...Shock Trooper...stomped on me," Kevin muttered, his voice coming more strongly. "Where's a morphine when you need one?"
"Kev, I got her with me." The blue eyes popped more widely open, and managed to find the ashen-faced blond girl in her CVR armor.
"Mandy?" he asked.
She nodded, no warmth on her face. "Yes."
A shadow of the pain he'd felt that terrible moment when he knew that she knew brushed his features again. It cleared, leaving the face as carefully neutral as hers.
"Sorry about getting Matt to drag you here," he said. "I guess you'd want to know who...what...I am. And why I'm in here. And all that other garbage."
She nodded.
"Chair over there." He tried to gesture with his head and was transfixed with a spasm of pain. The coldness on Amanda's face was momentarily replaced with worry.
"Kev, you're not in any condition to do this," Ulm insisted. Kevin's eyes met his with an ironic expression.
"Matt, after all the b.s.ing we've done, s' the least I can do. T'hell with the stonewalling." Kevin gritted his teeth and tried to settle himself. Amanda found a chair while wearing a preoccupied look, and sat. "Anyway, I drop dead, one less burden you got to carry."
Amanda's brows furrowed, listening to the exchange.
"Mandy, listen up. Wanted to say this months ago. Should have said this months ago. Any rate, everything back to 2038 is more or less true. Before that--gets..."
"Kevin." Her voice was worn. "What are you? I want to know for sure. No lies. After all--you promised."
He stiffened, evidently fighting himself, then went limp.
He sighed, closing his eyes. After a minute, he began.
"I am Kayagh of the Invid race, Solugi and prince of the upper rank, and far as I know one of the last evolved to the human form before the Ascension. About one or two days before the final battle, I recall." He swallowed.
"There it is, what you asked for. Unfortunately, you can't pass off my circulatory 'problem' as some hallucination from Malcolm spiking those muffins."
Mandy choked, host to the most bizarre composite of shock, horror, and hilarity. The debate on whether to scream, cry or laugh was causing a deadlock.
Kevin--Kayagh was looking at her with concern. "You all right?" He made a disgusted face. "Of course you aren't. Ha, for obvious reasons."
Mandy slowly recovered. "So why are you--"
"Long story. Has to do with the end of the war, Mandy. And a lot else as well."
Softly, with pauses, he began, remembering himself as he spoke.
oooooooooooooooooooo
The Gosu roared high above the lansdcape, heading east at twice the speed of sound, the light glittering off of the black and dark red trim of its metal exterior, brand new and formed by the Regis in order to protect the chosen ones that used them. It was in a rush; it had been called by the Queen-Mother to the main hive in defense from the invading forces of humans that now joined it in battle.
Its occupant looked out through the canopy, squinting a little and occasionally examining the pale-skinned, five-fingered hands he held up to his face and the black, red, and pale gray armor-suited body they were joined to. He had been transmuted to this form by the Queen-Mother less than a day ago and was still trying to get used to it. The hands, body and hair on his head was unsettling enough, but the color vision was unnerving. No more comforting red haze--the grasslands and woods below him were so--green.
Is that what it was? he wondered. Color... So this was how the humans saw everything. Was it compensation, in exchange for being born mind-blind?
Perhaps they had something there.
He rolled over the thought in his mind. Something about its character both disturbed and interested him. Another idea was following on its trail, something about the veracity of challenging the humans for this world... Was it he actually thinking these things?
He?
What was the matter with him? Why was there a sudden resistance to the idea of exterminating these creatures? Was it not his Mother that had stated the necessity for such an action?
And why was he being called to the Refles Point? He was a scientist by his role in the Hive, not one of the warriors, not like Kharoth, Sera, Lihra or Corg--
He shuddered. Only a matter of minutes ago, he had felt the agony through the Hivesong, as human missiles had shattered a Gosu battloid and the strangely irrational, changed hivebrother inside it to atoms. Corg was no more... And Lihra was missing...
He whipped over a human town, and for a second, he could see thorugh his sensors two small humans in the street, with a four-legged furry creature jumping between them. He could actually see the shock and the beginnings of terror on their small faces, so like his own now, before he was past and roaring into the distance.
No, little ones, my quarrel isn't with you. Go in peace... He felt strangely warm toward them. His brows knitted as he began to realize the full magnitude of what changes were going on within himself.
Great mother, what is happening to me?
Why?
Is it this body? It must be...
Is it something more?
Please help me!
Moisture was trickling off his forehead. No, nothing the Hive can do will help me--look at what happend to Corg! I don't want to end that way...the humans might be able to understand this madness...
The humans?
But how will I ask one? They've no reasons to love us...
Because we've killed them! Why are we hurting them? They don't need the Flowers, we do, so why are we trying to displace them? Blazing Tzuptum, why have I never asked this before???
For the first time in his physical existence, he was fighting a terrible war of self-doubt. Outside, the mecha was showing it, pitching and bouncing in the airstream in tune with the struggles of its pilot. It was a good thing that nearly all Terran airpower in the continent was concentrated on the battle over the Invid central hive, for the Gosu would have been easy pickings, its stupendous firepower nonwithstanding. It was, in fact, only a matter of minutes from crashing, for the terror of its pilot--an unknown feeling compounding the mental oscillations he was experiencing--was nearly causing him to cut out the engines.
And then the fear ceased, as he felt his being taken control of by a Will far greater than his own.
In the horizon toward which he headed, a false sun began to blaze.
oooooooooooooooooooo
"You see," Kevin said softly, "the Regis had decided to leave. Bernard's group had gotten through to her exactly what she was doing to humanity, that it was no better than what the Masters had done to her. So, time to tell the Invid to pack up its suitcases..."
oooooooooooooooooooo
An eerie calm suffused his being, as the Motherpresence put aside all doubts and gave him Her direction.
His eyes were fastened on that sunrise, as the first prominences of the Invid hivemind's energy transition began to rise skyward. The voice of the Regis rang through his mind and soul, and through that of every Invid still alive and fighting.
"Hear me, my children. When we sensed the first faint indications of the Protoculture resources on this planet, we thought that at last, we had found the world for which we have sought for so long. We called together all our people scattered throughout the Galaxy to begin life anew on this planet. We began to rebuild a world that had been destroyed by evil. And we constructed the Genesis Pits, in order to pursue the path of enlightened evolution.
"The Earth is gradually reviving, and will eventually regain its balance, in accordance with the laws of Nature. However, the humans have been influenced too strongly by the shadow of the Robotech Masters, and are intent only on the destruction of their race. It shall not be!" The light reached out for the human cruisers that even now had released the weapons that would doom the planet, consumed them and what they had fired, and began to rise further.
"Nor shall the Invid be responsible for perpetuating any more of the misery that has been visited on both it and humanity. It will merely mire us both further in the evil the Robotech Masters have begun, twisting us in their dark image. Follow me, my children. We shall pursue our evolution elsewhere. Another world awaits us, for this one is humanity's to hold!"
By now, the light had become a searing column of radiance, pulling all Invid toward it to join with that transcendent fire, and he along with it. He increased his speed, sucked along helplessly in the current. It felt right to do it, to fall back in the old pattern of obedience. But with the last shreds of his volition, something cried against it.
He certainly could go with the great tide of exodus he was rushing toward, to whatever place the Queen-Mother had designated for them. But what would happen to him once they arrived? Would he resume this terrifying train of thought, only to go Corg's way in the end? Was that what had happened to Lihra? Would he never understand what had happened? Madness would be a pleasant alternative...
And somewhere, far in the back of his mind, he found the emerald fields and forests he had flown over to be unutterably beautiful, even pocked with bombardment craters. He had so wished to find out more of them., and was he going to have that opportunity ripped from him now? What if they didn't have any such thing where the Invid was going?
And he did not know how to eunciate or even admit all of this happening to him. The only thing he understood, coming in a rising scream from his heart as the light became blinding was:
I don't want to go!!!
Something deep inside dug in its heels, refused to move, even as the racial pull tore at him. For the first time, that something, seeded the instant he had taken on the human genetic code, fully came to life.
The blissful relaxation was gone, replaced by a war. He had not had practice exerting his will; he was clumsy, frantic and frightened, and the Gosu cockpit rang with his groans as he fought the drag, giving reluctantly inch by mental inch, as he tasted the sweat running into his mouth.
And then, the pull was gone, and he felt nothing in his mind but silence.
There was a long, screeching boom, a blow, and darkness.
Far above, the Invid Pheonix unfurled its wings and flew.
oooooooooooooooooooo
"It crashed," Kevin said, embarassed. "Don't do that sort of thing in midair."
oooooooooooooooooooo
It was deep into the night, the last-quarter moon shining unmoved onto the great rut of crushed trees and the heap of inert alloys that lay half on its back, all the land behind it devoid of plantlife for a half-mile. The local wildlife had just stopped feeling jumpy about what had happened.
There was a dull thunping noise, and after several minutes the cockpit popped open.
A head protruded from the opening. There was a pained grunt, a couple of failed heaves, and then a figure was sitting on the edge of the opening.
It was--or looked to be--a handsome, dark-haired human male early into his second decade, clad in an alien-looking plated suit of black, dark red, and silvery gray panels that were bleached in the moonlight.
He also looked like he had seen better days. He swayed a bit, had a nasty black eye, and looked as though he could use a lot of rest and a few compresses to his bruised visage. He licked his lips, made a face, and put a finger up to his mouth. It came away dark. He winced and left off.
Carefully, he slid down, clumsily hit the ground, and passed out.
He woke a few minutes later, moaning, and sat up. Looking around, he could see nothing except the vague outlines of trees. Automatically, he reached out to summon an escort.
Nothing.
He began to panic. What happened?
He remembered, then began to panic further.
Alone... Forever. No minds to echo the Hivesong, alone with a bunch of primitives...
What on Optera had he been thinking?
Before the panic became full-blown, a cold clear thought made its way through.
You made your choice. Now do something about it.
There was a shaky sigh, then he began to look around. It was obvious that his mecha would never fly again. If it had ended up front down, he could have starved to death in there...He fought down that train of thought. He would have to walk. There. He would have to find a human trail or habitation sometime--and then? He would leave that for then. Now was more important.
He achily got to his feet, and looked around. Which way?
The moon was still near the horizon, lending enough radiance that he could see tree silhouettes and make his way in that direction.
That would have to do for now.
Stiffly, Kayagh turned and walked away from his old life and to whatever lay in his future.
oooooooooooooooooooo
"That's basically how I ended up staying behind," the Invid Amanda had known as Kevin O'Shea finished. It was, although he hadn't said so in so many words to her. What he had relived had been for himself only. "Come to think of it, I was one confused bastard." He stopped, and coughed. His tale had taken a great deal out of him.
Amanda did not say anything for a long time, as she tried to absorb the information.
"So how did you meet Matthew, then?"
Matthew spoke up from where he'd been perched on the bed. "I can take this bit. He's talked himself half to laryngitis on top of everything else. This was about three days after the Battle of Reflex Point. I'd left right after the battle, since there wasn't much for me to do there. It was actually pretty bloodless on the ground.
"Rolled into some putzy little hamlet on the way home to Springfield and had to take a nap. I didn't want to spend the money or goods on an inn, especially the fleahole they had there, so I dumped my crap by the road and expected to take a wink. I woke up and found my change of clothes was gone. I started looking around and saw some guy, bold as brass, sneaking around with my jacket on and some real funny bulges underneath it. I followed him and ended up seeing him inhaling a pie he'd stolen."
"Hey, I knew I had to wear something else if I knew what was good for me! You think anybody'd think I was Joe Average in what I was wearing?"
"Shut up. So I sneak up behind him, lay a hand on his shoulder, and he goes transatmospheric. Starts choking too, so I had to Heimlich him. I look under my jacket and shirt and sure enough, see a uniform that doesn't look like anything earthly I've ever seen.. I'd met one of the humanoid Invid the Regis had created at the battle site--Marlene I think, she was a redhead--so I had a sneaking suspicion. He was so damn scared he couldn't move. Bruised and starving, too."
"Three days with nothing to eat. No shit, Sherlock."
"Be quiet, Kev."
"No. Ow."
"So---what did--"
"Only thing I could've." Ulm looked over at Kevin, and smiled. "Paid for the pie, fed him, and got something decent for him to wear. Then I took him home. Everything goes from there more or less like you've heard it."
"I liked the Shakespeare," Kevin whispered wistfully. "Pissed to no end when it got destroyed."
"Rear-line desk job." Mandy said icily. His eyes met hers, looked away in shame.
"That's what I was, basically. I wasn't one of the Malar--the Enforcers--that did the sort of thing like--like--your village... Oh God, Mandy... I was only a scientist... I really can't remember...that life is like a ghost. Kayagh died so long ago he doesn't even smell anymore... " Face tight with pain, he closed his eyes. She looked on, her eyes green ice, the scar on her left cheek white against her flush.
Part of her wanted to hate him, to shriek insults and curses, to run outside and scream at the rest what was among them and to be the first one in the lynch party. The betrayal was overwhelming, and screaming inside of her for release, for vengance. Oh, God, she hated him. She wanted to see him bleed that green blood into the ground like she'd seen Grace's corpse bleed.
But there was a still, small voice inside, that remembered six months of friendship. And somehow, she knew that love him or hate him, she could not be indifferent to him; she simply cared about him too much.
Oh, damn. She cared what happened. That was the worst part of it all.
And he cared too.
Or he would not have helped her on the rough path of becoming another warrior in the front lines of this war, would not have talked to her while she had wheezed in pain from her illness, would not have said "They loved that land so much they were willing to die for it..." Would not have enabled her to destroy his own race...
Ulm watched helpless from the sidelines, impotent in influencing what would win that inner war and knowing it.
"Ah..." It was half sigh, half sob.
"To hell with it," Amanda said. She reached over, mindful of his wounds.
Kevin gulped, then painfully reached up an arm to put around her back. He then realized what she was doing; the knowledge brought tears to his eyes.
Matthew watched, his shoulders slumped in exhaustion and his own relief.
All sixes. Hot damn.
After a minute, Kevin let go, sniffling. "Shit."
She didn't laugh. "It's all right. Past day's put us all through the wringer." She rubbed her eyes, which were noticeably blue underneath. "Uh, Kayagh..."
"Kevin. Same as always."
"Excuse me. Kevin, the Invid came back not all that long afterward. Why didn't you join them again?"
She jumped as he stiffened.
"Do you think I didn't care what happened to Matthew? I may not be human in the strict sense, Mandy, but I'll tell you I'm not that kind of traitor. Big difference between seeing humans as targets and seeing Ernest who likes dogs and tomatoes. And I've really gotten to like Ernest a lot, if you know what I mean.
"And another thing--"
The kind azure eyes went hard and terrible.
"Because she lied."
oooooooooooooooooooo
They left Kevin's room, leaving him to sleep off his pain. Matthew looked down at his watch and started. It was very nearly six. Had it been that long? God, Kevin needed his rest to heal.
Twenty-four hours, he thought. At this time then, we'd been two guys with a bad secret and a girl who'd come along for the ride. Now the equation had been forever changed. For better? For worse? Only time could tell.
"Mandy." She looked up, eyes glazed from exhaustion. "Go and get some sleep. You get the day off--I don't think even Dennis is going to argue you've had it bad yesterday, although," he whispered, "not for the reason he thinks. But basket cases make bad soldiers."
"What about you?" she asked. Bless her.
"I've done on worse than this. Besides, being CO means I do everything everybody else does and then again anyway. I'll live. Get to bed. That's an order."
And so began the inclusion of Amanda into the conspiracy.
oooooooooooooooooooo
Lord Shkud, the Living Computer said silently.
"What?" he snapped out loud, as he paced back and forth within the inner chambers of the hive, mentally ordering the Malar on their tasks. "I'm busy."
Something has happened in the Southeastern sector of your domain on the planet.
"Ah yes, the dead area. What's so exciting about it? Absolutely nothing in that area's ever made Flowers or labor grow there."
The mass of floating protoplasm elsewhere in the hive bobbed gently and paused.
Several lunar cycles ago, you set one of the Gitamma mecha out there to provide extra coverage.
"Yes?
The Living Computer monitoring that area has just reported its destruction.
"WHAT?" Shkud barked. A few of the Malar pivoted to look at him incuriously.
The transmission ceased, but not before the Gitamma managed to convey some images of the agents of its destruction to it. It has spent the intervening time trying to process the images for your consumption.
"I was to have been informed immediately!"
It begs your pardon. It wished you to have all information on the destruction when you were informed.
Shkud grunted, his eyes narrowed balefully.
"Send me the images."
Yes, lord.
Within a couple of seconds, images and perceptions began to flicker behind the Invid lord's mind, coming in a steady flow that stored itself in his memory. It stopped after a minute.
Shkud played the transmissions from the Gitamma back in his mind, looking thoughtful. Three resistance in human armor and small mecha had played a part. He was grudgingly impressed with the strategy they had used and forced himself to admit that the Invid dependence on tracking via protoculture had its faults. It would have to be addressed the next convergence with his fellows. The Inorganics had benefits, but obviously needed improvment.
Something...bothered him about the scenario. The mecha's silent movement should have had the targets eliminated before they even knew what had happened. Might it be possible? Pfah. No, of course not.
Thinking over the fine nuances would have to wait until later on.
"Transmission received. Very well. I want the forces patrolling the area increased and searches conducted within that radius."
Confirmed, the Living Computer answered.
Shkud began to leave the room. "Oh, by the way."
Yes lord?
"That laggard Brain?"
Yes?
"Have it... replaced."
Confirmed.
Satisfied, Shkud left.