After War Read online

  That’s what I yearned to do. And it was within my rights to defend my property with lethal force.

  It’s what I intended to do when I squeezed my trigger finger. But I didn’t. A treacherous malaise in my mind shifted my aim at the last moment and I found myself firing two warning shots at the creature’s feet.

  The intruder snapped its gaze onto my position. At over 750 meters’ distance it seemed to look straight at me through my sights and frowned exactly as an irritated human might.

  I gotta admit, the thing was freaking me out. It didn’t even seem to have eyes, just black abyssal pits where eyes should be.

  It shrugged and held its palms up as if to ask: what the hell are you playing at?

  I hate it when they learn human body language.

  “Walk forwards with your hands high,” I told it in English, the human language it was most likely to understand. “Keep walking until I tell you to stop.”

  I only whispered the commands, but the SA-70 could amplify sounds and throw them with pinpoint accuracy over long distances.

  The creature raised his hands to shoulder height… and back-flipped high into the air.

  Instinctively, I nudged the rifle to track its sudden movement. My finger closed over the trigger.

  But I did nothing as I watched it backward somersault down into the gully and out of my field of view.

  Getting slow, NJ, said Sanaa.

  “Shut up!”

  Not slow, said Bahati. Soft.

  I ignored the voices in my head. There was deadly business to be done and I could do without critical commentary for a few minutes. I had to think.

  Much as I hated to squat down and hold a static position, there was a lot to be said for staying put up here on my platform, with its cover and views, and picking off the alien next it showed its head. A glance at the bruised sky nixed that idea. When those clouds opened, the deluge would be so blinding that the Emperor himself could dance naked for my pleasure just ten feet away, and I’d be none the wiser.

  Last thing I wanted was to sit out the storm with an alien on the loose. I had to sort this quickly.

  You done justifying yourself? teased Sanaa.

  “Reckon that’ll do it,” I replied with a grin.

  I popped out the power pack of my SA-70 and stowed it in a chest pouch – didn’t want Lumpy to double-back here and shoot me in the back with my own gun. I grabbed my SA-71 carbine, which was also heavy but just light enough that I raced down the steps cut into the side of the deck tower without stumbling, a move I practiced every day.

  I landed on the ground in a small cloud of dust.

  The voices in my head were full of advice, but there was no time to listen. Now I was out in the open I had to move fast.

  The alien had kept close to the gully because it was the best cover around. It hadn’t seemed too scared of being shot at either. Ex-military. It had to be. Like half the colonists on Klin-Tula.

  I hadn’t seen a weapon and hadn’t been shot at yet, but I had to assume my unwelcome visitor was armed. I dashed to the nearest decorative wall topped with the crude, overturned pot that the architect assured me looked classical, whatever that meant. Fine, I’d said, just so long as the ceramalloy shield inside the wall is shellproof.

  Ceramalloy: that’s the stuff they use as armor plating on warships. I don’t like to take unnecessary chances.

  Still no sign of my new friend. Either he had stealth capability – which meant he could put a bullet through my neck whenever he chose – or he was still in the gully.

  I moved from one armored decorative feature to another, hugging cover as much as possible, until I was 100 meters from the spot where the alien had disappeared.

  I decided it was too dangerous to jump into the gully at that point – the veck could be waiting for me – so I picked a point 50 meters to the right to enter the unknown. I didn’t know why there in particular, but it felt lucky. Probably because a huddle of ieyip bushes at the gully’s edge offered a little concealment to mask my entrance.

  I broke cover and raced across the field of barley, wishing I still had my battlesuit. I leapt over the bushes and landed halfway down the slope.

  No sign of the intruder.

  “Show yourself!” I shouted, my SA-71 ready to let loose.

  I’d put a few decades of wear and tear on my clock but my eyesight was still sharp. I knew Lumpy wasn’t here. The storm clouds were, though. They were streaming in from the hostile eastern horizon.

  “You’re ruining dinner,” I shouted. “Come here and take the consequences. If you hide, I shall assume hostile intent.”

  No response.

  Get the farm buggy, Sanaa suggested. Flush it out.

  “Too risky,” I said. “And it would take too long.”

  Bahati elaborated: NJ would get swept away when the flood water hits.

  Not if he’s fast, Sanaa countered.

  The ghosts bickered in my head, but they sounded muffled, as if a partition wall had suddenly been erected in my mind to shut them out. I was isolated in a room inside my head where a single thought throbbed with urgency. I had abandoned my deck with its lovely fields of fire and dumped my SA-70 rifle there. Who’s to say the alien hadn’t a spare power pack of its own?

  I felt my own rifle targeting my head from above. I threw myself to the ground and rolled.

  “Keep calm,” I told myself. “It’s just your imagination.” But deep inside I was certain I had screwed up badly here, even though I wasn’t sure how. I had to get back to the deck.

  The ghosts were screaming at me, but I couldn’t make out what they were trying to say.

  I took a single deep breath, and then scrambled back up the slope. All thoughts of running from cover to cover were beyond me now. I just wanted to get back ASAP before Lumpy beat me to it.

  I jumped over the ieyip bushes on the lip of the gully with such a single–minded compulsion to get back that I almost didn’t register the ground moving beneath my feet.

  The bushes grew out of a mound of dirt, and inside, Lumpy the alien had buried itself under a coating of soil like some of the ambush scorpions in the nearby hills.

  I reacted in a split second.

  If you’re a civilian or a spacer, I expect I sound like I’m boasting about my reaction times, but I’m not. I’m unlike the humans I encountered on Earth. My ancestors were bred by their alien masters for characteristics that served one purpose only: war.

  I put one foot down hard, using it to pivot around. As I did, I extended the teeth at the end of my carbine and jabbed at where I expected the alien to be.

  The monofilament needles we called teeth were worn from heavy use, but spinning at 800 rpm, they were plenty good enough to rip a gaping hole in… empty air.

  I was jabbing low, but the alien was lower still, practically horizontal and mere inches from the ground but still able to fling out a kick that hooked behind my knees.

  My legs gave way, and I fell heavily on to the dirt. Onto my dirt. Anger gave me just enough energy to turn my fall into a roll, and from a roll I flipped back onto my feet.

  At least, I started that flip, but just as I was lifting off the ground my neck struck a combat knife that gashed a shallow cut across my throat.

  The knife permitted me to collapse onto my back, but followed my neck closely all the way down.

  I’d sworn I’d never be at the mercy of an alien again.

  Guess there’s a lesson there for all of us. Never make a promise you can’t be sure to keep.

  “I’m sorry, my friends,” I murmured.

  I wasn’t sure whether my ghosts could hear me, but the partition wall suddenly vanished and they came tumbling through.

  Kwa heri, said Bahati. Goodbye.

  Lala salama, said Sanaa, which amounted to the same thing. At least you can stop running now.

  Sanaa’s words turned my hope to dust and blew it away in the breeze. Things must be seriously bad because Sanaa was being nice, and both were tryi
ng out archaic Kiswahili phrases they’d picked up when we were stationed in Africa, the province of Earth from which my ancestors had been offered up to our new alien overlords.

  “I won’t kill you,” said the alien in English, through the translator fitted into its larynx, or whatever it used for resonance in its throat.

  “Why the hell not?”

  I blinked, astonished by the anger in my reply. I knew I’d just yielded to my imminent demise, but was I really so angry at the prospect of being dragged back into the land of the living?

  “You had me in the sights of your SA-70,” the alien explained. Hell! Its eyesight really was good enough to see me through the firing port. “You chose not to shoot me, which is the quality of mercy that brought me to your farm in the first place.”

  “Throw that knife away and I’ll show you what I think of mercy.” I wanted to shout but the proximity of the knife meant my words came out as a ferocious whisper.

  “Bad choice of words,” said the alien, keeping the blade tight against my throat. “Not mercy so much as a reluctance to kill any more.”

  I shrugged, but inwardly I was seething with the fear the alien might be right.

  “Killing is easy,” said Lumpy, easing the blade back a little. “What I ask of you is far harder.”

  Now! screamed the Sarge, and for once old Sergeant Chinelo’s shade was right.

  I seized my opening and lashed out with my leg, sweeping the alien’s feet from under it. Lumpy landed on his bony alien ass. I got the impression that he was close to exhaustion, but he still recovered his balance with impressive speed.

  Though not as speedy as my fist.

  I gave it a lights-out smack right between the eyes.

  The creature slumped unconscious to the floor.

  I’d felled enough fighters in my time to know it wasn’t getting up again in a hurry, but I stood over the bastard, ready to send it back into sleepy-time if it showed any signs of stirring.

  It didn’t. With a worried glance at the purple-and-gray skies advancing from the east, followed by a wistful one at my deck – the gun would be fine out in the rain that was coming, but I didn’t hold much hope for my barbecue – I set to work, hauling Lumpy the alien over my shoulder.

  I nearly threw him right over behind me, he was so light. Just as well because I hung my carbine’s carrying strap over the other shoulder, and now that I wasn’t pumping combat hormones through my bloodstream, the gun felt so very heavy. In fact, I only managed a dozen steps back in the direction of the farmhouse before I was staggering.

  I paused for a moment to get my breath back. That was when I noticed the trail of blood we were leaving behind.

  I hadn’t hit the alien that hard, had I?

  A fiery burn across my throat finally crossed a threshold of pain and seared itself into my attention. I glanced down at my shirt and saw it was soaked in blood.

  This wasn’t exactly the first time I’d been wounded, and my legs knew this was their moment to assume command. I vaguely felt my feet crunching down into the gravel as I ran to the farmhouse, willing myself to get back before my brain drifted into shock.

  Already my vision was blurring and narrowing.

  The edge of the storm broke over my head, but I couldn’t remember why that was important.

  — CHAPTER 2 —

  Call me a mind–frakked psycho if you must – you wouldn’t exactly be the first – but I found it relaxing to sit in my rocking chair, trauma pack gripping onto my neck, ice cubes jingling in my drink in one hand, and a pistol in the other pointed at the alien intruder.

  Around my waist was a pair of oozers: fat leeches the size of my fist burrowing into my bloodstream. I had no memory of attaching the cyborg-parasites, but I sent the slimy bloodsuckers a steady stream of silent thanks because they were probably the reason why I had woken before Lumpy – why I was the one holding the gun.

  For the benefit of those of a delicate upbringing – anyone whose profession involves less bleeding than life in the Legion – oozers are natural bloodsuckers with three unnatural but very useful alterations. I kept them all over the farmhouse in liquid-filled jars, making sure they were always plump from feeding on my blood. Unlike their wild brethren, oozers draw only a modest supply of blood for their own needs, keeping most of their cargo fresh indefinitely while slowly infusing it with the nanoscale equivalent of an emergency medical team, courtesy of some serious bioengineering.

  The other alteration the bio-engineers made was kind of important to me in my present predicament. Oozers have a reverse switch, and mine were currently set to blow, not suck.

  Don’t ask where the oozers house their switch; you really don’t want to know. Let’s just say that I had an urge to wash my hands and scrub one of my thumbnails.

  Gotta love the leeches, though. As they slowly replenished my red stuff, I grew convinced that the alien was awake. I didn’t care; it suited us both to pretend it was still out for the count after a punch I was proud of.

  The alien was slumped in the wingback leather chair with broken springs. When I kitted out the farmhouse I bought all new furniture except for this battered thing that I’d noticed at the back of the warehouse. The dealer let me have it for free because it was worthless old junk. I guess I felt a personal connection to it.

  My butt would sink halfway through the chair seat to the floor but the hide covering was still good, and that was why I had dumped the intruder there. Once I’d rid myself of Lumpy, I could easily clean the alien’s stink from the leather, unlike the deep pile fabrics on my swankier furniture.

  The creature was humanoid, shorter and lighter framed than me, and its skin would look like a dead fish if not for a patchwork of pink and purple. The head tentacles gave me the creeps, even more now that I could see that at the back of its head where they merged into what I could only describe as fishy dreadlocks. Give it a large hat and gallon of make-up, and send it out on the darkest night of the year, and maybe it could pass for human. I prefer my aliens to look properly alien.

  Hardits and Gliesans were the original colonists of Klin-Tula, having been here centuries before the war. The end of the war of liberation saw the Legion dumping demobilized Tallermans, Pavnix, Littoranes, and Scumblebutts along with we humans as combined settler-reservists. On balance, the Legion’s brass hats had almost won my respect during the war. I didn’t hold much hope for the peace.

  The thing sitting in my battered leather chair was from none of those settler races.

  “I give up,” I said loudly. “What are you?”

  The alien opened its eyes. “I’m an innocent traveler, attacked without provocation.”

  “Cut the crap, you’re trespassing on my land.”

  “Not trespassing, visiting. I wanted to meet you.”

  Thumbing the safety off my pistol, I made sure of my aim.

  I was made for killing. What with the training, decades of war, and the alien tinkering with my DNA that had turned me from human into the kind of military cyborg they call a Marine, I can claim some experience in the matter too. I was brought to life for the sole purpose of robbing others of theirs. Rage boiled inside me every time I thought of that. Already, I could feel the tell-tale vein starting to throb at my temple.

  Kill the alien, said Bahati.

  Not here, moron. That was Sanaa. Do it outside. The rain will wash away the blood.

  Target acquired, added the Sarge eagerly. Bless him.

  “Identify yourself!” I growled. Even to me, I sounded like a predator twitching with anticipation, waiting for its prey to run so it could bound after it and rip out its throat. It’s a strange feeling when you scare yourself.

  The alien raised its hands in surrender. “Don’t shoot!”

  I could tell I had it frightened because I could hear its voice.

  When we spoke to aliens, and they spoke to us, we mumbled and the translator system in our heads made the appropriate alien sounds resonate in our voice box. A lot of people didn’t
need to mumble, going directly from thought to translated speech. This alien veck in front of me wasn’t mumbling either. It was screeching in fear, or else making a good pretense.

  “What are you?” I asked it.

  “I am a Nanasyne. That is my species name in your language. The Anglicized form of my personal name is Sylk-Peddembal.”

  Look up Nanasyne, I said in my head.

  Can’t find anything, answered Sanaa.

  It’s lying, said Bahati.

  Not necessarily, countered Sanaa. Many species have scores of names in other languages. We’ll look deeper.

  “All right then, Silky,” I said, happy to let my dead spouses occupy themselves in bickering over the nature of this alien. “I watched the way you move. You were in the military, weren’t you?”

  The alien hesitated before saying, ‘Yes’. Being military was so common that it wasn’t exactly a Big Secret. I definitely noted a hesitation, though. And why had it suddenly grown frightened?

  “Marine?” I guessed.

  “No, Army.”

  When this Silky didn’t go straight from his service to telling me the unit he had served with, unlike every other former soldier I had known, I knew something was wrong.

  I liked hitting people, and so far had proved a hopeless farmer. A lot of people put those two facts together and concluded I was dumb, but that’s not an accurate assessment. I was smart enough to know that Silky was worse than just a disgusting piece of alien filth stinking up my favorite chair.

  He was a piece of filth with a flashing holo-sign over his head that read: TROUBLE.

  I bared my teeth and growled. Body language between species is hit and miss, but that one is pretty universal.

  “One chance. Why are you here?”

  “A visitor. I came to see you.”

  “Bastard!”

  Do it outside, urged Sanaa.

  Target acquired, repeated the Sarge.

  “I’ve never met an alien yet who wasn’t a contemptible piece of shit,” I told the creature sitting in my armchair. “And you, Silky, are the worst of all. You wanna know why? Because when I shoot you, the plasma charge from this pistol is going to ruin my favorite chair.”