Charger the Soldier (37 page)

"Seems they finally figured out who killed
her," Mark said. "Turns out it was a Lycan named Mac, a war
veteran. And now General Harris is calling once again for the
destruction of all the Hyborgs and Lycans as a result."

"What? Wait, I thought he was the one in
charge of creating the Hyborgs and Lycans in the first place,"
Mickey responded.

"He was," replied Mark, as he drew up a chair
to slouch on. Reaching into a bowl on the coffee table, he pulled
out a handful of potato chips and continued, "Guess he's afraid
he'll be accused of creating monsters. So rather than accept
responsibility, he's decided to end the program completely."

"Someone should really hold Harris
responsible. This is just wrong," Mickey said in disgust. "I'm
still not sure how that creep has escaped prosecution for so long.
So many witnesses have come forward with evidence that he is a mass
murderer."

"Seems someone in government has him fully
protected," Andy said, as he too began to munch chips, ignoring the
fact that the solid muscle he'd had in his prime was becoming soft
and flabby.

"It's more than that," Mark said. "Seems he
has ordered the Hyborgs themselves to remove the problem."

"What!" both Andy and Mickey exclaimed.

"He is having our war veterans kill off other
war veterans?" Andy stammered in disbelief.

"Apparently so. But that's not the only news.
Seems congress decided last week to put Harris on trial. And now
the guy has disappeared. Poof, no trace anywhere," Mark said
wearily. He was so disgusted with the whole affair that he felt
helpless. "And there is a bigger debacle," he added.

Andy and Mickey were gazing at him, waiting
to hear more.

"Seems he's also the guy who had the Mavens
engineered. You remember, Andy, the ones who helped you and Lucy
with research on plants in Dhuusamareeb before General Harris
transferred them into the Revenge Program. The ones who stole the
supply ship and disappeared shortly after that."

"So, have they put out an arrest warrant for
Harris?" Mickey asked.

"Yup, system-wide, from what the news was
reporting this morning. You two really should get out of this
office more. Sitting here in the dark can't be good," Mark said, as
he wiped the potato chip dust from his fingers onto his pants.

Andy laughed. "No way! We are clearly safer
in here."

>>>

Four days previously, General Harris had
entered the darkened room deep beneath his mansion in the hills
outside New Denver. He sat at his desk and opened a small computer
laptop which was connected directly with the private server the
organization shared.

"It's done. I have sent the Hyborgs off
world. And I've made sure that fool of a Danny Opinhimmer, and his
band of misfits leading the world, are reliant on the information
we feed them."

A voice on the computer screen replied, "En
tack turelient, dell back engulf dorsal." The computer translator
engaged and repeated, "Good, see you stay on track."

Harris rose from his desk and went over to a
small bookshelf, where he picked up a small flat metal disk. An
image of a woman appeared on the disk and Harris spoke to it. "The
time is coming soon. Humanity is progressing to the point where
their technology will be sufficient to provide what we need."

General Harris then put his escape plan into
action; he had always had a plan ready. He was in his late eighties
in his present incarnation and in excellent shape, though in terms
of human time he had actually lived many, many thousands of years.
Anyway, these days eighty was no longer old; often people lived to
a hundred and thirty or beyond.

Harris had at his disposal, deep below his
mansion, a small Gray escape ship. It was equipped with a blinding
field which made it difficult to detect with electronics and
impossible for the human eye to see. Now that the courts had put
out a warrant for his arrest and his web of deceit could no longer
be maintained, he stole away in the dark and made course for Neo
Terra.

He took with him secrets that would never be
revealed. One secret was the fact that he had created the Hyborgs
quickly when the war with the aliens began because he'd been
engineered by the Grays and knew what was coming. He had started
building the Hyborg program long before the alien invasion
started.

His small ship plied the distance to Neo
Terra with no difficulty. Once there, he entered the planet
undetected and found a small crevasse in the tunnel leading to the
dock. He placed himself in stasis and set his clock for a wake-up
call three hundred years into the future. Like a well-fed spider in
the center of a new web, General Harris slept, waiting for the
daylight to favor his return.

>>>

Pam turned on her tape recorder, adjusted the
sound, and sat back to look around at the room full of dignitaries.
The place was well-lit and boasted the latest technologies, some
barely dreamed of when the war began. Yet she found it hard to
believe it was already 2073 and the war had been over for forty
years. In some ways, that hellish conflagration seemed like
yesterday.

Danny Opinhimmer, world president, emerged
from the wings in his wheelchair and came to the dais. He stood up,
gripping the stand with both hands.

"To understand what happened in the past, it
is sometimes necessary to know what transpired after," Danny said
to the dignitaries gathered before him. "We often forget our true
past, and then reinvent a false one in a vain attempt to disguise
our own embarrassing behavior. But in time, the truth is always
laid at our feet; we cannot hide from what we have become."

Danny's voice was cracked and worn, Pam
thought. It was sad to see how old and tired he looked now. She
remembered how strong he had appeared as the world's president
after the invasion was over. But he'd had heavy burdens to bear
these forty years, and he must find the bitterness he felt about
the past hard to disguise.

Danny continued. "Yet again, you try to
remove the stains of your ancestors. Yet again, you turn to your
media gods to create the lies and half-truths you need to ease your
consciences."

Pam could see the dignitaries squirming. But
none of them had the audacity to voice an objection.

"I say this to you one last time. I was
there. I remember what we did. I was the one who killed the last
invader in space and I've regretted it ever since. I remember how
it attempted to communicate, I remember the last word it tried to
say." The sorrow in Danny's voice and the deep scars across his
face were brutal reminders of reality to the dignitaries honoring
Danny's great deed on its fortieth anniversary, to yet again try to
turn Danny and the others into shining heroes.

"The invader said, 'Why?' It said,
'why?'"

With that, Danny's old knees gave way, and he
slumped back into the wheelchair. Without another word, he left the
podium and the public's view.

The dignitaries, as Pam had expected, blamed
Danny's statements on old age and frailty. The videos that followed
his speech were documentaries of how the evil invaders had had only
one goal: world domination, which they'd nearly achieved. The
videos showed that the combined fighting forces of good Earth
people had defeated the cruel and oppressive empire that had
spawned these aliens.

The footage of alien atrocities, matched with
the footage of humans treating these invaders with dignity, only
served to hide the true nature of war. The humans of Earth had been
no better and no worse. They were merely the victors, and it was
the duty of the media barons to capitalize on the heroic nature of
the demoralized Earth people in order to rouse them to greater
effort. To yet again send out wave after wave of media hype all
over the solar system, blaming 'aliens' for every ill that Earth
bore.

Pam could not take the hype any longer. She
stood up, walked away from the table, and left the room. Later, she
cursed herself for leaving when she did. She should have stayed
longer, at least tried to prevent this propaganda from continuing
to spew forth.

But one thing made her happy whenever she
thought of it. General Harris had been branded a war criminal. He'd
vanished and probably would never be punished, but at least all the
world now knew what he was.

For a brief moment, her thin, delicate face
stretched in a broad smile as she remembered the Pakistani diplomat
trying to infer that the Indian government was somehow responsible
for the death of so many people that first year of the war. A
priceless moment! It had served the fools right for starting a
pointless war just days before Earth was invaded. Photographs had
shown the stunned looks on the faces of the Pakistani and Indian
forces as the mother ships from space began attacking both
forces.

Pam took the pins from her French roll and
let down her long graying hair as she waited for the elevator to
whisk her off to her room, and crossed her fingers that a good
night's sleep would clear her head.

What was left of the world's population had
started rebuilding in those areas not completely devastated by the
alien onslaught, eventually dividing the remaining populations into
ethnocentric groups, then even further by ideological beliefs. But
what gave Pam the biggest headache were the yearly gatherings in
the new United Nations building to commemorate valiant fallen
soldiers and reaffirm the decision to eventually exterminate the
Hyborgs, who had been created to win the war.

Reaching her room on the two hundredth floor,
she entered a grand suite which had lavish refinements. This was
the order of things now in New Denver, the new capital of old
America. Reconstruction of the city had adopted a utopian design,
as buildings now spanned entire city blocks and rose hundreds of
stories into the air.

But, due to the depleted resources caused by
war around the globe, gone were the SUV and hybrid automobiles,
replaced with mass transit and three-wheeled bikes that ran on
electric motors. The coffee shops on every corner served coffee
substitute. Children had stopped attending schools, instead
plugging into a global web that, in addition to writing, reading
and arithmetic, taught all the propaganda that people needed to be
passive.

Yes, Pam thought as she pulled the bed sheets
up tight to her shoulders, the old ways were long gone now and
maybe it was time to let the world be. The room, sensing her
breathing slow down and the bed warming with her presence,
automatically dimmed the lights throughout the suite and lowered
the room's temperature. In spite of her dark thoughts, sleep took
her while she wondered if she'd be able to speak with Danny in the
morning.

But he had already died, a broken old man,
with no hope of the truth about the so-called aliens ever winning
out.

>>>

Dart speaks to Reader:

Danny's death that night shocked the world.
Not only was he the first native Indian president, but his approval
rating had never once dipped below eighty-nine percent, something
absolutely unheard of in the history of presidents. The procession
for his funeral put those of past emperors and kings to shame. The
roads were lined with saddened people for hundreds of miles, as his
motorcade passed on the way to the mausoleum which had been built
especially for him.

Yes, Reader, it's sad that he had to die. But
people died so quickly then.

I have more to tell you about Danny. The
information came to light through a book that his son, James,
wrote. James didn't want to succeed him in politics, but he did
want Danny's life to be remembered for more than killing the leader
of the invaders, and becoming world president.

Danny had a journal, which he only ever
shared with his son. His wife left shortly after giving birth to
James, and Danny made every effort to ensure that his son never
went without. The two would spend long nights out behind their
modest home, which he refused to leave even when he became
president. Danny and James camped out under the stars and burned a
small fire on clear evenings, which annoyed the security team no
end. There the two would read from Danny's journal, musing over
events from times past.

James heard stories of Suzie, Beth and Bobby,
Danny's old friends. When the Mahouds first attacked, Danny and
these friends hid in a cave above some old mine shafts. But more
importantly, James heard of the encounter his father had with a
demon.

Danny had vivid memories of it, because this
event saved his life. Just as he was sliding down a side shaft in
the mine, trying to escape the invader hunting for him, he
witnessed a strange event just moments before he blacked out. Danny
was sure the invader would kill him, for it was only a few feet
from his body, its gold-colored faceted eyes gleaming, and gaining
speed as he found himself falling backwards toward the shaft
opening.

Then, as if from thin air, a demon exploded
into the passageway in a flurry of noise and wind and dust,
blocking the invader from reaching Danny as he thumped down on the
bottom of the old shaft. He was just fading into unconsciousness
when he saw the demon hit the invader square in the chest. The
invader fell dead.

The demon was looking around the shaft,
apparently confused, when it caught sight of Danny slumped on the
floor. The huge beast bent down for a closer look, and the last
thing Danny saw before he passed out was the demon's smile,
revealing four gleaming white fangs below the blank white eyes.

That sounds like Charger? You're very
observant, Reader.

Anyway, that was where the story ended for
Danny, because when he came to, the demon was gone and he was safe.
He liked to tell James that it was a beast from native Indian
traditions, something called a Wendigo. James always loved that
story when he was little and, when he got older, often recounted
the event when trying to save his family's traditions from
disappearing.