Rebel Fleet (32 page)

=52=

Sometimes, I think I’m at my best when I’m winging it. That seemed to be true with women, work—and war.

We had to move fast. It was getting dark, and we had maybe forty-five minutes before the tug from
Killer
arrived. I had to make every minute count.

First, I requested a Blackhawk gunship. They complied worriedly, and twenty minutes later it set it down on a nearby helipad. The weight and size of the vehicle was pretty close—I hoped it would be close enough to be convincing.

Then, we rolled one of the two big fuel tanks right up against the gunship.

My crew was getting nervous by this time.

“Dammit, Blake,” Dalton said, “why don’t you just let us go home? I’m itching for some iced whiskey and a warm companion.”

I appreciated his state of mind, and I expected a hero’s welcome too—but business came first.

“You’re still under my command for now, Dalton,” I said. “We’re part of the Rebel Fleet until Captain Ursahn releases us.”

“You’re a right bastard, Blake,” he muttered. “What can we do?”

“We’re blowing that up,” I said, pointing at the Blackhawk and the fuel tank. “With you manning the cannon.”

“You crazy sod,” he laughed. “We’ll be hanged—or worse.”

“You let me worry about that. Gwen, blank the ship’s logs again the second it’s done.”

“Oh… this is too insane.”

“Keep it together,” I said, “trust me.”

“I don’t trust you.”

“Well then—trust in America.”

She looked at me and shook her head. She sighed. “I’ll do it, but I want it noted that I was only following orders.”

“So noted.”

“That defense always works, Gwen,” Dalton cackled. “Don’t worry for a moment, my love.”

She muttered foul words, hacked into the ship again, and gave me the thumbs up.

Dalton didn’t even wait. He blasted the helicopter to fragments. Flaming pieces went cartwheeling into the air. He hooted with joy.

“Right under the Yanks’ noses,” he said. “Look at them run!”

The marines who’d been ordered to clear the vicinity had been loitering at what they’d thought was a safe distance. But when the air ripped apart, releasing deadly radiation in pulses, they’d all fallen on their faces. Some of them had singed hair and uniforms. I hoped no one was seriously injured.

“Dammit Dalton,” I said, “You might have killed someone.”

“I had to make it look good,” he argued. “If the tug gets down here and—”

He didn’t make it any further as the ship lost power. Gwen had blanked everything again, which had shut down
Hammerhead’s
systems.

We piled out and I waved for the two-star. He came striding to me, red-faced in anger.

“I’ve got injuries, Blake!” he shouted. “Why didn’t you tell me to clear the area?”

“There wasn’t time, sir,” I said. “And I need your help again.”

“What do you want from me now?” he asked, marveling at the audacity.

I pointed at
Hammerhead
’s hulk. “Get this thing off the pad and hide it,” I said. “You’ve got… nineteen minutes.”

Roaring and waving his arms violently, he spun around and began shouting orders.

“What do we do in the meantime?” Gwen asked.

“Maybe we could go inside and get something to eat,” Samson said. “I’m hungry.”

“We’ll stand near that exploded helicopter and wait,” I ordered them. “Look sad. When the tug gets here, it has to be convincing.”

The next twenty minutes passed by in a whirlwind of activity. First, the Marines tried to lift the ship with a Chinook, but it was too heavy. Then they tried a bulldozer. I assured them the hull wouldn’t dent in. It was tougher than steel.

That got it moving. With an awful screeching sound, they pushed it over the pavement and even a section of grass. The only hiding spot in range was a subway station nearby. They evacuated it and shoved the fighter down the escalators. It was still showing a little—so they parked a set of trucks in front of it.

We watched the skies for the tug coming down from
Killer
. Since we’d powered down
Hammerhead
after pretending to destroy it, there was no data transmission for the tug to lock onto. From their point of view, the fighter had vanished.

When the tug finally landed, the crew aboard wasn’t happy to see a pile of smoldering wreckage.

I met them at their hatch.

“Hey guys,” I said. “We’ve had an accident, I’m afraid.”

Then I faltered. All my bullshit died on my lips. The tug crew was made up of Terrapinians. I’d forgotten that they’d been reassigned to this duty after it had been decided they were too slow to fly fighters.

“Blake?” asked the chief. “Did someone destroy your vessel?”

I looked from one pitiless set of eyes to the next, and I swallowed hard.

“Nope,” I said. “We tried to—”

“We monitored unusual activity on the way down here,” he interrupted. “We saw your fighter’s cannon fire—but now the vessel appears to be missing.”

I had a whole line of crap to feed him, but I could tell it wasn’t going to work. My plan had been to claim the ship had blown up when we’d tried to get her flying again on our own. But all of that was out the window now that there were impartial witnesses.

“I’m afraid I’m going to have to arrest you and your crew,” the turtle chief told me.

The Marines behind me lifted weapons and pulled back bolts. I waved for them to relax.

“Wait a minute,” I said to the big Terrapinian. “Don’t you owe me, Chief? Didn’t we have a deal? I’m your lord or whatever, right?”

“That service-arrangement has lapsed. You’ve left the Rebel Fleet.”

“No I haven’t. Not until you call up to
Killer
and report in. Right now, we’re still part of the same service. You owe me, and I’m calling in your debt right now.”

He hesitated. “What is it that you wish of me?” he asked slowly.

“Report back the truth, that
Hammerhead
was destroyed, but her crew escaped the accident.”

“That’s not the truth,” he said in a flat tone. His kind were painfully literal.

“You must present it as the truth,” I explained. “If you do, your debt will be repaid. You’ll be free of my service.”

“I don’t want to be free.”

“Then find yourself a new leader! You’ll be discharged on your home world soon. You can find peace there.”

He pondered this for what seemed like several long seconds. Finally, he agreed.

“I will dishonor myself with this deception, but this will end our pact.

“That’s the deal, buddy,” I told him. “Have a nice flight home.”

He stared at me for another few heartbeats. Finally, he said a single word: “Primates...” He said this word with disgust, even loathing.

Then he turned around and climbed back into his tug. Minutes later, he flew his ship back up into the sky. I watched the ugly vessel shrink until it vanished. Only then did a smile spread across my face.

The two-star came up and clapped me on the shoulder again.

“That was some grade-A bullshit, Blake,” he said. “You’ve got a lot of stories to tell, I’m sure.”

“I do indeed, General.”

=53=

The following days were a whirlwind of meeting and greeting. We were heroes—of a sort.

Some people on Earth seemed to believe we were half-alien ourselves. True, due to our syms, we were stronger than normal humans and could do strange things like hack computer systems with minimal equipment. But I rejected the idea we weren’t Earth’s lost soldiers. I felt everyone on my home planet owed us a “thank you” at the very least.

We did find some who were quite grateful, or at least curious, about us. We enjoyed celebrity and endured debriefings in random order.

After a few months, we became mascots. We did the talk show circuit, had ghostwriters pen tell-all books, and even started our own web-shows. All the while, we weren’t allowed out of the sight of government agents.

Those agents shadowed us, guarded us, and picked through our trash. It was like being a suspect and a victim at the same time. The people of Earth didn’t quite seem to know if they should arrest us or nominate us for sainthood.

Part of the problem was due to the status of the other humans who’d been affected by the Kher. They were still homicidal. Apparently, when the Kher had rejected them as prospective crew members, they hadn’t bothered to shut down their syms. These subjects were still in the same aggressive mode that we had experienced, seeking one another out and trying to kill each other.

Several had succeeded in dying, but not all. Lt Commander Jones was one of the lucky ones, so to speak. He asked for me often from his maximum security cell, and eventually I was given permission to meet him there.

“Jones?” I asked, seeing a large shape at the back of his cell.

It was dark inside his cage—apparently, it calmed him to stay in a cool, dark place. The psychologists who’d briefed me said it was the light of the stars that drove him to madness.

He came forward until his face was splashed with a soft glow from the passageway. His eyes had a haunted cast to them.

“Jones?” I asked. “What have they done to you?”

“The jailors?” he asked. “Nothing. It was the Kher that left me like this—like discarded garbage. I rage every night tearing up my flesh—but by morning, I’ve healed.”

He showed me red gashes on his arms. Apparently, he’d ripped right through the tough fabric of his prison uniform.

“You called for me,” I said. “Is there anything I can do for you?”

“Maybe,” he said, “but I doubt you’ll do it.”

“Try me.”

He licked his cracked lips as if he was hungry. His eyes were red-rimmed and fixedly staring.

He shuffled closer, to the bars, and I stood my ground.

Then he lunged. He caught hold of my jacket, and he pulled me to the bars.

Surprised, I struggled with him. Two guards sprang forward, jabbing with buzzing sticks through the bars. They stung him over and over. He howled, but he didn’t let go.

There was madness in his eyes, and I realized the bloodlust the syms had released into his body was still there, still churning in his brain. He
needed
to kill me with every fiber of his being.

I left behind a clump of my hair, some skin and my jacket before I wrenched myself free. He retreated to the back of his cell with these prizes—and began to chew on them.

Shaken, I retreated from that place and walked the streets of D. C., feeling troubled.

Later that same night, Gwen called me. She used her sym, as we’d figured out how to get them to interface with our cellphones. It was a neat trick that no one else on Earth had yet mastered.

“How did it go?” she asked me.

“Badly,” I said, describing Jones’ attack.

“That’s awful,” she said. “What can we do?”

It struck me at that moment that there might be something we could do.

“Will you come see me?” I asked her.

She hesitated. “All right,” she said in a quiet voice.

We met at a bar. We talked about a plan. We drank, and one thing led to another.

Since time immemorial, individuals who went through great trials tended to bond. We were no different. Because of our experiences off-world and our biological modification by the syms, we were in a class with very few peers on Earth.

We ended up making love in a hotel room. Afterward, we lay awake for a long time, discussing plans.

“Do you really want to do this?” Gwen asked me sometime before dawn.

“Yes. I think we have to. We owe it to Jones. We owe it to all the survivors.”

She didn’t answer. Soon, her breathing slowed and deepened. She’d fallen asleep—but I wasn’t able to.

* * *

The next day, I returned to the prison to see Jones again. This time, I brought Gwen with me. It was a special facility for very special prisoners in the Appalachian Mountains. We were allowed inside, but we had to get past an army of officials before we could see Jones.

They all told us it was hopeless. Rational appeals had been tried, and they couldn’t penetrate the evil haze that clouded his mind.

We asked for a chance. We hinted that we could do things they weren’t able to do with mere drugs and counseling.

At last, probably because some general somewhere figured we couldn’t make matters worse, we were allowed into Jones’ presence.

“Blake?” he called out softly. “Have you brought me dinner?”

Gwen shuddered at my side. She had no doubt in her mind that she was the dinner Jones had in mind.

“We’re here to help you,” I said. “As you helped me once, on the side of a lonely road.”

He laughed. It was sudden, loud sound and tinged with madness.

“I remember that!” he called. “Did you kill Dalton? I still hate that little frigger.”

“I beat him down more than once,” I assured him.

“Oh good—good. Now… just let me have the girl. I promise to be quick.”

Gwen and I exchanged glances. We stepped forward together.

Jones lunged again, but he did so too early. He couldn’t reach us. His face was pressed up against the bars, straining and grunting with effort. His dirty, outstretched fingers clawed the air.

Each of us grabbed a wrist and held on.

Our syms had made us strong—not like him, but close. Together, we could keep him pinned to the bars. He struggled and grunted like a wild animal.

The next part was the most difficult of all. We invaded his mind.

More accurately, the syms in our bodies leeched through our shared blood in crescent pools torn by his fingernails. Our sweat, blood, grime—it all intermingled.

We hacked him. We hacked his mind.

It was a strange thing. It wasn’t telepathy, or any other variety of psychic mumbo-jumbo. It was all chemical.

What is a brain other than a collection of cells? How did it communicate with our bodies if not by sending impulses through chains of other cells—the tissue we call nerves?

We used these same pathways. It was just another network to us, different only because it was one made of flesh rather than copper wire.

The symbiotic creatures that resided in all three of us were alike, but Jones’ sym had never been switched out of its initial mode. It had gotten worse, in fact, after the blood-trials on the ship.

But we managed to capture his mad sym, to calm it, to get it to modify behavior patterns.

Three long minutes passed, and by the end he was squirming weakly instead of howling. Dry sobs wracked his body when we finally let go of his hands. He sank down onto the floor of his cell, letting his face rest on the stained concrete.

“This feels good,” he said in an utterly calm voice.

“You feel better now?” Gwen asked.

“Yes…” he said hoarsely. “Yes, I think so. My rage is gone. I don’t need to kill you anymore… Thank you.”

“We don’t deserve your thanks,” Gwen said. She was crying silently, wiping tears from her face.

“You don’t owe us anything, Jones,” I said. “You served Earth just as much as we did.”

We left him to recover, but that wasn’t the end for us. There were other survivors in other cells.

We had a long day ahead.

The End

From the Author:
Thanks Reader! I hope you enjoyed
REBEL FLEET
. If you liked the book and want to read more about this universe, please put up some stars and a review
here
to support the book.

-BVL