Ten Little Aliens: 50th Anniversary Edition (3 page)

‘You fight on, Marshal Haunt,’ Shade gasped.

‘You fight on!’ Haunt bellowed. ‘Damned right you fight on!’ She hunched over him, yelled in his face, grey eyes flashing. ‘These are Schirr you’re going up against, Colonel Shade. You think a better suit’s going to save you?’ She turned back to shout at her students. ‘Well, the colonel may just have a point. Those pig-faced murderers don’t just like slaughtering soldiers. Like the Spooks from Morphiea, they like killing whole cities. Whole planets. Planets they’ve never been to before, people they’ve never seen, and none of them given the option of wearing any damned protection.’

The tirade stopped. Shade wondered if the only sound in the entire theatre was his hoarse, ragged breathing as he fought to ride out the pain, to stay conscious.

‘Medics,’ he heard one of the other instructors say softly. There were running footsteps. A shot of warmth. The pain lessened.

Haunt pulled him up by his good arm. He saluted her.
Don’t you know who I am?
She saluted him in turn.

He made it to a seat in the front row unaided. Every eye was on him. The Earthborn getting his ass whupped. He sat up straight on that ass. Hoped Haunt would think he looked like a man who had just learned a lesson, and who was the wiser for it. Much wiser.

‘All right,’ said Principal Cellmek quietly, once Haunt had climbed back onto the podium and taken her seat among the long line of grim-faced instuctors. ‘Playtime’s over.’

He nodded to an aide standing impassively beside him. She hit a button on the lectern console, and a picture of the freighter they’d boarded in the simulation swam into view.

‘By now you’ve all of you had your chance to storm the
Harbinger
and get the crew out alive…’ Cellmek started his usual waffle about how their performance profiles would be affected
by
the various tasks they’d encountered during the simulation. All Shade could think about was Haunt. He watched her through narrowed eyes. She looked dead calm now. Just carrying on like her flip-out had never happened.
Don’t you know what I can do to you? With just a couple of calls it can all be arranged
.

Cellmek finally got back to real life again. ‘The
Harbinger
was on a peaceful mission, with minimal armaments, mapping new trade lines around the Indochina system. The Schirr disciples first infiltrated the lower levels, then secured and held the bridge. Not with weapons. With Morphiean ritual. The AT Elite unit deployed failed to stop them. The real freighter
was
destroyed.’

‘Did the unit escape?’

Shade looked across the hall to see who was speaking. It was some guy he’d not seen around. Denni sat beside him.

‘Only two men got clear before the Schirr detonated the ship, Creben,’ Cellmek announced.

Shade gritted his teeth as the throbbing in his chest grew worse. So this was Creben, known by name to the principal. Only about twenty-five. Short fair hair. Neatly chiselled handsome features. Already he made Shade sick.

‘Eight hundred unarmed human civilians on board were lost,’ Cellmek elaborated. ‘But the explosion took out the
Ardent
too, with the loss of a further thousand. The two survivors drifted for weeks, into the fringes of the Spook Quadrant. We don’t know what happened there. But somehow their pod travelled back within the Earth frontier and was reclaimed. By then, both were dead.’

‘Then
we
did better than
they
did,’ Creben murmured quietly. But not quietly enough.

‘You were up against training droids with beta weapons only, Creben,’ Cellmek said calmly. ‘Those men had DeCaster’s fanatics to contend with. Schirr suicide squad.’

Creben nodded deferentially, his head bobbing about like he was looking for a suitable ass he could climb up.

But Cellmek wasn’t so easily appeased. ‘Perhaps this is a good time to remind all of you that we are not putting you through the most intensive training in the military to make you better people,’ he said sternly. ‘If the Spooks make good on their threats… If DeCaster and his disciples aren’t located and dispatched quickly…’

It felt to Shade like the unspoken threat hung solely over those recruits packed in the hall, not over all Earth’s overstretched Empire. He checked out Haunt again. The mere mention of DeCaster – to quote Haunt herself from one of her spiels, the ‘most wanted pig-faced murdering Schirr in all space’ – always got her riled up. He noted spots of colour in both cheeks. Twin targets.

Cellmek finally broke the interminable silence with more cheerfulness. ‘You’re here because you want to make Anti-Terror Elite. Because you want to hit back at the cowards who commit atrocities like on Toronto, or on New Jersey, or the Argentines. And the final stage of your combat training will be for real. Real ammo, not the peashooters you’ve been firing off. You’ve been grouped into tens, each group including one instructor. Your strengths and weaknesses, as extrapolated from the experiential web, have been inputted to Pentagon Central’s tactical computers. From this data the most appropriate training program and location will be selected from those in the systems. The e-rag will post your final training groups at twenty-one hundred. But for now – put on your websets.’ He paused for two hundred pairs of hands to fumble with the delicate metal headbands. ‘The experiences you’re about to endure were taken from the two dead men found in the pod. Now we can show you what the unit on that freighter was really up against.’

Shade picked up his own webset and eagerly fitted it in place over his ears. Becoming someone else for a few hours, letting his own feelings, his own pain be swamped by a stranger’s
impressions
would be a blessing right now. The lights in Theatre One dimmed into darkness. He focused on his breathing, in and out, as his senses started to fall away.

And suddenly we’re someone else, indestructible. Buoyed up with adrenaline and the camaraderie of our unit, barely waiting for the docking tube to clang home before we rush to board the freighter, to save the ship and everyone on it.

An hour later the tiny detached part of him that still knew it was Colonel Adam Shade was screaming for his own pain, for the lights to be switched back on.

III

‘Shade? You get your grouping?’

Shade was woken from painful sleep by the sound of something yelling and kicking down his door.

‘Coming along for the greet?’ yelled the muffled voice.

He checked the clock; it was gone twenty-two hundred. Rising stiffly, he peeled off the heal-pads from his arm and chest and padded across the cool floor. Hit the green button and watched the door swish open.

Denni was leaning in the doorway. She was smiling, but it was hard to read the expression in her black eyes. ‘Sorry, Shade. Looks like we’re going to war together.’

Shade half-smiled at her. ‘Lindey, Frog and Joiks too, right?’

She nodded. ‘Best in squad.’

‘Uh-uh. We just need the most work.’

‘We must be good. You see who else is with us?’

‘I haven’t checked the rag,’ Shade admitted.

Denni’s face softened a little. ‘You still hurting?’

‘Guess I had it coming.’

‘Guess Haunt is an uptight bitch.’ She paused. ‘She’s grouped with us.’

Shade’s eyes widened. ‘She is?’

Denni nodded slowly. She looked just a little concerned. ‘Her and Shel.’

‘Haunt’s mystery man,’ mused Shade. ‘Who else we got?’

‘Come to the greet, you’ll see.’ Denni grimaced. ‘Sorry. You’ve not seen the rag. The groups are meeting up. Just so we can see who’s going to be watching our backs.’

‘Joiks’ll be too busy ogling their fronts.’ Shade wondered about asking Denni into his room. But there was nothing in her look to encourage him.

‘Probably,’ she said. ‘You know, that big guy, Roba’s with us, remember him?’

‘Seen him around.’

‘And his best buddy, Tovel.’

‘The square-jawed hero. Sweet.’

She paused. ‘And Joseph Creben, shining star of AT Elite.’

Shade smiled tightly. ‘Think I’ll give the gathering a miss.’

‘You really hurting?’

He looked into Denni’s eyes, hopeful she might actually care. No. Nothing there but polite interest.

‘I got things to do,’ he said. ‘Things to arrange, before the off tomorrow.’

‘Pulling a few strings on Earth to get the best cabin?’

Shade closed his eyes. He wished there were something warm in the way she mocked him. ‘You know that’s bull.’

‘Whatever.’

‘Every time…’ He looked at her. ‘Why does my coming from Earth have to make a difference?’

She became mock-pensive. ‘Because our glorious seat of Empire is outmoded and obsolete? Because Earthers stay rich by taxing to death the populations they chucked out into space in the first place? Because…’

Shade felt tired. It was an old argument. ‘I’m running from Earth, Denni. I hate it as much as you do.’

‘Maybe you’ll prove that to me, one day,’ she said as she straightened up and stretched, a cat ready to slink off somewhere new. No loyalties to anyone dumb enough to stroke it.

‘Oh, I’ll prove it,’ Shade promised her as she walked away. ‘To all of you.’

Big words.

He hit red, let the door swish shut. Looked down at the vidphone.
I got things to do
, he’d said. A single call and he could turn all this around.

Shade sighed, and called up the e-rag. The text played over his wall but he barely took it in, hardly heard the cheesy voiceover making a joke out of everything. He stood unmoving, kept staring at the phone as the minutes slid by.

A-T E—ZINE

23.5.90

supple+mental

POSTINGS ALERT SPECIAL ISH! ++

welcome
adam shade
. your training group posting is
E87
. shortcut yes? no?

yes ++

Breaking the news first as always – then stamping on it, shooting it full of holes and nuking it – your ever-lovin’ E-RAG proudly presents your live-ammo training team,
adam shade
++

Age:
28

Visual:
Black male

The big bruiser with the baby face, Roba’s had a good semester, scoring
highest KD kill-rate over five simulations
. Just hope he don’t give you the evil-eye – Roba was
top marksman
with the Volunteers out in Hunan and the Commonwealth and he’s been itching for the live ammo.
Shoot to kill
now, big guy, y’hear?

In his own words:

THE ONLY GOOD SCHIRR IS
++
‘crawling in its coffin right now to save us the effort’

Age:
27

Visual:
White female

The lovely Frog never got the breaks in life (’ceptin’ the one that
broke her face
). Still she’s proved herself a
super-soldier
this semester, building on that
scary
reputation she got fighting in the Second-Wave Argentine skirmishes and through the Buenos Aries Pacification Programs of ’87–88. She gonna
croak some Schirr
for sure.
Mercy
!

In her own words:

THE ONLY GOOD SCHIRR IS
++
‘a dead Schirr. Or have you had that already? Hey, can I change that?’

Age:
32

Visual:
White male

Joining A-TE following a two-year stint with the
notorious SMC Incendiary Division
(African Frontier), Joiks sure must like it when the heat is on. After singeing his fingers over his third and final Academy
caution for misconduct
he’s gained a blistering five merits in the last three simulations. Way to go, Joiks – but
don’t burn up now, y’hear?

In his own words:

THE ONLY GOOD SCHIRR IS
+ +
‘under my boot’

Age:
30

Visual:
White male

Highest-ranking hero of the Dawn Bridge simulation with fifteen merits, about Tovel they say
there ain’t a ship in the sky he can’t fix and fly
. Come a long way from his days stretcher-bearing with the Volunteers out in the Commonwealth Belt. It’s
Schirr stretchers
he’s gonna be filling up come graduation day.
Go Tovel!

In his own words:

THE ONLY GOOD SCHIRR IS
++
‘pacified, kissing Earth’s ass’

Age:
23

Visual
:
White male

Creben’s not your average Joe.
Acing the braincases
in Intelligence, he’s been put on
fast-flight
to join the Big Guns in Pent Central. If he can get through Elite without that
big head
getting
blown off
, that is!

In his own words:

THE ONLY GOOD SCHIRR IS
++
‘More important than blind hatred against the Schirr is the question of why the Morphiean Quadrant has involved itself in a conflict against Empire’