The Darkside War (4 page)

I didn't want to answer. But this was the acting president of the Americas, and I could recognize the ton of shit I'd stepped into. “Puerto Rico,” I stammered.

He nodded knowingly. “Thought so. Latina. Nice. . . . During the occupation, I linked up with my fellow soldiers in units all over the South. We negotiated with the Accordance to stand down. It was the Federal's fight with the ETs, not ours. We saw a chance to rise again, we took it. Now, from Richmond to Tampa, ain't nothing but the right kind of churches, and the right kind of folk. And you know what?”

I shook my head. I didn't.

“We all still have problems. The poverty, that didn't go away. Those people out there, they're still facing seeing their children get drafted. Or ‘volunteered.' That's why they're angry. Angry because they can't eat. Because they barely have any work to go around, unless it's for the Accordance. Angry because there's still some war off in the distance. And they're angry at me. I thought it would get better. I was wrong. And now, I know things. The Accordance: They've shown me what's coming. And I'm going to eat, screw, and party until I drop dead. I'd recommend you try the same.”

Anais smoothly appeared next to us both. “Mr. President, your presence is needed.”

Barnett glanced over at the two Arvani in their mechanized water tanks waiting for him. “Well, fuck. Here we go. Time to be obsequious and do my duty.”

Anais held up an open palm with a pair of blue pills in it. “Your personal aide suggested I pass these on.”

“Ah.” Barnett picked up one of them and eyed it. “You're going to make me sober up. Do you know how much expensive bourbon it took for me to get to where I am right now? Never mind, rhetorical question.”

He swallowed the pills dry, blinked, and took a deep breath.

Anais indicated that Barnett should go first, but the presi­dent grabbed his shoulder. “The Arvani are going to lecture me. Before I go, Anais, make sure this boy is taken care of. If the Accordance bayoneted a kid out there, that mob outside would have overrun my estate.”

“The capitol building, you mean?” Anais prompted.

Barnett waved his hand. “Capitol, estate, personal palace. President, ruler, puppet. My head on a pike: We'll see it happen at some point when they get over the walls. I just would rather have some more fun while there's still some life in me yet without some goddamned Accordance soldier screwing me over early. Struthiforms can't tell the difference between a child and a fully grown human because the walking drumsticks lay eggs and leave them, so they don't even understand what a child is. See, that's the problem with aliens on the ground. They're alien. Which I keep saying. But who the fuck listens to me? I'm just the acting president.”

Anais glanced at me. “He can't be in the publicity program. There have to be consequences for what he did.”

“Let the CPF give him a chance to prove himself. He stood between a soldier in full armor and a kid. Do your president a solid: Send him to the Hamptons instead of . . . what you're planning.”

I looked at them both, but they avoided my eyes.

Anais finally sighed. “Okay, Mr. President. The Hamptons it is.”

5

The hopper rattled and shook as it flew us over the American East Coast. I sat on a plain bench with Anais on one side of me, and on the other side an unshaven, older Colonial Protection Forces soldier who looked supremely bored.

I twisted my wrists. The zip ties cut into my skin, but neither of them had cared about my complaints. Right now, I was still technically a prisoner. A recruit who'd gotten in the way of the Accordance military doing their job.

The soldier propped up two prosthetic legs against the bench on the other side, leaned back with crossed arms, and closed his eyes.

“Anais, what about my parents?” I asked.

“What about them?”

“Are they going to be executed, now that everything is changing? What's going to happen?” I was scared that a split-second decision was going to ruin it all. All the sacrifices I'd made. “Anais, please help. If everything I've done is for nothing—”

“Help? Help?” Anais groaned. “I've done nothing but help you and you've blown it. Who
helped
coach you to sell your story better? Who shepherded you kids around the world? Who ran into the fucking fire to drag your ass out to safety? I did. I did that. Now you're whining about more help. You know what you haven't done? Have you thanked me? Once? Have you ever thought about the fact that all of this isn't just about you?”

I pulled back from his anger. “It's your job,” I protested.

“My job is to take willing recruits and parade them around the world for PR purposes. If I really gave a shit about nothing but my job, I'd only take recruits from families that worked closely with the Accordance. I wouldn't have helped you save your parents' lives by letting you into the program. To be honest, I may not be making that mistake again.”

I resisted Anais's words. I couldn't find it in my heart to give him credit for doing the good thing. It was the minimum.

And yet. He was right. He could make things simpler. And he hadn't. And that said . . . something.

“As for your parents,” Anais said, “I don't see the point in sending a recruit to training knowing his parents are about to die. That shit isn't going to make a good soldier. No, the deal stands. The deal stands because you were on live TV, standing in front of a child. You risked your life to protect, and we're spinning that. You're about to get the promotion that you've been begging for, because you want to protect more than just a child in a riot.”

“A promotion?” I was zip-tied and locked to a bench in an Accordance vehicle. There were no portholes, just turbulence and whining motors. I didn't feel like I was getting a promotion.

“Promotion to combat. Real action.”

The old soldier on my other side spoke up. “Congratulations, boot. You're about to become cannon fodder. You could have spent your whole enlistment being an actor in uniform. Simple exercises, safe on Earth. Now, no more TV appearances. No champagne with politicians. No handshakes. No jogging along nice boulevards with security.”

Anais smiled sadly. “He's right.”

The hopper pitched up and shook, the engines whined as we suddenly dumped velocity. The CPF soldier staggered up and slid the side door open with a grunt.

“Your home for the next couple days,” he shouted back over the wind.

We glided through the air over the Hamptons. Obstacles littered the beach. The remains of bombed-out mansions used for target practice slumped over into sandy grasses. Bunkers pocked the landscape like inside-out barnacles, hoppers lined up on landing pads around them. Barracks clustered around bulldozed pits, and I saw several squads of humans running in formation.

The hopper slid over it all and dropped the last hundred feet down to the beach, kicking up a maelstrom of sand and water.

Anais cut the zip ties loose and pointed at the door. “If you make it back, look me up,” he said, not unkindly. “I'll buy you your first drink.”

The soldier grabbed my collar. “Welcome to the first day of the rest of your war,” he shouted into my ear.

Then he threw me out of the hopper and into the storm.

+  +  +  +

I choked and tried to cover my face as wet sand blasted my exposed skin. The hopper eased back into the sky, and the flurry stilled. I wiped caked sand away from my face and stood up.

Four other hoppers slapped down onto the beach. Three or four recruits tumbled out the doors of each hopper, landing awkwardly in the sand and staggering in the blast of air as the vehicles rose back into the sky.

We milled around, pulling closer together as we watched the insectile aircraft skim out over the ocean, then bank south together in formation.

“Anyone know where we're supposed to go next?” a girl nervously asked. She hugged herself, and her wide-eyed fear created a sort of boundary around her. Everyone stepped back, as if worried they might catch it.

We glanced up at the sound of a loud buzz. A carapoid, wings fully extended, finished a ten-foot jump over our heads and landed in the sand near the water.

We all gaped. No one had ever seen one of the beetle-like aliens in armor. It looked like a mobile tank with scuttling feet as it moved toward us, holding a raised baton in one of its knobby hands.

It jammed the stick into a puddle of salt water. The stick sizzled and spat, and the puddle of water exploded from the jolt cast by the mother of all cattle prods.

We all reflexively jumped back. “Jesus,” someone muttered.

“Is that our drill instructor?”

“What are any of you good for?” the carapoid asked in a hiss augmented by the heavy segments of gray armor molded to its mandibles. They creaked as it moved. “Do you have any survival instincts? Or will you be the first to die when it gets really ugly? Do you have any talents to offer me? Because right now you all seem bewildered and scared, and that's not what I need. But maybe I have trouble interpreting your ugly alien faces and you're all ready to go. Either way, you are here so that we learn where best you might serve.”

The carapoid moved over the sand, thudding its way around the group, eyeing us through compound eyes protected by scarred blast-proof goggles backlit with heads-up display information.

It tapped the prod against the armored carapace. Tick, tick, tick.

None of us said anything.

“The Accordance sacrifices much to keep an umbrella over your heads, and you're all cowering on this beach like hatchlings on a mother's stomach,” the carapoid said. “So let's shake you loose and see whether you can scuttle on your own, yes?”

We all looked at each other.

Tick. Tick. Tick. “See that pier out there? I'm going to start walking toward it after you. Anyone I catch up with, I'm going to tap to encourage them. Ready? Go.”

For a second we all remained frozen. Then the carapoid reached out with the prod and gently tapped the nearest recruit. The tip sizzled and snapped, and electricity danced across his shoulder.

He screamed and leapt into motion, staggering away from the carapoid drill instructor. I needed no similar convincing. I ran.

I'd been on a hunger strike the last week. This week I'd been drinking punch and flying around the world to parade myself as a new recruit. I was jet-lagged and bewildered. Out of breath.

Smaller, faster recruits than me ran past as I struggled to keep to the middle of the pack, highly aware that just a few people struggled on behind me in the wet sand.

Zap! I glanced behind to see the girl with wide eyes eat sand as the carapoid got within reach and tapped her.

She lay facedown on the beach, quivering, as several of the other girls gave her and the drill instructor a wide berth to pelt for the pier. They passed me by; I'd slowed down as I'd looked behind.

I snapped my attention forward and ran like hell, passing a purple-haired girl wearing a leather jacket and jeans. She glanced over at me, and her eyes glinted silver in the sunlight. A couple years older than me, than most of the recruits, she looked pissed, not scared like the rest of us.

We all made it to the piers. I grabbed one of the weathered pylons and panted, holding myself up.

“This won't do,” the alien drill instructor said as it trundled up to the heaving, exhausted mess of us scattered around the pylons. It moved around on its many legs to face back down the beach, then turned back to us. “Again!”

It squeezed the prod. Sparks ran threateningly up and down it.

The group took off. But the girl with the silver eyes walked up to the carapoid. “This is stupid,” she said calmly.

I stayed to watch, still catching my breath, ready to run like hell.

“What?”

“You've figured out who can run faster,” she said. “But what the fuck does that have to do with who can fight the best? Unless you're planning on putting us into battles where we run away from the enemy a lot.”

The carapoid rubbed its forehands together, making a cricket-like chirp. “Now, there's some spit,” it said. “Well done. You're right. This exercise tells us nothing about you other than who can run the fastest, and that's not all we're looking for. There will be more tests, don't you worry about that. But what it also tells us is—”

It slammed her on the chest with the prod. She fell back against the pylon behind her, but surprisingly kept standing. From her jacket rose a wisp of smoke, and she quickly shucked it off and let it drop to the sand by her feet.

“It also tells us who follows orders! Now follow my damn orders and run!”

We both took off down the beach.

6

A boy with thick shoulders stood on a chair in the center of the mess hall. His skin dripped salt water from his grays, and he'd shaved his head down to the scalp to reveal a custom CPF Earth-and-triangle tattoo on the back of his neck.

For the whole day we'd been run back and forth down the beach. Until recruits dropped to the sand and wouldn't move. Until we coughed, our lungs burned, and our muscles gave out.

Human medics checked over recruits with burn marks on their skin as we milled about and eyed the kitchen's empty counters. The food that had been left out had been snapped up by the runners who got to the mess hall first.

Runners like the kid with the South African accent standing on the chair.

“Today, you learned something about yourselves,” he shouted at us. “About the warriors you really are. Or aren't. Over the next few days, we will find out who the true fighters are, and who will be our support staff mopping the barracks while we fight to protect Earth!”

“Sounds like a lot of bullshit,” I muttered.

Someone next to me snorted. I hadn't realized I'd said that out loud. I was more tired than I realized. She nodded though. “His name's Ken Awojobi. He was on my transport in. His family is in deep with the Accordance. He's on the officer track, and he knows it. Been training and studying for this his whole life. A chance to serve, gain rank, then come out high for something in Accordance civil service. Maybe run a partition, or something nice like that.”

I wasn't too tired to smile and hold a hand out. “I'm Devlin,” I said.

“Cee Cee.” Cee Cee was a head shorter than me. She'd pulled her blond hair back in a tight ponytail. The corners of her eyes fluoresced with processor ink tattoos. Extra augmentation.

“What is he doing?” I asked out loud.

Ken had pulled out a pair of clippers. “You, grab him.”

A nearby recruit squirmed and kicked at the two lean recruits pinning him down. Ken grabbed his head and the clippers bit down.

“This is crazy,” I said, looking around for the drill instructor.

“It's all a test,” Cee Cee said. “Look.” I followed her eyes to the upper corners of the room.

“What?”

“Cameras. I can sense their link-ups.” She tapped the nano-ink beside her eyes. “They're watching us. All the time. We're being studied. Smile.”

“Just keep moving and keep people between us and the idiot with the clippers,” I muttered, and tried to put a hand on her lower back. A bit of showmanship that I couldn't help.

But my plan didn't work. Ken spotted the movement. He swaggered over and flipped the clippers on and off. “Worried about losing a little hair? Think it'll mess with your good looks?” He glanced at Cee Cee and smiled.

“Look,” I said. “They have official barbers; if we're going to get shaved down, they'll do it.” Ken didn't need to parade around as if he were in charge. Although, from what Cee Cee said, he probably would end up being in charge anyway.

“Oh, but this is
tradition
,” Ken said.

“I don't care,” I said. Why was I bristling so much? “It's not your place.”

Ken's eyes flashed. “Not my place?”

“Look—” As I said that, Ken grabbed my head with one hand. “Hey!”

“I know who you are, asshole,” he hissed. I jerked back from him, the clippers snarling and catching my neck. Hair fell down between us as I twisted away. Two of Ken's “assistants” grabbed my arms. I tried to yank free, but they were strong, their fingers bruising me as they shoved me down onto a table. “Seen you on TV. Seen your parents. You're traitors, anti-Accordance. So you might fool some people, by pretending to join. But anyone who looks closely can see you don't give a shit about all this. You're half-assing it.”

Metal ran up my scalp and more hair flurried around me and landed on the table shoved against my face.

“Fuck you.” I squirmed and tried to kick backward. I got a knee, and a curse.

“There's some real, actual fight in him,” Ken announced to the room. “He's not as much of a pacifist coward as his parents after all.” He dug an elbow into the back of my neck and I gasped. The clippers nicked my left ear, and I felt a little trickle of blood run down the lobe.

Ken shoved himself away from me, and I jumped up, my face hot with humiliation. Fists balled, I growled, but he just laughed and stepped away as his newfound groupies made a wall in front of him and shook their heads.

Five recruits now surrounded him like bodyguards.

Six on one. Two of them older, large biceps under their gray T-shirts.

I was going to get my ass handed to me. And Ken knew it. He smiled, daring me to try. Everyone else had seen the logic of not trying it.

Fast. I'd have to get past them and focus on getting just one punch in. One punch to show the room that Ken wasn't invincible. To make a point.

To prove that I wasn't a coward to everyone watching.

“Lights out in two minutes!” a human drill instructor shouted from across the room. “Anyone not in an assigned bunk will spend the night on the beach with me. Your names are on your bunks. Go!”

The larger threat scattered us.

I jogged through the hallway, looking for the bunks, exhausted, hungry, still tense with anger. I stopped when I saw a water fountain.

“We don't have time for that,” someone passing me hissed.

I kept drinking water. Until I felt like something in my stomach was going to burst. Part of me was trying to fill that hole the hunger had excavated in me. But I also had another trick up my sleeve.

The end of the corridor opened up into an almost warehouse-­sized room. Hundreds of bunk beds in rows in the open area. To the back, bathrooms and showers.

I jumped into my lower bunk. Looked around. “Hey, upstairs,” I asked the bunk above me. “Is it all boys in one row and girls in the next?”

“As far as I can see,” the voice replied tiredly.

“Huh.”

“I wouldn't get out of the bed at night, though.” The bed shifted, and a brown face peered over at me. Curved gang sigils marked the massive forearm dangling over the side.

“Why not?”

“Force fields. I got here a day early. Our overlords aren't interested in anyone here getting into trouble at night. We might as well be in a jail cell come lights-out.”

And just as he said it, the lights cut out.

There was some muttering chatter between the rows—invitations—and then a sound like a bug getting zapped in one of those bug lights. Someone screamed and swore.

“See?” Upstairs laughed.

“Shit. When do they turn back off ?”

“Hoping to make friends with someone you met?”

“No, I drank a lot of water. I'm going to have to pee,” I told him. “I wanted to wake up early, but now I'm wondering how I take a piss in the middle of the night.”

My bunkmate's face came back over the edge. “Up early,” he said thoughtfully. “That's smart. What's your name again? I saw it when I got to the bunk, but forgot.”

“Devlin,” I said.

“Rakwon.” Rakwon extended his hand over the edge of the bed. I shook it. It was a big, strong hand. I felt like a child.

“You play sports?” I asked.

“No. Everyone asks. We run big in my family. I guess it's because my mother's Samoan. Dad's from Queens. My brother played rugby, but quit after he lost a tooth.” He laughed. “If you don't piss the bed tonight, wake me up with you. The fields turn off right before breakfast. Getting there first while everyone is getting their bearings is a good idea.”

Another loud zap, this time swearing in a decidedly female timbre.

“The fields are up across beds as well. So it's only bunkmates that can move around. Get some sleep, don't pee yourself. Wake me up when you get up.”

+  +  +  +

We converged on breakfast like a barbarian horde, up before the force fields around our bunks dropped out, waiting for the telltale shimmer in the air to fade away.

The line cooks ladled porridge-like goop into divots in our trays. At the end of the counters were squares of what looked like unwrapped energy bars near large baskets of fist-sized gray blobs.

“What is this shit?” I asked.

Rakwon pointed with a spoon at the goop. “Slurry. Made in Accordance vats and perfectly balanced with all the nutrients a human digestive system needs. You can live off it forever.”

“And this?” I shoved the gray blob. It wobbled.

“Energy drink, kinda. Sharpens focus. And hydrates. You can eat the film that holds it together.” Rakwon bit into his blob and slurped hard to get the liquid out before it dribbled out from the collapsing spheroid. Then, like slurping spaghetti, he sucked the remains in and chewed them.

“It looks like snot.”

Rakwon grinned. “Keep the energy bar in your pocket for later,” he said, sliding his square into a pocket of his grays. I did the same.

The slurry tasted vaguely like oatmeal . . . if I used my imagination. I spilled most of the lightly coconut-flavored orb juice down my chin. And I didn't care. We'd got in first, got our table, and had food.

“Holy shit,” Cee Cee said. I looked up, mouth full of food, to see the girl with silver eyes and purple ponytail pass us by.

“She tried to stand down the instructor on the beach,” I said.

“Those eyes.” Cee Cee shook her head. “They would've had to tattoo in the nano-ink with a gun right to the open eyeball.”

Rakwon stopped eating and put down his plastic fork. I swallowed; my appetite fled as I thought about a needle striking an eyeball.

“No sedation.” Cee Cee winced.

The girl wore her grays now. No street gear. No piercings. But she'd somehow not had her hair shaved down. The purple stood out as she walked between the tables. I noticed processor tats ran down her biceps and forearms in galaxy-like swirls and swoops.

“Hey, hey you!” a smiling boy shouted. “Where
you
from?”

She stopped. He stood in her way. They were face-to-face, food tray to food tray. “Bronx,” she said.

“Nah, I mean, where are you
from
from?”

“Castle Hill,” she said, looking quite unimpressed.

The boy shook his head. “No, no. Like, where are your
parents
from?”

“Wisconsin and Jersey,” she said.

“No, no, you know what I mean.”

The girl could have blended into a crowd in some South Asian country. She shoved her interrogator and walked around him with a “Get out of my way.” Rakwon laughed. “Bronx,” he said.

“Better question is, what's her name,” Cee Cee murmured. “She's a walking supercomputer with attitude.”

The boy didn't get out of her way, though. He moved back to stand in front of her. “You ain't too polite; I'm just asking you a question,” he insisted.

She shoved him again with the flat of her hand. He dropped his tray and pushed her right back. Hard enough she flew back and sprawled hard on the ground.

Everyone froze.

Except for the purple-haired girl. She grabbed a nearby chair and kicked a leg out from it. The metal screws broke right off with the impact.

Then she hit him across the side of the face, using the chair leg like a bat.

He dropped to the ground. She kicked him in the ribs twice, then once in the face. She tossed the leg aside and stepped back, hands in the air, as two human drill instructors ran across the room at them. “He needs help,” she called out to them. “He fell into that chair really hard.”

They tackled her and dragged her away.

“Washed out in one day,” someone said in an awed voice.

There was only cold satisfaction on her face, though. Like she was done playing a silly game she hadn't wanted in on to begin with.

“Glad I didn't say good morning to that one,” Rakwon muttered.

“She seemed cute and cuddly to me,” I said, still staring at the door she'd been dragged out through.

“A real teddy bear,” Cee Cee said. “I'm sure you wouldn't mind trying to put an arm around
her
at night.”

“I have a feeling it'd be like hugging a porcupine,” Rakwon said.

“Move out!” a carapoid drill instructor shouted from the doors.
“Move out!”

+  +  +  +

The drill instructor the previous day hadn't lied. We weren't just running up and down the beach. Now we were tested in other areas. In a room with screens mounted on clear plastic stands, I stared at a holographic display of random parts floating in the air.

“This is a puzzle,” said the carapoid alien instructor. “You will now solve it. Attention will be paid to how fast you solve it.”

Simple enough, I thought, looking at the pieces.

Then I noticed the instructor tugging out a fire hose from a box in the wall.

Wait a second. . . .

“Waterproof screens,” Rakwon moaned.

I didn't even have time to swear. A powerful jet of frigid water knocked me back from my console. The carapoid instructor gleefully swept the stream of pounding water across the room. By the time I'd put the three-dimensional puzzle together, my fingers shook so hard I could barely manipulate the images.

To warm us all up, they ran us up and down the beach.

Last ones in didn't get dinner. So I went hungry again.

By lights-out I didn't have the energy to talk to Rakwon. But I did stop to drink enough water to get up early again.

Day three we built a tower out of large logs, and defended it against other teams on the beach. Ken led a team. He buried my face in the sand, choking me. “You're too slow to eat dinner. Chew on sand, coward,” he hissed.

Maybe the girl with the purple hair had the right idea. I was going to have to kneecap Ken and get dragged away to a prison to get away from all this.