Animalis (2 page)

After what might have been five minutes of lying there on the ground, with thoughts of his past swirling around him, Jax noticed a gloved hand hovering above him. Gillian stood before him with a wide smile splitting his face.

“Not bad! You’ve got something, kid—really got something. No one takes a hit like that and keeps fighting. Sorry you had to be the one to feel it. But believe me, this is not going to be a fight that I forget.”

Jax tried to hold onto the words while he brought himself back to reality. The jeers from the crowd had disappeared, and as he took hold of Gillian’s hand, he even heard some light clapping.

“You’re a … a beast, Gillian,” Jax managed to wheeze out. “Next time, I’m going to tear you apart, though.”

Jax drooled a bit of blood as he spoke the last word. The drops of red disappeared into the dark shadows amongst the grass. He clumsily pulled his hand out of its glove and put pressure on it. While he had been consumed by the pain, all he had wanted was to get away from this mad group of people pretending to be his enemy, but now he thought he might stick around long enough to get a few more compliments.

Gillian turned away and joined the group of officers gathering behind him. Jax noticed Hank had left the group and was standing by his side. It was a relief to have someone next to him that he knew was really on his side. Hank was about to speak when the staff sergeant cut him off.

“Unpredictable, demanding, and dangerous,” the staff sergeant said. “When they're breaking international law, you've got to maintain control.”

Jax only nodded as he looked up at the tall sergeant. Jax hadn’t controlled the fight. When all the points for the punches and blocks were tallied up, even though they had ended in a stalemate, Gillian had won the fight.

“Your results will be sent to you in a day,” the sergeant said. He turned to Hank. “You two knew each other before joining, huh?”

Hank nodded. “Friends all through high school,” he said. “You can be sure that my notes for his certification will be entirely encomiastic.”

The staff sergeant slapped Jax on the back and returned to the group of officers. Jax began walking back to the
Hornet
and Hank fell in beside him. Hank’s eyes were oscillating around in tight, random patterns, scrolling through loads of information in his retina monitor. He was probably looking at information about the fight, or communicating with the pro fighter he’d hired—who was likely wondering what had happened. Jax wasn’t sure if Hank would be madder at the idea of the fighter being incompetent, or Jax going against the plan. At least if the fighter had lost, they could loathe the man together.

“Ruination, Jax, you lost,” Hank said.

Jax looked over at him. Hank had a worried smirk with his chin still tucked under his collar. His eyebrows shot up and he met Jax’s glance. Jax looked away, not knowing what to say.

At the end of the sparring field the path turned and joined a road running through the middle of the small base. They passed the armory and storehouse. Jax tilted his head up to gaze at the launch shaft of the airport disappearing into the clouds. It was a magnificent sight. The honey comb pattern of the beams started wide at the brightly lit base and rose up to the slender point a thousand feet in the air, like a giant had pinched the metal and dragged it into the sky.

The view into the sky was cut off as they entered the hanger beside the launch shaft and continued walking toward the
Hornet
. The barracks, the mess hall, the officers quarters, and the command center were all part of the
Hornet
—a monstrous space plane with two pod bays, four turrets, and room to house forty men.

“It’s hard to know either way, though. Maybe in their eyes, you did win,” Hank said, breaking the silence. They started ascending the stairs into the
Hornet
. “After he hit you in the groin? That earned you some prodigious creds. And you did it on your own.”

Jax looked at him, feeling both hopeful and nervous: hopeful, because Hank hadn’t given any hint of lying that Jax might still pass certification, and nervous for what Hank was about to say.

Hank nodded. “Yeah, I just got a message from the fighter I hired—says the connection was never paired. That was insensitive on my part, assuming he would fight better than you.” He slugged Jax in the shoulder.

“I just hope it was enough,” Jax said. He was relieved to see Hank’s smile again. “I know I can do it. If the situation is real, that's when my instincts take over—“ Jax stopped, feeling his thoughts derail.

As Hank had lowered his arm, Jax glimpsed a white logo on the shoulder of Hank’s coat: three horizontal white stripes. The design was common, a popular brand from before either of them were born, but seeing the whiteness reminded him of something.

Black and white, swirling together, trapped behind bars. Like a dream quickly fading, the blurry image of a yin-and-yang came back to Jax.
Yes …
During the fight, someone had said his name. He shook his head. It felt like déjà vu now, slipping just out of his awareness. Had there really been someone speaking to him?

Jax stopped walking and turned around. “Was there someone looking for me during the fight?”

Hank stopped a few steps above Jax on the stairs and turned around. His smile bulged his freckled cheeks. “No. What, did you invite a girl I don’t know about?”

Jax said nothing, trying to focus on remembering, and then something came to him.

“Jax, save me!”
the voice had said.

——

It was late. Jax should have been in his bunk, but he couldn’t sleep. He stood in the hall in front of the pods. The walls were smooth and white, and radiated a soft light from diodes spread throughout their surfaces.

He could see his reflection in the window to the vacuum chamber of the first pod. The face looked confident. Jax’s crisp, strong features and thin brown eyes looked older than most seventeen-year-olds—with their unwearied faces. This was just the start of his military career, but he had been pushed forward because of his physical abilities … and his commitment to never quit.

He was a good complement to Hank, who had excelled for intellectual prowess. Hank had blazed through academy and straight into a commanding position as warrant officer. In high school, Hank was the one planning pranks to reprogram the walls of the school to play movies, and Jax was the one that climbed onto the roof and found openings in the skylight to get in at night. Hank had even found a way to hack the city traffic control, and subsequently sent all of the teachers’ cars to a meat-packing plant instead of the high school one day. Hank had also designed the fighting suit that would have controlled Jax’s body during the fight, and apparently it was selling for 1,600 United Credits on the 3D print design market. A year of Jax’s salary per print. Hank had to be rich.

A message blinked in Jax’s retina monitor as a little translucent box, glowing orange in the air beside the pod door. He gave a mental gesture to display the message. He stepped back, grabbed a ceiling handhold, and watched the message expand to be read.

9-25-2093: Jax Minette. After careful review of your enrollment records, and having evaluated your test with high marks, your request to fill the position of pod pilot aboard the Hornet under the command of Warrant Officer Hank Schneps and Captain Jesus Hernandez has been approved. Call sign Catcher 6. Report to Officer Schneps at 0400 hours.

Jax let out his breath slowly and the glass window clouded with moisture. He took another deep breath and smiled.

When he turned to leave the hall he would now be reporting to regularly, he felt the pain of the fight return. Each step sent a stab into his stomach … but it was worth it.
Like old times
, he thought. Him and Hank. They would send a tremor of fear through the ranks of the militant Animalis.

Chapter 2

Animalis

“Let me be clear: if you don’t make it out in thirty minutes, you’ll blow up with the rest of the plane.” The life-size image of Captain Hernandez’s head and torso focused an intense gaze at the small crew. On the wall, colored diodes and microscopic electromagnets rearranged to form a vivid, textured replica of the man for the video call—like an animated Roman relief sculpture in full color. His bare scalp glistened, reflecting the light emanating from the walls around him in the cockpit of the
Hornet.

Captain Jesus Hernandez spoke with a soft Hispanic accent. At age fifty, war and stress had conspired together, leaving his face as cratered as an asteroid. His left ear had been torn in a previous battle, and Jax couldn’t help looking at it. He and his fellow soldiers stood in the pod bay hall, facing the wall opposite the vacuum chambers.
Jax stood with Hank, with the other two pot pilots, Maven and Felix, a short distance away, listening intently to the captain.

Jax glanced at the clock displayed in the top right of his vision:

05:32.

Somewhere in the plane, a valve hammered open and sent a hollow echo through the floor and into Jax’s feet. The quiet hiss of the electric motors died. He could feel the liquid-fueled rockets rumble to life, ready to push the
Hornet
through the last thin layer of atmosphere.

“The Animalis space plane appears to have lost its maneuvering capabilities,” Captain Hernandez continued, “and is unable to reenter the atmosphere without bursting into flames. It’s a small-sized cargo plane, only within our concern because it is so close to US airspace.”

“Only thirty minutes?” Felix interrupted. “How close are we to being orbital?”

The captain waited in silence once Felix had finish speaking. Felix opened his mouth slightly, then closed it again and rocked back on his heels, away from the wall bearing the image of the captain’s face.

“We need the encrypted logs from the computer,” the captain said, “and any other bits of data that can be recovered. Warrant Officer Schneps …” The captain tapped Hank on the viewer on his end to bring up a mission log. “I’m giving you authorization to board the plane and retrieve all encrypted data from the computer. Our ICT scans are being blocked, but the modifications to the plane suggest that there is a rat Animalis on board. No effort will be made to assist or evacuate. Is that clear?”

“Yes, sir,” Hank said. He saluted the captain, then Hernandez’s grizzled face disappeared and the wall rearranged into its normal, flat, surface. Hank let his hand drop.

With the captain gone, Felix turned to Maven and clapped his hands together. “Aw, a rat hole! Isn’t that just what gets you out of bed in the morning? I can smell it already.” He feigned a large whiff in the air, then walked to the west wall, which folded away to reveal a rack of spacesuits. His hand stopped before he took down his suit. “Actually, I forgot, Jax is now officially certified to pilot. I think it might be time we give him the honor, don’t you?” Then Felix turned to look at Jax. “Heard you fought Gillian last night and didn’t do half bad!”

Hank grabbed his own suit off the rack and started stepping into the bottom half. “It’s going to be tight,” he said, looking at Jax. “I wouldn’t trust anyone else more than you, though. Are you ready for your first flight?”

“What?” Jax waited for the words to echo through his mind again so he could make sure he had heard them right. “Yeah, yes,” he said. “Yes, definitely.”

Jax hurried to the rack of suits. He lifted both halves of a suit together, but lost hold of the legs, and they clattered to the floor. He left them there and started pulling on the torso piece. Training, learning, expecting, waiting for a real opportunity to make a difference. And here it was, him in control, flying through space, retrieving … data. Maybe not the world-changing mission he was waiting for, but it still fed his sense of purpose.

Jax pulled up a menu in his own retina monitor and navigated to the military training information on Animalis encounters. He had read most of it, and had gone through a series of training classes designed to prepare him for encounters, but this was his first operation—with death as a grim failing grade.

While Jax read, the three others continued to chat.

A list of articles appeared in Jax’s vision:

Rat Animalis Disease Prevention

Rat Animalis Recent Attacks

Rat Animalis Neurology and Psychology

…

Jax robotically put the pieces of his suit on and fastened them together. He scrolled through the list of articles till one caught his eye—
Signals a Rat Gives before an Attack
—and pulled it up:

While this document aims to give you tools that will help you recognize a dangerous situation before it develops, it is impossible to know with certainty that an Animalis is not about to become aggressive. Studies from within the Animalis detention center over the past thirty years have led to a compilation of common behavioral cues that each species of Animalis gives.

“And,” Felix was saying to Maven, “you think it’s a poorly designed test for the pilot certification?”

Unlike predator Animalis, rats do not usually attack the neck area. In most cases, only legs, tails, and lower backs are bitten. However, when a rat is territorial, their attacks become deadly, clawing and biting at the stomach, genitals, and throat with a vicious ferocity.

“Fighting is what we work the hardest to avoid,” Maven said quietly.

A rat Animalis will almost always turn to violence if a situation suddenly changes, or if they are put into a new environment. Be cautious if the rat is experiencing something new, or a situation it might interpret as dangerous.

“This is the last place you want to be if you’re trying to avoid a fight,” Felix said, laughing.

“I didn’t join the army to fight,” Maven said, not responding to the jab. “My favorite teacher in grade school said that if you were smart enough, you could always find a better solution than fighting.”

Jax found himself losing track of his place while reading. Snippets of the conversation were drawing his attention. He skipped to the next points of information:

… Rats will almost always attack intruders …

… Do not approach a rat, or any Animalis, that becomes cornered …

“We’re all here for different reasons,” Hank said. “Jax, we’ve got to go. Twenty-six minutes and we’re hot cinders.”

Jax glanced to his left. Hank was at the pod bay, with the door already folded open. Jax closed the browser, quickly locked his helmet in place, and pulled down a laser rifle from the rack beside the suits. He was glad he had missed the conversation. While he liked Maven, and wanted to take her side just to aid an underdog, he couldn’t agree with her. The fight had been exhilarating. Waking this morning, after taking a few pills and putting on the bandages that his health monitors had recommended, he was as happy as he had ever been. Singing in the shower, dancing while he brushed his teeth, even sending a quick message to his mother that things were going well for him in the military.

“Sayonara, comrades,” Felix said. Before the door folded shut, he called out, “Hank, if you die, can I have your stuff?”

Hank bent to shout through the last gap in the door before it closed: “You know it’s sweet stuff.” Hank straightened up and followed Jax, floating through the vacuum chamber and into the pod.

After strapping themselves into the pod, they waited for the
Hornet
to reach orbital speeds. Jax had a countdown going in his retina monitor, ready to launch out into space as soon as it reached zero. A second countdown ticked off just above it:

24:32

That timer told him how long they had until the rat plane burst into flames. It was going to be tight, but as long as Hank could get the information fast enough, they’d make it.
Heroically,
Jax thought as he eyed the main timer:

03     02     01     00

Just as Jax felt the weightlessness of orbital freefall, he launched the pod. Cameras ringing the pod captured a complete view outside and fed the video into Jax’s retina, giving the illusion that the walls were transparent. The sun blazed over the eastern horizon of the massive Earth below them. An ocean of twinkling jewels riding on waves of ghostly transparent and colored satin covered the rest of the view. The blackness was more beautiful than Jax had imagined. Even the pod simulator, which he had practiced in so many times, didn’t come close to showing the range of depth and color that surrounded them. It was stunning. Massive formations of swirling teal and magenta gasses seemed close enough to touch.

Jax rotated the pod and found the rat plane, highlighted by the computer. It was a medium-size space plane, two hundred yards away, designed to carry twenty tons of cargo anywhere in the world within an hour. It was drifting now, just above the atmosphere of the Earth, unable to use its rockets for safe reentry.

“Here we go,” Jax said, pushing the throttle.

Numbers ticked away, showing that they were moving closer to the plane, but everything around them seemed to stay still and permanent. It was an anticlimactic moment, stealing away some of the mystique of flying in space. After a long minute, watching the plane grow, Jax heard Hank laugh.

“A new arena fight has been creating a riot on the web,” Hank said.

“I don’t want to see it, not after the last one you made me watch.”

“We’ll watch it when we get back,” Hank continued. “Now I’m your commanding officer, and your friend; you have to watch this one.”

“Whatever you and the rest of the world see in those videos, I don’t,” Jax said. He decreased their speed with light bursts of counter pressure.

Arena fights … Two Animalis, forced into the arena by other Animalis, fighting to the death. Not just to the death, but till the loser was devoured. Or worse, till the body was thrown into the crowd of Animalis watching in the stands, and they devoured the loser. Hank treated it like some delicacy that Jax had to try a few times before he developed a taste for it.

The distance to the cargo plane ticked off in Jax’s retina monitor until it reached zero and the pod reverberated with a metal clang and jerked to a stop. Jax’s first flight was complete. Now they were coming to the unknown part of the mission. Without being able to get an ICT scan of the plane, they really didn’t know what they would find inside. There could be a dozen Animalis inside. Jax had to focus, so he pushed the thoughts of the arena out of his mind.

“For the computer to go into recovery mode, we’ll need to get into a panel at the front of the plane,” Hank said. He opened the door of the pod. “Plane must have oxygen; there was no pressure loss.”

Through the opening, Jax could see bits of plastic debris floating in the air. Emergency lights were flashing. Jax’s ears were filled with invisible sound, a slight ringing that fluctuated in and out of his audible range. The ceiling was low for a cargo plane, only about ten feet high according to the retina monitor readout, and the doorways were five feet tall. Between the cargo and the wall was a length of hall that started narrow at the cockpit, widened in the middle at the hatch they had opened, and shrunk again at the tail. Jax noticed bolts and adhesive tape holding panels together along the floor and walls. Each panel was a different color, and some were entirely different composites of metal. The whole plane was a patchwork quilt of metal and machinery. The adhesive tape stood out like a bold
DANGER
sign. Was that the only thing keeping the air inside the plane?

Incredible that we aren’t being sucked out into space at this moment
, Jax thought.

Hank held up a small ICT scanner and passed it over the opening, scanning the plane. The information would be displayed in his retina monitor. After a moment, Jax saw a prompt in his own monitor to receive the information. Hank had run the scan through a program that created an easy-to-follow map of the plane. Little icons floated above rooms and crates.

Hank held his hand out to block the door. “Hold on.”

Jax had already expanded one of the crate icons as Hank had spoken. It expanded to reveal its contents:
Weapons
. Tactical, long-range laser rifles. Jax expanded more icons. Rifles, pistols, shock sticks—a whole plane loaded with military-grade weapons. The mission had a new layer of complexity. Weapons on an Animalis plane—it had to be militants. Would they have a shootout? Blasting holes in the walls, sucking the plastic debris out into space?

He readjusted his grip on his own rifle.

“I sent the information to Hernandez,” Hank said. “If he wants to shut down the mission, he’ll let us know. For now, we keep going. Do you see where the rat is?”

Jax hadn’t, but he exited the icon information and scanned the rest of the map.

“He’s close to the cockpit,” Hank said, “but look at the compartment he’s in. That’s a telltale hiding hole. That rat is scared for its life. He’s not coming out of there.” He flipped his palm up and gestured to the door. “After you.”