Infinity Squad (7 page)

"Sure, Doc. Fire away."

It still burned like a bitch, but it wasn't so bad this time. This time I enjoyed the feeling of her gentle hands turning my wrist over, of a strand of her red hair tickling my skin as it brushed my shoulder, and of the light, barely-there smell of her perfume as she got close. Since I was sitting naked in the tub with her leaning over me, this led to some very obvious results.

"Lieutenant!" she gasped, shielding her eyes from my midsection. "Control your thoughts!"

"I'm sorry Doc. I guess this new body just has a thing for redheads." I got out of the tub, making her blush and turn away even more.

"That's NOT how it works, Lieutenant. Those...
preferences
are all in your mind!"

I toweled off quickly, then started pulling my standard issue fatigues up over my standard issue body.

"So you're saying we were each other's type even before?"

"I'm saying that you should put your thoughts and that thing away, or I'll report you to your Captain."

I laughed, looking at the rows and rows of naked clones just like me sleeping in their tubs. "Come on Doc, give it to me straight. Of all the guys you see come through here, how do I stack up?"

She waited until I had zipped up before turning back around, then flicked her eyes up from my crotch to my face with a wry smile. "You're about average."

"See, Doc, I knew there was a reason I liked you."

"Get some sleep, Lieutenant, that's an order."

"Heard and received. That's my first priority," I said, smiling at her as I left.

I tracked the squad's return from the Comms tower while writing up the after-action report. Using squad code language over the open channel, Zazlu and I compromised on how many spiders had been killed by our brave action this morning. I wanted five, he wanted ten, so I made the report say seven. In the air-conditioned office, I had all the forms spell-checked and filled out in triplicate by the time the squad staggered back into the Cleared Zone. I snapped my fingers twice to make the Comms private get me my third cup of coffee since I had come straight from the resurrection tanks, then headed down the tower steps to the main gate with time to spare.

Maybe there
was
something to the way Immortal Squad officers did business.

The gate area was surprisingly crowded for the unscheduled return of half a squad. And the crowd was surprisingly dainty. One of the three news reporters I had never seen before was wearing four-inch high heels as she adjusted the camera man to get her best side. Our Press Relations Officer was next to her, eating a croissant. The rest of the crowd were in suits. Business suits, not battle suits.

Diplomats? Reporters? Croissants? Here? A new transport must have just delivered them all through the wormgate. And then I saw the reason for the fuss.

The General, of course, was holding court in the middle of the crowd. But more important were the two wiry robo skeletons rolling next to him. Encounter bots for the Benefactors.

"And here they come folks," Oakley boomed, waving his arm towards the opening gate. "Soldiers returning from another successful hunt in our expanding struggle to make this planet safe for human colonists, returning with their heads held high!"

The metal gate cranked open and Zazlu stomped in first, three colors of mud caking one side of his body and blue spider blood dripping down the other from the decapitated head he carried. Ann-Marie came in next, looking somewhat presentable except for the exhausted Steve draped on her shoulder, his fatigues cut open to make room for the leg which had swelled to twice its normal size. Grimmy staggered in and fell to his knees, starting to dry heave. Juan loped in, also covered in blue blood and mud, dropped his skull with a thud and leaned on his rifle sucking wind, but still found the energy to look up and wink at the high heeled reporter.

Mouths were hanging open.

"Squad,
attention
!" I barked, stepping forward through the crowd. It hated to do it, most of the squad was falling down exhausted, but just too many muckety mucks were watching. The squad snapped to despite their screaming muscles, even Steve. I allowed just enough time to let the cameras click twice and the videos to get their opening shot, then snapped, "At ease! MEDIC!"

"Here," Steve whimpered, collapsing.

"
Another
medic!" I yelled, Ann-Marie and I catching and helping him to the floor. I slung Ann-Marie the sack of cold water bottles I had brought and when the base medics rushed over, I left Steve to them and went to the kneeling Zaz.

"Great job," I said, patting his shoulder, then helped him wipe grime from his arms. "You got them all back."

"Thank you sir. But it was your sacrifice which got us out of trouble." He looked at me. "The trouble you put us into by not telling me about your secret spider friend."

"No more secrets, Zaz, I promise. It's my first time being the double bar." He nodded, then grinned as Butcher poured cold water on his head. He lifted his mouth to drink as she kept pouring, and when the bottle was empty he wiped his bald head then smiled at me.

"It was my first time being the single bar. I should have challenged you more. Now, go," Zaz said, slapping the bloody head resting on his knee and motioning towards the immaculately dressed Oakley with a grin.

The general was already storming towards me so I met him halfway. The reporters would be able to hear us that way.

"Sir, may I present the first Hell Spider skull collected by any armed forces on Angie's Star II! Long may humans hold this planet!"

With my parade quality stance and formal looking offering of the head, Oakley had no choice but to reach out and take skull from me, holding it at arm's length to keep the dangling neck bits from leaking onto his polished boots. I snapped to attention and Oakley smiled weakly for the whirring cameras, then immediately motioned for one of the BlackShirts to take the skull away.

"First Lieutenant Forrest, I accept this trophy and commend your actions," he boomed to the cameras more than me as he handed the bloody mess off. "You and your Infinity Squad embody all that humans are trying to accomplish on this planet."

Still smiling widely, he leaned in close to my ear and growled, "Next time you WILL be dropped off and retrieved by helicopter so that your squad does not look like a band of goddamned homeless butchers when you return! And clean up the fucking skulls before you present them! Laugh and salute me you sorry excuse for an officer."

I broke into deep belly chuckles and then snapped to, smiling at Oakley like he was my hero. "Yes sir! You are an inspiration, sir!"

"Thank you, Lieutenant," he said, smiling at me like a wolf. "I look forward to the next five skulls you will get to me by the end of the week. Dismissed." He saluted, then turned stiffly away.

He tried to direct the crowd away from the squad and most followed, until the two Benefactor robots started rolling towards us. And then every camera was jostling for position, eager to capture what the aliens who had given humans access to the stars might say to us.

Humans had never seen a Benefactor in the flesh, but had been assured that they looked somewhat like their tele-operated encounter bots, tall bipeds with spindly, fragile limbs and a thin, oval head. They also assured us that they were not the same tall, spindly biped aliens that humans had reported being abducted by for decades.

The first Benefactor bot rolled to a stop right in front of me, its camera eyes panning over the squad, the gate, the spider skull, my sidearm, and finally my face. It looked right at my eyes, paused like it was going to say something, then just nodded and started rolling away.

The second bot was looking closely over each member of my exhausted squad, then turned its emotionless face to me as well. "It was a difficult mission?" it said in its slow, perfectly unaccented English.

I gulped, looking at Oakley and the other frozen diplomats who were as shocked as I. A First Lieutenant should
not
be talking to a representative of the species that controlled the wormgates. One wrong word, one gesture taken a bad way, we'd be trapped here forever, cut off from Earth, hundreds of people slowly starving. What did it want to hear? The truth? The official line? A gung-ho sound bite?

Now the silence was getting awkward. The bot was still looking at me, perfectly still, waiting. But there were huge implications here, political, economic... I tried to remember everything I had ever heard or read about the Benefactors, every nuance of their culture, real or theorized.

"Answer him,"
Ann-Marie hissed into her mike, the voice barely registering in my implants.

The bot stood motionless, head tilted, still waiting for my answer.

"Yep."

Fuck. Did I just say 'yep' to the most powerful aliens in the uni-

"You will have to tell us
more
about it sometime."

Double fuck. The inflection could have been annoyance. Or sarcasm. Or mirth. There was no way to tell. You don't really miss emoticons until you're trying to communicate with the robotically operated representative of an alien race you've never seen with your life hanging in the balance.

I slowly, very slowly, pulled my completely fake, full of lies, folded up mission report from my back pocket and extended one copy towards him. Metal fingers accepted the papers from my hand, brought them up to its camera face and flipped through them faster than my eye could follow, like an industrial machine. Then he handed them back to me as slowly as I had to him.

"Thank you," it said, then turned and wheeled away. The crowd followed, the reporters taking pictures of my shocked face, the diplomats pissing themselves and consulting their etiquette guides, and the General fuming. The medics wheeled Steve away, alive, as one of the eight BlackShirts ringing the tour, a real prick named McCloud, stomped over and ripped the report from my shocked hand and boot-stepped off after the General. And then we were alone.

I coughed to keep my voice from shaking, then said, pointing with each name, "Juan, Grim, back to quarters, R&R for the rest of the day. Ann-Marie, Zazlu, two hours for rest and clean up."

As the privates slumped out of earshot, Zazlu looked up at me. "Just two hours?"

"Yep. Then we've got a spider to talk to."

***

***

FLEET INTER-SERVICE COMMUNICATION: PRIORITY 7C

FROM: UN HIGH COMMAND, DEPGENSEC, SWITZERLAND

TO: GENERAL OAKLEY, COMEARTHFOR, ANGIE'S STAR II

RE: ORDERS FOR THE CAPTURED ENEMY

MESSAGE:

YOUR RECENT MESSAGE ABOUT THE LIVE SPIDER CAPTURE WAS CAUSE FOR CELEBRATION IN THE OFFICE. IT IS QUITE A HISTORIC ACCOMPLISHMENT. YOU ARE HEREBY PROMOTED TO THREE-STAR GENERAL, EFFECTIVE IMMEDIATELY.

AS FOR ORDERS REGARDING THE PRISONER, DEPENEMYINTELL CONCURS WITH YOUR TESTING PLAN, WITH THE CHANGE THAT DISEMBOWELMENT FOLLOWS BREAKING OF THE SPINE, NOT PRECEDES IT. YOU MAY BEGIN IMMEDIATELY.

AS BEFITTING YOUR NEW RANK, WE ARE MOBILIZING TWO MORE SQUADS OF INFANTRY TO DEPLOY TO YOUR COMMAND, TO BE SENT WITHIN THREE SCHEDULED WORMGATE SHIPMENTS. A SERGEANT MAJOR HUGHES WILL ACCOMPANY THEM AND MAY PROVE HELPFUL IN THE MORALE PROBLEM YOU HAVE CITED IN PREVIOUS MESSAGES.

SGMAJ HUGHES IS AN EXPERT IN TRAINING WILLFUL OFFICERS TO FALL IN LINE, AND WITH THE EXTRA MANPOWER, DISOBEDIENT PERSONNEL OR LARGE PORTIONS OF SQUADS CAN BE DEACTIVATED FOR RETRAINING WITHOUT AFFECTING YOUR OPERATION SCHEDULE.

KEEP UP THE EXCELLENT WORK.

END MESSAGE

***

Chapter Four

"Are we sure this is a wise idea?" Zazlu asked, pulling at his clean uniform. "Couldn't he just psychically melt our brains or something?"

I stopped with my hand on the doorknob to the Holding room. I hadn't thought of that. I looked over at Ann-Marie, also in a newly cleaned and pressed uniform.

She shrugged. "They wouldn't have claws if they could."

I looked back at Zazlu. "She has a point," he agreed.

I nodded, then asked Ann-Marie, "How long for you to disable the cameras in there?"

She pulled out her smartphone and hit two buttons. "Done."

When Zazlu and I just kept looking at her in shock, she added, "What? Where did you two go to Counter-Intelligence school?"

"The wrong place, obviously," I said, opening the door.

The Hell-Spider was sitting there like before, all eight legs tucked underneath it, in a serene pose. And just like before, it did not react when I walked in, or even when Zazlu and Ann-Marie followed me in on eggshells, like the bulletproof glass wasn't there.

"It's okay," I said. "I've seen this before. It won't react until it recognizes me." I turned to the glass, tapped it gently. "Hello, it's me again. From before? The Halon tank?"