Iron Mike (13 page)

Mike stood up straighter, determination fueling him. Jenn needed him. It was time to man up. He winced as the circulation returned to his legs with intensity, and he marched in place for a minute more to ensure his legs would function without dropping him on his ass. Mike heard a final sucking noise and Stephen was gone. He didn’t turn to look.

He got his backpack on as quickly as he could … which wasn’t so quick. Standing, moving again, his head swam and throbbed as he shook miserably with the chills. He hadn’t pissed since the morning before, and hadn’t eaten for … awhile. He couldn’t remember. The thought of food cramped Mike’s stomach, the nausea overwhelming him. He put his hands on his knees and dry heaved onto the blacktop, nothing coming up but yellow bile. Then, the backpack finally adjusted and snapped in front, Mike set off down the ramp, his eyes fixed on the road in front of him. It wasn’t long before putting one step in front of the other became the entire focus of his world

He didn’t know how much time passed, how long he walked. There were people in front of him, and he thought he should know them. Oh, yeah. The hot chick who deferred to his leadership but whose lips tightened every single time. She was an explosion waiting for a place to happen. He liked her. He knew she was important, but for just now, he couldn’t remember why.

“Welcome back, Mike,” she said softly. Her voice clanged inside his skull. He nodded at her and looked at the children. Kari – that was her name – carried the girl with pink Dora the Explorer sandals on her shoulders, and Jenn was holding Anthony. Another girl … a cute young black girl with neat pigtails … was carrying Ariel, but the pigtails girl – Sasha – was clearly exhausted. Mike took Ariel from her shoulders, gritting his teeth as he lifted the little girl over his head, almost entirely using his right arm.

“Can you lead, Kari?” Mike asked. His voice was raw.

“Of course,” Kari agreed. “Remember guys, it’s follow-the-leader. You have to step where I step, right?”

The children’s response to the game was unenthusiastic. They didn’t know why Kari insisted on a game of follow-the-leader when they were all so hungry and tired. Mike didn’t know why she would do that, either, but he brought up the rear, thinking about it as he walked. He stopped thinking about it after a few seconds. He stopped thinking about anything other than moving, just putting one foot in front of the other. He knew he would put one foot in front of the other until he dropped. And when he dropped, he would die. He could live with that.

They marched for hours … or months. He didn’t know anymore. The pain in his head was intense, worse than any headache he’d ever had. He wanted to call out to Kari, to ask her for more ibuprofen, but she was too far ahead of him, and it was too much effort.

Sometime later, the line of children stopped. Mike stopped with them, watching dully as Kari ran back to him. “It’s the first tank – we’re almost here!” she told him. “The gate is about five hundred yards.”

Mike looked up at the tank and the unfocussed words beneath it. He blinked, trying to read them. “Strength starts here,” he mumbled. Mike lowered his head again to watch his feet as the group moved out.

It wasn’t too long after that they came up to guarded booths. Mike looked up. He, Kari, and the children were surrounded by soldiers with machine guns aimed at them. Off to the side, a large brick sign proclaimed, “Welcome to Fort Knox.” Mike dropped onto the asphalt, sitting rather than falling more by accident than design. He pulled Ariel off his shoulders and held her in his lap, his arms wrapped around her while he shivered. He heard the man’s voice as though it echoed down a long tunnel in his brain.

“This facility is closed down, folks. We’re on lockdown in response to the national emergency. You need to clear this area immediately.”

Mike looked up at the soldier who spoke. There were three of them blurring together in his vision, and he wasn’t sure which one was real. “You’re gonna have to shoot me,” he said, matter-of-factly, his words slurred.

“Sergeant -” Kari interrupted, her voice firm. “I’m going to reach into my pocket and bring out my I.D. card.”

“Ma’am, don’t bother,” the soldier replied with equal firmness. “The post is closed.”

Kari frowned, the shift in her body language indicating she was no longer playing nice. “Did Colonel Kasoniak survive the attack?” she asked. The sergeant’s quick glance to one of his men answered her question.

“That information is class –”

Kari leaned forward a bit to be able to read the man’s identity. “Sergeant Richardson, if you value your stripes, you will get a message to Col. Kasoniak, and do so immediately. You will tell him that his daughter, Karissinna Michelle Kasoniak, is waiting at the Brandenburg gate with a desperately wounded man and nine very cold, very hungry children, and that we are being denied entrance to this facility.” Kari’s eyes hardened to chocolate ice. “I am sure you’ll be given new orders at that point.”

The man wasn’t stupid, for all his obstinacy. He had blanched at the word “daughter” and hadn’t recovered since. He nodded sharply to a PFC. “Double time, Jenkins, report to the colonel!” he barked, and the soldier took off running toward a jeep.

Kari stood beside Mike, whose head lolled onto her thigh. “The kids are cold and hungry, Sergeant,” she said. Her voice no longer held that authoritative coldness, just a bone-deep weariness.

The sergeant looked at two of his soldiers who had stood down. “Get the children into the guard station,” he said quickly. “Denison, get ambulance transport and get this man to Ireland.”

The soldiers moved out to obey orders, but when they tried to take Ariel from Mike, the girl clung to his neck tightly and began screaming. Mike tightened his hold. “I’ll keep her safe,” he slurred. Then he lost consciousness.

Scientist-Farmer

Scientist-Farmer stared for a long time at the symbols on the communication. A Mother was dead, killed by the indigenous species of the planet they were harvesting! It was unprecedented, and the Council was in an uproar. It was the equivalent of a zarok taking on and defeating an ult … or, in terms native to the world they now occupied, an ant defeating an elephant. It simply wasn’t possible for a Mother to be killed – and yet she and her fifty-some unborn offspring were indeed very dead. He looked at the communication again, although each of his seven brains already had the contents memorized. The Council wanted him to give them an explanation. How had the zarok defeated the ult? Scientist-Farmer suspected he knew the answer; he also suspected the Council wouldn’t like it one bit.

Scientist-Farmer knew the requirements for Classification Eight sapience as well as he knew his own designation. There was no need to have the image of the requirements placed motionlessly –accusingly – behind the images the Spotter played for him. He did not remove the background image.

Self-awareness. Sentience. Communication. Abstract reasoning. Emotion. Emotional detachment as needed to act for the common good. Empathy. Protection of other sentient beings. Defined social structure. Altering the environment to suit its needs. Tenacity of spirit and the will to live. The ability to hope. The ability to regret. The ability to grieve. Free will. Understanding of right and wrong. Moral guidelines. The capability of self-sacrifice.

Scientist-Farmer shifted, uncomfortable in the corporeal form but unwilling to shed it for the moment. Human-Male demonstrated eighteen of the requisite thirty-six indicia … and this was after merely two days of subjective observation! Scientist-Farmer had not brought Human-Male, or any of the humans, aboard the ship to study in the laboratory. He was so certain of the Consortium’s results – they had studied the planet for millennia, after all. Their reports clearly described a barbaric, aggressive race of simple beasts. The garden planet was inhabited by simple animals that waged war on each other in territorial fights, that could not reason, that had only the basest, most unsophisticated understanding of tools, that were able to communicate only in crude, primitive sounds and gestures.

Scientist-Farmer frowned at the symbols and images the Spotter displayed, narrowing the multiple feeds to one. Human-Male collapsed, yet the youngling still clung to him. The other humans, obviously stronger and healthier than Human-Male, attempted to take the youngling from his arms. Human-Male gripped her tightly and made sounds. The sounds translated to “I will protect this youngling.”

Human-Male was dying … from the injury Scientist-Farmer inflicted. Yet, with his last breath, he was defending his kit from a perceived threat.

Scientist-Farmer knew there were thousands of non-sapient species from many galaxies which would do the same. More often than not, it was the female of the species who would defend her young to the point of death, but it occurred often enough in the male that the data was statistically significant. It wasn’t Human-Male’s actions that … disturbed him. It was the expression on the kit’s face.

Scientist-Farmer froze the image of the youngling, clinging to Human-Male’s neck, wetness pouring from her eyes onto reddened cheeks, and her mouth opened in a scream. He curled the tendrils of his synapses around the image as tightly as he could, and then loosened them in frustration. It didn’t help to hypothesize. If he had been present, he would know already what he needed to know … but the Spotters merely recorded. They were machines, incapable of thought-to-thought communication.

He stared at the image of the human kit’s face for a long passage of time. Then, resolved, he sent a polite communication to Researcher-Xenohistorian, requesting a meeting.

January 5.

Hershey

Hershey’s ears drew back, and the fur on his neck stood up. The growl was low in his throat, not menacing, but warning. His human looked up in surprise, her eyes moving quickly from Hershey to the front door of work. They played most of the morning again, and came into work in the early afternoon. They stayed only long enough for Hershey to have a nap and to say hello to the big black lab. Clare kept the door to the room with the pens open now, and Hershey could wander in and out to visit the other dogs as he pleased. He liked that. He still stayed mostly with his human, though – he never knew when she would want to pet him or give him a treat.

“Down, boy,” his human said softly.

Hershey knew what “downboy” meant, but he did not sit down. There was a human standing outside the door to work. It had been a few days since he had smelled a human, not counting the dead ones that were beginning to smell really bad. He stayed on his feet, staring at the door.

His human picked up one of the toys she had found when they played. She held it in her hand, and it smelled of oil and, faintly, of a lit match. Hershey didn’t like that toy. She never threw it for him, and it would be hard on his teeth if she did. He growled again, very softly.

The human outside the door to work tried to turn the knob, but of course Hershey’s human kept it locked. Still, at the noise and motion of the knob turning, Hershey went berserk. It was his job to keep his human safe now, so he let her know emphatically there was someone outside the door. His barks boomed in the small office and the black lab joined him, his bark even more thunderous from the pens. Within seconds, there was as much cacophony as eighteen dogs could make, and Hershey was well-pleased with their efforts.

“Just a minute!” his human yelled, and then she went and closed the door to the room with the pens, cutting the effectiveness of the aggressive barking cleanly in half. Hershey gave her a disgusted look she didn’t notice and kept up his solitary defense.

“Quiet, Hershey!” his human snapped. Reluctantly, he stopped barking and opted for a low, threatening growl, his teeth showing. He had heard “quiet” many times before. It meant if he kept barking, his human would put him in a pen. She didn't do it often, but Hershey had suffered the indignity of it once or twice before, when the lady in the white coat and the men with the uniforms worked, too. They hadn’t come to work in several days now that Hershey considered it; obviously, they weren’t as dedicated as
his
human was.

“What do you want?” Clare said, speaking loudly through the door. Her voice, which was normally kind and friendly, was harsh.

There was a moment of silence from the other side. Hershey wasn’t surprised when the voice that replied was female – he smelled that already. He wished she would come inside – he liked sniffing humans. Well, the living ones, anyway.

“I – I was worried about the animals,” the woman called. “You’re open?”

Hershey stood, his hackles raised in warning, as his human propped a chair up on its back legs against the door and opened the door into it, jamming the door to leave only an inch or two of open space. It was plenty of room for Hershey to start sniffing.

“Are you armed?” his human asked, her voice still unfriendly.

There was another long silence, and then the other woman replied, “Why in the world would I be armed?”

Clare pulled the chair away and opened the door quickly, practically dragging the smaller woman inside before shutting and locking the door again. The other woman smelled like oatmeal, sadness and dog. The dog scent was fading, and Hershey understood her sadness. He decided he would downboy like a good dog, so he stepped over to his bed and settled into it.

His human put her new toy into its holder around her waist. The other human gasped on seeing it, but didn’t say anything.

“I’m Clare Bonham,” his human said, extending her hand. The smaller woman stared for a moment, and then took her hand, shaking it slightly.

“Sandy Anderson,” she said softly. “Pleased to meet you.”

There was an awkward silence for a moment, then Sandra continued speaking. “I wasn’t expecting anyone to be here, honestly,” she said. “I thought I would have to break in to let the animals go free.”

Hershey’s human smiled, and her scent changed slightly as she relaxed. “Have a seat,” she said to Sandy and she moved around to sit behind her desk. Hershey expected her to tap her fingers on the desk like she usually did when somebody came to get a dog or a cat from work. But his human didn’t tap her fingers; she just talked some more in that sad voice she sometimes used when an animal needed to be “put to sleep.” Sleep sounded kind of nice, actually. Hershey yawned widely, his eyes already beginning to close. He only half listened, even though the new woman had a nice, friendly voice, and he could tell his human was very happy to hear her talking words. He had time for another nap!