CHAPTER FORTY-NINE
"War does not determine who is right - only who is left." - Bertrand Russell
"Hey, Johnson!" He flinched. It was Recon. Or was it?
Everything spooks me now, Johnson thought. They can't be around every corner.
"Yeah, what?" Sergeant Johnson kept his distance, suspiciously eyeing the other man who a minute ago had been one of his most trustworthy men.
"Would you come with me for a minute? I need to show you something." He started to come toward the sergeant.
Johnson lifted his laser ax. "Stay where you are. Tell me, McNeil, did you hear from Lieutenant O'Shea?" Makr would try to reinforce the illusion, right?
"No. Of course not. I haven't seen her in days. You?"
"Never mind," he said, rubbing his head. "Okay, show me what ya gotta show me."
On their way out, Johnson paused to tell the captain he'd be right back. Carlos nodded and waved him on.
"What's going on, McNeil?"
"You gotta see this for yourself."
Silently, McNeil led the sergeant to where they had separated from the main group. Nothing had changed in the last two minutes. All four hundred or so Shadows, without Stealth, were dancing in the street, oblivious to the all-out war taking place around them. It was moonlight, music and candlelight. Everyone seemed to be having the time of their lives.
"What the...?" Sergeant Johnson's jaw dropped .He had never seen such a thing. "Where did the swimming pool come from?"
"What swimming pool?"
"You mean, you don't see a swimming pool or a pool party?"
"No. No, dancing."
"What kind?"
"I dunno. Formal. Everybody's formal."
"Kid, glad you came to fetch me. Now let's tell the captain. I don't think he's going to like this."
As the two walked back quickly to make their report, Captain Montoya passed by them on the right.
"Captain?" Johnson tried to grab his sleeve. Then he felt the Stealth fabric, but the captain didn't stop. There was a flicker.
"Captain, stop or I'll disintegrate you. If you're really the captain..."
He didn't finish the sentence. Instead he fired his laser. The captain had disappeared. In his place, a giant spider-like cybert rose up to the 20-foot ceiling. Mostly head, taking up over half of the mass, it had two upper appendages about eight feet long that looked like sharp and deadly titanium swords rather than arms, and six spindly insect-like legs with joints bending to the rear. Its front 'arms' nearly touched the floor. Even standing well over 15 feet tall, its body seemed designed to cover the ground quickly outside, although not inside a factory. It looked a little cramped in the factory space, but lethal just the same.
Johnson and McNeil stood facing the creature, mesmerized by its eyes. They looked like thousands of human eyes covered with a clear arachnid protective shell. Both Johnson and McNeil heard the same voice.
"Ya shouldn't have done that, boys," the voice said.
"That voice," McNeil muttered, "I know that voice!"
"Me, too. Sounds like Leach."
"No, it can't be, he's dead!"
"Only my body, Johnson. The mind and spirit's still kicking."
It was Leach all right--before he had lost his tongue. They would know that crude voice anywhere. So that's what happened to the scumbag, Johnson thought.
"Thought I was dead, didn't you? Know the body ain't much to look at, but it's plenty strong. Ten times as strong? More like a hundred times as strong. What do I need a soft human body for when I can have the best of both worlds? In my mind I'm a hundred times more man. That's all that matters, ain't it? Sensa-fuckin-Vision! I git all the pleasure I c'n handle, boys. How 'bout you boys?"
"What are you doing, Leach?"
"Surviving. Ain't that what we all do?"
Neither man knew what to do, facing this Goliath. McNeil froze with his mouth open. Johnson made a decision. He fired at the cybert's head, Leach or no Leach. The cybert skin wasn't even scratched.
He heard Leach's diabolical laugh. He hardly sounded human anymore, Johnson thought. He fired again and again to no effect. He saw the others coming to his rescue.
"Back! Stay back," he screamed, but it was too late. Goliath, the mechanical giant, raised a spindly leg, which split open like a scissors and caught Johnson at the waist as he tried to escape. With a sickening crunch, in a fraction of a second, Johnson was in two bloody parts.
McNeil stood frozen and alone against Leach as everyone else stayed back.
"I don't want you," the voice of Leach said. "I'm here for Carlos.
"Carlos ain't here."
"Where is he?" Goliath demanded and extended his right appendage until it resembled a whip in length and flexibility. He snapped it four or five times at McNeil who kept moving backward with each individual snap, his eyes glued upon the giant cybert until he tripped over his own feet and fell.
"He's dead. Killed in the big explosion," he lied. "Ask them."
"Don't worry, I will."
"Carlos is not dead, is he?" The rescuers were too afraid to move; he had a captive audience. He thundered, "He's not dead, is he?!!"
A brave soul in the rescue group fired his laser ax at the steely behemoth, but the beam glanced off the cybert's frame. The whip snapped out and decapitated the man before he could scream.
"No," McNeil finally answered truthfully. He was beaten. There was no place to run. Maybe if I let him have me he'll go away and leave the others with their lives, he thought. "Carlos is not dead, but he's not here either," he said aloud.
"Foolishly, your captain's gone. There's no one to save you from the likes of me."
"We've always been saving ourselves from the likes of you." The Goliath turned to see the once-devout Reverend Parks, now a soldier, standing defiantly in front of him.
"Everyone else around here is sweating bullets. Why aren't you afraid of me?"
"I don't know exactly. We should fear that we might become you. If you're an example of the Symbiosis, I'll gladly take death."
"You should fear me. I can kill you."
"We die every day."
"Painfully."
"Some do, yes. If we haven't the courage."
"Have you courage enough to watch your comrades die?" With that, he snapped his whip again, this time around McNeil's neck, decapitating him...
He didn't stop there.
.
Carlos had no way of knowing what was happen to the Shadows he sent reconnoitering, but he had had enough waiting for their return. He had to do so something! Meanwhile, he had one last hope.
Leaving his most senior sergeant in charge, he made his way back the way they came in.
"Carlos! Where are you going?" Marlene grabbed him as she saw him heading back for the Nest, shocked that he was abandoning them.
"Someone has to get Harry and Mother-General. I'll be right back
He was already half way there. Everyone has a job to do. I'll be just a few minutes."
"Really?"
"Do you think I'd leave you all here to die?"
"I don't know you very well, but I'd say it was unlikely. Take me with you!"
"No!"
"Why? I have no job. Along for the ride, remember?"
"You don't know, do you?" There wasn't time for this.
"Know what?"
"There's no time to explain. We need Harry."
"I can help."
"I can't...take you with me."
"What do you want Harry to do? He's hurt."
"I know that. I don't know what exactly, but I think he knows more about this world we've invaded than any of us. You know about this world, too; he senses it."
"He can see reality."
"You know that for sure? Right down to the awful truth?" He had only suspected it. Harry never really said, Carlos thought, but it is as if he knows things instinctively.
"He thought-blinks. He can see through the illusion sometimes."
"I thought someone else told him
about us. I thought he was a spy."
"I want to see Harry. I need to know he's all right. Take me with you."
"I can't take you. I promised to keep you safe."
"Keep me safe? Who? Harry?"
"No, your mother, my mother, Harry's mother."
"Now you aren't making sense at all."
"It's true, not that it matters now, but when you were very young you were abandoned by our mother. You were raised in a State home, right?"
"Why are you telling me this?"
"Believe it or not, she was trying to keep you safe by keeping you on the Inside, when she was involved in starting this revolution almost thirty years ago. Harry, too. We messed up her plans in a way."
"I don't believe this. You're telling me this outrageous story so I won't insist on going with you. Mother-General's my mother? Harry's my brother? And, I suppose, that makes me your sister as well?"
"Half."
"Half?"
"Half-sister. Don't ask."
"Well, forget it! I don't know what's going on here, but Harry's saved my life more than once. I can't bear to let him rot or worse in the Nest. I need to be there. If you won't take me, I'll go alone."
"Okay. Okay, I'll take you, but you tell Mother-General you insisted. Just for the record: I've had it up to here with strong women."
"Yeah, sure." She wondered.
"Let's go, then."
"Good."
"Okay." He was silent as he retrieved a second laser ax buried in his Stealth cloak and, with safety on, tossed it to her. "Jana."
"What?"
"Your real name is Jana."