Grunt Traitor (30 page)

Conspiracy Theory Talk Radio,

Night Stalker Monologue #1713

CHAPTER THIRTY-SEVEN

A
FTER SEVENTEEN FORAYS
into Ertebat Shar, expending eleven thousand rounds and three hundred and thirty missiles, I was finally satisfied that my team wouldn’t get themselves killed within the first five minutes of the mission. Each of us had had our moments. Of particular interest had been when Stranz and Ohirra decided to remove a building with missiles to improve their fields of fire. That single event triggered something in the rest of the team and by the end of the morning, there wasn’t a single building left standing. Exercise Control was going to have to get to work constructing a new Ertebat Shar if they wanted to train for any future missions.

Both the exercises and the venting were important. My grunts needed to be able to work together. I think we’d accomplished this.

When we finished, Dewhurst limped off to a meeting, which Ohirra attended as well in her capacity as a senior intelligence officer. I took the rest of my grunts back to the barracks, where we showered, changed clothes, then headed to a private officer’s lounge where I’d arranged for a little party. Before them was a spread of food unlike they’d seen in one place since before the alien invasion. Inspired by the spread that Mr. Pink had provided when he’d recruited me, I’d arranged for burgers and pasta, and whatever vegetables and sweets the cooks could come up with. Fort Irwin was limited in what it had to provide, relying on the vast warehouses of canned goods and MREs stored here to support all the training units. The logisticians had established relationships with many of the outlying ranches still operating and were able to get a trickle of dairy and meat. What the chow hall had provided to my grunts represented more real meat than they’d had in the last six months.

I’d also arranged for a case of beer, which had been iced in a cooler. When I opened it, my grunts stared lovingly at it, unable to move. For a moment I wasn’t even sure they were breathing.

“Is this all for us?” Mal asked.

I grinned widely. “Thought you all might want something good before we go into the shit.”

Stranz gave me a look. “Like a condemned man’s last dinner,” he said.

“If that’s what you want to call it.” I shrugged. “I could have blown this off and made it so that tomorrow was no big deal. I probably would have done it that way, before the alien invasion. But I figured we ought to be reminded about how great we had it, about how awesome it was before the Cray attacked and took everything from us. I thought a full stomach might motivate you.”

Sula held up a burger with a huge bite taken out. “Um all forit,” she said around a huge mouthful.

“Dig in, guys.”

I watched as they loaded their plates and found a table. I grabbed a burger, fries and a cold beer and joined them. We just sat and ate in silence for awhile. It wasn’t until I was on my last French fry, scooping up a red swirl of ketchup, that anyone said anything.

“I could get used to this,” Mal said. He held up a hand to stifle a belch. Stranz got up to get another plate, while Sula was still working on her pasta.

There was something I’d been wanting to ask Mal. “Ohirra said you were awarded two Soldier’s Medals. Can you share what happened?”

He glanced at me, his face suddenly solemn. “There was a house fire. I was driving to work back when I was stationed at Fort Bragg and came across this house on Sycamore Dairy Road. Fully engaged, is what the firemen later said. I pulled over and got out, which is when I heard the screams. I was able to run inside and get the mother out, but no matter how many times I tried to go back in, I just couldn’t make it to the rest of the family. I heard their screams until they cut off. Then I knew it was over.”

“How old were they?”

“Five and seven.” Mal frowned. “The firemen later said that it had been a short circuit in the kids’ bedroom.”

“But you were able to save the mother.”

“Lot of good that did. She killed herself a year later. The day after they gave me the medal, in fact. She was at the ceremony and decided she just couldn’t take it.” Mal looked at me. “Promise me you’ll never give me a medal. Will you promise me that?”

I nodded slowly. “We don’t do medals anymore. The appreciations we show for duty are meals like this.” I went over and grabbed two beers. Opening them both, I put one before Mal and sipped the other one. “What about the other medal?”

“Yeah, Debbie Downer, tell us another sad story,” Stranz said.

Empathy-challenged for sure. Was it PTSD or was he just an ass?

Mal rolled his eyes. “I saved a dog.”

I snorted beer. “You what?”

“He saved a dog and it bit him,” laughed Sula. “Show him the scar, Mal.”

I looked from Sula back to Mal. “Yeah, show me the scar.”

Mal got up and unceremoniously pulled down his pants. I was about to say something when both Dewhurst and Ohirra entered the room. They both stopped and stared, then looked at each other and shook their heads.

“Didn’t know this was
that
sort of party,” Dewhurst said.

Stranz, Sula and I burst into laughter.

I waved at Mal. “Continue, please.”

He pointed to a diamond-shaped scar on his left calf, then pulled his pants back up. He also showed me where his left hand had a bunch of smaller scars.

“So how did saving a dog get you a Soldier’s Medal?”

“It was a military dog,” Mal said, sitting back down and picking up his beer. “It had been hit by a car and left beside the road.”

Dewhurst joined us at the table, three burgers on his plate and nothing else. “Did you know that a military working dog holds the rank of sergeant on the battlefield?”

Sula laughed at that. “See, Stranz? Even the dog would outrank you.”

Stranz scowled and stared daggers at Sula.

“He was supposed to be promoted to sergeant on the day the aliens attacked. He’s never let us forget it, either.”

“Is that true, Stranz?” I asked.

“I’d worked hard. My father was a sergeant, my grandfather was a sergeant, and his father was a sergeant. It was just something I wanted to achieve, is all.” He looked at Sula, who was smirking. “You wouldn’t understand.”

“Of course I wouldn’t understand,” she said, rolling her eyes. “I’ve never wanted to achieve anything. I didn’t even
have
parents. I was a miracle birth, born from the union of a plant and a stop sign.”

Mal and Dewhurst chuckled.

I smiled, and noticed something going on with Ohirra.

To Stranz I said, “Do you want to be a sergeant?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Fine. Then you’re a sergeant.”

He blinked at me. “Just like that?”

“Just like that. If I can go from master sergeant to lieutenant, then you can be a sergeant.” I glanced at Ohirra and under my breath, asked, “I can do that, right?”

She nodded slightly.

“There you have it.” I turned to the rest of the group. “May I present Sergeant Stranz.”

Everyone clapped. After a few moments of Stranz smiling happily and uncomfortably, I turned back to Mal.

“So the dog bit you.”

“Yeah. It bit me, but it was bleeding pretty badly. I just let it chew on my hand while I carried it to the trunk of my car and put it in. Then I took it to the Fort Bragg vet.”

“And they gave you a Soldier’s Medal for that?”

He nodded. “I told them I didn’t want one, but they insisted.”

“Medals aren’t really for those they award them to,” Dewhurst said. “They’re for everyone else, to see the achievement and to dare them to match it.” He nodded to Mal. “Congrats, kid.”

“Thank you, sir.”

“What’s your story, Sula?” I asked. “Where are you from?”

“Los Angeles,” she said. “Westwood.”

I nodded slowly. “I’m from Pedro. Were you in Westwood during the invasion?”

She shook her head. “We were in Vegas to celebrate my birthday. They were killed there.”

I shook my head. “You’ve got to wonder why Vegas, of all places. Why waste a hive there?”

Dewhurst answered around a mouthful of burger. “Nellis Air Force Base and the Nevada Test and Training Range, where Area 51 is located.”

I glanced at him. Area 51. With all the rumors, one had to wonder if they weren’t true. “Did they really keep aliens there?” I asked.

Dewhurst shrugged. “Maybe. Who knows? Does it really matter now?”

I stared at him for a moment. I supposed he was right. What did it matter now?

“What if the aliens invaded us because we captured some of their people—er—aliens back in the day?” Mal asked softly. “What if the problem started with Area 51?”

“Or Roswell?” Sula added.

“Or what if we could go to the aliens we have in custody, free them, and get us to help them fight the Cray?” Mal said.

I would have laughed, but it made a sort of obnoxious sense.

Just then Ohirra threw her fork down. “Will you shut up? Stupid, stupid,
stupid
.” Then she froze. Realizing what she’d done, she got up and hurried out of the room.

I glanced once at my grunts, then hurried after her. I caught up with her halfway down the hall. I was smart enough not to touch her. “Hey, what’s going on?”

She kept walking, head down.

I scooted past her and placed myself in front of her. “Seriously, Ohirra. What is it?”

She tried twice to go around, then said, “Move.”

“I’m talking to you not only as your friend, but as your mission commander. You’re obligated to answer me.”

She seemed as though she might argue, then she sagged against the wall and leaned there, one hand on her face.

“What’s wrong?” I asked softly.

She sighed. “We just came from a meeting where they briefed us on the initial results of the translations.” She looked at me and shook her head. “You’re not going to believe this.”

I leaned against the other wall and crossed my arms. “Try me.”

She looked down, then back at me. “As it turns out, there
are
no invading aliens.”

“What? How can that be? What about the Cray?”

She shook her head in frustration. “I said it wrong. Remember what we postulated back in Africa? It’s true. The species we’ve encountered so far have specific tasks. The Cray, the Sirens, the needlers, the alien vine, even the spore; purpose-made, purpose-sent. But the master alien race, the ones controlling them, they have no intention of coming here.”

I gulped as a hollowness filled me. “Then
why?
”

“They want to mine us.”

“Mine us?”

“They want our iron. They want our sodium. They want our silicon. They want our water. They’re in the middle of a war and we’re just a convenient planet to harvest.”

“What about us? What about humans?”

“They don’t care about us. They don’t want us and they don’t want to live here. They’re just trying to get rid of us, like a colony of ants in your garden.”

I thought that a cockroach analogy might be better than ants. They’re far harder to kill. But it was the master aliens’ dismissal of us that pissed me off. Like we didn’t count. Like we didn’t
rate
. Their hubris slayed me. “Do you know what this means?” I finally asked.

“That we have no target, no way to kill them,” she said. “No way to convince them to stop. As soon as we figure out how to wipe out the Cray, they’ll just send something else.”

“We don’t know that,” I said. “They might just as well not send another alien species. Hell, there might not be any more alien species to send.” I held up a finger. “And consider this. It also means that we can operate a little easier.”

The idea apparently startled her. She looked at me quizzically.

“If they don’t want us or care about us, it means that they’ve underestimated us. Just look at what we can do. One, we can defeat the Cray on their own terms. Two, we’re about to defeat them without all that loss of life we had in Kilimanjaro. Three, we have a cure for their zombie plague. Four, we’ve figured out a way to translate their language into something understandable.”

She’d nodded as I ticked off each thing, then added to it. “Five, they picked on the wrong planet.”

I grinned. “Absolutely. They saw our planet as someone might see you, walking down the street. A pretty girl, easy on the eye, even easier to take and maybe bend to your will.”

She’d raised her eyebrows and grinned as I was speaking. “Then
BOOM
,” she said, making her hands explode. She grinned and nodded. “Do you really think I’m hot?”

Now it was my turn to raise an eyebrow. “Easy there, Lieutenant. Keep it in your pants.”

She punched me lightly in the chest and laughed.

“Seriously, though. Think about this. If we can beat back the Cray, and if we can find a way to destroy the alien vine, these master aliens, whoever they are, will be forced to come.”