First Contact

Chapter 934: Edge of Twilight

Wait till you see it, kid.

See what?

What the Terrans will do to other people. - Wemterran soldier, Second Human/Wemterran War

Ret.lek had to admit, if he hadn't have been part of it, he would have never believed it.

His mek was parked up on a hill, about six miles from the large enemy base that he'd helped attack.

He had his cockpit canopy open and was chewing on a Goody Yum-Yum bar, a narcobrew between his thighs, watching the remainder of the enemy base burn in the darkness.

On his left was the XO, who apparently used to be known as "Warboss" back when he worked with the other two Terrans. On the right was Sledgehammer, piloting a 70 ton missile wagon. On the XO's left was a 30 ton Cobra light ECM mek piloted by Sprinter.

Ret.lek could hear the rumble of the fusion engines from the other meks, but that and the local insects were the only sounds in the night.

Sledgehammer and Sprinter were asleep in their meks, their greenies working to repair the battle damage and recalibrating systems.

The XO was laying on a flat rock, a smokestick in his mouth and a bottle of fizzybrew in one hand, staring up at the stars.

Stuffing the last of the Goody Yum-Yum bar into his mouth, he climbed down and moved over to sit on the rock next to the XO.

"Good fight, kid," the XO said. He exhaled smoke, took a drink off his brew, and put the smokestick back in his mouth. "Knew you could hang tough."

"Thanks," Ret.lek said. "Whatcha looking at? The Navy boys?"

"Naw," the XO said. He took his smokestick out of his mouth and used it as a pointer. "See that star?"

"Which one?" Ret.lek asked.

The XO gave precise directions and finally he got which one.

"All right?" Ret.lek said.

"That's Sol. Where I'm from. We're twelve to thirteen thousand light years away, and I can still see it," the XO said.

"I can't," Ret.lek said.

"Huh. Eyes aren't as sensitive to light?" the XO asked.

"My people have better light sensitivity than Terrans, but to me, the sky has always been patchy. It takes a telescope or a long-exposure lens to really capture the night sky," Ret.lek said.

"Want to see what I see?" the XO asked.

"Sure," Ret.lek said, looking up at the sky. It was full of dark splotches, with scattered stars across it. As he stared, more and more stars came into view. As soon as he blinked, they vanished. The XO looked slowly from side to side a couple of time.

"We probably have more rhodopsin in our rods than your people," the XO said. He made a tossing motion. "Here, check that out."

Ret.lek accepted the file, saw it was a visual overlay, and put it in place.

He gasped when he looked up at the night sky.

It was full of glittering and gleaming points of light. Not the steady light of the stars he could normally see.

"You see all of this?" Ret.lek asked in disbelief.

"Yup," the XO said. "Looking up, my brain automatically looks for the brightest stars and groups them," he gave a chuckle and pointed up with his smokestick. "Up there is the two headed fish. Over there is the Dancing Pubvian. Right there is the Ice Cream Box."

Each time the map highlighted, lines connecting bright stars into triangles, rhombuses, or just a string of lines.

"My people hunted, navigated the oceans, traveled the land by the light of the stars," the XO said. He exhaled a cloud of smoke. "We even kept track of the seasons, the years, all of that, before we even had much more than paper."

"Wow," Ret.lek stared at all the stars.

"Us humans, we'd look to the heavens and see a vast breathtaking starry field," the XO said.

"I can see the galactic spread," Ret.lek marveled.

"Yup," the XO said. He took a drink off of his beer.

"So you look for Sol?" Ret.lek asked.

"I'd try to find your home, but you're a long distance, too far for my eyes to see, even using vision magnification," the XO said. "If you want, though, I can give you a little app that'll let you spot any star in the sky if you can see where it is."

"That would be neat," Ret.lek said.

"The light we're seeing from Sol, the people there are all pre-Industrial. Iron Age, maybe, I'm not sure. Lots of empires, lots of fighting over territory. We were all scattered peoples then, just strewn all over seven continents," the XO said.

"Was it a disaster?" Ret.lek asked. Twelve thousand years ago, his people had been Lanaktallan servants for thousands of years.

"What? Oh, no. We spread out pretty quickly. Terra was pretty competitive," the XO said. "They explained it in school but that was a long time ago but I hated school and I kind of replaced that information with the maximum range of a thrown beer bottle pretty quick."

"You hated school?" Ret.lek said. "I thought humans craved knowledge."

The XO chuckled. "Maybe. I liked running cracked templates and hacked microforges, brawling with the other hab-gangs, and jacking speeders to take on a joy ride and crash out in the desert."

Ret.lek turned and looked at the XO.

"You were a criminal?" he asked.

The XO chuckled. "So was Daxin. Good enough for the first disciple of the Digital Omnimessiah, good enough for me."

"Why'd you join the military?" Ret.lek asked.

"Probably same reason as you," the XO said. He took a drink off his beer. "One step ahead of Lawsec, made too many enemies in the other gangs, and got too big for my britches so everyone was more than happy to dime me out to the law."

"I was running from a Lawsec patrol and ducked into a recruiting office to hide. Figured I'd take the test," Ret.lek admitted. "Lawsec escorted me to all my appointments, drove me to the starport the last day."

The XO chuckled. "Yeah. Lots of people just like us in the Confed military, kid."

"Why?" Ret.lek asked.

The XO shrugged. "Who knows. Not enough excitement in our civilian lives? Not enough challenge? Maybe just some people aren't born to live a life of ease and comfort, where scarcity is a forgotten relic of the past. Maybe the idea of having everything we want handed to us by a creation engine or a nano-forge just isn't what some of us want."

Ret.lek thought about how many times he'd gone hungry, gotten his ass kicked just to amuse someone bigger, and how many times he'd been robbed.

"I can't imagine having anything I want and still fighting with Lawsec," Ret.lek admitted.

The XO just shrugged. "Some humans are wired that way. You put us in a lavish, golden cage, with plenty of food and everything we could want, all we can see is the bars of the cage."

"So... why?" Ret.lek asked.

The XO shrugged. "I was a rebel without a clue, I guess. I wanted more, but I didn't know what it was I wanted, didn't have the vocabulary to understand what I wanted, so I lashed out."

Ret.lek stared at the little dot labeled "SOL" on the overlay in his vision. "What did you want?"

The XO was silent for a moment. "This. I wanted my life to matter. I didn't want to be just one more drone, jerking off into the collection hose, sleeping in the cubicle nearest me when I got tired, eating whatever was on the menu. I wanted fear, uncertainty, and hardship. I didn't feel complete unless I had to fight someone bigger than me for the same ration bar I could have gotten from any public food-forge for free."

"That can't be right," Ret.lek said.

The XO shrugged again, then took a drink off his bottle. "Yeah. Humanity was made to thrive where others suffer."

"Really?" Ret.lek could believe it.

"Yeah. It's scientifically proven that food tastes better, we like material objects, more when we struggle, fight, endure suffering, or work hard for it. We have an old saying: Something given has no value. Scientists proved, before we achieved superluminal flight, that a ration bar tastes better to us if we had to cave in some other poor bastard's face to get it or keep it."

"Fighting for something makes it taste better to you?" Ret.lek asked.

"Yup," the XO took a drag and exhaled smoke slowly. "The more we have to endure, the more danger, the better it is," he sighed. "Hell, there's an ancient parable about that."

"Can I hear it?" Ret.lek asked.

The XO shifted, putting one hand behind his head. "OK, a long time ago, back when people didn't really wear shoes because they weren't a thing yet, back when people just wrapped cloth around themselves because pants and shirts weren't really a thing, there was this wise man, right?"

"How long ago was this? Like, a million years?" Ret.lek asked.

"No. If we had a good enough telescope, we could probably see him right now. That light probably left Sol when this happened. Anyway, pay attention. So this wise man, right, he's out walking around the woods all contemplating everything and shit, like wise men do. This tiger jumps out,"

"Tiger?" Ret.lek asked.

"A Simba, back when they were all flesh and lived in the wild. Big ass carnivore cats. Anyway, this tiger jumps out and the wise man takes off running. The tiger is chasing him and he comes to a cliff. He sees a vine and starts to climb down, only he looks down and sees another tiger below him, looking up and all licking its chops and shit."

"Oh, fuck," Ret.lek said. He leaned back and stared up at Sol, imagining being able to see it.

"The wise man looks up, he sees this mouse come out, right, and it starts gnawing at the vine. So the wise man, he's trapped between two bigass tigers, hanging from a vine on a cliff, with a mouse chewing on the vine," the XO's voice seemed far away and Ret.lek could almost visualize it.

"The wise man, he looks over and sees a little clump of strawberries growing on the cliff. There's a single berry that's on it and ripe. The wise man picks it," the XO paused for a moment.

"It's perfectly shaped, plump, ripe, warmed by the sun. He pops it in his mouth, closing his eyes," The XO paused again.

"It was delicious," the XO said.

There was silence for a moment.

"What happened to the wise man?" Ret.lek asked.

"The tigers ate him. That's not the point. The point is, in the face of certain doom, the berry was perfect. The point is, surrounded by certain death, hanging from a fraying vine on a cliff, he chose to pick that strawberry and enjoy it in his final moments," the XO said. He took a drink, holding his smokestick in the same hand as the bottle. "That's what it's all about. That's what it means to be human."

Ret.lek shook his head. "That's crazy."

The XO took a long drag off his smokestick and exhaled the smoke slowly.

"Behold: Humanity!" he said softly.

-----

Four days later found Ret.lek in a skirmish line with the rest of the regiment. He was in the rear rank, marching steadily forward, his weapons live, his point defense striking down missiles and rockets, his missiles knocking aerospace fighters and strikers from the sky, his PPC's and autocannon shredding enemy armor. In front of him were three ranks of shorter warmeks. Around his feet were the toe-jam of powered armor infantry.

He was bored as shit.

MILINT and NAVINT were providing the targeting priorities. Regimental command had everyone's systems on override, running the battle from the information nerve center of the regiment. Every shot, every step, analyzed, determined, and ordered by the massive combat computer arrays of Regimental Combat Command.

Three of his four greenies were asleep. The new guy was chewing on the tips of his bladearms and looking around nervously.

Ret.lek was eating a Slender James meat stick, stirring it in a packet of MRE hot-pepper cheese, and taking swigs off of a Countess Crey Super Berry and Transmission Fluid Thirst Blaster. His hands weren't on the controls, he'd folded his legs onto his seat, and he was leaned back as far as the seat would go.

"Man, this sucks," Ret.lek grumbled.

His mek kept moving forward, his PPC's throwing man-made lightning into the front rank of enemy armor, his autocannon shredding the APC's, his missiles raking down the aerospace fighters and the strikers. His battlescreens just rippled slightly as the enemy's fire, inaccurate and sporadic at the long range that the Terran Confederacy Armed Services engaged the enemy at.

As he watched, the fire dwindled for a second just before the close air support grav-strikers came roaring in. He thought he saw something on the first striker and increased the magnification on it.

The pilot's head was pressed against the side window, his mouth was open, his eyes were closed, and he was drooling on the window.

He's on automatic too, Ret.lek realized.

"OK, this is bullshit," Ret.lek snapped, tearing open another meat stick and angrily biting the end off.

The commo clinked and Captain Stomps Your Guts Out appeared.

"You all right, Private? Your vitals and biometrics just spiked," the black mantid asked.

"Sir, this is bullshit. We're basically manned drones," Ret.lek complained.

"Welcome to the world of fully integrated combat," the Black Mantid shrugged. "We're basically just the biological backup systems."

"I liked it better during the Slorpie War," Ret.lek complained.

Stomps nodded. "We all did, Wrecker. The Slorpie War? That was the shit, right there. That time you uppercutted that kiaju made the division social media feed," he gave another shrug. "This? This is just modern warfare. It's like this until something goes wrong."

"Hmph," Ret.lek said, slumping slightly.

"The XO's asleep. So's your Lance Commander," Stomps said. "Warfare. 99.99% boring bullshit, point zero one percent pants shitting terror."

"At least I might get a strawberry," Ret.lek grumbled.

Stomps laughed. "You've been hanging around with the XO too long," he said. "As long as you're all right. Stomps out."

The channel closed.

Ret.lek watched as the entire second rank of the enemy tanks exploded in unison as the skirmish line opened up at the optimal range with the optimal firing angles and the optimal weapon power.

He took another bite of the meat stick, which usually tasted spicy and greasy, grimacing at the dry pasty taste. He stirred it in the greasy and oily hot artificial cheese flavored cheese substitute and took a bite.

It just didn't taste as good as it did back in the Slorpie Contested Zone.

And his soda was flat.

Ret.lek leaned back some more in his pilot's chair, putting his feet up on the dash, watching as the enemy missiles were killed far beyond their ignition range, popping them into a burst of black smoke that rained down chunks of debris.

He dropped the can into the grinder and tabbed up another one from the nutri-forge, setting it on random and getting a Cherry Blast Bingo Cola. Ret.lek cracked it open, watching as another salvo of enemy shells was raked out of the sky by the regiment's massed point defense and AMS systems. He shook his head, took a drink, and made a grimace.

It tasted off. Like something was missing,

Sighing, he just stirred the meat stick in the artificial cheese flavored cheese substitute, took a bite, and washed down the oily and chemically hot mouthful with weird tasting Bingo Cola.

Aerospace fighters tried to make a close attack run, only to be knocked down by missiles from the skirmish line of meks as well as the grav-strikers hovering behind the walking war machines.

They didn't even explode in cool colors like Slorpy Strikers.

"Man, war sucks," Ret.lek bitched.