Killing Titan Read online

  Let’s look at you and Joe.

  Joe Sanchez and I had a long, winding history on our way to becoming Skyrines. To me, it seems he was always there—has always been there. But of course, there have been gaps. Some long ones—like before our first drop on Mars. I didn’t see him for over a year, during the last phase of training. I thought maybe he had been selected out for special training, but when he reappeared, all was fine; he said he’d been hanging out with a lady in Virginia, while taking some OCS courses at VMI. I have rarely if ever questioned Joe’s word.

  And of course that last drop on Mars. He had gone ahead; we had reunited at the Drifter. No explanation there, except that our units had been reassigned at the last minute.

  But there were also clear, marked-out moments that seemed like beginnings. I think on one now, lying back in bed with my eyes closed; I can almost see the lowering sun, the line of clouds hugging the western horizon.

  The trestle.

  The time Joe and I nearly got ourselves killed.

  I suppose every Skyrine, every fighter for a nation, a polity, a socially segregated club, starts off believing in the purity and magnificence of trial and adventure. As a child, I sought adventure wherever I could find it—sometimes getting myself into real scrapes with danger and with the law. I was harum-scarum, reckless, but I was also pretty smart and so I seldom got into a fix I could not, all on my own, get myself out of. But on three occasions, before I reached the age of sixteen, I came close to getting myself killed.

  Once, I was following a train track in Southern California, not far from where Pendleton still trains and houses young Skyrines. I was with Joe. I was usually with Joe when we weren’t off trying to pick up girls, which we did separately.

  Back then Joe Sanchez was a brown-haired Huck Finn kind of guy, a year older than me, as smart as I thought I was, and even more resourceful. We had known each other for two years, we were happy, we were seeking adventure.

  Young men who think they’re smart tend not to make straight, linear plans, but to engage in ingeniously crooked schemes and maneuvers, just to try things out. Just to test the world. That’s their job. Our job.

  Our crooked plan was to walk along the tracks and jump out of the way as trains came howling around the far headlands, through a cut in the Del Mar hills—passing behind Torrey Pines State Beach. We paid attention and walked the tracks and jumped out of the way as the engines and bright cars streaked past, though a few engineers were provoked to let loose with that impressive horn and glare at us as they flashed by in their long steel monsters.

  But then we came to a bridge over the tidal inlet, a creosote pile kind of thing that might have been fifty or even seventy years old, just tracks, no cars, no clear path for a pair of reckless kids bent on a crooked lark.

  We were halfway across that bridge, looking down through the ties at shallow turquoise and gray water lapping against the piles, enjoying the ocean breeze as seagulls wheeled and screeched. Joe was grinning like a bandit, walking ahead of me, teeth on fire in the lowering sun, glancing back and raising his arms as if he were a tightrope walker—brown hair rippling, brown arms reaching—when about two miles back we heard a train blat out like an angry dinosaur.

  The engineer had glimmed across the low tidal inlet flats and with his sharp eyes discerned two scrawny figures in the middle of the bridge, with about a hundred and fifty feet left to finish gingerly walking, tie by tie, balancing, trying not to step through the spaces between—and the engineer had no doubt, given the train’s speed and our steady, careful pace, that we had to speed it up, had to run along the ties like circus performers or cartoon characters…

  And then he knew what we knew.

  We still wouldn’t make it. The train would be upon us before we could finish the crossing, and the water was at least thirty feet below, with a two-foot shoal over sand and gravel and eelgrass to break our fall or our necks.

  So we did what we had to do. We laughed like loons. The fear was amazing. We ran, no, we danced along the ties. We ran and stumbled and recovered and ran. We slipped—Joe dropped his leg between two ties—I came down off a rail, one foot in the air, and somehow, we both scrambled up, unhurt, to keep running, all the time crowing and shouting and screaming—Move, fucker! Speed it up! Speed speed speed!

  I managed to mostly balance on the left rail, stepping foot over foot, the toes of my shoes catching my pant cuffs, like my own legs would kill me if they could—

  And my friend cried out, his voice breaking shrill, “It’s right behind us! Fuck fuck fuck!”

  I did not look back. I knew what I had to do—this was adventure, scary but chock-full of living, the height of everything I’d experienced until now—it was us versus the monster, and the engineer was leaning on his awful horn and the air filled with the most intense, gut-vibrating noise I had ever experienced.

  I knew that I had to jump and break my legs.

  Or die.

  Joe screamed again, looked back at me with the face of a maniac, and dove off the tracks. His legs splayed as he flew a yard out from the bridge and then straight down, arms wheeling. I lost sight of him when I jumped, but I didn’t fall—I clung to the left rail with my fingers, feeling the polished, sunwarm steel sear my fingers, hot as a steam iron, while I nearly bit through my cheek—legs and feet dangling, maybe a second before the train’s thousand tons of pressure pulped my hand and I fell anyway—

  And my toes came down firm on a board. A crosstie. I could not see it but it was there—I could feel it. I let go of the steel rail and hugged a thick black piling, smelling the pungent tarry heat of creosote, just as the train roared over at forty or fifty miles per hour, wheels a few inches from my face, my feet trying to keep their purchase on the crosstie someone had so thoughtfully hammered between two pilings, but angled at a crazy slant, the soles of my running shoes hot and slippery from the steel ties, splinters driving into my palms—the entire bridge alive with weight and motor noise, rattling my guts and bones and suspended thoughts, rattling my skull and teeth while blood streamed from a corner of my lips.

  The train took forever.

  It was by me in less than a minute.

  The horn stopped its insane howl.

  The engineer probably thought we were both dead.

  No matter.

  All my muscles had locked. I wanted to throw up but there was still stuff I had to do. I punched my arm and leg to release their lock, then edged forward along the crosspiece, which angled down to intersect another piling, and then along a lower piece, balancing briefly between pilings, shoes still slipping (I never bought that brand again) until I was within ten feet of the tidal flow, and I just gave up and fell back, closing my eyes—

  Dropped and dropped.

  Splashed down hard in the bath of the brackish stream, the shock spread evenly along my back and hips and legs. Water filled my nose. Eelgrass grabbed my hips and tried to hold me under, but I thrashed and broke free, found the mucky bottom, and shoved up with water streaming. The air brightened with diamond spray.

  Only then did I look for Joe. He stood about twenty feet away, soaked and covered in mud, eyes and teeth golden through the muck. Both of us laughing. We had not stopped laughing since we’d seen the train, except when we were screaming.

  “Fuck! I SAW YOU!” Joe shouted, turning the expletive into a buzz saw. “You were like RIGHT UNDER THE FUCKING ENGINE and I could see you fucking vibrating like a GONG and then—you… you…” He’d swallowed a lot of water and was spewing it up, saying between shuddering heaves how foul it was. We pulled our feet from the muck and finished crossing the lagoon, then stumbled through saw grass to the gravel bank of the highway. There we sat on the margin and leaned our heads back in the last fiery glow of the setting sun, suddenly quiet, laughter spent.

  “Nothing better,” Joe said hoarsely. “Nothing ever so great.”

  We sat beside each other for long minutes. The sun slid behind the far edge of the Pacific. Mud dried and stiffe
ned our pants. The chill of evening made us shiver. We didn’t care. We talked about trains and bridges, then about girls and drinking and movies and parties, then about cars and how we were no longer alone in the universe, all that stuff, like we were adults, old wise men, until the only lights we saw came from cars rushing north and south and a high scatter of stars washed gray by the electric glow of San Diego and Del Mar. Mist from the lagoon cloaked everything.

  By then we were so cold we had to move. We got to our feet, shoes squelching, and walked into Del Mar—miles away, not hitching, just walking, drawing out our time of being alive after what had happened, clinging to that feeling that we had survived something amazingly stupid and really, really great. This had just happened to us.

  This was Adventure.

  Walking backward ahead of me, Joe looked up and raised his hands to the dull orange-black sky.

  “What’s it like out there, Vinnie?” he asked. “We’ve sucked this planet dry. Nothing better here, just more stupid stunts.”

  “Great stungs,” I said. I had bitten my tongue jumping from the bridge.

  “Great what?”

  “Great stunts,” I corrected.

  “What’s waiting out there? What’s way out there waiting to happen to both of us?”

  That was the night Joe Sanchez and I told each other we would enlist. We wanted more stupid joy and danger and the sheer, druggy rush of survival. We wanted as much of that as we could get, the real thing. Wanted it over and over. God, how I loved that whole stupid day and chilly night.

  We were idiots. But we were also young gods.

  I SAW THAT in an old movie.

  Coyle!

  This time the word balloon fills in. I roll over, look up from my tangled bed, and glare at the ceiling. “It was real. It happened to me—to us.” I can feel her, recognize her—almost hear her voice. “I don’t know what you’re doing in here! You’re fucking dead.”

  And you’re fucking stuck in a cheap hotel. But not for long.

  That makes me angry. “Get the hell out of my head!”

  And what is this about you and Joe and a mummy? That is just creepy. If you want original, you should see what I’m seeing. And by the way, I like Corporal Johnson better than you.

  “You mean, DJ? Where is he?”

  Then—Coyle’s voice dusts up and away, before I can even decide whether I’m still dreaming.

  DAY 123

  The stainless steel shutters behind the thick window hiss and click and slide open. A new guy stands behind the glass while the suite’s little buzzer attracts my attention. He’s alone. He looks around, sees me standing in the door to the bedroom. I’m still wearing my bathrobe.

  The new guy’s in his late fifties, bald, skinny, with a peach-smooth pink face and small, bright eyes. He’s something of a sloppy dresser and wears a gray wool coat over a worn green sweater. He fastens those small bright eyes on me and smiles. Pink lips, tiny, perfect teeth.

  “Master Sergeant Michael Venn. Vinnie,” he says, though nobody around here has earned the right to use that nickname. Any other time or place, I’d look right past him, but there’s something about this new guy, like close-mortared bricks or a finely fitted rock wall. He’s confident, in his element, with the creepy manner of a civilian who can make generals wait in the lobby.

  I get it. I’ll play along and see what transpires.

  “My name is Harris,” he says. “First name Walker. I’m not a doctor but the docs talk to me. They tell me they’re just about finished with your CDE.”

  Command Directed Evaluation.

  “Oh?”

  He smiles reassuringly. “They tell me there’s no evidence of a maladaptive and enduring pattern of behavior destructive to yourself or others. In short, you’re fine.”

  “Why did the docs take so long to make up their minds?” I ask.

  “The stories you told were interesting. Fantastic and interesting.”

  “You’re Wait Staff,” I say.

  “Some call us that,” Harris admits. He releases a dry chuckle and then his eyes scrinch down. “You claim to have been influenced by a green powder you encountered inside an intriguing geological formation on Mars.”

  “Not just me,” I say.

  “Right. Another soldier, Corporal Johnson—DJ. Pardon. Another Skyrine. We needed to check out the stories, and so we have. I’m about to deliver a report to a trio of Gurus. They work in threes, you know.”

  I did not know.

  “They interact with us in threes, that is, to avoid making mistakes, I suppose. I’ve been working with the Gurus for ten years—eleven, actually—and I am still amazed by how little we know about them. How little I know.”

  “Inscrutable?” I ask.

  “Like open books, actually—but printed in a foreign language. Well, our local trio has expressed great interest in your story, what you’ve told us. Our doctors and scientists have finished their analyses, and the upshot is—the final report is going to read—I am going to tell the Gurus directly—that nothing significant about you has changed.” Walker Harris touches the bridge of his nose, sniffs lightly, and concludes, “You are not contagious. Never have been. Nobody should feel concern. The green powder appears to have been innocuous. Maybe it was just dried algae, residue from the attempts to fill the old mine with breathable atmosphere. Don’t you agree?”

  I don’t say a word. Maybe they’ll let me out. Maybe they’ll let me get back in the fight. It’s all I know, really. All I’ve ever been good at.

  “As for the dreams you’ve been having, we’ve been tracking your thought patterns, even translating some of them, and I’m told they’re vivid, imaginative. But your dreams are neither based in mental disorder or referential to another reality. Certainly not an ancient moon’s reality.” Having doubled down, he waits for my response. I give him a twitch of one finger, which he focuses upon like a targeting system.

  That look, that expression—

  Is this guy human or machine? I have to ask. But I don’t. Could be maladaptive.

  “Your time here can’t have been easy.”

  “No complaints,” I say.

  “Remarkable presence of mind. Though I understand you’ve been visited by a friend.” His targeting system homes on my eyes. “A dead friend.”

  This gives me a jolt. I haven’t told any of the docs about Coyle. My skin heats, my face flushes. Walker Harris watches with sympathetic concern. I murmur, “I miss my buddies. Nothing out of the ordinary.”

  “And nothing to be ashamed of,” he says. “We remember our dead in so many ways. As for the experience itself… What little I’ve managed to understand of Guru metaphysics is a puzzle to me. They might or might not deny the possibility of life after death, but you understand—in our military, in our security forces in general, such an experience does not inspire confidence. Still, MHAT is prepared to evaluate and clear you quickly if it’s just a stress-related interlude.”

  “Yeah,” I say, “but I never expected a visit from Medvedev. Vee-Def, we called him. He hated my guts.”

  “Paradoxes and surprises abound,” Harris says. He’s giving up nothing—or he doesn’t know. He’s like a watchful barracuda, perfectly happy to find blood in the water; any excuse to tear me down and eat me up. I’m thinking maybe Walker Harris is borderline maladaptive.

  “But given the trials you’ve been subjected to, and the length of time you’ve been isolated with little in the way of human company—and given that most of these contacts have been scientists…” Harris’s smile could chill a side of beef. “I can arrange for all of that awkwardness to be ignored.” His cheek jerks. He’s lying.

  “Good to hear,” I say. “What else have you seen, looking into my head?”

  Harris appreciates the chance to show off. “The compiled profile shows an intelligent and resourceful warrior with fewer stress-related issues than might be expected. A warrior who could return to service very soon and be a valuable contributor to our war effort. W
hich is entering a new and interesting phase.”

  “Titan,” I say.

  Harris nods with a tight little fidget. “We have yet to broadcast these actions to the general public,” he says, “but you’ve drawn conclusions from what little you’ve heard, and they are not wrong.”

  “How long have we been there? Fighting?”

  “Two years.”

  Again, he’s lying. Based on what the gray-haired secretary said to me outside SBLM about her son’s death, I think maybe four or five.

  “The Gurus must have given us new tech,” I say. “Otherwise, it would take a decade for space frames to reach that far, even with spent matter drives. Out to Saturn and back.”

  If they come back.

  “Very good,” he says,

  “How’s it going out there?” I ask.

  Harris purses his lips and presents his profile as if looking at someone beside him—a theatrical pose that tells me our little session is almost over. “Thank you for your patience, Master Sergeant Venn.”

  I approach the window. “I was told I’d be taken to see some Gurus.”

  “That meeting is not necessary.”

  “Pity,” I say. “All my dreams, my other life—just made-up shit?”

  “Pure and simple.”

  I manage my best boyish grin. “Good to know,” I say.

  “I suppose it does bring relief.” With a ramrod break at the hips, meant to be a respectful bow, he motions for the shutters to close.

  All lies and deceptions, of course. I know things I can’t possibly have made up, things I learned in my other life, if I can just remember them clearly, make them stick down like wallpaper over this life; things I will apply once I get out of Madigan, if I ever get out of Madigan, if this isn’t just a prelude to Zyklon B being pumped into my suite.…