1st to Fight (Earth at War) Read online

  “How ’bout that, bro?” Jambo enthused, slapping me on the shoulder. “You’re gonna be the first jarhead to go the stars!”

  My head swam, my thoughts a rush of adrenaline and wonder and sheer, fucking terror.

  I’m going to the stars, the eight-year-old kid screamed at me, the sort of scream I would have made at the top of the first big dive on a rollercoaster.

  But the part of me that had survived combat, seen friends die, witnessed enough horror and death to drive me into a bottle for the better part of five years countered the child with sober, adult cynicism.

  And the stars are at war.

  Chapter Ten

  I’d gotten my cell phone back when we left the Situation Room and I tossed it in my hand a few times, seeing a million possibilities. The base in Idaho had full-spectrum communications jammers to keep anyone from doing anything stupid like sending their geotagged selfie taken in a Svalinn suit, but we were in DC and the skies were wide open.

  Jambo and the others joined me on the front steps of the White House, waiting for our limo. I squinted in the bright, late summer sunlight, sweating already. DC in August was a humid, bug-infested nightmare. Beyond the fence and lines of security police, protestors chanted and waved signs for the media drones. The protests had been going on since the day the Helta showed up, dwindled to almost nothing, but experiencing a resurgence every time some new tidbit of information was released. I wasn’t sure what, exactly, this group’s problem was, whether it was denying aliens existed, insisting it was all a hoax, protesting the US getting involved militarily, protesting the UN not being involved or maybe a bunch of furries complaining they should be included in negotiations since the Helta were obviously their brethren.

  “We have to be ready to ship out in three weeks,” Olivera told us, slipping on his cover.

  It’s a damned hat. Why can’t the military just call things what they are instead of inventing new shit for us to remember?

  “We’ll be leaving from out there,” Julie added, careful not to mention the name of the base or where we were leaving for. “Our rides will be ready to go and can take off from basically anywhere.”

  “Your special operations team will be there when you get back,” Olivera said to Jambo. “I know it’s going to be an accelerated training course with the armor and weapons, but you can continue their training en route.”

  “Are you two heading back with us?” Brooks asked, gesturing toward Olivera and Julie.

  “Negative,” Olivera told her. “We have some last-minute checks to finish.” He checked the time on his smart watch and scowled. “In fact, we have a helicopter to catch. Glad I didn’t bring any luggage.”

  “Our flight leaves in the morning,” Brooks said, grinning, “and I fully intend to take advantage of the expense account room service in our hotel.” She sighed. “And maybe I can video chat with my family before I go to bed. I haven’t seen any of them in months. I think my kids have forgotten I exist.”

  “My daughter is in Honolulu with my ex-husband,” Julie lamented. “It’s six hours earlier there so we talk on the phone about as often as you see your family live and in person, Dani.”

  “Here’s our car,” Olivera told Julie, nodding at a driverless Honda pulling up to the curb. It was a government vehicle, of course. They didn’t let any cab, driverless or not, inside the White House gates. “Safe flight to you three.”

  I shuddered, knowing it was ironic for a science fiction writer to be a Luddite and not caring. I would never, not if I lived to be four hundred, which I just might, get used to driverless cars. The two of them slid into the back seat as if it was the most natural thing in the world, chatting as the car pulled away and blended into the traffic.

  Brooks was frowning at the line of limos, cars and buses waiting to pull up to the pickup area.

  “Where the hell is our limo?” she muttered. She waved at us, heading back up the steps. “You two hang out here, I’m going to go see if they have the driver’s contact number.”

  “If we’re gonna be a while,” Jambo told me, “I gotta hit the latrine.” He grinned at me. “That’s the ‘head’ for you jarhead types…and our president.”

  “I’ll wait here,” I said, “in case the limo arrives.”

  Once he’d disappeared, I pulled my phone out and scrolled through the numbers, knowing it was there but forgetting what I stored it under. A for Allie? No, nothing. C for Clanton? Not for a while now, but no, not there, either. J for her maiden name Jackson? No. F for her new husband’s name, Franklin? Again, no.

  Ah, there it was under B. For bitch.

  I touched the screen and called my ex-wife.

  It rang a good nine times and I was confident it was going to go straight to voicemail. I hung up before it did. I didn’t really want to hear her voice, particularly not being artificially cheerful. I scrolled down to Z for Zach.

  It rang fifteen times, and when it was picked up, I actually felt a little lightheaded.

  “Zack?” I said, hope welling up in my chest.

  She killed it, of course.

  “You know you’re not supposed to call him directly,” Allie said, a primary school teacher scolding a student. “You’re supposed to go through me.”

  “I’ve tried to go through you,” I shot back, not bothering with pleasantries either. “You refuse to answer my calls and you won’t let him talk to me. Despite the fact that you’re legally required to by our custody agreement.”

  “Then you should speak to my lawyer, not call his cell directly.” Her voice was flat and unapologetic, she wouldn’t even consider the idea she was in the wrong.

  “No,” I snapped, “my lawyer will call your lawyer and then you’re going to wind up back in court. Don’t tell me you don’t think I can afford a lawyer, Allie. You know exactly how much money I’m making and we both know how much I’m paying in child support. I may not be a real estate mogul like Paul, but I can tie you up in court if that’s the way you want this to go. All I want is what the courts ruled I could have: an opportunity to talk to my son at least once a week. Now are you going to give me that opportunity?”

  “This isn’t a good time, Andy,” she said, the hardass act finally cracking around the edges. “Zack and Paul are just starting to bond. It’s taken a long time and I don’t want to confuse things right now.”

  And I could believe that the quaver of emotion in her voice was real or not at my own discretion. She had proven how good an actor she was when she kept reassuring me over video calls that everything was fine and the only reason Zack was never around when I got time at the comm center was because he was so busy with sports. Then I’d come home from Venezuela to an empty house.

  Not that I hadn’t deserved it.

  “It may not be a good time, but it’s the only time I’ve got,” I told her. “Jesus, you’ve seen the news. You know what’s going on. You know where I was when all this started. This may be the only chance I have to talk to him for months.”

  And I was probably saying more than I was allowed to, but I was past caring. I was going not just off the planet but out of the fucking star system. I wanted the chance to tell my son goodbye.

  “He’s starting to call Paul ‘dad,’” she blurted. “I don’t want to let his alcoholic absentee father fuck up his one chance to have a stable family.”

  “Goddammit, Allie, you know that’s bullshit,” I growled. “I haven’t had a drink in three years. I had PTSD and I was self-medicating and yeah, I was in a bad place and needed help. And I got it, but God knows it wasn’t from you.” I snapped my mouth shut on the next word, knowing I was letting her get under my skin. Again. “It doesn’t matter. All that was between us, and it’s over. I want to talk to Zack. I don’t care who else you’re telling him to call ‘dad,’ I am still his father.”

  She hesitated and I actually thought she might give in and make this easy. I must have forgotten who I was talking to.

  “It’s not a good time,” she repeated,
her tone a slamming door. “And I can’t trust you.”

  “Allie—” I began, but there was no arguing with a closed door.

  “You’d better go ahead and call your lawyer,” she said, “because you’re not talking to Zack.”

  The phone went dead. I cursed loud enough to turn a few heads on the curb around me and pressed my lips together hard to contain the litany of invective trying to get out, restrained myself from smashing the phone on the concrete, mindful for the first time in months of the uniform I was wearing.

  I should have known better. I should have realized how it would go and just done what she said and called my lawyer first. But the God’s honest truth was, Paul Franklin was a real estate mogul and he could afford better lawyers than I could, even with the TV deal. They’d tie this up in the courts for weeks just because they could, and by the time it actually got to a judge and the decision was made, I’d be too far away for it to matter. She’d win the way she’d always did, because she was the only one playing.

  “Bro, are you sleepwalking or something?”

  My head snapped around at Jambo’s voice and I tucked the phone against my leg, hiding it out of instinct, though I didn’t know why I should. He knew about the dissolution of my marriage. He’d even admitted to me once, after way too little sleep on way too long a training op, that he’d been married once, though he wouldn’t say more than that.

  “What?” I asked him, blinking in confusion.

  “The fucking limo, man,” he said, pointing in front of me. “It’s right there.”

  I turned back toward the road and sure enough, there was a long, black car with a real, human driver waiting patiently in the left hand seat.

  “Oh, sorry,” I told him. “I was thinking about something. Should I run in and get Colonel Brooks?”

  “Colonel Brooks is here, too,” she announced over my other shoulder. “Good Lord, you are a bit out of it, aren’t you, Clanton?”

  She seemed amused by it rather than suspicious, so I just laughed and passed it off.

  It was exactly the second limo I’d ever ridden in, so I couldn’t say with any sort of certainty if it was high-end, but it was nicer than my Ford. I sank back into the seat and tried to think. The last time I’d talked to Zack, he’d gone on and on about a new fantasy MMORPG called Abysmal, how he’d made some new friends on the message forums dedicated to it on Threadit. I snuck a look at Jambo and Brooks, who were engaged in a discussion of the relative merits of .45ACP vs. 9mm for personal defense, just to make sure they weren’t paying attention, then pulled up the search engine on my phone and found the message forum for Abysmal.

  The limo ride back to the hotel took nearly forty minutes in DC traffic, and it almost wasn’t long enough. There were three message forums for Abysmal on Threadit alone and I had no fucking clue what Zack’s screen name would be.

  Unless it was ZackClanton32.

  Damn, someone has to have a talk with that kid about OpSec.

  I’d found the screen name, and it was fairly obvious it was him. His manner of speaking, his word choices, the many times he’d referred to being born on a military base in California and now living in Austin, they all confirmed it was the right Zack Clanton.

  At least he still uses my last name.

  Registering for a log-in took another five minutes, and by the time I’d been authorized to post in the forum, the limo was stopping in front of the Hilton and someone was opening my door for me.

  “You’re lucky you have your own room, Colonel,” Jambo told her as we escaped the brief taste of summer in DC into the blissful climate control of the lobby. “I hate to speak ill of an officer, but my boy Major Clanton here snores like a wounded rhino.”

  “I’d advise some tactical earplugs,” Brooks told him. She tipped her head at the hotel’s restaurant. “Did you boys want to grab some lunch?”

  “Why don’t you go ahead, Jambo?” I said. “I got a headache. Think I’m gonna go up to the room and catch a nap.”

  Jambo squinted at me the same way I saw him look at a guerilla leader who’d promised his people would be in place to support our attack right on time, no problemo.

  “You sure you’re okay, Andy?”

  “Oh, yeah,” I insisted, already pressing the button to call the elevator. “It’s just the heat. And the time change. A couple hours of shut-eye and I’ll be raring to go.”

  “All right,” he relented with a shrug. “Pop a couple Vitamin I. There’s a bottle on my nightstand.”

  “Will do.” Then the elevator door opened with a chime.

  I waited until I was free of Jambo’s inquisitive stare before I tapped my phone screen to life again. I had to go through three different menus to find the private message function on Threadit, but finally, the dialogue box opened and my thumbs froze on the keyboard.

  What the hell was I going to say?

  Zack, this is your father. I’ve been trying to call but your mother always says you’re not available…

  No. Damn. Didn’t want to play him against her. Playing games was her thing, not mine. I backspaced out of the last sentence.

  I’ve been trying to call, but haven’t been able to catch you. I remembered you said you liked this game, so I checked since I don’t have your personal number. Here’s mine. I tapped in my cell number. I’m working with the military again, so your best bet will be to message me. I may be getting deployed very far away soon, so please get in touch with me as soon as you can.

  Love,

  Dad

  My thumb hovered over the button and I chewed on my lip, still not sure if I was doing the right thing. It was a violation of security, I was fairly sure, though I hadn’t asked anyone. It was definitely a violation of our custody agreement, though that hadn’t stopped Allie at any point.

  “Fuck it.” I hit the button, then turned the screen off and slipped it into my pocket.

  An older lady riding beside me in the elevator raised an eyebrow and I blushed.

  “Sorry, ma’am,” I said.

  “That’s all right, son,” she said with a knowing smile. “My late husband was a Marine and he couldn’t string five words together unless one of them was ‘fuck,’ so I’m used to it.”

  I laughed politely.

  “I’m sorry he’s gone, ma’am.”

  “Me too, every day,” she said, eyes clouding with old memories. “He died in Afghanistan. A long time ago, now, but I miss him every day.” She smiled wistfully. “At least my son had the brains to join the Space Force. Even with all this nonsense about these aliens, I’m pretty sure he’ll never face anything more deadly than a paper cut.”

  I tried not to let the wince make it to my face.

  “Yes, ma’am,” was all I trusted myself to say. “I’m sure he’ll be fine.”

  I got out on the twelfth floor and fumbled for my room key, wondering what the hell I was actually going to do. I didn’t need a nap, I needed a drink.

  I thought of my son and took a nap.

  Chapter Eleven

  “You payin’ attention to this shit, man?” Jambo asked, sprawled out on a couch in the break room of the Staging Base Alpha Training Headquarters, which was a very elaborate and fancy name for an ancient office building with half a dozen offices that we hardly ever used except when the time came to file reports on the official servers, which were isolated, even from the Space Force net.

  I’d been using my personal tablet to tap into the heavily-censored entertainment net, trying to see if Zack had messaged me back. It was a forlorn hope at this point, I knew. We were scheduled to ship out in two days and the whole base was a buzz of activity, cargo trucks and power-loaders and heavy-lift helicopters heading in and out at all hours and a damned space shuttle pulled into a special, oversized hangar they’d constructed for it a couple months ago.

  And it all left damned little for us to do except try to familiarize the Special Ops team with the suits and weapons in the time we had left. Even that had been put on hold for the m
oment. The live fire ranges were shut down because of all the air traffic and, more importantly, the repair shops and the techs were all shipping out to the Truthseeker and no one wanted to break a suit and have it left behind.

  So the Delta boys were doing what operators do best when there’s no real work to be done: shamming. And this was the best place to sham, far from the prying eyes of any officers. Except me. I was technically an officer, but I was outside their chain of command and might as well be a civilian as far as most of them were concerned. They were a bunch of odd ducks, all twelve of them, all ragged denim and ancient, faded T-shirts and scraggly hair, and every single one of them carried a gun everywhere but the shower. Maybe. I’d heard at least one conversation about “shower guns,” but they might have been just yanking my chain.

  Even here in the break room, absorbed in hand-held games and virtual reality goggles, sprawled over couches or hunched over folding tables, Glocks or SIGs or HKs stuck out of shoulder or belt holsters, and those were just the guns I could see.

  “Paying attention to what?” I asked Jambo, tossing an empty Diet Coke can into the recycling bin.

  I grabbed another from the fridge and frowned at it. I still needed to figure out a way to smuggle a few cases onto the ship. There was no way I was going to be able to live without caffeine for however long it would take to complete this mission, and I just can’t stand coffee. God knows, I’ve tried. In the military, coffee is nearly as ubiquitous as divorce and every bit as bitter.

  “The fucking news, bro,” Jambo said as if I’d asked a dumb question. He had an hourly update running on the TV, though God knows why. All the talking heads were computer generated now, not like when I was a kid and we had real people to spout bullshit at us on the news.