Тим Пауэрс - Free Stories 2018

So today was the day, or more accurately, the night was the night.

I demanded from my lieutenant that I didn’t get any kind of send-off—I was afraid that seeing all of my fellow troopers would spook me and I’d turn around at the last minute—so the only person to see me off was the same soldier as before, at the OP at the top of the stairs.

Corporal Tanner was there, blanket around his shoulders, and he said, “Hey,—Sarge, I mean—“

“Keep quiet,” I said, “and help us with this stuff.”

The “stuff” was two plastic sledges, with black boxes and components tied down, and ropes to drag them. He helped Ludmilla and me over the top of the berm, and he gave me a quick slap on the back.

“Take care.”

“That’s my plan.”

Ludmilla said “Soldier?”

“Yes?”

“Go away now. Far away.”

“Yes, ma’am,” and Tanner scampered down the stairway.

Now it was just Ludmilla and me.

“We go.”

“Great,” I said.

I followed Ludmilla’s lead, and moved slow, very slow. We dragged the sledges behind us, and she said, “We learn… from hard lessons… to move slow. Not set any pattern.”

“I see.”

I followed her slim body, as we traversed the torn up and scorched earth. Overhead the constant flares and burning lights of space wreckage coming into the atmosphere continued. My stomach and abdomen were burning, but having Ludmilla in front of me calmed me down some.

We went up and down a trench, around some burnt wreckage from attacks a decade ago—some kind of artillery piece, its barrel and support melted—and Ludmilla whispered, “Stop, now.”

“Okay.”

I sat there, and then Ludmilla rustled her way over to me and said, “I’m cold.”

I was dumb, but not that dumb.

I put my arm around her, and she cuddled in next to me, and I smelled her hair and fresh soap.

I can’t remember that last time I’ve been so happy.

I said, “How did you end up here?”

She said, “You mean, how I get into war?”

“Something like that,” I said.

I looked up at the lights flaring and burning through the night sky, feeling the dull and heavy presence of the dome base close by.

“I… was a child. On holiday. With my family. On a cruise ship from Vladivostok. The ship was called the V.V. Tereshkova. I don’t remember much. But the bugs come, drop their rocks… many tidal waves… our ship, she was sunk.”

“I’m sorry.”

She moved under my arm. “So. A long time back… somehow… I ended in life raft… washed ashore… when I grew up, in All Orphan Pioneer Party, I swore I would get my revenge… and here I am.”

“But…”

“But what, Walter?”

“Aren’t you afraid?”

“Are you afraid?”

“Some… but I know what’s ahead of me. It’s not good. I’d rather go out doing something… oh, I don’t know. Special. Heroic.”

“Good for you,” Ludmilla said. “I just want to kill the bugs. Let’s move some more.”

We dragged our sledges across the landscape, stopping at Ludmilla’s command, me not too sure what she was doing, only knowing that she must have been working from years of experience. It was hard to believe that in these plastic sledges, bouncing behind us, sometimes getting caught up in torn and blasted metal, that there was a weapon that would destroy this dome.

We were closer now, and we rested two more times.

“How further do we go?” I asked.

“Right up to the dome,” she said. “Where the access hatch dilates open… it’s the weakest spot.”

“Makes sense,” I said.

We cuddled up again and she said, “Now, your story, eh?”

“Not much of a story,” I said.

“Tell me still.”

“Grew up in Maine, up north of here. Small family. Deep in the woods… and, the war began.”

“How old were you?”

“Seven.”

“And?”

A particularly big piece of space debris came in, throwing off big sparks and flares.

She nudged me.

“And?”

Well, she asked.

“The weather took a hit with all the debris and water kicked up into the atmosphere,” I said. “The first year was tough, the second year was tougher. The little house we lived in was only heated by a fireplace. We took to going to bed for most of the day when the snowstorms came through. Dad, Mom and me. I was on a couch near the fire, covered in blankets and comforters. They were nearby, on a fold-out couch. One day… I don’t remember much. The fire had gone out. There wasn’t much wood. My parents wouldn’t get up, and then… well, they couldn’t get up.”

“Oh,” she said.

“Yeah. I walked a while to a neighbor’s house. Got turned away. Went to another house. Was taken in, joined the Boy Scouts soon afterwards. When I got older, I figured out my parents starved to death, trying to keep me alive.”

Ludmilla kissed me on the cheek. “So we both have reasons to kill the bugs, eh?”

“We do.”

I kissed her back, on the cheek as well, and then I kissed her lips, and that’s how the time passed for a long lovely while.

Two more movements, and then we were up against the Dome. I was shuddering and feeling scared, and my body was betraying me as well. I threw up again and from the light of a big chunk of space debris, I see there was blood in what came out.

No matter.

Ludmilla took her time, opening the hard plastic containers, explaining how the different modules and pieces of the nuclear device were put together.

“So many experiments, so many failures,” she said, moving slowly and then stopping for a while. “Many brave men and women died to get the… knowledge? Information. Da. Information. We all learned hard way that the bugs monitor all electronics, from space, from the Domes. But to what level? So… volunteers. Would go up against the Domes, carrying various electronics… they would be burnt, captured… a lucky few would escape… but we learned. We learned.”

She looked around, very satisfied indeed.

“We rest now,” she said.

She came to me and we kissed again.

“Walter, your leg?”

“The good one or the fake one?”

“What happened?”

“It’s buried somewhere in a landfill in New Hampshire,” I said. “I had been in the Army a month. It hadn’t been a good month.”

“I want to know more.”

“I don’t want to tell you.”

“Okay, then.”

I think Ludmilla dozed in my arms, which was a good thing, because I could sense… something. Movement. Vibration.

A light slowly started bathing the area to the north of me, and then I turned and closed my eyes, because I knew what was happening next.

The Creeper Dome was opening up and with its opening, came a bright flash of light.

I turned in a second and off to the distant north, one and then two alien Creepers skittered over the dirt berm. They moved at a good pace, and from my vantage point, with a beautiful girl in my arms, I could see they were two Battle modes, coming back to their home base after a night of burning and lasering whatever they wanted. Seeing the armored arthropods up close again made me tense with fear and anger, and then they safely slipped into the dome, and the dilated opening closed.

Ludmilla stirred and moved away. “What… what happen?”

“Two Creepers just came back, into their base.”

She sat up. A line of light pink and red was beginning to form in the east.

“Good,” she said. “Two more that will die.”

The morning day looked to be pretty fine. My arms and chest felt heavy.

One’s last day.

“Ludmilla?”

“Yes?”

“You and I… we could run away. Go to the west. They’re looking for workers, farmers out west. We would never be found.”