Chapter Six
The ground crawler rumbled over the highway, slowly consuming the distance. Rok gripped the controller, guiding the vehicle around the obstructions while replaying the biggest mistake of his life. Rather than earn three good kills, he’d eliminated an asset.
I’m a failure. A disgrace.
Officer material? I’m not worthy of the right to call myself Progg.
His intention had snapped and veered sideways. He was supposed to claim the planet for the empire, not sympathize with the inhabitants nor make comparisons between them. A noble human was of no more value than a traitor—both were impediments to colonization.
But a smirking Knife, sucking on a fire stick, so confident he’d purchased his safety by sacrificing others of his kind contrasted starkly with a mother trying to shield her terrified child and the male willing to die to protect them both.
The former deserved to die. The latter demonstrated the type of courage Zok often rewarded.
Letting the family live ran counter to his orders and his own aspirations, but he could not bring himself to kill them. A single face-to-face encounter had recalibrated the scales and upended the principles and certitudes he’d been taught.
There was no point to remaining in camp. He’d eliminated the tracker who could have located more humans, and, after the church incident, he questioned his ability to perform his duty if he happened to find any strays on his own.
A surgical strike from space was clean, easy, anonymous.
One moment, a city teemed with millions of people; the next moment, it was as if they never existed.
A merciful conquest. But confronting the inhabitants face-to-face, seeing their terror, hearing their voices, wasn’t clean, easy, or anonymous.
Humans were people. Aliens, something other. But still people.
The human father and mother had protected their offspring the same way a Progg would have protected theirs.
Centuries had passed since Progg-Res had had to fend off a threat.
Technology, military might, and dominance had afforded them unparalleled security and rendered them untouchable.
No single planet or race of being could beat them.
Progg-Res had been building its galactic empire for generations.
In reaction, less powerful nation planets had banded into the Federation of Alien Beings, giving them the collective might to repel an invasion.
The General Ministry left allied planets alone. There were other easier conquests…for now anyway. The future? Well, that hadn’t been decided yet.
For as long as people had existed, the mighty had conquered the weak.
Even the self-righteous federation planets had a history of hegemony.
But in viewing the Earth campaign through the eyes of the vanquished, dominance looked like aggression, confidence resembled hubris, and a bloodless and merciful acquisition appeared savage.
Had this campaign progressed like all the others, it would have been over by now. A once-clear future had turned murky.
He couldn’t fathom what was happening on the command ship or at the General Ministry. There was only one certainty. If he got home, his military career would be over. His actions in the church defined dereliction of duty.
In the short term, he’d decided to try to locate his brother. The odds were Grav had died along with the admiral, but, if he was still alive, he might have more information about what was going on. Besides, the unity of the family in the church had triggered an urge to reunite with his own kin.
He’d like to believe his parents would have defended him fiercely, but that was more wish than reality.
That their allegiance was stronger than their love for their children wasn’t entirely their fault.
The GM deliberately weakened emotional familial attachments, so they didn’t distract from one’s patriotism.
That was part of the reason for taking children from the parents and rearing them at the MEC.
Whether or not he returned home, his parents were lost to him.
But maybe he could reconnect with Grav.
He had only general coordinates for the admiral’s last location, but he had plugged those into the crawler’s self-guided nav system.
With communications to the command ship lost, the crawler couldn’t access real-time data to determine ground conditions and thus defaulted to the most direct route—plowing through and over abandoned vehicles clogging the byways.
Once, the crawler had nearly toppled over.
The near-accident convinced him to take control of the helm and navigate around the obstacles rather than climb over them. If the General Ministry colonized Earth, they would need to remove the obstructions. Vehicles could not be vaporized.
Arriving in a town at the shore of a lake, he spotted a recreation area and decided to take a much-needed break. He guided the crawler around a truck blocking the entrance and drove in, stopping when pavement turned to sand.
He climbed out and picked a table closest to the water where he could enjoy the breeze blowing off the lake and watch waterfowl swim.
He ripped open a field ration packet, took a bite, and grimaced at the vile, chalky flavor, halfway regretting the return of his sense of taste.
Crowding up near the shore, the water fowl quacked expectantly.
“You won’t like what I’m eating,” he said.
Their quacking insisted they would, so he broke off a chunk, crumpled it up, and tossed it into the water. The fowl dove for the tidbits, gobbled them up—then spit them out.
He laughed. “I told you.”
They swam away with an angry twitch of tail feathers.
He finished off his meal, drank some water, then relieved himself in the nearby bushes.
He’d hoped to get to Drek’s camp in a day, but he hadn’t factored in the numerous detours.
From the sun’s position, he estimated a few hours of daylight remained.
Unable to see obstructions on a moonless night, he couldn’t travel after dark.
Better get a move on. Log as many muh-ruga as I can.
Strolling to the crawler, he heard a pfft and then something pinged off the reinforced vehicle.
Pfft! Pfft!
Searing pain pierced his thigh, and he fell to the ground, blood spurting from his leg.
Pfft! A plume of dirt shot up right next to his head. He rolled away. I’m under attack!
Leg on fire, he used his arms to crawl on his belly. Another blast seared his shoulder. They’re going to kill me. Agony shot through him as he dragged himself the last few ruga and hauled himself into the reinforced vehicle.
Hands shaking, his fingers slippery with blood, he activated the automatic pilot. The crawler fired up and headed out of the rest stop. Through the view screen he spotted two armed males, faded hats pulled low over their determined faces, barricaded behind a vehicle at the entrance.
They fired at the crawler.
Ping! Ping! Ping! Ping!
Although the reinforced hull was impenetrable, he flinched at every hit. The men kept shooting until the very last second before the crawler plowed into their vehicle, forcing them to leap out of the way.
Shots continued to bounce off the hull as the vehicle growled down the road.
“Pikur zok vinik okum!” he swore and collapsed onto a narrow bench seat, clutching his bleeding right leg.
He could barely move his left arm from the pain in his shoulder.
Earth weapons were no match against vaporizers, but in a hand-to-hand battle against a Progg who’d stupidly left his weapon in the crawler, they were quite effective.
Something hard had lodged in his thigh and shoulder. Until his body expelled the embedded foreign objects and healed itself, he’d continue to suffer.
I could have been killed. A couple of shots had come perilously close to his head. Progg physiology was a marvel of bodily repair, but it couldn’t mend having one’s brains splattered.
It appeared the survivors still had fight in them and weren’t going to give up. Their courage stood in stark contrast to Knife’s acts of cowardice.
Belatedly, it dawned on him that he could have used the tracker’s help to find Grav. Only a tracker could safely approach both Progg and humans. But the idea to search for his brother hadn’t occurred until after he’d killed Knife, and he had no regrets about vaporizing the man.
The crawler climbed over a vehicle, the rocking motion sending stabbing pain through his injured limbs.
Vision grayed, and, for a moment, he almost passed out.
Every jolt would be excruciating, but he couldn’t halt the vehicle and wait for his body to heal; he had to put maximum distance between him and his attackers as fast as he could.
If they managed to overtake the crawler, they could tip it over. They couldn’t get inside, but he’d be trapped with few food rations. All they would have to do was wait it out.
He tried to get up to see if they were in pursuit, but spiking pain blurred his vision, and he collapsed.
His body would push out the projectiles embedded in his shoulder and thigh and knit the wound closed, but replenishing the lost blood would take a while.
His shirt and pants leg were stained and sticky, but it appeared the bleeding had slowed.
The crawler crashed through a pileup of cars, and agony splintered through him.
This time, he did pass out.