End of the Line Read online

  “Whatever,” Jordan said. His body language painted him as amped up and ready to rock and roll.

  “You’re the Chancellor now, apparently,” McAdams said sourly.

  I didn’t want her to be pissed at me any more than she was, so I launched into my grand plan, which was basically to go outside and see if the Kai would light us up. When she didn’t argue, didn’t even frown, I told them the rest of the plan.

  “We’ll go wherever they lead us, but we won’t ditch our suits under any circumstance, even if it means getting wasted.”

  “That’s your fuckin’ plan?” Jordan asked with a laugh. “Jesus, Lofgren, I could have come up with something better than that.”

  “It’s open mic night, Tyler,” I said. “If you got a better idea, let’s hear it.”

  “Okay, so maybe mine isn’t as good. I say we open the doors, scream ‘cheers, motherfuckers!’ and detonate the suits.”

  “That’s actually a great plan,” I said as if I was willing to change my mind. “It’s a copycat of mine, but I know everyone imitates greatness.”

  He gave me a toothy grin and patted his rifle. “If yours involves killing more of ‘em, then let’s do yours.”

  “Krista?” I asked, checking to see if she had her own plan in mind. She shook her head, her expression of irritation fading into a blank, featureless void. “All right. Jordan, grab a few of the protein bars and our water bags and get them on my back. I don’t know if we’ll live long enough to be hungry or thirsty, but if we do, I don’t want to hear anyone bitching about it.”

  That got a laugh out of the sergeant, though she still looked like she’d rather be kicking me between the legs. Whatever kept her going until one of us was the last man standing. I checked my Harper. The readout said 541 in yellow, and my reserve chamber was a steady red 0. I’d burn all five hundred rounds if I had to, but it would only bring satisfaction, not victory. I pushed that thought and the swirling thoughts about STD’s and All-Stop out of my head.

  “Ready?”

  They nodded and I stepped to the door. I closed my eyes, took a deep breath and began to count. I opened my eyes and the door on five. The sun was high enough in the sky to light up the valley, but not high enough to peak over the eastern mountains. Along the gravel road leading back to the highway was a solid line of Kai infantry, five deep on each side. Two mechs had their weapons pointed at us from less than ten meters away, while two more mechs patrolled the area. I looked up to see the sleek, deadly assault cruiser float along to the south. My Tac-Comp alerted me to a second one’s EM signature two klicks behind us.

  The two mechs in front of us took a few steps back and swiveled their torsos toward each other. I grinned. This was the end. The big finale. We were about to find out what happened to the Hanura, The Seven, the Varu, the Hoerus, and any other species the Kai had ended. Were we truly the last humans left in the galaxy? Or were we only the last military personnel left and it held significance to the Kai that we were truly defeated? I decided to ponder those questions as we traveled to our destiny.

  McAdams and Jordan caught up to me in seconds. He had to walk twice as fast as normal to keep up with our suits, so I decided to slow the pace. The Kai made no movements other than pounding the butts of their rifles against the ground a number of times as we passed. Beyond that, no one seemed to be in a hurry to make us get anywhere, so there was no need to make Jordan work twice as hard to meet his maker.

  “Is this shit for real?” Jordan asked as we neared the highway.

  It was odd listening to him. I was used to his voice coming through my helmet’s speakers or my earbuds when I had them in. He sounded smaller, distant, far away. Powerless.

  “Seems like we’re the guests of honor to some kind of award ceremony,” I answered.

  Stretched out along the highway to the south were thousands of Kai soldiers. The route north was blocked off by at least four mechs and four heavy tanks. As far as I could see down the valley, Kai soldiers lined the road on both sides. I saw two troopships in the distance touch down in an empty field, depositing their contents of Kai troops before lifting off and heading south.

  The whole scene felt surreal. I was sure I had already died and this was some kind of weird purgatory where I had to pass a test to move on. Not because the Kai had finally brought us to an end and were making a big ceremony about it, but because instead of my skin and asshole crawling from the mass of enemies on all sides, I felt calmer and more relaxed than I had in months.

  It frightened me a little that I’d accepted my own death. It’s not something a person dwells on often, but there are times, during the low points, the stressful points, or oddly random points, where we try to imagine our own ending. We like to believe we’re brave enough to face down or meet death in any situation, but no one really knows until that situation arises. I had been afraid. I wasn’t ready to die. I hadn’t even turned thirty yet. I’d never have a wife, a plot of land on a sunny colony, and a gaggle of brats to yell at or worry about or play with. My drive to keep living had faltered an uncountable number of times during the war, with the majority of those times coming after Little Rock. I had no choice now, other than the choice to end it on my terms or the Kai’s.

  We turned south on the highway and listened to hundreds, then thousands of rifles banging into the rocks, the dirt, the asphalt. It wasn’t the same as the native drumbeats from the old flicks, but in a sense, it had the same feel. I guessed the Kai were pleased that we seemed to understand what was expected of us. We’d been a quality enemy for them, having lasted far longer than the Hanura and The Seven.

  We’d inflicted at least ten, maybe a hundred times as many losses on the Kai as the the Hanura and The Seven combined. Our allies had taken a few planets from the Kai before being routed. We’d taken and retaken almost a thousand planets from the Kai, some more than fifty times, turning those worlds into barren, hostile, inhospitable wastelands. Humanity had fought the Kai to a draw until the Hanura and The Seven fell. Even then, we held out for a decade before being crushed and driven back to TS-137 and our home system.

  I had no idea if my fantasies were truly what the Kai had planned for us. They were too alien to understand, but it kept my mind ticking along to fill in the hidden details with my own guesses. I imagined that McAdams, Jordan, and I were the vaunted sacrifice to end the war. With our blood (or ashes, in this case) spilled, the Kai would once again be without enemies. To honor such brave fighters, we were being led to parade grounds for the final cleansing ritual, one that the Kai did with each species they’d liquidated. It was all bullshit anthropomorphizing, but at least it brought a smile to my face. It was better than thinking we were the last three roaches and the Kai were cruel enough to make a big scene about stuffing us into an oven before going out for a round of ice cold Xeno Ale.

  I grew bored of making up stupid stories about what we were walking into and began reading the material in the Educational folder of the All-Stop directive. By the first paragraph, I knew what the All-Stop was. By the second, I knew whoever had come up with the idea had been bitter, hateful, vengeful motherfuckers. Sore losers of the worst kind. The kind of assholes who would get shorted one credit and burn down the company’s entire factory as payback.

  ***

  “You guys want to hear a story?” I asked after almost an hour of reading through the All-Stop documents.

  “Sure,” Jordan said.

  McAdams only stared at me for a few seconds before turning her helmet forward. The endless road lined with what seemed like every Kai in the galaxy was no longer interesting. Even as we passed through Horseshoe Bend, where the Kai were at least a hundred deep for a few kilometers until we reached the south end of town, there seemed to be little variance. Every Kai looked the same to me, though I could honestly say I hadn’t spent a lot of time trying to pick one out of a lineup. I typically only looked at one for the half-second it took to pull the trigger on my Harper.

  “Once upon a time,” I bega
n, “there were these people called humans.”

  “Oh boy,” Jordan said, but his sly grin told me he knew I knew something interesting.

  “These humans,” I continued, “loved to go to war and kill each other. They loved a lot of other things, but other than sex and good food, the legacy they’d built for themselves was war and death. They practiced it just enough to become experts at it, but not too much to wipe out their populations to an unrecoverable state. They killed each other for thousands of years until someone figured out how to kill millions with a single weapon.

  “Luckily, they never used more than a couple of these weapons on their own people, and survived long enough to travel beyond their atmosphere, eventually reaching other suns they’d dreamed about and charted since the dawn of their kind. They hadn’t practiced war and killing very much throughout this period, which must have made someone nervous, as the first opportunity to get back into the swing of things came along while they were still crawling through the local neighborhood. They jumped at the chance to help a couple of their friends beat up a neighborhood bully. At least that’s what they told their own people, who had enjoyed this long period without war and killing.

  “Unfortunately, they picked a fight with someone who had graduated from crawling to walking to running to beyond. And instead of taking a moment to think about what they might be getting their entire species into, they bulled forward and used the opportunity to unite all of their kind, touting economic benefits, technological gains, and medical advancements. When the first ally folded, these humans pretended to laugh and claim that the ally wasn’t really all that strong anyway, though inside, they became frightened, since their common enemy wasn’t interested in allowing the species to continue.

  “When the second ally folded, they again laughed and deflected the worry of their people by explaining how they’d acquired the proper tech and manpower to put these bullies on the run, eventually forcing them to negotiate for peace, which of course, would be favorable to the humans.”

  “Does your story have a point, or are you just going to rehash history until I put a round in my own head?” McAdams asked. The irritation was back in her voice.

  “I promise. Just bear with me.”

  “It isn’t like I have a choice other than turning off my mics and my comm.”

  “Anyway,” I said, ignoring her threat, “that scenario never panned out. Instead of driving the enemy back into their home systems and demanding a treaty, the enemy drove the humans back to their home system, and wiped them all out, to a man, other than twelve brave souls from B-Company—”

  “—I’m from A-Company, asshole,” Jordan interjected.

  “Eight brave souls from B-Company, a couple of brave souls from the 133rd and the Navy, and a fantastic sergeant along with some lame, suitless asshole from A-Company,” I said, looking down at him. He laughed and flipped me off. “Soon enough, the brave souls were whittled down to the last three humans in the universe, leaving the survivors in a dire situation indeed. But before he died, the leader of the twelve had passed along a secret to one of the three survivors…”

  McAdams’ head swiveled to me. “You better not be disrespectful, Lofgren, or I’ll fucking waste you right here.”

  I held up my hand. I saw her rifle twitch, and for a moment, I thought she might decide to shoot me anyway.

  “The one who was given the secret, he had been so tired that he forgot to actually find out what the secret was until it was almost too late. But in the final hours of their last night together, he activated the final message from his former commanders, and learned of the All-Stop.”

  “What the fuck is the All-Stop?” Jordan asked. McAdams only stared at me.

  “Oh, now we’re interested in my story,” I said, and saw her rifle twitch again. “It seems that a group of humans had realized decades before that the war wasn’t winnable. They’d proposed sending thousands of seed ships out into the great beyond, far from the Kai borders, to ensure that the human race would live on. Of course, their superiors were ultra-geniuses and killed that idea quickly. However, these ultra-geniuses heard about another idea that had been floating around, and decided it was the better option.”

  “Jesus Christ, Lofgren,” Jordan grumbled, “you sure know how to drag a story out.”

  “You got somewhere else to be?” McAdams asked.

  She surprised me with her question. I’d been under the impression she wished I would shut the hell up before she shut me up.

  “No,” he answered. “I’m just sayin’.”

  “Stop sayin’ and listen.”

  “Okay, sheesh. Grumpy fucker.”

  McAdams gave him a thumbs-up.

  “As I was saying,” I continued, “this idea was a doozy. You see, before the humans had found their way into other star systems, they’d built tens of thousands of these weapons that could kill millions at once. It had been deemed a bad idea to actually use such weapons, as it would make the only world they’d ever known a toxic, poisonous, radioactive wasteland that couldn’t harbor life. Or, at least not human life. These weapons were stored away, just in case, though for what, no one ever knew.

  “Then along came space exploration and eventually space warfare. These weapons suddenly became interesting again, even though they were still useless in the sense that if they were used on a colony planet or a planet the humans were conquering, it would make the planet uninhabitable. The humans used them sparingly, usually as a final finger to the eye of their enemy before abandoning a planet, or as an opening salvo to let the enemy know there would be no mercy shown.

  “Because of the technology of space travel, fusion energy, and plasma generation and containment, bigger, nastier, more dangerous weapons were developed. At some point, these weapons became so frightening that the humans banned their development and ordered the ones already built to be destroyed. The humans who saw their species on the losing end of the war secretly formed a group, which was then sanctioned by the human government without anyone’s knowledge.

  “This group began seeding all human weapons of mass destruction not just across their homeworld, but to every colony world, and every occupied or contested world that they were in control of at the time. But these paranoid, or maybe just really pissed off humans, they went a step farther. They built more of the radiological weapons and seeded them around important locations in all of these systems, because they knew their enemy liked to park a ton of warships in these areas. They built thousands of the even more dangerous weapons and seeded them in every star system they had access to. Then they built even more, stuffed them into translation drones, and then sent the drones into hiding, sometimes sending them into the deep black just to be sure no one would happen upon one accidentally.”

  SIXTEEN

  McAdams stopped in the middle of the road.

  “What are you saying?” she asked.

  Jordan and I stopped and turned to look at her. The banging of rifles against the ground intensified. I held out my hand and gestured for her to continue walking.

  “I haven’t done anything except activate the system to alert the emergency Wire node that a transmission might require a relay at any moment,” I said, beginning to walk forward again.

  “Is this one of those STD’s?” Jordan asked after catching up. “Because this sounds like some comic book shit where we kill their king in mortal combat and become their masters with the threat of this Stop Action bullshit.”

  “All-Stop,” I corrected. The noise of rifles tapping on the ground had returned to its normal pitch. “And no, it’s not an STD. Well, sort of. Let’s put it this way: we’re not walking away from this. No one is. Not even the Kai.”

  McAdams came to a stop again, the Kai lining the road sounding out their agitation once more.

  “Come on,” I said, not turning back. “If they kill us out here, we won’t get to see how it ends.”

  “What does it matter how it ends?” she asked. Her green marker was on the mo
ve again. “We die. What else is there?”

  “I guess I’m curious to see what they’re up to.”

  “They’re going to fuckin’ fry us in an oven, Lofgren!” Jordan said angrily. “Why not just push the button or stop time or whatever it is you’re being so fucking cryptic about? Get it over with.”

  “Do you believe in the afterlife, Tyler?” I asked.

  “What? Who gives a shit? There ain’t no god. If there is, he hates us.”

  “I’m with you,” I said. “But just in case there’s a tiny chance that I might remember this somehow, I want to know. We’re going to become ashes either way. Why not see what they’ve cooked up.”

  “I bet it’s like some kind of Aztec ceremony,” McAdams said, suddenly interested. “What?” she asked when we turned around to look at her. “You’re right. Fuck it. We’re going to die. Let’s see what only a few others have ever witnessed.”

  Jordan gave her a suspicious look, then turned it on me. I tried to shrug in the suit and only ended up raising my rifle. The Kai never flinched or reacted other than making sure to keep up their version of a drumbeat, even though it sounded more like a ton of small rocks rattling around inside of a giant wooden barrel.

  “Why the sudden change of heart?” Jordan asked.

  “King-President Lofgren has something up his sleeve,” she answered as if it were obvious.

  “Yeah, but we’re gonna be toast.”

  “Everyone has to die sometime.”

  “I guess today is our day, then,” Jordan said.

  He became silent, his face growing blank. I guessed he was finally getting around to sorting out his own end. It was happening. I’d wondered before what it must be like for a condemned man to be led to the gallows, the firing squad, to his death regardless of method. I’d never experienced anything remotely close to that, including the march to Boise. It felt more like we were heading to a party of some kind.