Chapter Error and a Half - Nth Wave (1/2)
”Look, mama, buggy-people dancing! Mama, look! Mama! Look! Momma, why aren't you looking!” the little girl said, hopping up and down and holding on to her mother's hand. The mother looked down at her daughter, then at where she was pointing.
A group of Treana'ad were dancing in a clear space in the park. The matrons, bigger than the males, wore as close of an approximation as their insectile bodies could get for old Pre-Glassing dresses. They were swishing their skirts and petticoats and they clacked their bladearms to clap. The males were strutting and did some weird footwork like they were sliding off to the side as the matrons came forward.
Lots of kids were laughing and clapping, the sight of the Treana'ad bringing joy to them. Treana'ad dancing in the park was a weekly thing, a community display held by the Treana'ad Classical Ballroom Dancing Club & Social Group and many people brought their children to see the costumes and the dancing and listen to the music.
”Don't point, Sammy, it's rude,” the woman said.
”Yes, sweetie, Treana'ad are dancing,” the woman said.
”Can we go watch them, Momma?” Sammy asked, looking up with her big blue eyes. ”Please, momma, please?”
”Your father's shuttle is going to land soon. We don't have time,” the woman said.
”Your father's shuttle is going to land soon, but he'll take a little while to clear customs, so of course we can,” the woman said.
”Your father's shuttle is running late, this would be good thing to watch,” the woman said.
”Can I have ice cream?” Sammy asked, pointing at the cart manned by a Treana'ad.
”No,” the woman said, pulling Sammy away from the cart where a Rigellian saurian was selling ice cream cones.
”Sure, sweetie,” the woman said, smiling down at her daughter and walking with her to where the Mantid was handing out ice cream cones. Sammy hoped she could have strawberry, it was her favorite, especially the kind of the chunks the kind with the candy the kind that was smoothly whipped and creamy.
Things shimmered and shook, leaving traceries behind, the Treana'ad slid off to the side, vanishing into the distance as the sky rezzed and flickered before slowly melting into the ground. Buildings flexed, bulged, changed color and architecture even as they flickered and vanished.
”Are you going to jump?” Mandy Newstedder asked Sammy, a challenge in her brown eyes.
Sammy looked down, off the edge of the cliff, to the sparkling water of the lake beneath her. Several of her classmates were swimming in the water, splashing around and laughing.
Sammy shook her head, backing away from the cliff.
Sammy backed up, nodding, reaching down and grabbing her courage, pushing aside the fear.
Sammy nodded, licking her lips nervously. She reached out and grabbed the rope, backing up.
She walked away to the jeers of her peers, mocking her cowardice.
She ran at the edge, holding the rope tight, balling her fists as she pumped her arms and ran. She jumped off the edge, swung on the rope out into the empty air, flew off the end, kicking her feet as she straightened her legs out to plunge into the water as she folded forward and extended her arms out to plunge headfirst into the water.
The water exploded from around her.
Sammy stood next to the table at the mall, leaning on it and smiling at her boyfriend. She opened her mouth to say something and suddenly her boyfriend had dozens of different boys appear around him as well as different versions of him appear. Different hair, different eyes, different clothing, different skin color. Her own image multiplied, appearing just as differently as the boy across from her.
Before she could ask a question a dozen different questions were asked around her.
Everything suddenly imploded, leaving Sammy standing on the sidewalk in front of the recruiter's office. She was wearing her best Tuesday dress Sunday suit Monday jumper, her hair braided shaved teased lacquered as she toyed with a lock of hair her necklace one bracelet.
”JOIN SPACE FORCE/THE FLEET/MOBILE INFANTRY/STARFLEET/THE ARMY/THE NAVY TODAY!” the hologram flashed.
She kept walking past it.
She went inside to rob the place/sign up/buy drugs/meet for some random app hookup/buy a souvenier.
She stepped back to look up at the big holosign of a spaceship and was hit by a passing taxi.
The Rigellian male showed her the different jobs she could sign up for, fluffing his feathers while he watched his wife lying on the floor watching cartoons and giggling. The Saurian Compact Kobold nodded with satisfaction as she chose the Navy and escorted her to where she could take the test. She was nervous as she went inside and the Rigellian female activated the eVR testing.
She scored in the top 3%.
She scored firmly in the top 25%.
She barely eeked by.
She failed miserably.
The eVR dissolved and took Sammy with it.
Sammy signed her name, Samantha Johnathon Kwagarkak Smith, showed her legal ID that she was an adult at 21 years of age, and then wrote in the number of the job she wanted.
And wrote in a different number.
A different number.
Pressed her chrome thumb against the datapad.
Pressed the tip of her nose on the pad.
Felt the needle flicker out of the touchpad and take a DNA sample.
Scrawled it with a paintstick.
Everything swirled around, uniforms whipping by, thousands of Terran Republic/Confederacy/Imperial/Combined Military Forces uniforms, thousands of Mantid Slave Army uniforms, hundreds of North Africa Space Defense uniforms.
She spun around, tumbled, turned inside out and backwards.
She landed face first in the mud. Weight was on her back, her arms were exhausted, her back hurt, her knees ached, her uniform was soaked as she collapsed into the puddle.
”GET YOUR FAT ASS BACK IN THE AIR, RECRUIT!” a voice bellowed.
She pushed herself with shaky arms back into the pushup position. She couldn't lift herself. She collapsed halfway up. She curled into a ball and started crying. She got up and knocked out one more pushup screaming at the top of her lungs.
She fell through the world, spinning through everything and nothing as she started grabbing for something, anything, to slow her down.
An Expert Marksmanship badge broke away and she looked at it in her hand as blood seeped out around it from the cuts in her palm.
It whirled away as thousands of her qualified with weapons on the range. Some of her fired pistols, others rifles, one of her with a face scarred from a donorcycle chain a rival banger had smashed her face in with fired a heavy machinegun, still others fired bows, and one fired a heavy grenade laucnher.
Still another of her stood on the stage, a microphone in his hand as he sang in front of thousands of adoring fans, strutting back and forth as he bellowed out the lyrics to his latest hit.
Another of her crouched in the burnt out house, staring at the pistol's ammo counter with tears running down her face. Outside she could hear something moving through the rubble filled streets. The smell of pine cleaning fluid got stronger and, still weeping, she lifted up the pistol and put the barrel in her mouth. As the tentacles burst from through the wall to grab her, she pulled the trigger.
She shattered into a thousand pieces and reformed.
She was on the bridge/gunnery station/DCC/engineering sections of a destroyer/frigate/dreadnought/battleship/galleon, locked into her seat as the point defense systems went to rapid fire. The weapons were sweeping the Mar-gite from space even as another cloud of them erupted from their jagged crystalline ship and headed for the task force.
They were swept from the sky.
They got through by the thousands and attached to the ship, their caustic saliva and grinding teeth ripping at the battlesteel of the ancient frigate.
A handful got through, making for the engine nacelles, the engines going dark and the ship floating without power as another cloud of Mar-gite puffed from the crystalline mothership.
The battelship's main guns hammered into missed shattered on the shields of the Mar-gite hiveship.
Sharp crystalline fragments broke free. The engine organs exploded. It consumed itself in fire and fury. It silent broke apart, each part converting to dozens, hundreds of bone white Mar-gite, starving and ravenous.
A Mar-gite broke through the door to the bridge. Sammy looked through the smoke, seeing only the Captain alive.
”It's time,” he said.
”For the Imperium,” he said.
”For the Republic,” Sammy said.
”For the ducks,” Sammy said.
”For the Confederacy,” the Captain quacked.
Sammy flipped up the plastic cover and carefully typed out of the self destruct code, looking at the Captain and nodding.
”Prepare to turn key, midshipman,” the Captain told her. ”For Holy Terra.”
”For Murdered Venus,” she said, her green skin pale with bloodloss. She turned the key.
Everything shattered and Sammy found herself whirling inside and out, infinity coalescing into a pinprick that contained everything that could or could not be.
”Come around to two five one bearing six three,” Sammy yelled out, her Captain's star on her chest gleaming in the air thick with smoke. ”Target the Ring Locusts closest to the planet!”
”All guns open fire! Pound those rebellious jumped up video game NPC's into shattered code!” Holy Ship Guardian Sammy bellowed out, his hands on his hips and chin lifted.
”Go to hyperspace, we have to warn the Federation the PAWM are back!” Sammy coughed into the commo link, blood running out from between her lips. ”Get out of here. All ships, go to local control, get to hyper...” her face hit the cracked plasteel of her visor as the life left her body.
Sammy held her baby, looking at its unfocused and dreamy eyes and smiling, sweat making her hair wet and sticky. The baby opened and closed its mouth, looking for comfort and sustenance. She marveled at how amazing it was and that she had made it.
”Get the civilians out!” Sammy yelled over the loudspeakers of his armor, firing his rifle at the oncoming Ring Locusts.
”We can't hold them, Gunny!” one of his men yelled.
”Then we make them buy every fucking inch!” Sammy yelled even as a launched spike snapped the tip of the dog ear off his armor. ”For the Holy Order of Terra and the Pharaoh Tulketikan!”
The Ring Locusts dissolved into nothingness, leaving Sammy floating in darkness, surrounded by rings of herself expanding ever outward.
She stood on the bridge of her flagship, staring at the ships orbiting the neutron star. The largest fleet ever assembled, larger than even the Mar-gite Solution Armada, larger even then the Second Mantid War Punitive Fleet.
Tens of thousands of the most powerful ships ever produced by mankind.
The Courage in Despair was the newest, one of the most powerful, or her entire Armada.
”Fleet is ready, ma'am,” she heard.
”Send the signal. All units to hyperspace,” Sammy ordered, the Admiral rank on her shoulders gleaming silently in the lights of the flag bridge.
Everything rewound, her life moving backwards, until she hit a brick wall made of soft rubber and bounced.
”It's a boy.”