A Phoenix First Must Burn Read online

  Santos says, “We’re complicit.”

  “Nothing in the UDL Code of Conduct about torturing orcs from space.” Santos looks tortured herself, so I soften my tone. “Look, you don’t want to call them orcs, fine. But in case you missed it, the only conversation they’ve ever tried to have with any of us is one that comes out the laser end of their guns.”

  “You willing to sell your soul?”

  “To save my uncle Junior?” I lean back. “In a heartbeat.”

  * * *

  ◆ ◆ ◆

  In my second year in UDL, when I was stationed in Atlanta, I got a call from Uncle June. He sounded beaten down and slow and I knew before he told me it must be really, really bad. And it was: the orcs had made it down to Baltimore and laid waste to the whole area. He’d been traveling with Judith, the last surviving member of the elderly prayer circle; they had just the clothes on their backs, but she’d been injured and didn’t make it. But he was still trying to help anyone he could as he made his way over the crumbled I-95 highway, sometimes pulling burnt bodies out of cars to sleep. He had nowhere to go, and we both knew that him roaming the countryside meant it was just a matter of time before he was killed—by orcs or by the humans who’d turned to anarchy now that the battle seemed to be a losing one.

  Then there was news about a mission that was going to save us all. They’d found the orcs’ home planet, and were going to bring the fight to their backyard. They needed fighters, doctors, pilots . . .

  And translators, I told Uncle June the next time he managed to get a call through to base. Anyone who volunteers for Mission Savior has a chance to win themselves and their families a spot in Sanctum. We don’t do hardcore interrogation. Just translating.

  But Uncle June sucked his teeth. I can’t sit in that place knowing everyone else is left out in the cold.

  Only people like politicians, top scientists, and their families had refuge in Sanctum, an underground facility in the Rockies, but now I had a chance to secure a place for Uncle June and me. That’s how it is for most people on this mission. Almost all of us have people at home, loved-one-shaped reasons why we signed up for what could be a one-way trip through a wormhole to an orc planet.

  I told Uncle June I was doing it, and after a few moments he told me, You do what you gotta do, and that he loved me, but his disappointment was clear. And then he added, But I’m not steppin’ foot in that place, like it was hell and not the haven it was.

  And then his voice sort of drifted and he asked me, You think those aliens sing? and Do they make music? Dance? Create art? I was like, Why does that even matter? Uncle June was silent for a few seconds. Because, he said, if they take the time to translate their world into sound and color, that means they know love. That means we have a chance.

  I said, Whatever, and didn’t mention Sanctum again, figuring I’d convince him another time, after I secured him the spot.

  It was our last conversation.

  * * *

  ◆ ◆ ◆

  I am my uncle’s niece, so I don’t quit easily.

  Since Orc #176 has yet to respond to standard questions, I’ve decided to try a less orthodox approach.

  All right, Uncle June. I’ve got nothing to lose. “You know how to sing?” Sonari goan yan owla?

  It isn’t really a direct translation because we don’t know their word for sing or singing, so the closest I get is something like You know how to make good noise with mouth?

  A slight movement in that slimy neck. It’s a curveball, no doubt, and I’ve got its attention, despite the terrible translation.

  “You draw? Paint?”

  Still blank-faced.

  “You like music? You like dancing?” I do a slight shimmy with my shoulders because the translation is more like I’m asking if it likes noise in the air and moving to the sound.

  At first I’m thinking all that may have gone over its head but then it sits up a little.

  Still, it doesn’t speak. We stare at each other for what must be ten minutes.

  “Sonari ahn anya.”

  I jump, and I realize I never expected it to answer. Its voice is so much gentler than what I thought would come from something so muscular. The translation program’s speech-to-speech voice imitates but can’t quite manage the orc’s tone.

  When I recover, I say, “OK, you don’t sing. That makes two of us.”

  “Your questions are wasted on me,” it says.

  “We’re just getting started.”

  “You do not seek conversation. You want only information. You are all alike.”

  “So you like music?” I force a subject change because this thing has wasted enough of my time. “You dance?”

  “I enjoy music.”

  “So you have music down there.”

  A pause. “Down there?”

  “We already figured your cities are underground. We’ve seen the state of this planet. It’s dying.”

  A low grunt is its only response.

  “Your lot went to Earth, laser guns blazing, in search of a new home, isn’t that right?”

  “And if we did not arrive wielding weapons?” Its voice is controlled but tight. “Would you share your planet with us?”

  I stare at its eyes. It’s almost as if they don’t belong. They’re too . . . full. “A friend of mine thinks you all are basically the same as people. Santos is soft like that.”

  It tilts its head sharply. If Santos had spoken to my orc, she would’ve mentioned it, but it’s clear her name has sparked recognition, and I get a bad feeling. Not only did I give up information it didn’t need to know, it also seems to know yet another thing I don’t.

  A red light begins to pulse in the left field of my vision. My alarm. Time’s up.

  I pick up the speaker and head for the door, but before I leave, I glance back, wondering if maybe I imagined the look in its eye when I said Santos’ name.

  * * *

  ◆ ◆ ◆

  I don’t mention it to Santos the next morning. No need to unsettle her.

  Not that she’s paying me the slightest attention.

  “Santos,” I say, taking a break from making my bed to knock against the metal frame of hers. “Where are you?”

  “Sorry, I’m . . . I’m fine.” But she looks shaken. Plus she’s shoving into her mouth the second Fruitbomb in three minutes.

  “Tell me.”

  Santos motions for us to leave, and doesn’t speak again until we’re just outside the barracks, alone. “They’ve figured it out. Why we lost contact with Earth.”

  “So they’ve regained contact?” Maybe I can get a message to Uncle June.

  Santos shakes her head, her eyes reddening. “And they’re not going to.”

  She takes several seconds to eat another piece of candy, swallow, and breathe. Whatever it is, she really, really doesn’t want to say it.

  “They’re not going to because . . .” She stares down at the scarlet grass. “Because there’s no one there.”

  “What do you mean there’s no one there? The transmission center’s been abandoned? Did they set up somewhere else? Was it attacked?”

  “There’s no one there. On Earth.”

  Now I’m the one who needs to breathe. Uncle June, Santos’ family . . . the whole damned planet? “They’re . . .” It isn’t possible that they’ve killed billions of people. Is it? “They’re dead?”

  “No.” Santos wraps her arms around herself. “No one’s on Earth because no one’s been born yet.”

  I frown in my attempt to understand.

  “No one’s been born. Not a single human being. No homo sapien, anyway.”

  I laugh, my voice shrill and brimming with hysteria. “The hell are you saying?”

  “We traveled through time, Mitchell. The wormhole was some kind of rip in space-time. Or maybe it
caused the rip. Either way, Earth is thousands of years in the past.”

  “But . . . no . . . Wait.” I shake my head. “If Earth is thousands of years in the past and these monsters invaded us, then where—I mean when—are we?”

  “They don’t know.”

  * * *

  ◆ ◆ ◆

  Just over twenty-four hours later, I’m staring at the orc. It looks at me differently than before; something else has replaced its previous simmering hostility.

  It studies me, but all I can think about is Uncle June. Part of me feels like my uncle is dead. The other part thinks of him as being alive but extremely far away, as if Present Day isn’t a time but a location, like the Hawaiian Isles of China.

  Finally, I manage to speak. “Santos. You’ve heard the name before.”

  “You’re young,” it replies.

  “So what?”

  “I am young, too.”

  “How old are you?”

  “I have eleven years.”

  Damn. What’re they feeding these things?

  But the incredulity lasts only a few seconds and then I’m lost again in what Santos said about Earth, about humanity not existing because Earth is so far back in the past; meanwhile, we’re on this alien planet, a mission of four hundred fifty UDL soldiers and two hundred prisoner orcs and a handful of weapons of mass destruction.

  I feel alone.

  “Santos,” I say again. “You recognized the name.”

  “I will speak of it. But first, whom do you call upon? From whom do you request favor? Guidance?”

  “Like God?” I shake my head. It’s difficult to believe in something I can’t see. Besides, nobody’s Good Book mentioned a thing about orcs in space. Who spiked God’s sweet tea on the day He created them?

  “You are,” it says, “certain your friend is Santos?”

  “Of course I’m sure.”

  It clasps its grey hands and begins to cry, and I can’t tell if it’s happy or sad or both.

  “What is it?” I say, the hairs at the nape of my neck rising.

  “It is true,” it whispers to itself. “It was written.”

  “What was written?”

  It looks at me. “We do not return.”

  * * *

  ◆ ◆ ◆

  Santos and I have shared double-shift perimeter duty the last couple of days, but all I’ve been able to think about is getting the orc to talk. After the last session, the interrogator, his expression hard and unforgiving, asked me, Where are you going with your line of questioning? Names, chain of command, coordinates—that’s what we require. If you want your ticket to Sanctum, you’d best focus on that. But the orc’s opening up, and I know it won’t be long before it gives up the important stuff.

  When I finally return, just after dark, it sits with less tension, almost like I came for tea instead of answers.

  I set up the speaker, but before I ask it anything, it speaks.

  “I was a weapons maker. Before.”

  I glance upward at the camera on the ceiling, knowing the interrogator’s watching. Eat it.

  I don’t say anything, sensing it might go on.

  “I did not want to make weapons, but I excelled and my family was compensated well and my people needed them.”

  “To attack us. To kill us all.” I can’t help it.

  “We don’t want to kill you all.”

  “Just enough of us.”

  “Just enough of you for peace.”

  “Because murdering us will bring peace.”

  “Does it not? From war comes peace. After peace comes war. And so on.”

  “Maybe that’s how it works around here.” But when I actually think about the cycle of wars throughout humanity, the orc’s worldview—worldsview—isn’t so far off.

  “Learning to share a planet,” it says, “will prove difficult.”

  “Humans aren’t always the best at sharing.” I can’t say much about the orcs, but the fact that they crossed the galaxy to not play nice doesn’t speak well for them, either.

  “The Great Leaping,” the orc says, “was foretold when Goddess descended from the Dreaming Place with her retinue.”

  Now it’s gone off track, talking about the first tribes and queendoms and kingdoms and I’m only half listening because I keep thinking, Just give me the good stuff, but I’m also surprised at how human it sounds. Not human like me . . . or maybe human like me. I’m getting confused and I think of Uncle June and all the movies I’ve seen about time travel and I wish I and Uncle June and Santos and her family and everyone on Earth could just leap into a different universe, a different timeline, one in which we weren’t invaded by orcs.

  “I have a sister,” it says, and then it stops talking, like it wants me to say something.

  “That’s . . . nice.”

  “You belong to a family?”

  “My parents passed away in a mining accident. Asteroid mining. My uncle Junior is . . .” The orc’s shoulders slump a little, and when I see its eyes I jump up because it doesn’t deserve to be sad. “You orcs should’ve left us alone. Do you know how many lives you’ve snuffed? How many you’ve ruined? Why couldn’t you just stay here? Or find some other planet? Why Earth?”

  “We are all part of a greater whole, of the Vast Story. The Great Leaping was foretold many ages past, from the Time of the Beginning.”

  In the dimness of the cell, the orc looks just like Uncle June, and he kind of talks like him, too, the day he told me about Mom and Dad. The day he lost his little brother. Uncle June rasped about things being meant to be and part of something bigger. I stormed to my room and kicked a hole in the closet door.

  I realize it now:

  The orc . . . he feels alone, too.

  “What’s your name?” I ask.

  “I am Kaizahn.”

  I take a breath and say, “I’m Mae Mitchell,” and he gives a short nod.

  There’s a reason they use certain words in the military, words like eliminate and target instead of kill and person. It’s so you gain distance. It’s so you don’t waver. It’s so you don’t see your enemy close enough to see yourself.

  I whisper, “What are you?”

  “We are the Nokira,” he says. “The first companions of Goddess Santosa.”

  * * *

  ◆ ◆ ◆

  The next morning, everyone’s called to muster at what would be Earth eleven hundred hours. As most of our fellow UDLs crack jokes in the main hall, Santos and I sit in uneasy silence. Probably because we know about the time-travel issue with Earth and they don’t.

  “At exactly nineteen hundred hours tomorrow,” says the commander, “all personnel will leave this base via transport ship. You will report to the transport at eighteen hundred hours. If you do not report, no one will come looking for you. No one will wait.”

  Are we returning to Earth? Have they found the solution to the time issue? I know what the others are wondering. We’re supposed to be here for another five, six months, so they’re surprised we’re heading out already, and the whole thing about no one waiting is against code, which makes the withdrawal sound like an evacuation under duress.

  A senior officer takes over, briefing us about the withdrawal, but all I can think is: if they have figured a way to get back to our own time, where does this leave me? I’m finally making progress with Kaizahn, but I need more time. Will our objectives be considered met? Can Uncle June make it to Sanctum after all?

  As I raise a hand, someone asks that very question.

  “That would be affirmative,” the senior officer says, but I don’t feel better. Something about his voice. Like it’s not going to matter.

  “What about the orcs?” someone blurts.

  “They return to Earth with us.” To remain imprisoned and interrogated.

  I tell m
yself there’s no difference. That here or on Earth, their fate remains the same.

  But I’m unconvinced.

  Afterward, I pull Santos aside. “Why the rush?”

  “The wormhole is closing. They’d leave tonight if they could do it safely.”

  “And the fact that the only person on Earth to talk to right now is covered in fur and hanging ten from a tree branch?”

  “They . . . they think going back through the wormhole might return us to our own time.”

  “Might.” I cock a brow.

  “I don’t trust it any more than you do, but what other option is there?”

  She’s right. “Let’s just hope we don’t come out the other end to discover the continents are fused together and we’ve got meat-loving dinosaurs waiting, mouths open.”

  I turn to leave but Santos grabs my arm. “The Nokira.”

  “What about them?” But already guilt tugs at me from beneath my ribs. “Well, what are we supposed to do? Let them escape so they can find the others?”

  Santos shakes her head. “There are no others to find.”

  “What do you mean—”

  “We can’t let them go back to Earth. You know they’ll be killed. And it’ll be on us. The right thing is to let them go. Tonight.” I start to say no but Santos closes her hand around mine. “Help me.”

  “But I don’t want to help you to a death sentence, Santos. Myself, either.” Because that’s what we’d earn in a court-martial. “And it probably won’t work.”

  “We can only try.”

  A familiar sentiment. I think of Uncle June heading out to save the world one person at a time.

  “Mitchell.”

  It’s obvious she’s made up her mind. “Fine. But only because you’ll definitely get caught if I let you do it alone.”