Chapter Three
Day by day, Admiral Bruce Haldane was growing accustomed to the new body, and he certainly had no time to waste. Fortunately, the volunteer had kept himself in good shape. The body was adequate, with a good frame, well-toned muscles. He was even handsome, in a way. Haldane was growing accustomed to what he saw in the mirror. Instead of being startled, he took the time to study his features, the dark hair, heavy eyebrows, the boyish expression of an innocent young recruit who had seen little horror in his life. But Haldane’s eyes looked out from the face, and he had seen enough of war in the last few months.
Previously, his career had been soft and dull, but the Sluggos changed all that.
The volunteer’s name had been Aaron Shelty, a seaman-apprentice who seemed a perfectly reasonable recruit for the Earth Planetary Navy, but he must have been a coward, because he refused to sign up for actual combat duty. Too many people have grown as soft as the Sluggos, Haldane thought.
After the mind transfer, Haldane had glanced through Shelty’s dossier, looking at his grades, his performance in basic training. Everything seemed normal. Haldane couldn’t understand why the man would sign up as cannon fodder. Shelty had left behind a fiancée, but she was young and pretty; she would find someone else before long. Shelty had parents and a sister, and they would all receive a compassionate and carefully-worded letter thanking them for Mr. Shelty’s sacrifice aboard the Far Horizon. Haldane certainly appreciated the gesture, otherwise he would have died aboard the destroyer rather than his replacement.
It must have seemed like a good bargain when young Shelty had signed up for the program. The young man had gambled—whether through laziness or cowardice Haldane didn’t know—that nothing would happen to Admiral Haldane. And the gamble had backfired on Shelty.
But Haldane benefited, and therefore the EPN benefited, and therefore the human race benefited. The admiral was alive, and he still had his expertise. The Earth Navy could count on him.
Yes, he was glad for Aaron Shelty’s sacrifice, but was that sacrifice any more dramatic or extraordinary than that of all those seamen who had died, devoured or crushed under the onslaught of the alien slugs? Haldane didn’t think so. Every person needed to do his or her duty, and Haldane needed to do his, even if it meant he had to swap bodies at the last minute and let the old body die on the battlefield. The war depended on him, and so it was worth the hassle.
Haldane looked in the mirror again, ran his fingers through the dark hair, made different expressions as he practiced the movement of his facial muscles. Yes, this body would do. Maybe he’d even pay a visit to Shelty’s pretty fiancée. Now wouldn’t that be a surprise!
But he didn’t have time for that. There was a war on. After all the alien creatures were wiped out, however . . .
Unless something terrible happened again to him on the battlefield.
This time, the shock of the body transfer hadn’t been as dramatic as when his original body was killed, when he’d been forced in that awful last second of indecision to push the transfer button on the implanted pendant, to give up his actual physical form, the one that had emerged from his mother’s womb, the one he’d lived with all his life. But during the explosions, the firefight, and the horrific swarming Sluggos, after watching so many uniformed men and women torn to pieces around him, the decision hadn’t been so difficult after all.
New body, same old job. He was back at EPN Headquarters in the La Diego main base, briefing world leaders, requesting new ships, more armaments, more depth pulsers, and an expanded fleet to attack the Sluggos.
As he drove in that morning, two Marines had tried to stop him at the outer gate. Though he had a new ID, the system had not updated his fingerprints, photographs, and DNA scans. Haldane made three increasingly angry calls until revised credentials were transmitted back to the guard shack.
After the Far Horizon tragedy, he had delivered his grand speech in this new body. Didn’t they recognize him? Everyone on Earth should have seen the images of how the destroyer had been torn apart and sunk, all hands lost. How could these Marines not recognize Admiral Haldane’s new body? He hated to be reminded that he wasn’t as famous as he believed himself to be. Earth itself was under attack! Why wasn’t every human being glued to their media and entertainment screens? Didn’t they know that the fate of their planet was at stake?
After the fiasco at the guard shack, he finally made it to his office. As he entered, he still met the questioning stares, the double-takes from his staff as they tried to readjust to his new appearance. The Admiral’s uniform had been altered, but the rank insignia and name plate were transferred over, same as before. Haldane was still himself, with his demeanor, his facial expressions. They would have to get used to it.
He sat behind his large desk and called up the day’s intel reports of aerial flyovers and deep-water scans. His chief of staff, Ms. Tenn, entered the office and stood before his desk, running her eyes up and down his face and uniform. “I have your calendar, sir. If there’s anything you need, please let me know.”
“I need concentration time to reassess these images. Is there full documentation regarding new intel on the Sluggos? I need to plan our next strategy. There’s some piece missing, and because I have the most experience, I’m the one to find it.”
“It’s all here, sir.” Tenn leaned over the desk to activate Haldane’s screen, calling up the messages he needed and spreading them out so he could sort and review them in whatever order he chose.
She brought him his usual bitter black coffee, but when he took a sip, it tasted strange. “Are you using a different blend, Lieutenant? Or does the brewer need cleaning?”
“No, Admiral. Same as always.”
“Taste it.”
He pushed the cup toward her, and she dutifully took a sip. “Tastes awful, sir, just like always.”
Haldane shook his head. “Must be these new taste buds. Bring me a variety of coffees, lattes, cappuccinos, espressos. I need to sample them until I find one that tastes right on Aaron Shelty’s tongue. Can’t do my work without caffeine.”
“Certainly, Admiral.” She departed.
Haldane took another gulp of the bitter brew, struggled to swallow it, then pushed the cup away. That wouldn’t do at all, and the inconvenience was troublesome. He’d have to compile a more detailed dossier about the next volunteer waiting in the wings. Shelty had passed all the required tests and his brain scan had been a match for Haldane’s, but no one had thought to ask about his favorite foods or drinks. The admiral made a note of that.
On the screen, he called up the new messages. The Sluggos were damned difficult to locate under the water, but they were such a huge mass, millions of them writhing together, spreading out, moving a gigantic school of fish. Each time sonar bursts tried to pinpoint the location of the main mass, the swarm faded away and reappeared elsewhere. As soon as the mass of Sluggos was spotted, attack aircraft would drop explosives, which would kill a lot of fish and individual Sluggos—thus the military scientists had plenty of specimens, but very few answers. Even after the most horrendous explosions, though, the main Sluggo body would reappear and continue to attack.
All the EPN efforts thus far had only pissed off the squirming invaders, but Haldane wasn’t going to use that as an excuse to relent. Even ineffective explosions were far superior—from a PR standpoint if nothing else—than letting the Sluggos do whatever they liked. The aliens had not proven to be good neighbors.
As humans expanded into the solar system, no one found any evidence of ancient Martian races or prehistoric Venusians, no Selenites under the craters of the Moon, no civilizations under the ice sheets of Europa, no bizarre creatures drifting among the asteroids.
No one knew where the Sluggos came from. Their ships were detected at the edge of the solar system by bored teams of asteroid mappers, but no one noticed their speed or incoming trajectory until the invaders had almost reached Earth orbit. Though the human military scrambled, the metallic teardrop ships hammered into the atmosphere like shotgun pellets and plunged into the Pacific Ocean.
Ships were dispatched to the area to see if they could find wreckage of the alien vessels, while news pundits demanded rescue efforts. Subs and diving bells went down to the crashed ships to save the benevolent alien visitors before they drowned. (Even then, Admiral Haldane knew it was a brash notion to assume that any alien visitor would breathe air instead of water.)
Considering the size of the alien ships, they should have been easy to find even in the deep water, but sonar detected nothing. The vessels seemed to have vaporized on impact.
The first attack struck a far-ranging Japanese whaler, the Dragon Pearl. The terrified crew transmitted images and distress signals, wailing for help as squirming conglomerate tentacles rose out of the water to smash the decks. After the initial horror subsided, Haldane thought that the scenes reminded him of a clip from a bad low-budget Japanese giant monster movie, some horrific rubber behemoth rising from the sea to toss about a toy model of a boat.
But the destruction of the Dragon Pearl was real, the Sluggos were real, and the alien mass had attacked other cargo ships, an oil tanker (causing great consternation among environmentalists who insisted that the resultant spill was a greater threat to Earth than the alien invasion), and even a large cruise ship—all passengers and crew slaughtered on formal night. Recovered surveillance cameras showed frantic, swanky passengers trying to flee in their fancy tuxedos or slinky cocktail gowns and high heels.
Admiral Haldane had led the first unsuccessful responses against the aliens, embarrassed because he couldn’t even find the Sluggos. When he finally did locate the enemy, they had destroyed his ship, killed his crew, and forced him to evacuate into a different body.
But he was the first one to notice that the Sluggos were pulling some equipment down into the water after destroying the ships, as if they meant to use the components, metals, antennae, even some of the weapons pieces.
The Far Horizon had been the Earth Planetary Navy’s most heavily armed destroyer, and that too had been utterly destroyed, but Haldane did not feel defeated. He was back again in a new body, and he would continue to fight—although if he continued to die during engagements against the enemy, it would look bad on his record.
Ms. Tenn returned carrying a tray with seven cups of various coffee drinks. “I brought you a variety of options, sir. One of these should do.”
“Thank you, Lieutenant,” he said, then had a horrible thought. “God, I hope Shelty wasn’t a tea drinker.” He decided to be methodical about his testing. He closed all the records displayed on his screen. He would review them later.
Haldane fingered the implanted pendant at the base of his skull. Sooner or later he would go out on another brutal engagement. He couldn’t put this off. “Ms. Tenn, I want you to go through recruiting records so we can prepare for the worst-case scenario. This body is certainly adequate, but there’s no telling what might happen to me. Find me a new volunteer.”