World Hunger
by Mark Manifesto
Sheets of poison smoke hung over the night sky. Trails from the crumbled skyscrapers. Faint alarms. Most had died out. Staring from overtop the metropolis, Hector tried not to think of the lives beneath the burning steel, generations which had erected these towers, towers cleaved in less than an hour. A world taken in less than a day.
The planet shook under the Obstinought’s step. It was his own. All ten thousand feet of the titan. The flesh over his bones, the eyes through which he stared out of Thesakles’ visor, they weren’t really him. The suit was.
Admiral Booker called over the radio, “One last wasp, Thesakles.”
Soaring in from northern clouds hummed a mammoth battleship. His greataxe carved through the streets as he dragged up and over his back.
“Quellcannon,” Hector commanded.
The quiverholster rotated. Power inputs attached from wrist to rifle. Missiles flared out from the ship in rounded arcs, a great plague of fireflies. He doubted they’d darken the hull.
He slid the power control near the trigger. Three percent. A red glow illuminated the rifle’s core. With crosshairs on the ship, he felt a sudden fit of asphyxiation, panic and self-loathing. He reminded himself of the billions of Unus Animus citizens waiting in orbit, exiled from a world turned desert. Pauci pro multis. A few for the many.
Hyllan had its time.
Hundreds of fiery plumes burst over the hull. He squeezed the trigger. Unholy thunder roared and a colossal pearl of red energy cleared the city’s smoke. Like a fist through wet paper, the ship erupted.
Hector looked over the apocalyptic landscape. Gauges read that he’d only used twenty three percent of the suit’s battery over the course of the day. The casualty estimate bore too many commas to conceptualize. Acid licked sharply at the lining of his stomach.
“Hell of a job, Thesakles,” Booker called from the ship. He looked up to the celestial gray sphere in orbit. “Hyllan’s down for count.”
“…”
“Steak on me.”
A firmament quivering roar rolled from the jets on Thesakles’ back. Buildings below seared and boiled as the mecha rose towards the stars.
Arms at his back, eyes on the Harvester ships descending upon Hyllan, Hector’s mind ventured towards places he wouldn’t let himself dwell. Booker finished reading the report and tossed the tablet onto his desk.
There was a time when Hector didn’t worry about the results. “Sir?” he asked, fingers running over the input jacks atop his hands.
“Nothing I haven’t seen,” Booker said. Deep wrinkles scored his ebony cheeks. Dark oysters swelled beneath his eyes.
“So I’m stable.”
“As anyone. They’re going to boost your prescriptions. More SNRI for the fits and PPI for the ulcers,” he said, sitting on the end of his desk. For a man who hadn’t undergone the Pilot Surgeries— and pushing 197 years old— he was a unit.
“How’d it feel to get back in the suit?” Booker asked.
Hector’s gaze turned to the sun and Thesakles before it, a spiraling cone of light siphoning the star’s combined energies into its core. Sharp thorns ran from shoulder to knuckles, hips to ankles. Its crimson alloy drank the light.
“I didn’t think about it.”
Booker grinned and shook his head. “Maybe it’s time I had the med team hollow me out too.”
People genuinely thought that Pilots couldn’t feel.
“Anything useful we should know?” Booker asked.
“The air and water have dangerous amounts of heavy metal. A lot of microplastics in the soil. Regardless of its size, I’m guessing the next two planets might provide more in the way of untainted resources.”
A sharp buzz sounded from the door. The security monitor in the corner showed Dr. Lanna Ross, tablet in hand, foot tapping anxiously. She buzzed again.
Booker sighed. “Keep your head together, Kid.”
He remembered the term as pedantic in his younger years, but at seventy-two, he didn’t care.
The steel door slid open, and without a second’s pause, Doctor Ross stormed forward. She held her tablet up like a second coming of the commandments.
“See!” she said, pushing her glasses and pulling her loose trousers up. Her hair poked like straw out of her ponytail. “I told you.”
“Most likely,” Booker said.
“This time near it was at the center of the Paramecium Galaxy. Last week in the Sculptor Dwarf. So either there are multiple of them or it can jump. Organic wormholes. Quicker than ours. Look,” she said, handing him the tablet.
Hector turned to leave.
“Captain Thorne, can you tell me what you see?” Booker asked.
The image showed a blurred image of a large cylindrical formation floating through space, surrounded by small asteroids, and hovering before a blue planet. Next showed it nearer, the last showed no planet. Ross glared in the abominable manner he’d become accustomed to at advisory panels.
“I’m not an astronomer.”
“That’s not what I asked,” Booker said.
“I see a large and irregularly shaped asteroid, surrounded by smaller ones. Then what looks like a planetary devastation.”
“Are you serious?” Ross asked, almost knocking her glasses off as she palmed her face. “An asteroid that size would be round, held together by gravity. And it couldn’t change direction, look at the frames! And these ones from last week. And these ones from two months back! Don’t be ridiculous.”
“As ridiculous as an interstellar, planet-eating leviathan, with symbiotic insects? We’ve been crossing stars for nearly three thousand years, Lanna, and not once have we seen one of these things. You’re making a wild leap.” Booker stood and stared down his nose. “And more importantly, I told you to stop wasting satellite time on personal projects when your job is to tend to the Obstinoughts. We’re still behind on Deianira’s core systems, and I’m waiting for a damage report.”
She tried to match the heat in his gaze. “This isn’t why I joined.”
“Dismissed.”
Down the stainless-steel halls, past communications rooms, and labs, the phantom reverberation of Thesakle’s ax through Hyllan’s Planetary Capitol Building sent a shiver through Hector’s forearm. Flashes of incoming missiles played in the periphery of his sight. Splattered bodies that could hardly be made out.
“Captain Thorne!” Ross called, running down the hall.
“Yes?” he asked.
Hunched over to catch her breath, she said, “Your psych evaluation.”
His heart sped and eyes turned furtively. “I’m tired, Doctor.”
“It’s my job to make sure our Obstinoughts and their pilots are in working condition.”
“Thesakles is fine.”
“He always is.”
“… What do you want?”
“To discuss your future.”
Fifty years of service, thirty at the helm of humanity’s greatest sword, and now a small case of regret was going to ruin him? “Can we have this conversation in private?” he asked.
Ross’ office was adorned like most of the research and maintenance team. Monitors, files, VR systems, fidget toys, and a hologram table.
“You don’t have to stand at attention,” she said, taking a seat and gesturing to him to do the same. “Suit yourself.”
“Are you going to recommend my dismissal?”
“No. I want to discuss the dismissal of the Conquest program.”
His brow furrowed. It was like discussing the end of public education.
She continued, “Have you ever thought about how ridiculous this system is?”
“To live is to consume.”
“To live is to learn.”
His jaw tightened in defense of many things. “There are over five hundred trillion Unus Animus citizens spread across a hundred worlds. How else should we provide for them?”
“For starters, taking care of those worlds.”
“Easier in theory.”
“Easier than relocating a population every few years.”
“You should talk to someone who can help.”
“I am.” She sighed and rubbed circles in her temples. “For deeply troubling reasons, people look up to Obstinough pilots, yet you, your colleagues, and predecessors only use your celebrity to sell bullshit.”
“The pension isn’t great.”
“The pension isn’t the problem— and there’s a reason most don’t live to see it.”
The crystalline memory flashed of his father slumped in his office chair. Blood on the wall, a half-finished note. He cited the Unus Animus motto, “Pauci pro multis.”
“What I’m saying is that if you endorsed alternative means of resource allocation, alliances, or maybe even just sustainable living instead of Dunbar’s Discount Imitation Shrimp, maybe we wouldn’t need to decimate half a dozen planets a decade.”
One of the main reasons he’d joined the military is because it was— on the surface— supposed to be simple.
“You overestimate how much people care about us.”
“And you haven’t estimated it at all. You might try to look like teflon, but you’re breaking. You have been since the last Conquest. Your liver’s proof.”
He squeezed irritation through his wrists.
“It’s my job, Ma’am.”
Too flustered to speak, she snarled, “It won’t last forever.”
He nodded and looked to the textureless steel floor. “Am I excused?”
“I’m not a commander.” She rolled her eyes upon seeing him still there. “Yes.”
“Thank you. And good luck.”
He meant it.