Enemy Territory

Enemy Territory: Where does it end?

John W. Gilmore

“I love to watch a sunset, Marriane,” I said. I turned. She wasn’t even watching, she was stooping down placing large, broken branches into the fire one at a time. “You don’t even notice these things anymore, do you?”

“Let me tell you something, Kyle. This is your first night here. I did a turn on this rock a few years ago. You don’t know what to expect. The temperature is going to plummet as soon as the sun drops below the horizon.”

“That’s a surprise to me. It was so hot this afternoon I thought we were going to roast. I almost got sunburned.” I looked down at my hands to make sure there was no permanent skin damage. My normal beige color had turned to chocolate. Marriane paused from her fire making and looked up at me.

“That’s the way it goes on this planet.” She smiled. “Like I said. You’re not used to being here. Soo… get the thermals out of that big trunk you’ve been carrying all day, and get ready to put’em on. In the meantime,” She stood and took another glance at the fire, before turning to me. “I’ll get the cold weather pod and build it over this fire. It should hold enough heat in it to keep us warm all night with the blankets we have with us.” She walked over opened the large trunk she had been carrying.

It wasn’t really a trunk, exactly, neither was mine. They were more like a combination of a trunk and a backpack, if you can imagine putting a cushion on the bottom of a trunk and strapping it to your back, you’ve got it. We had specialized smart suits that helped enhance our strength and abilities, so carrying such a thing wasn’t impossible, but these were not the top of the line suits. They weren’t as weather resistant as the others, nor did they aid as much in lifting capacity and movement. We could have just about flown in the newer suits, but they were reserved for the special forces in the secret space program. Iron Man type soldiers, if you can believe it. I found it difficult to believe, myself.

Somehow we ended up having to land on this planet--one of the worse planets in the solar system because of its temperature swings and extreme weather, because of a break in the air lock seal from a little pebble sized meteor. Something was wrong with the shield generator and no one took the time to fix it.

We landed hard and had to ditch the ship in case it got spotted by the enemy. We loaded up the emergency packs and got out fast. I never realized we would have to use what we put in them. Apparently Marrianne did. She was the expert. Marrianne took over quickly and knew exactly what to do.

I thought I wouldn’t make it after we left the ship tromping through all of that heat carrying heavy, heavy backpacks full of all of this stuff, especially climbing up a mountain with it. I wanted to drop it all off at the bottom. When Marriane told me what we needed to take it with us, I thought she was crazy. Here we were up on the top of a small mountain on a strange planet looking out over the horizon with not a stitch of wind, or moving air.

It was hot as hell, but a lot cooler than in the valley. She got us up there as quickly as she could, but now she was building a fire? She said we needed fire blocks, winter coats, heavy boots and a thermal tent, and there we were, standing in the middle of a desert with the temperature almost 130 Degrees Fahrenheit. I had no argument. As I said, she was the marine. I was just a war correspondent looking for a new story. I still don’t understand why I took this job.

In actuality I do. I love to travel. I am hooked on travelling and adventure. What better adventure than being in the middle of a war. We go into the battles, we shoot pictures, we make mental notes, we write, and try to get some sleep at night after seeing all kinds of atrocities. But in between the battles and the wars there is a camaraderie that you can’t imagine between us and the soldiers. The travel is part of the job and the travel in between the wars is what you do after you get paid. Nothing is more pleasurable than staying in a beautiful, peaceful place after seeing the horrors of war.

I removed two thick, heavy coats, and two very thin blankets that were supposedly thermal blankets made out of the lightest materials possible. Why were the coats so heavy in that case? To save money?

In Marriane’s pack she had a very light nylon looking tent (no telling what it was made of), water, some fire blocks, and a small solar charger for our radios and communication devices, and of course a few charges for the plasma rifle she always carried slung across her shoulder. I carried the coats over and set them near the fire.

“Not that close, we want them outside the tent.” I moved them back. She unfolded the tent and I helped her put it up over the fire. Seemed that I could actually see the tent reddening and heating up, as if it was collecting the heat. She gave me a stiff nod.

“That’s right. When it collects the heat we’ll be nice and warm. For this planet anyway. Temperature drops to 30 below at night. The coats---we can wear them out here, take them off inside, and they are thick enough to be--tada, mattresses and pillows against that cold hard ground. Clever wouldn’t you say?”

“I would say so. You marines don’t leave anything to chance, do you?”

“I wouldn’t say that. We wouldn’t be on this godforsaken world if there weren’t mistakes made somewhere down the line. Somebody should be coming in by tomorrow though. Problem is that we really can’t make too much noise on the radio. If we have a beacon going the enemy might come in. We are in enemy territory, you know.” She sat on the ground. I plopped down beside her.

“Where does enemy territory end,” Marianne?’

“Where and when?” She asked back. “I tend to wonder. When we started going into space we thought that the people we ran into...well actually, we weren’t even sure if they would be people so let me say if the beings that we ran into, would be more enlightened, or would want to squash us like bugs. We ran into both types. It’s really too bad that the whole galaxy is as bad as it is on our planet. You would think people advanced enough to zoom around the galaxy would have gotten over their psychological problems.”

“I agree with you completely, but what is the saying ‘power corrupts and more power corrupts even more.’ I think that included all of us being deceived. How long did they cover up Extra Terrestrial contacts, and work to reverse engineer things just to make money and to keep us retarded when it came to the development of our planet?

Then suddenly all this stuff came out and we could get into space like that." I snapped my fingers. "They said it was because the leaders were hoping that we would find a more peaceful world. They lied. They were just wanting to find more resources for an overpopulated planet that has squandered most of theirs. They knew that violent races were out here because they were out here fighting them all along. After everything was disclosed we suddenly became a space faring race, but we still ended up at war again.”

“Well some of us are soldiers, aren’t we? We are in the thick of it carrying out the wishes of the raiders of undeveloped planets. We didn’t have enough sense to know that even the burned out ones are claimed by large federations. So here we are.”

“Well I’m not a soldier.”

”Might as well be one. You’re always there right in the middle. You get paid well, and you even carry a gun, don’t you?”

“Just in case.”

“Yeah. Just in case. If you leave that gun in your holster when I get attacked you’re gonna have some answering to do if I survive. And it’s the same with everybody. When those bullets start flying you know you have to be ready to fight.”

“To be ready,” I said.

“Paid for fighting,” Marriane said, with a grin. I had never thought of it that way. I figured I was paid for reporting. She had an interesting way of seeing things.

There was a lull in the conversation. The sun had just about dipped below the horizon. Marriane got up, walked over, and snatched up her coat. I followed suit. We stood beside the tent putting them on. Believe it or not, they were rather warm. The temperature had already dropped drastically, but had not begun to go as low as it would. I only hoped the thinsulate lining our suits pants would keep our legs warm. They had been hot as hell a couple of hours ago. The expensive suits would have had built in cooling and heating units.

A streak of light shot across the horizon looking like a shooting star. Just when it looked as though it would hit the ground it hovered and slowly descended to the ground. The temperature began to drop even faster as Marriane grabbed her plasma rifle and found a spot near the outside of the tent. I could see my breath and began to need to rub my palms together.

“Looks like a Borian ship. You better go inside, Dear,” she said with a grin. "I don't think we have gloves. Ooops." She smiled.

“You gonna be alright? I have a side arm.”

“Oh yeah. Take it in with you. I have enough sense to come inside when it gets too cold. That’s what I’m really worried about. They won’t be travelling during the frigid hours.”

“I guess we can take turns keeping watch.”

“That’s Ok. You’re a reporter, remember? I’ll put the motion detector on and it will let me know way out if somebody’s coming. You go inside and get some sleep.” I unzipped the door. “Remember to take that coat off. That coat is too heavy and will become unbearable in there. We don’t want you to sweat and wet up the inside of that coat. Sweat is your enemy in temperatures like this.”

I stepped inside. It was warm inside, not hot, the way I expected after watching it heat up, which informed me how cold it was outside already. I took the coat off and laid it out like a pallet, using the hood somewhat like a pillow. I lay down and pulled the thin, silver blanket over me as I shivered, wondering how good all of this could be for my health. Surprisingly the crappy looking blanket heated up quickly. I lay down relaxing, looking up at the struts at the top of the tent. Smoke from the fire rose up through a hole at the top. I wondered why I was there and what would become of me.

Apparently the enemy had found us. We didn’t know what to expect. We didn’t even know what type of enemy they were. We had never seen Borians. There were actually conglomerates of various planets consisting of different types of beings working together as allies, who were fighting what they called the final conflict. I had heard that plenty of times, and it never was. We had no idea what these beings would look like, their weaponry, or what type of powers they had that would be normal for their species. I pulled the blanket up tighter under my chin and surprisingly, I fell asleep.

After a few hours I heard Marriane crawl into the tent. It was dark and freezing by then. She hurriedly removed the heavy coat and placed it on the floor as a mattress. She wrapped herself in the thin blanket, cursed a bit, and then got up to stir the fire and put on a couple of more blocks. She got under the blanket again. I could hear her breathing slowing and getting deeper until she seemed to be asleep. I sat there with my eyes open for I don’t know how long until I smelled a strange, gaseous odor. I could hear something that sounded like rain pouring over the tent, and fell into a deep sleep.

When I awakened the ceiling had changed. I was in a small room with a stainless steel ceiling. A woman with no hair, a shaved head, stood over me with a large pair of scissors. I tried to move, but discovered that my arms, legs and head had been strapped to the table. She was very pale with massive blue eyes. She looked somewhat human, but her eyes were a little larger and mouth a little too small.

If she were walking down a crowded street, you couldn’t tell the difference. She looked at me intensely. It felt as though somehow she gripped my mind with her thoughts. I heard her tell me to lie still. Or I might slip, she said in my head, snapping the scissors open and closed in front of my face just a little too close for comfort.

She began at the crotch and cut my beautiful suit open, like someone skinning a deer. I couldn’t even look down. I could barely keep it together. She had destroyed my wonderful suit. Did she know how long it took to get that thing?

We’ll give you a better one, she said, in my head. Obviously a telepathic race.

Obviously, she repeated back. She looked into my eyes again. So what are you doing on our planet? She sent.

We had an emergency and crash landed.

And the guns and the gear? Who are you fighting this time (!)? Why are you always fighting?

I have no idea why we are always fighting. I am a reporter, not a soldier. I report on what I see so that people back home know what’s going on.

And they are alright with the fighting, dying, and clamoring for resources you don’t need, are they?

You’d be surprised what human beings are satisfied with, I thought. I couldn’t believe I was having the conversation with the enemy, I guess, in my head.

“The enemy is inside you,” a smooth voice said. She snapped the scissors open and closed. “Maybe if I gut you like a fish I can get the violence out of you,” she said out loud.

“Hold on there.” A man in a silver uniform stepped forward. He extended his hand. She reluctantly put them in it. She turned and walked out.

“She’s angry,” he said. He was just about the opposite of her, his head was bald also, but he was very dark with dark, almost black eyes. He pulled up a stool that had been sitting somewhere. I couldn’t see anything because I couldn’t turn my head. He released the strap holding my head down. “People tend to get a little angry when their relatives get blown to pieces, wouldn’t you say?” He sat down.

“Yes. Is this telling the truth some type of torture?” He grinned.

“No torture, just telling you why you almost got gutted like a fish. Did you think Wrenthra was joking?”

“A little. She didn’t seem like the type.”

“What type is that?”

“A ruthless monster.”

“I don’t think you should be talking about ruthless monsters. I really don’t. Who told you to come out here trying to steal planets and resources because you wasted your own? There are plenty of resources where you come from...enough in your own solar system to last your planet a thousand lifetimes. What are you doing in space?”

“I don’t know. I’m just a newspaper reporter. You act as if the people on my planet have a say so in this matter. I’m not in charge of the military, or the government. When it comes to war they do what they want and everyone has to just believe that they are doing it in the interest of preserving our health and well being. Because it is much easier to do that, unless you want to end up in a jail cell somewhere.”

“So this is what you are fighting to defend, or expand?”

“No. I tell people what is going on. I’m a reporter. If I can get the message out about what is going on I can build the public pressure to maybe push to change it. I’m afraid that would be impossible now though. We are allied with people with their own agendas. Some of our leaders have their own agendas. We the people can’t do anything. If we, as a planet, decided to pull back, I'm sure that our own allies would come in and take over the planet. Who wants the death of billions of people on their hands?”

“Your planet already has that on its hands.”

“I can’t do anything about it.”

“You can. You can defect.”

“Defect to a side doing the exact same thing in the other direction, is that it?”

“No. To a peaceful regime where there are no wars. To a place far beyond what your species can even imagine. There are beings so advanced that war is not even a consideration anymore. They are closer to the center of the universe. We call them first evolvers. They have much power and wisdom. We are part of their group. They call themselves The Imperial Ones. That is what I am talking about defecting to. Leave your ball of dirt behind and join us.”

“And that woman who was going to gut me is one of these Imperial Ones?”

“No. She just lives in their empire. Their planet really got damaged before they decided to join. The Empire is an empire made up of planets who volunteer to take part. They send out peace envoys. Some planets join, and some don’t. They then simply come in and govern the planets who agree to be part of their empire leaving the others free to do what they will. If the ones they left free attack any of their worlds they are so powerful they obliterate the attackers.”

“And that is more enlightened?”

“They are so highly evolved that the death of us is nothing, because they know where we come from and where we’re going. I’m telling you that the Imperial Ones are the real thing. Compared to us they are like divinity, even though they don’t ever refer to themselves that way because they see it as unimportant. You are going to visit a planet governed by the Imperial Ones.”

I will be removing the straps and you will be free to roam the ship, but I warn you, if you try to escape or hurt anyone you will be dealt with harshly. This is important. These Imperial Ones may be the only ones to stop this war for you and your people. They go around the governments overriding them and creating peace if it is the will of the people. You need to listen to this. And then, if you don’t like what you hear we'll drop you off on one of your war torn planets and let you go at it.”

Since being part of The Empire we have risen above the need for war and revenge. We don’t care where you go.”

“Really?”

“Yes.” He stood up. “I am going to send Wrenthra back in to release you, and she'll lead you to the cafeteria where your friend is waiting.”

“You sure she’s safe...I mean Wrenthra?”

“Of course. She just gets really, how do people say it, pissed off sometimes. I’m sure she has cooled off.” I never heard that saying before. Sounded kind of gross to me. “I’m sure I’ll see you again before you depart. I just hope you and your friend make the right decision.” He spun on his heel to walk out.

“And you are?”

He turned back. “Wrenthra. We all have the same name. When you are telepathic, names are not that important.” He turned again and walked out. I looked around the room. It was very small. It looked like an operating room. That was scary. In a few moments Wrenthra meanie had come back in. She started to release the straps on my arms and legs.

“You’re lucky,” she said out loud this time.

I sure don’t feel lucky right now, I thought.

“I know you don’t,” She said out loud. “You don’t know what you and your planet will be offered. Truth is, if you don’t take it, it will be forced down your throat eventually.” I sat up on the narrow table and hung my feet off. “You only know war, so the Imperial Ones have made themselves into the ultimate warriors. If you don’t choose peace they are going to cut you to pieces.”

“That would make you happy?” I asked.

“No. I don’t want to see anyone die, and I especially don’t want to see the Imperial Ones on the move.” She lifted a finger. “Oh yes. To the right,” she pointed, you will find sets of overalls for your convenience unless you want to go naked, which might be entertaining to everyone.” She smiled for the first time.

“I will let you get dressed and then guide you to your...the mess, as you people call it. We call it a cafeteria. And then you and your marine person can roam around as you like until we get to the Imperial Ones. The overalls have no pockets. We don’t want you to make a mistake and get the Imperial Ones angry by trying to smuggle weapons. They are like coins. One second loving and caring, but when they flip you don’t want to be around.”

I would say it is hard to make them flip, but that would be a lie. They kind of naturally feed back what you bring to them. So be prepared. Cleanse yourself. No violence on this ship, or when you get there because violence begets violence. At this moment the Imperial Ones are seeking your planet. Depending on you, they will interact with your planet as friends or enemies. Even if you are violent idiots you better be able to pretend that you aren’t.” She headed toward the door “I’m stepping outside.”

I went to the large cabinet and opened it. It was shelved on one side. The other had several uniforms hanging there. I looked at them until I found one that would fit. Jumpsuits...blue. Reminded me of the jumpsuits prisoners often wore. As soon as I was dressed Wrenthra came in. These telepaths were something. She smiled.

“Looks good on you. Follow me.” We headed out into the hall. Everything was silver colored, the same color as stainless steel, but the metal seemed softer, more like a soft, malleable plastic. “It’s alive,” she said, noticing me running my hand along the wall. “That is an organic substance. The ship is alive. It is somewhat like a large plant. We grow them and then we implant the technology surgically when they are grown. But they are still alive.” She seemed more relaxed and friendly for some reason.

“You’ll learn more, when we become allies.”

“Who said that will happen?”

“The Imperial Ones. Didn’t Wrenthra tell you about them?”

“Yes.”

“I guess you didn’t believe him. He wasn’t exaggerating about the Imperial Ones. Once a planet or small empire catches their attention, their fighting is over, if they want it to be. Sometimes if they don’t. Believe me. Your planet will join.

My planet joined a long time ago. At the time we were at war with each other and then when we started reaching out into space we aligned ourselves with other warlike planets. We had to be warlike once they noticed us to survive, and we were like that anyway.”

The corporations were in charge. Our minds had been being dulled so long and we had been indoctrinated with one false religion or the other so long we couldn’t develop our natural potentials as a species. After the Imperial Ones we began to develop and grow. Our abilities just came as a natural result. Telepathy, second site, psychokinesis, all types of gifts that were latent and stifled because of the mental chains began to blossom. Now, here we are.”

“Where is your planet?”

“In a very small corner of a galaxy we call the Milky Way, because from our planet it looks like a large river of stars full of cosmic dust as you look out across the edge of it. We are the third planet from the sun called Earth by the native people. People call us Borians, which we are since we joined that federation, but we call ourselves Earthlings.

We have been known by that name locally for thousands of years. We hope that you will join us and enjoy a lifestyle that has advanced to the point where war and violence is no longer necessary, and where everyone is entitled to Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Happiness.”

“High ideals.”

She shrugged.

“That’s just the way we live on Earth. It really is.”

The End

This is a nice short story that addresses the possibilities for humanity when they get free of the false ideologies and institutions that hinder our growth as a species. Like what you're reading? Give the author a tip and pass on this story to your friends. Search Vocal.Media for more free, entertaining stories.