Tyger Burning Read online

  “Why?”

  “Because,” said Maung, “I am the only one left. The Americans took everyone from Myanmar and spared the soldiers’ lives, but not the Dream Warriors’. They hunted us; it is how your mother died, soon after you were born. All of us are gone now except me, and if the Americans find out one is alive I don’t know what they’d do.”

  “Would you go to prison?” his son asked.

  “Maybe.” Maung grabbed a cigarette, lit it, then glanced out the window one more time—to be sure there were no drone scanners. “Maybe worse. Or maybe nothing would happen. These Americans are funny; they get so angry sometimes, but then forget everything and forgive, so they’re not at all like the Chinese. I don’t trust Americans, but there are things to like.”

  The boy nodded and crossed his arms, trying so hard to look serious that Maung almost laughed.

  “I like them,” he said. “We have American kids in our class. A few. I will keep the secret.”

  “Good,” said Maung, messing up his son’s hair. “I’m off to find work; do what your grandmother says.”

  The walk from his home to the spaceport took almost an hour, so that by the time he got there, sweat soaked Maung’s shirt. Charleston Spaceport dwarfed everything; it rose from the shore in a forest of steel and carbon buildings that, Maung suspected, went farther underground than they did above, and the aboveground portions were at least a thousand meters high. The tallest one was also the broadest. It reminded him of the deep jungles in Myanmar, of banyans and leza trees so old they towered for miles and with bases so thick it took forever to walk around. But the jungle wasn’t ugly. Banyans didn’t use up half the nation’s alloys and impossible-to-get metals when they grew.

  Anchored within their base structures were the elevator strips and Maung looked at them the same way he always did, with his mouth open at the fact that the carbon nanotube “strips”—more like girders, three meters thick—stretched all the way into space, disappearing into the clouds where somewhere miles away they linked with the main orbital station. He had only seen the station in pictures. Someday maybe his son would go there, would have the chance to get away from the Earth and into space where Maung imagined everything was clean and new, unspoiled by war.

  An alarm horn startled Maung. He reached for homemade earplugs of candle wax and stuffed them in just before the massive elevator fired braking rockets to land at the main terminal; even with plugs the noise made him wince. Maung covered both ears with his hands and closed his eyes, not opening them again until the elevator banged into its mooring locks and the hydraulic shock absorbers stopped hissing.

  Away from the main complex was another facility. The Americans were dismantling it, so as Maung walked toward the temporary worker zone he saw that much had already disappeared but that some remained, spiky and broad, made from a glossy green material that could only be alien because it was—the remnants of the Sommen, who had arrived on Earth before Maung was even born. He said a silent prayer of thanks; as soon as the Sommen left, the Burmese surrendered and the Americans drafted people from all over Southeast Asia for construction projects. Maung’s family would be starving or dead had the things not disappeared, because they had been losing to the Americans and their allies.

  But nobody, least of all Maung, knew why the Sommen left—or why they’d come in the first place.

  Maung tossed his cigarette to the gutter. There was a small bodega in a trailer, just outside the main construction and cargo support area, and passing trucks filled the air with the smell of ozone and alcohol, their engines and turbines whining. Only Joseph was there, sitting on a bench outside the trailer. Maung crossed the street and sat next to him.

  “I smell the stink of Yangon gutter trash,” Joseph said.

  “That’s the smell a dead Filipino,” Maung responded. “It’s a good smell.”

  Joseph glared at Maung for a moment and then both men smiled.

  “Strange,” said Joseph.

  Maung shrugged and rolled the dice. It was a slow day and he and Joseph were both late so the main hiring had already taken place; now those who stopped at their bench had only small jobs. So far the pair were paid to move a few wheelbarrows of rubble, barely enough to cover lunch, so they played backgammon while waiting for more work and while the day got hotter and hotter.

  “What is strange?” Maung asked.

  “The Sommen site. It’s gone quiet. Usually there is the noise of demolition and trucks moving in and out but not now; there hasn’t been any movement or jackhammering for the last ten minutes.”

  Another elevator screeched down and Maung barely got his earplugs in; he yelled over the noise. “Are you sure?”

  “I’m sure. I hate that site; it gives me the creeps and reminds me of an abandoned church from the jungle near my home in the islands. My brother convinced me that church was haunted when we were kids.”

  “Bah,” said Maung. He thought maybe Filipinos were prone to superstition but now that his attention was drawn to it, the facility did seem off. He rolled the dice again and moved his pieces. “I’m sure it’s fine; just ignore it.”

  “Have you ever seen a Sommen?” Joseph asked.

  “Nobody has.”

  “Exactly,” Joseph said.

  “Exactly, what?”

  “You and I grew up knowing that other things existed out there, in space. But we’ve never seen them. And I remember when the news used to warn us about having to go to war if the Sommen attacked, but then one day it all ends. No war. No nothing. They just leave and magically the war between China and America ends.”

  Maung closed his eyes and let the breeze cool him as it flowed across his forehead; his hair dripped with sweat. The humidity in Charleston reminded him once more of Yangon and he liked the sensation at the same time he wished for air conditioning.

  He moved his pieces and handed the dice to Joseph. “It is weird, and I think about that a lot; we all do. But there aren’t any answers. Your turn.”

  Maung’s stomach tightened in fear. It was after lunch and despite all the cargo carriers and trucks, nobody had work; he rubbed his eyes to pretend he was tired because it shamed him to think Joseph might see that he was almost crying and Maung couldn’t remember where the instinct to mask his moods came from.

  The pair were about to start their tenth game of backgammon when multiple armored personnel carriers motored past with silent electric engines, surprising them with stealth; Maung nearly dropped his cigarette.

  “What are they doing here?” he asked.

  “I told you something was wrong,” said Joseph.

  “We don’t know yet. Maybe there is trouble in the terminal or maybe they are running an exercise.”

  “If something was wrong with the elevators the Army would use the main terminal or one of the support entrances.” Joseph shook his head and snapped the backgammon board shut. He stood. “And they would not schedule an exercise on one of the busiest cargo upload days I’ve ever seen. This is trouble.”

  “Where are you going?” asked Maung.

  “Let’s get closer so we can watch. We were both soldiers once; aren’t you even curious?”

  “I am never curious about the American Army!” he shouted at Joseph, who sprinted after the APCs. “You don’t care because they like Filipinos!”

  Finally Maung sighed and followed.

  Temporary work badges provided some access, but eventually one of the automated security fences whined when they approached and Maung and Joseph backed away until the alarm silenced. They looked for a good vantage point. Beyond the security fence was a massive wall topped with barbed wire that made it difficult to see, but they eventually found a dumpster to climb, high enough to get a view of the Sommen structure, which now was only about a hundred meters away. This close, Maung spotted details. The green structure consisted of thousands of interlocked leaves, and he glimpsed different shades of green like a forest of emerald rods and the longer he stared the more he thought that the co
lors changed, shifting with winds that blew from the river. The view mesmerized him until movement caught his eye, forcing his attention back to the American vehicles.

  The APCs formed a semicircle around the structure’s main entrance. Maung watched as the soldiers spilled from underneath the vehicles, ducking between the massive wheels and then sprinting forward. Maung and Joseph were so close that he heard the turrets whine as they turned.

  “What the hell is going on?” Joseph asked.

  Maung’s instincts told him to run. “How the hell should I know? Where are the usual boys—the general and the rest of his work crew? Did you hear anything when you showed up this morning—anything about who picked them up for a job?”

  “No. I got there just before you did; everyone was already gone.”

  “You don’t . . .” Maung started. He paused to light a cigarette. “You don’t think they’d get work in there, do you? I mean that’s never happened before.”

  “No way. Look at the security. We wouldn’t be cleared to—”

  An explosion stopped him in midsentence. Maung flinched when the APCs opened fire, their coaxial auto-Maxwells spitting streamers of explosive shells that left bright streaks of light from tracer phosphorus, brilliant red lines that disappeared somewhere inside the green structure’s main entrance. Joseph yanked him down onto his knees; a ricocheting shell tumbled through the air and thudded into the ground beside the dumpster before it detonated, sending hot metal pinging through the container’s sides and up into Maung’s shin.

  “Damn!” he hissed, almost falling off.

  “Are you hit?”

  Maung nodded and looked down, but the penetration was nothing and he picked two hot pieces of metal from his skin. “It’s not bad. Just bad luck. I wonder if—”

  A shriek interrupted him. The noise came from inside the Sommen compound, from an animal of some kind but Maung was sure it wasn’t any animal from Earth; this was the sound of something unnatural, a simultaneous choking, gurgling and screaming and Maung thought that whatever made the noise, it was a thing capable of speaking the language of horror and decay, the language of demons. He had to look again. Several APCs inched backward, firing as they went.

  “We should go,” Joseph said, tugging at Maung’s shirt.

  “Now I want to see.”

  “See what? Your own death? Fine—I’ll see you tomorrow at the bodega.”

  Maung, his attention fixed on the Sommen site, was only vaguely aware that Joseph had gone. Still the APCs moved backward. Men emerged from the Sommen structure in small groups while the vehicles’ autocannons fired over their heads, and some of the soldiers dragged wounded comrades whose armor was torn and split, while workers sprinted as fast as they could. Maung recognized one and held his breath: the general. The man was dressed like he was, in a t-shirt and work pants, and hauled himself along the ground using both arms; the general’s legs were twisted, broken almost into right angles.

  Without thinking, Maung jumped from the dumpster. He sprinted toward the security fence and ignored the alarm as he leaped onto it, dragging himself up and then swinging over to the ground below. The next obstacle, the wall, was another matter. On his first attempt he missed; Maung couldn’t jump as high as he needed and his fingers missed the top by only a few centimeters, so he cursed while looking up at an impossible height. The general screamed, calling for help in Burmese. Maung tried again and this time his right hand held, tightly enough that he could swing his left up and then scramble to the top, where he tangled himself in barbed wire.

  “General!” he shouted. “Keep moving!”

  The general was on his back now, just outside the Sommen entrance; if he heard Maung, he gave no indication. Whatever had his attention was still inside the compound’s green walls, at first not visible until, finally, it appeared at the gate.

  Maung went limp in the wire; his mouth had opened to scream again at the general, to tell him to keep moving, but now nothing came out as he stared at a creature that should only have existed in children’s nightmares. The thing stood twice the height of a man and three times as wide, on two legs. Armor encased it from head to toe. The plates looked to Maung as though they were made of the same green material as the complex itself, so he couldn’t see the thing’s body, but its wide faceplate was clear and Maung was close enough that he looked into the creature’s eyes—four, huge round globes, all of them jet black, a darker shade than its black and gray skin, and the creature’s mouth opened to reveal what looked like multiple rows of dark, needlelike teeth. The thing screamed again. This time Maung figured the sound must be amplified by speakers on its armor.

  It lifted a foot, preparing to crush the general when Maung yelled, “Touch him and die!”

  The creature paused. Autocannon rounds sparked when they bounced off its armor and now the troops loaded back into their APCs—probably, Maung thought, so they could use plasma rounds without cooking their own troops. Then the creature looked at him. Maung’s body tensed and what happened next was automatic: His internal systems activated. Maung tried shutting them down but couldn’t; these were programmed defenses, which activated because the creature was scanning him and passive receivers in his wetware detected a threat. Once active, they couldn’t be turned off, not until he was safe.

  “Enemy scan. Threat active,” a voice said. The voice came from inside his head as though from a dream and now Maung “saw” two worlds, one in the visual spectrum, the other flicking through radio, long-wave IR, and every other part of the spectrum until settling on microwave; he flinched when the thing directed a beam of energy at him, one which caused a sharp pain in the rear of his skull so that he screamed. It took Maung a moment to recover. He gripped his head and formulated a thought, ordering his systems to begin jamming by sending his own beam of electromagnetic energy back.

  The creature stumbled. It cocked its head and bellowed, then took a running start toward Maung, lifting what looked like an odd-shaped rifle at the same time it stepped on the general’s head with a crunch.

  “No!” Maung shouted.

  He barely thought; it was instinctive, like breathing, and Maung’s consciousness swam through the thing’s electromagnetic emissions so that within milliseconds he was inside the creature’s armor. It was a world so alien that Maung had to pause, confused. He viewed himself through alien sensors, trapped in barbed wire atop the site’s security wall, where his own shape appeared in a mixture of light and color, and Maung made note of the fact that most of the creature’s internal frequencies were geared toward ultraviolet; its natural vision probably functioned within that spectrum. Everything was calm. Despite the fact that the thing roared, bearing down on him like an unstoppable tank, Maung also “saw” the alien suit’s power nodes and couldn’t shake a sensation that this had to be a Sommen design. He flipped the power nodes off as fast as he could, having to adjust for the system’s alien configuration. One by one they shut down. In less than a second he found the armor’s servo nodes and flicked them off too, which stopped the thing in its tracks—freezing it. And when Maung flipped another node the creature vented dense white gas, and the smell of ammonia drifted over everything, making Maung’s consciousness return to his own body, which now choked as he gasped for air.

  Ammonia detected, his system warned. Don chemical protection and find higher ground.

  The creature’s face contorted; it opened and closed its mouth, over and over, reminding Maung of a beached fish until the thing’s eyes and face went blank.

  By the time Maung realized it was over, the ammonia had blown away and the thing stopped emitting on any frequency, leaving nothing upon which Maung could piggyback; his systems deactivated. Maung sagged with exhaustion. But at the same time, the thrill of having returned to the old ways, of flexing muscles that hadn’t been used in years, invigorated him and he grinned until a stabbing pain reminded him of his injuries. The barbed wire was razor sharp. Several points dug into his skin and warm blood dripped through h
is shirt as he tried to pull himself free. The soldiers kept firing at the creature. Maung hoped stray autocannon rounds wouldn’t ricochet into him, but soon the men in the APCs recognized that the thing had gone motionless and someone ordered them to cease fire.

  A soldier exited the closest vehicle and walked toward Maung, but stopped at the creature, which was only a few meters away. He yanked his helmet off. “Is it dead?” the man asked.

  Maung gave up trying to free himself. “I believe so.” Then he thought of a lie. “I think the cannons hit its life-support systems because I nearly choked on a cloud of ammonia gas; it must breathe the stuff.”

  The man nodded. “You’re going to need help getting down. And an ambulance. That’s razor wire and some of those points are probably down to your bone. Stay put and try not to move.” He turned and walked back to his APC and in the distance Maung heard sirens getting louder.

  “What was that thing?”

  “Forget about it, pal.” The man said it over his shoulder, without turning around. “And there will be some people here to talk with you in a bit—to tell you what you can and can’t say.”

  By the time they treated Maung and the authorities finished interviewing him, it was 3 a.m. They offered to drive him home. But spending even one more minute with the men in dark blue suits, men from the capital who were dead-faced either from being tired by the trip south or just because that was their real complexion, would be too dangerous. They asked too many questions. Maung had seen security types before—in Myanmar. They acted friendly until it was time to shoot into the back of your head, which they always did after offering you a smoke.

  “No,” Maung said. “I’ll walk.”

  They nodded, and the taller one slapped him on the shoulder; Maung winced. It was where he had been given seven stitches to sew up razor-wire gashes.