The other man grasped Riskin’s hand. The private’s hand was cold and clammy. He was short, looked oriental and to be on the verge of going into shock.
“Chen,” was all he said and even that took a great effort from the smaller man.
“Nice to meet you, Chen. Too bad it’s under these circumstances, but you know what? We’ll be behind the lieutenant the whole way. Isn’t that right, Sir Magnificent?” Riskin tried for a lopsided smile but only achieved a half-sneer with contempt on top.
“One minute!”
What made the bellow so odd was that there was only Riskin and Chen. No one else was nearby. They couldn’t hear any other people yelling. Riskin wondered how many IMs were left. He couldn’t remember seeing more than a handful at any one time in any one place. The only officer he remembered was the lieutenant.
“How many total are in this human wave, your sir-ness?” Riskin asked suddenly.
“All of them. Every swinging dick, Lance Corporal. Now, fix bayonets!” The lieutenant moved to the edge of the trench and cupped his hands as if to give them a boost up.
He noted that they didn’t have bayonets, but the lieutenant seemed to be in a different place at a different time.
“Oh, hell no!” Riskin answered, stepping beside the lieutenant and cupping his hands. “You can pull us up once you’re on top,” Riskin suggested.
The lieutenant unholstered his pistol and nodded. “You know if you don’t come, I’ll shoot you?” He smiled at the two men and looked at his watch, breathing heavily and grinning.
* * *
“I think the order has been rescinded,” Ak’Tiul said and relaxed. “Wow, that was a close one. Smoke if you are having them, eh, MarPul?”
“You get up that wall, dickface. Ten, nine…” the MarPul counted down, holding his shock stick at the ready. Ak’Tiul weighed his imminent death versus an extended period of pain before dying. He didn’t like his options.
“ONE!” the third level MarPul screeched in a click and a whistle.
Ak’Tiul had no idea where he found the courage, but he hit the two steps carved into the mud wall, popping out of the trench and into the open. He stood there dumbfounded but was bumped out of the way as the MarPul climbed up behind him.
Side by side they stood, two Bazarians. One hundred yards away, a human popped out of his trench, but he wasn’t looking their way.
“Well?!” the MarPul demanded.
“Well, what?” Ak’Tiul wondered.
“Shoot him! Shoot the enemy, dickface!” the junior officer howled, stamping one foot in the mud.
Ak’Tiul looked at it, curious that there was mud up in no man’s land, too. He figured all the water made its way into his trench. He couldn’t imagine that there was any remaining to make mud elsewhere. Maybe the planet wasn’t a rock, but one big mudball. He looked at the terrain, certain that no argument could convince him otherwise.
“Fire!” the officer yelled.
“Right!” Ak’Tiul said, thinking about the mud and that this would all be over soon. The winner would go home. He called out, “Time to win, your preeminent supremeness!”
Ak’Tiul took aim with his old slug thrower and pulled the trigger.
Nothing. The MarPul was not pleased and jammed the shock stick against the enlisted man’s leg. Ak’Tiul screamed in pain until his whole body convulsed and he dropped his weapon. It slid in the mud and back into the trench.
The third level MarPul released the button, and Ak’Tiul doubled over. “I shall recover my weapon, sir,” he said without any derision. He resigned himself to the fact that he would die in pain. He hated the humans for being here with him. He hated the Council for sending him to the godforsaken place. But he hated the MarPul most of all.
“No. You’ll fight them hand to hand. Look at their frail pink flesh! You’ll rend them into tiny pieces. Now forward, ho!”
Ak’Tiul walked ahead as if carrying the casket to his funeral. The perceived weight on his shoulders was equally great.
* * *
Riskin had every intention of running as soon as the lieutenant was out of the trench, but when Riskin threw him forward, the officer twisted in midair like a spider monkey and landed, aiming his pistol at Riskin’s astonished face.
With a sigh of reservation, he reached up and the lieutenant pulled him to the top. They both leaned back down and grabbed Chen’s outstretched arms. Besides holding his hands in the air, the private was incapable of helping. They dragged him up the mud wall and deposited him face first in the mud.
He lay there, weaponless. His slug thrower was still in the trench.
“You first, Private!” the lieutenant growled. “If you can’t shoot, then you can be our human shield. Now move! Lance Corporal, rifle up!”
Riskin whirled through one hundred eighty degrees. The lieutenant ducked to avoid getting brained by the weapon’s barrel as it flashed past.
“Watch it!” the lieutenant yelled, focusing all his attention on the two junior enlisted and none of it on the enemy.
Riskin had never had any respect for him before, but that clinched it. He decided that he had to kill the man. He looked across no man’s land to see who was watching
As far as the eye could see, horizon to horizon, he saw no more than ten Interstellar Marines. Most were singles, by themselves in the middle of nowhere. The story was the same on the other side. The Bazarians had an equal number.
“You have got to be kidding me! Are we it? We’re all that’s left?” Riskin glared at the lieutenant. “How in the hell did I get so unlucky to be stuck here and with an idiot like you?”
“No one ever leaves…” the lieutenant whispered, as if talking to himself.
* * *
Ak’Tiul shuffled toward the humans. The MarPul stayed behind him, hiding, but carrying his shock stick and ready to inflict pain should Ak’Tiul try to run.
“I have no weapon, dickface, maybe you give me your stick? Or better, why don’t you go first?” Ak’Tiul said, continuing to slop through the mud.
His answer was the stick jammed into his leg, followed by a short burst of voltage. Ak’Tiul spasmed and fell.
Pain and death were becoming one and the same. As he lay there, he saw the few bodies walking across no man’s land. The final push. It looked like wayward souls stumbling through the mist of life.
The third level MarPul screamed at Ak’Tiul to get up and keep walking.
Pain and death. He had no incentive to rise. The MarPul stabbed the stick against the prostrate Bazarian’s leg and pressed the button, holding it to inflict the maximum punishment.
* * *
“Shoot them!” the lieutenant screamed fanatically. Chen dropped to his knees and covered his ears. His pinched his eyes closed and rocked himself.
Lance Corporal Riskin Devereaux raised his slug thrower and took aim. If we win, I get to go home, he thought as he zeroed in on the one spiker jamming some stick into a second one lying on the ground.
They don’t want to be here any more than I do, he thought. But if we win, I get to go home. Losing is dying.
No one ever leaves, the lieutenant said. What the hell?
“What did you mean by that?” Riskin asked, lowering his slug thrower, which enraged the lieutenant. “What did you mean when you said no one ever leaves?”
The young officer aimed his pistol at Riskin’s face. “What I meant isn’t for the likes of you. Now raise your weapon, Marine, and get back into this battle. For the glory of the IM and a battle banner for the longest battle ever fought in all the interstellar wars. We must win!”
The whites of the lieutenant’s eyes showed as his mouth hung open and he panted like an animal. His pistol shook as his knuckles whitened from his fanatically tight grip.
Riskin raised his slug thrower’s barrel and aimed at the Bazarian cajoling the one in the mud.
Sight picture, sight alignment. He focused on the front sight post, positioning the slightly fuzzy silhouette of the spiker in the middle of the rear
sight aperture. When everything was aligned, he exhaled and gently squeezed the trigger.
The weapon barked, and the trigger froze to the rear. It cycled uncontrollably like a machinegun, making the barrel jump. The first round hit the Bazarian center mass, in the middle of its chest. As the barrel jumped, the impacts climbed.
The next round hit the enemy in the throat, and the last impact blew a hole through its head. The weapon jumped out of Riskin’s hands as it continued to fire.
The lieutenant was too slow diving out of the way, and the last round from the magazine tore through the lieutenant’s head.
The slug thrower splashed into the mud beside Chen, followed closely by the lieutenant, who toppled over backward.
Riskin stood, eyes wide with shock at what had happened. He barely breathed. He’d killed his lieutenant.
But it was an accident! he tried to reason. Chen mumbled and whined.
“Shut up, Chen!” Riskin yelled, then realized his mistake. Chen hadn’t done anything wrong. The man was terrified.
Riskin thought he should have felt worse, but he seemed oddly relieved. He felt free for the first time in a long time. He was out from under someone else’s boot, even if only for a short while.
“It’s okay, Chen, stand up and let’s go. There’s no one left to report anything, no one left who knows anything.” Riskin looked around and saw a few figures here or there, but wasn’t sure if they were human or Bazarian. The enemy closest to him was picking himself up out of the mud.
* * *
Ak’Tiul heard the sound at the same time he saw the slugs impact the third level MarPul. The officer was close, and Ak’Tiul simply laid there and watched as the Bazarian was torn apart. The dead body flopped like a wet rag, splashing into the mud.
The enlisted Bazarian crabbed backward, away from his dead officer. He thought about running for his trench, but if he didn’t stand, then maybe they would think him dead.
He remained where he was, but watched the humans closely. Where once there had been three, only one remained standing. Of the other two, one knelt and the last looked as dead as the MarPul.
One helped the other to his feet, then they turned and walked back to their trench. When they reached it, they stood there, motionless for an interminable amount of time.
He saw his opportunity to return unseen to his own trench.
* * *
Riskin and Chen stood at the top of the wall, looking down at a heavy yellow gas. It rose chest high within, and that was if one knew where the high points were.
“Damn the lieutenant,” Riskin said softly, then turned back to the officer’s body and screamed. “Damn you!”
Chen was coming back to himself, having raced through four of the five stages of grief, from denial to anger, bargaining, and depression. He was ready to accept his depression as the final state of his life.
“What if we surrender?” Chen asked. As a private in the IM, he’d never had to think for himself. Someone else always told him what to do. He needed that in his life. Riskin Devereaux was the opposite; he despised people telling him what to do.
Which was how he ended up as a Marine—to show his father that he couldn’t tell Riskin what to do. Riskin hadn’t appreciated how much freedom he’d had when he lived at home.
The irony wasn’t lost on him. The years of being ordered around by an idiot like the lieutenant had convinced him how smart and how wise his father was.
And how young and stupid Riskin had been.
Now I’m going to die for it, killed by my own people because everyone wants this little planet and this little war to go away.
“I wonder…” Riskin started to say. “Come on, Chen, let’s see if I’m right.”
He turned Chen around, and they started walking toward the muddy Bazarian, who was looking at his trench the same way they’d just looked at theirs.
“You speak Chinese, Chen?” Riskin asked.
“What do you think?” the private replied sarcastically, trying hard not to look at the lieutenant’s exploded head as they walked past. He failed miserably and he couldn’t keep his eyes off it.
“Tell that Bazarian not to go into the trench, it’s poison,” Riskin said.
Chen translated the phrases in milliseconds in his head and then spoke Mandarin Chinese in a normal tone of voice.
“Come on, Chen, everyone knows that the spikers don’t have ears. You gotta really belt it out!” Riskin threw up his hands in hopeful encouragement.
“You’re kidding, right?” Chen asked.
“You ask a lot of questions, Private,” Riskin sneered. “Why would I kid about something like poison and death?”
“If they don’t have ears, why would yelling make any difference?” Chen explained, eyebrows raised.
“Damn straight; maybe he can read lips?” Riskin suggested, then laughed heartily. The Bazarians didn’t have lips.
Riskin and Chen kept walking across no man’s land.
* * *
Ak’Tiul looked at the green gas in the trench. He could smell it.
Death.
He thought he heard someone tell him not to go into the trench, but it was in the human Chinese language. He knew the voice spoke the truth, although the truth sounded strange, no matter which language it was communicated in.
“Hate humans,” Ak’Tiul said. He looked back at the dead body of the MarPul. “Hate MarPul more. Sorry, your cerebral supremeness, in that I didn’t recognize your superiority sooner and race across the wasteland with reckless abandon to dispatch your enemies.”
He saluted haphazardly, then swaggered to the body, picked up the stick and jabbed it against the leg. When he depressed the button, the MarPul’s body jumped, but the stick shorted out, sending electricity through the water and into Ak’Tiul’s foot.
He dropped the stick and jumped around on one leg, feeling like a moron for shocking himself.
The humans stopped on the other side of the MarPul and stood there watching Ak’Tiul’s antics.
He stopped hopping and stood still, returning the humans’ gaze.
“Don’t go into your trench. The gas is death,” the Bazarian told them in the sing-song language of diplomacy.
* * *
The creature was the same size as the two Marines, but to Riskin, the Bazarian looked like a cross between a bumblebee and a wasp. When it spoke Chinese, Riskin was relieved, but still couldn’t understand the creature.
Chen nodded and replied.
Riskin slapped the shorter man on the arm. Chen remembered that the other Marine didn’t speak his language. “He said to not go into the trenches.”
“We know that,” Riskin said.
“That’s what I told him.” Chen looked oddly at the lance corporal.
“So what the hell do we do now?” Riskin asked. Chen translated the question for the Bazarian.
“Dammit! I was asking you, not him,” Riskin clarified.
Chen shrugged.
“Ak’Tiul,” the Bazarian said, pointing to himself with one spindly arm.
“Riskin,” Chen said, pointing to the lance corporal. He said it twice and then pointed to himself. “Chen.”
“Who was that?” Riskin asked, leaning toward the Bazarian that he himself had killed.
“The MarPul, an officer, a bad officer,” Ak’Tiul said, and Chen interpreted for Riskin.
“Our officer too, bad and dead,” Riskin said succinctly.
“What do we do now?” Ak’Tiul wondered.
“Find a way off this godforsaken mudball!” Riskin exclaimed. Chen smiled before telling Ak’Tiul what the lance corporal had said. The Bazarian bobbed excitedly.
“Like humans,” he said. The clicks and whistles of the Bazarian language were lost on his new companions.
About Craig Martelle
If you liked this story, you might like some of Craig’s other books. You can join his mailing list at www.craigmartelle.com. If you have any comments, shoot him a note at [email protected]
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He enjoyed writing “The Trenches of Alpha Centauri,” which is based on what he found out when working with military from other countries, including Russia, Cuba, Yugoslavia (before that country broke up), and so many more. All soldiers put their boots on the same way, and they all have the same concerns about their families. They enjoy a good meal, and Craig learned that none of the frontline forces hate each other. They trained to fight, just in case, but they hoped they wouldn’t have to. No one who has to fight a war longs for one.
Craig is a lifelong daydreamer and student of human interaction. He’s got some degrees, but those don’t matter when it comes to telling the story. Engaging characters within a believable narrative—that’s what it’s all about. Craig lives in the interior of Alaska, far away from an awful lot, but he loves it there. It is natural beauty at its finest.
Broken One
by Josi Russell
Dear Son,
Now that I’m gone, you’re going to hear a lot about who I was and who your mother should have been. Try not to get too defensive—much of that is probably true.
THE JARRING THUD OF AN 800-TON, LONG RANGE PLASMA MISSILE shook the ship, and all Ryz could think of was that stupid letter. One of the king’s advisers, Karnat, had slipped it into his hand as he’d walked to his ship at the beginning of this battle, and he’d gotten through the first confusing page before the fire had begun to fall hard.
Even as he spun to return the fire, the elegant handwriting, the self-deprecating humor of the writer, the fragility of the fiber paper skidded through his head.
His primary hands, with their strange extra digits, worked the pitch of the cannon while the three fingers of his secondary hands—on the ends of short, thin arms that jutted out just below the bend of his elbows—streaked across the buttons on the upper dash, aiming, firing, aiming, firing again. He kept the extra fingers out of the way expertly, just as he had practiced, tucking them in toward his palms. He had to in order to keep up the speed and accuracy with which he was firing. He was good at manning a fighter pod. He always had been. Better, they said, than anyone in the last century.
Bridge Across the Stars: A Sci-Fi Bridge Original Anthology Page 16