The Live Soldier Trilogy Box Set

by Liam Clay

  “You did that on purpose, didn't you?”

  The woman turns a beady eye in my direction. “Did what?”

  “Played with her emotions until she cracked. To save her.”

  “And you.”

  “Yes, and us too.” Bending down, I pluck a shoot of long grass and put one end in my mouth. “So are you really her mother?”

  “I gave birth to her, if that's what you mean. But I was never her mother.”

  “Clearly. Why did you really give her away?”

  The woman gazes out over the plain. “It was almost 60 years ago. The person I used to be did things I can't understand or explain today.”

  “Try.”

  “Why do you care?”

  “Because she's one of us.”

  “That's not an answer.”

  “Yes it is.”

  She looks back at me, and then laughs. “Maybe it is, at that. I gave her away because I was young and stupid. I thought she would be safe inside Medival. But high walls can't protect you from the jackals living next door. I wonder what you will find there, when your squad goes after the Architect during the battle to come.”

  “Who says we're going to do that?”

  This time her laugh is a mocking cackle. “You would be fools not to. How long do you think my people will follow Hera for? Not long, I would say. So if you want to cut the head off the snake, it will have to be done quickly.”

  “Who are you? One of the elders?”

  “No. Just an old washerwoman with a knack for reading people.” Her head drops. “Do you think she will see me?”

  “I don't know. Maybe once she figures out that you saved us just now.”

  “Well let me know if she comes around, will you?”

  “Alright. How do I find you?”

  “It won't be hard. Just get Pon to pass on a message.”

  “You know Pon?”

  “Of course. And Hera - although only by reputation. We're neighbors, after all.”

  “Wait. You've been living right under your daughter this whole time, and you didn't say anything?”

  “What would I have said? No, it was better this way. At least I helped her, in my own strange fashion.” She extends a weathered hand. “Can you help me get back home?”

  With the old woman on my arm, we walk back to our Garden. The Unders spot us and send down a vine. As she settles into its welcoming coils, something makes me ask, “Rajani's father. Did you love him?”

  She squints at me. “Love? I don't know. But he was definitely the hottest piece of ass I've ever had.”

  And then she's being pulled up into the Under's green embrace.

  .

  I find Rajani sitting on the collapsed wall of an abandoned longhouse. She's alone. The tears have dried up, but her expression is tortured. Taking a seat beside her, I wait in what I'm hoping is companionable silence until she's ready to talk. Presently, she does so.

  “I didn't handle that very well, did I?”

  “It depends.” I reply carefully. “Are you referring to the part where you repressed your emotions so much that people thought you were a surgically altered monster, or the part where you told your estranged mother to fuck off?”

  “The second one.”

  “I actually think that was about what she deserved. And it had the added benefit of saving our lives, so overall I'd call it a win.”

  “I'm sorry it came to that. It's just... when people think it's impossible to hurt you, they eventually stop trying. And over time, staying detached became so ingrained that I didn't know how to shut it off.” She pauses. “My mother did that on purpose, didn't she?”

  “Yes. She lives under this platform, so she could have been watching you for weeks.”

  “Is that why she didn't speak to me earlier?”

  “I have no idea. But if she had revealed herself before, she couldn't have gotten that reaction out of you today. And then we would all be dead now.”

  “So you think I should speak with her.”

  “That's your call. But I will say this. I never had parents. You know the story: created in a vat, grew up in the jungle stealing food to survive and all that shit.”

  She nods. “Your origins form the seed of the Live Soldier legend that has grown up around you.”

  “You think so? I've never thought of it that way before. But anyway, not a day goes by that I don't wonder what my life would be like - what I would be like - if I'd had parents. So it would be a shame if you missed out on that chance.”

  “But she abandoned me.”

  “Yes, 60 years ago. They say people can't change, but I don't think that's true. It just takes a long time, and six decades is plenty. You don't have to be nice to her, though. Shout, scream, curse. Say all the things you never could, all those years ago. And then see how you feel afterwards.”

  “You want me to be emotional.”

  “Unless you like being cut off from the rest of humanity?”

  “I don't. But it is dangerous to become involved with other people. Just look at you, for example.”

  “What are you talking about?”

  “I should not be telling you this. But if I was you, I would have broken my promise to me.”

  “Sorry, who would have broken what?”

  “I'm saying that you should be back in Opacity right now. But you feel guilty about how selfish you used to be, and so you are trying to make up for it by helping others. And it is going to get you killed.”

  “So people keep telling me. But believe it or not, I'm thankful for my guilt. It forced me to be better when nothing else could. And besides, you're part of the squad now. We can't leave you to fight the Null alone.”

  Rajani's lip quivers, and then she wraps her arms around me. I'm too surprised to reciprocate, but she doesn't seem to mind.

  “Thank you. It feels good to be part of something greater than myself.” She stands up. “I think I will go see my mother now.”

  “Good luck.” I say quietly.

  CHAPTER 27

  We spend the afternoon nursing ourselves back to health - which is just tough guy code for lying around doing sweet fuck all. But the evening holds some unexpected excitement. Delez and Peace spend the first half of it curled up in their corner of the lab, whispering to each other. But as the night deepens, they stand up and ask for our attention.

  “What's going on?” Francis asks curiously.

  Peace digs her toe into the floor. “Um, as some of you know, I've been worried about how I will handle normal life after all of this is over. But I've decided to forget about that. All I care about is right now. This moment, when I'm not killing anyone, or waiting for Delez to get shot, or for the Null to take over the goddamn world. And in that spirit... we've decided to get married. I know it won't be official, and it's just another knee jerk reaction to the prospect of dying soon, but I don't care.”

  “We're not asking for anyone's blessing.” Delez jumps in. “It's just that we really dig each other, and after everything we've been through, neither of us can imagine relating romantically to anyone else. So what do you say? Wanna watch us get hitched?”

  Francis pumps his fist in the air. “Hell yes! I love grand, largely meaningless gestures!”

  “Here's to what might conceivably be love!” Lucy adds. “May you become divorced quickly and at the slightest provocation.”

  “Can I be best man?” I ask.

  “I was just about to ask!” Delez replies. Then he turns to Rajani. “And we would be honored if you would do the honors.”

  The Medgician looks concerned.

  “But I don’t know the rules very well. Isn't a white dress involved?”

  “Just douse Peace in nanovax! The non-weaponized kind, preferably. And don't worry about the rules. Everything you say sounds solemn and highly official, and that's good enough for us. Oh and by the way, how did things go with your mom?”

  “Have you been drinking?” Rajani asks.

  “Certainly. Now, ar
e you going to marry us or what? Come on, we might only have days left to live!”

  And so it comes to pass that a green skinned half-breed marries a serial killer and a cartel enforcer in a laboratory built out of logs. I don't suppose I'll ever get to say that sentence again. There is much giggling throughout, but also a sense of gravity that the absurdity of the situation cannot entirely dispel. Like Delez said, all of this could go away tomorrow. But tonight, we are free to enjoy this misfit family we've made for ourselves. I only wish our other members were here to enjoy it too. Jinx, Ryo and Den. Amy and Balthazar. Tiana, Ethan and Morgan. Kalana, the soccer moms and not so little Sophie. Everyone who has played a part in the Anex show, which most people are afraid to watch now because it's gotten a little too real.

  .

  The next day, we switch into preparation mode. Rajani kicks things off by turning Hera's entire lab into a nanovax assembly line. We act as her helpers. The Medgician still doesn't show much emotion, but she has begun to verbalize her feelings with a sort of introspective awe. She reminds me of an explorer traveling a foreign land. Each new vista holds surprises that can be good or bad, but never boring.

  Peace and Delez are loved up to the max. They seem determined to enjoy every second of married life, and delight in referring to one another as the old ball and chain. Lucy is unchanged, but Francis has found a lover among the Unders. There are lots of jokes about tops, bottoms and green skin fetishes, but he seems happy which is nice to see. As for me and Tikal, we have settled into a pleasant rhythm, but the war effort consumes most of our time.

  Overall, it feels a lot like the lead up to our march on Kingston with the rabble army. We were faced with a different set of problems then, but it all boils down to training, requisition, and talking high-strung people down out of trees (sometimes literally on this occasion). Twice, globetanks circle us at a distance before heading back to Medival. So they probably know we're coming. But there isn't much we can do about that.

  And then, all of a sudden, everything is ready. 62 Gardens have been armed for war. Spread out in a line, they make for a wild sight - one that has never been seen before and may never be again. Hera has set up a master comms channel; and through it, she orders the advance. Fans roar, and the platforms accelerate over the plain. We estimate that it will take six hours to reach Medival's living walls. The sky is a deep, cloudless blue, the air hot and sticky. The Gravs look tense but ready. I keep imagining that I hear dice rolling around inside my head. Can't imagine why.

  An hour into our drawn out charge, the arcology's solar sails clear the horizon. And three hours after that, we see a black cordon drawn across the wetlands ahead. They are arrayed in their hundreds: more globetanks than I thought still existed. What kind of war machine must the Null have at their disposal, to field an army of this size at will?

  The two forces close on each other. I'm hanging from a tree on the underside of our platform, fitted out in Rajani's newest invention. It's a suit of armor made entirely of sculpted nanovax. Hera got a two-handed broadsword. We haven't had time to field-test any of it, but the stuff is about to get a major trial by fire. The tanks are 300 meters away now. A boom echoes along the enemy line, and an encompassing white mesh soars up into the sky. It hangs suspended for a moment, and then descends upon the Gardens.

  I heft my vine. We've spent the last few days learning swing techniques from the Gravs, but training and battle are very different things. Below us, the tanks sprout gun barrels from their equators. Bullets rip into the foliage nearby. Then a larger cannon goes off. Our platform takes a direct hit. Trees turn into inverted bonfires, and the heat becomes unbearable.

  “Go!” Tikal shouts, and I drop from my perch. The vine I'm holding has its roots further forward, and so I swing straight at one of the tanks. I raise my armored hands, and they pass right through its shell. My body follows, and now I’m inside the vehicle. A slash of my sonic shear drops me into an orb with three soldiers in it. They must be new recruits because their hair is closely shorn, scars minty fresh. They close in around me, faces expressionless. There is no coordination to their movements, though - being nullified doesn’t make you a better fighter.

  One lifts a handgun, but I take her arm off at the elbow before she can fire. The woman looks curiously at the stump. Then she launches herself at me, and we go down in a shower of blood. The other two start firing at point blank range. Rounds ping off my armor. I swing my shear in a horizontal arc that severs ankles from feet. Then I cut a hole in the floor and fall through into the control chamber. A Null pilot lies nested within a tangle of wires here, eyes closed and barely breathing.

  The sight throws me, and I start to flail wildly with my shear. The software core is cut in two. The tank wobbles, groans and then disintegrates, coming unglued faster than I would have thought possible. I sink down into a viscous pit of nano-materials. Utterly panicked, I fight my way through the sludge and into open air. A vine trails past, and I grab it without thinking. Now I'm climbing hand over hand into the sky. This Garden has barely been touched by the battle. The inverted canopy swallows me, and I tuck myself into a kink between branches, panting and mildly crazed but euphoric as well. I may have kicked my drug habit, but I will always be an adrenaline junkie.

  That being said, I would like to curl up in a ball and hide for a while. But there's no time for that. The sky should be visible through the trees, but all I can see is a wall of green marked with flashes of bright color. We've reached Medival. The Garden is moving at breakneck speed now. Mad laughter can be heard as the Gravs realize that holy shit, we're really doing this.

  The green pyramid grows to fill the world. An entire army holds its breath, and then we smash into the living facade. A splintering, tearing sound assaults my eardrums. I'm ripped from my perch - no, the tree is falling with me, snapped roots and all. A vine tries to save me, but it is half dead itself, severed from the Garden's soil. We fall together, my botanical friend and I, with no knowledge of up and down or any concept of where we will land.

  It won't be the suspense that kills me, though. Pink leaves strike my face, and then a branch clips my leg, sending me into a hard spin. I crash land in a meshwork of thick branches. My chestplate cracks open, and a shard pierces the skin just above my heart. My left leg is pinned beneath me. But I've found a pocket of calm at least, and time to take a breath.

  The branches supporting me are all part of a single tree - a banyan, I think. Knobbed joints connect them to one another. Little by little, I shift my weight off my trapped leg. When it's no longer a break risk, I wriggle free of the vine and my shattered chestplate, careful not to puncture myself further. Then I draw the nanovax shard from my flesh. God only knows what the stuff will do to my white blood cells, but there's no point worrying about that now.

  Somewhere above, I can hear the Garden carving a path through the living wall. But this is quickly eclipsed by a new sound, one straight from the darkest tracts of my ancestral memory. It is a clacking, chirping animal noise, coming this way fast. I take off through the press of branches. I think I'm heading deeper into the wall, but who the fuck knows? The sounds of pursuit fade quickly at least; there must be hundreds of corpses back there for my nightmares to feast on.

  This place is insane. Unless I'm way off, the entire wall is one huge tree. And although there is little light, that hasn't stopped a host of lesser plant life from growing up around it. I push through acid green ferns; slide past flowers the size of cows; run from a venus fucking flytrap with a half-digested bat in its jaws. The only upside is that I'm too busy freaking out to worry about Tikal. I must be getting somewhere though, because the branches become less dense until I'm climbing instead of crawling, and falling becomes a danger. I can see glimpses of open air up ahead. A final scramble up an inclined trunk, and I stop dead to stare.

  Rajani told us that Medival was beautiful, but I wasn't expecting this. It is a city of freestanding staircases, hanging skyscrapers and vaulted walkways, all carved from
a rich wood that has been oiled to a chocolate shine. Green light filters down through the roof, creating a softly toned world that seems to sit outside of time.

  But now it is under attack. Over a dozen Gardens have broken through the wall. One is falling into a manicured forest below me. Another collides with a hanging building, severing its supports and bringing it crashing down. Entire sections of the city have caught fire. Gravs pour from the wall like ants, and Null soldiers fire on them from positions atop bridges and platforms. But of the Medivalians themselves, I see no sign. Could the entire city have been nullified in such a short time? For Rajani's sake, I hope not.

  I start to climb down the interior side of the wall. The angle is undercut, making the descent doubly difficult, but there’s no way I'm going back into the banyan. Twenty grueling minutes later, I reach the ground. The forest here is a cultivated paradise. I pick a path and head inward, passing ponds and picnic areas as I go. The Gravs have a simple mission: kill the Null wherever they find them, until none are left. But I have a date with the Architect.

  According to Rajani, Medival's richest neighborhood is buried in a subterranean grotto heated by a network of hot springs. It is located in the middle of the city, and is our best guess as to where the Architect might be. The squad expected to become separated, so the plan was to meet at a statue that marks the grotto's entrance. Now I just need to reach it.

  A handful of Gardens have breached the wall intact, and they are spewing nanovax down upon the city. Wherever it touches the forest, all life dies. I cut across flower beds and wooded hillsides to avoid the massacre. After half an hour of this, I leave the parklands behind. This new area is a warehouse district. I run along arrow-straight streets past huge, featureless buildings. More than once, I see groups of Null hurrying in the opposite direction. One woman looks back at me, but does not deviate from her course.

  My chest wound burns, and my stomach muscles haven't fully healed either. It is statistically unlikely that my squadmates are any better off, but I will only know for sure when I reach the rendezvous point. And now, a block ahead, movement. Null soldiers are emerging from a warehouse in groups of two. Each pair is carrying what looks like a body between them.