Now Barto used the spear with finesse.
A great calm flowed through him, as if the rest of the world had slowed down, and he saw exactly what to do, exactly where to hold the spear. The sharpened point neatly plunged through the ribcage of the beast and skewered its lungs and heart. Showering a wet-iron smell in the air, the creature lay quivering, trembling ... dying.
When Barto came back to his senses, he saw that his legs had been slashed open by the boar’s tusks. The deep gouges left him bleeding, but oddly without any sense of pain or injury. He looked down and studied the corpse of his opponent, the Enemy. Now he had killed. Barto had fresh blood on his hands, real blood from a vanquished opponent.
He liked the sensation.
He knew that this had been no simple exercise. He knew the boar could well have killed him, and that other trainees who had vanished from the barracks must have failed this part of their instruction.
But Barto had succeeded. He was a killer now, and he was one step closer to becoming a soldier.
***
Time didn’t matter. For a soldier, time never mattered. He awoke hours, or days, later back in the HQ infirmary and repair shop—patched up, drugged, but fully aware. A hairless chimpanzee tended him, leaning over in a cloud of disinfectant scents and bad breath. The chimp medical techs knew how to bandage and fix battlefield wounds. They could do no surgery that required finesse, but the soldiers required nothing that needed delicacy for cosmetic effect.
Once injured, if a soldier could be fixed, he would be sent back to the battlefield. If his wounds caused the chimp med-techs too much trouble, he would be eliminated. Every surviving member of the squad bore his share of scars, burns, scabs, and callouses. No one paid attention to these trophies of war; they were part of a soldier’s life, not a badge of honor or bravery.
Since Barto hadn’t been eliminated, he assumed he must have been fixed.
He sat up on the infirmary cot, and the hairless chimpanzees hurried over, uttering quiet reassurances, a few English words, a few soothing grunts. Triggered by his awakening, a signal was automatically sent back to his squad commander.
Barto listened to an assessment of his repaired leg, his stitched muscles and skin, and his bruises and contusions. Not too bad, he thought. He’d suffered worse, sometimes even in training with other soldiers (especially during the initial few months, when they’d first been given their own sets of armor).
He remembered that back then his comrade Arviq, in particular, had thought himself invincible. ...
During downtime before the soldiers crawled into their assigned sleeping bins, the other squad members were required to file through the infirmary to see their injured comrades. Some came only because of orders to do so; most of them would rather have been sleeping.
But the invisible commanders planted instructions to go to the infirmary simply so that other soldiers could see the wounded, could see what could happen to them if they weren’t careful ... but also so they could see that they just might survive.
Recovering, Barto sat up in the uncomfortable infirmary bed and watched the other soldiers come in. His pain went away with another automatic rush of endorphins to deaden his unpleasant sensations ... or perhaps his own determination was enough to quell the nerve-fire of agony.
The fighters filed by. He recognized few of them, all strangers without armor and helmets, though he could have identified each one by the serial numbers displayed on their fatigues. These were soldiers, cogs in a fighting machine. They didn’t have time to be individuals.
When Arviq came up at the end of the line, he stood brusque, nodding gruffly. “You’ll mend,” he said.
“Thank you for saving me,” Barto answered. It was the closest thing they’d had to a conversation in a long time.
“It’s my duty. I await the day when you can fight with us again.” He marched out, and the others followed him. Barto lay back and attempted to sleep, to regain his strength. Through sheer force of will, he growled at his cells and tissues to work harder, to knit the injuries and restore him to full health. ...
Day after day, lying in the infirmary and waiting proved far more difficult than any combat situation Barto had ever encountered. Finally, after a maddening week of intensive recuperation, directed therapy aided by medical technology and powerful drugs, he was released from his hospital prison and sent back to the front.
Where he belonged.
***
The battlefield screamed with pain and destruction, explosions, fire, and death—but to Barto, after being so long in the sheltered quiet of the infirmary, the tumult was a shout of exuberance. He was glad to be here.
The soldiers raced across the ground, each in his own squad position, weapons drawn. They had already driven back the Enemy, and now the fire of laser-lances grew even thicker around them as the others became desperate. They pressed ahead, deeper into Enemy territory than they had ever gone before.
Their helmet locators for sonic mines and shrapnel grenades buzzed constantly, but the reptilian part of Barto’s brain reacted without volition, hardwired into fighting and killing. He dodged and weaved, keeping himself alive.
His point man, Arviq, jogged close beside him, and Barto extended his peripheral vision behind the dark visor to enfold his comrade into an invisible protective sphere. He would assist his partner if he got into trouble—not out of any sense of payback or obligation, but because it was an automatic response, his own assignment. He would have done the same for any other soldier, any member of his squad—anyone but the Enemy.
Precision-guided mortars scribed parabolas through the air and exploded close to any concentration of soldiers who did not display the proper transponders. Amidst screams and thunder, a massive triple detonation wiped out over half of Barto’s squad, but the others did not fall back, did not even pause. They drove onward, continued the push. The fallen comrades would be taken care of somehow, though no one knew how the bloodhounds would ever make it this deep into Enemy-held territory.
This far behind the main battle lines, the Enemy numbers themselves were dwindling, and Barto fired and fired again. The laser-lance thrummed in his gauntleted hands, skewering a distant man’s chestplate and leaving a smoking hole.
But it wasn’t really a man, after all. It was the Enemy.
The chase continued, and the survivors of Barto’s squad ran in the direction of what must have been Enemy HQ. In his dry, dusty mouth he could taste the sweet honey of victory.
But suddenly, unexpectedly, they triggered a row of booby-traps that did not appear on their helmet sensors. Camouflaged catapults popped up, spraying near-invisible clouds of netting, monofilament webs as insubstantial as smoke but sharper than the most deadly razor.
The flying webwork engulfed four soldiers near him, and they fell into neatly butchered pieces. But oddly enough, so did three of the Enemy men rushing in retreat, as if they themselves hadn’t known of these defenses. But their own visor sensors must have been keyed to boobytraps they themselves had planted. ...
Though the questions astonished him, Barto did not pause. His job was not to analyze. Paraplegic computer tactitions and the invisible battlefield commanders did all that work. The voices in his helmet told him to push forward, and so he pushed forward.
Arviq ran beside him, still firing his laser-lance—and numbly Barto realized that most of the other soldiers were dead. His squad had been decimated ... but the Enemy was nearly eradicated as well.
War often required sacrifices, and many soldiers died. But a victory would pay the bloody cost ten times over. They had never gone so far.
The thrill of seeing the Enemy nearly exterminated gave Barto all the enthusiasm he needed, even without an adrenaline rush augmented by injectors in his armor. With a shared glance behind opaque visors, he and Arviq both had the same thought, and ran forward with their four remaining companions. They couldn’t stop now.
Then large gun emplacements popped out of the ground, more massive t
han anything he had ever seen before. Barto reeled in unaccustomed confusion—the Enemy had never exhibited technology like this! Automated fire rained down on them, super powerful laser-lances far more devastating than any of the hand-held rifles.
Soldiers screamed. The blasts were like belts of incinerating flame, vaporizing armor and leaving not even bones for the bloodhounds to retrieve. The firepower pummeled anyone who came close, whether friend or Enemy. They had no chance, no chance at all.
An explosion ripped out a deep crater ten meters from them. Someone screamed, but Barto had no voice. The automated superlasers continued to track across the ground, pinpointing armor, crushing any movement. Barto watched the beams sweep closer, vaporizing everything in the vicinity. His four remaining squad members died in a puff of blood-smoke and molten armor plate.
On impulse he grabbed Arviq and shoved him hard toward the fresh crater. Together, the two dove into the raw trench just as the splash of disintegration passed over them. The voices in his helmet turned to a rainstorm of incomprehensible static.
Within moments the battle stopped. Everyone else was dead.
All of the laser fire and explosions ceased. All the Enemy, all of the squad, every living thing had been annihilated.
Without saying a word, Arviq hauled himself to his hands and knees and reached over to shake Barto, who also recovered his balance. The two of them sat panting for a moment, stunned but still determined. Neither of them—in fact, no one they knew—had ever been so far behind Enemy lines.
They rose up slowly and carefully into the crackling silence, afraid of other targeted automated systems. Clods of dry dirt fell from their armor. Dust and crackling ash roiled through the air ... but nothing else moved.
“We won?” Barto asked. “Is the war over?”
“I hope not.” Arviq turned to him, his mouth a grim line beneath the opaque visor of the helmet. “The war will never be over. But we may have won this battle.”
Barto raised his helmet over the rim of the blasted crater. No weapons responded to the motion. The battlefield remained eerily quiet with only the faint sound of coughing fires and settling dust.
“Must be the Enemy encampment,” Arviq said with a grunt. “Increased defenses— maybe even HQ.” He grinned. “Success!”
But Barto wasn’t so sure. Moving with tense caution, he climbed away from the crater. “No, not HQ. The defenses killed as many of them as us. ID transponders useless.”
Arviq joined him, sole survivors on the sprawling battlefield. Barto could see where the huge gun emplacements had raised up. Adjusting his visor filters, he spotted different infrared signatures, metallic traces, solid structures and hollow passages beneath the scarred ground.
Amazed, Barto crept forward. “We’ve discovered something. We’re required to investigate.”
“No, back to HQ,” Arviq said. “We must report. Our squad was wiped out.”
But Barto shook him off. He stood determined, looking ahead across the scabbed landscape. “Not until we have hard reconnaissance. This could be important.”
Arviq hesitated only a moment. Neither outranked the other, and they had no time for argument, but the other soldier quickly came to his own decision. “Yes. Reconnaissance is part of our mission.”
Most of the time, sly intelligence cats would creep through the darkness, observing Enemy strongholds and reporting back to HQ. But the squad had gone farther into Enemy territory than any known advance, and they might have new information. That was the most important thing. They weren’t doing it for the glory or for a possible promotion, or for any sort of reward. Barto and Arviq would take the risk because it was their duty.
“My head, my thoughts ... are empty,” Arviq said, tapping his helmet.
Barto adjusted his earphones, but still received no transmission and no commands. An uneasy silence echoed in his head. The speakers growled no more repetitive commands to attack and kill.
“How can you stand it?” Arviq looked at him.
Barto took a deep breath. “No choice. Tolerate it.”
Crouched low, they trudged toward the automated gun emplacements, but the motion sensors did not reactivate. The weapons had gone through their program and wiped out the threat. Somehow, the two comrades had slipped through the cracks. They could move forward.
Barto and Arviq found a metal hatchplate in the half-hidden superstructure of the enormous laser-lances. Barto sat down and pressed his helmet against the hatch, carefully listening for any vibration, fully tense. Any moment now he expected the destructive fire to rain out again.
He tugged on the hatch, looking for access controls. “We can infiltrate,” he said. “It’s an underground bunker. Maybe weapons storage. We can bring supplies or power packs back to HQ.”
Together they wiped off dust and blasted dirt from the plate, used tools from their armor belts to crack open the seals, and, finally, they lifted the heavy hatch.
Still no voices came to their heads, no instructions. The two soldiers were on their own. Barto didn’t like it one bit.
They dropped down into the opening, where a steel ladder led into a maw of shadows. They descended, gripping rung after rung with gauntleted hands. If this was Enemy HQ, Barto thought, it was a much larger complex than anything he and his squad had ever lived in.
Finally the ladder ended in an underground tunnel with the hatch cover high above them. Barto paused for a moment to scan the surroundings, then they walked forward into dim silence. The tunnels seemed empty, barely used, abandoned for a long time. Barto realized the Enemy soldiers could not have emerged from this place. No one had walked down these access tunnels in a long, long time.
As point man, Arviq led the way. He strode forward, hands on his weapons, ready for anything. A soldier had to be flexible and determined. The small tunnel lights gave little illumination, but their helmet visors augmented the ambient photons.
Cameras in their helmets recorded everything as reconnaissance files to be downloaded back in HQ. They continued for what seemed like miles, trudging deeper and deeper into the Earth. This place was an important facility, possibly a central complex ... but Barto couldn’t begin to understand it.
From up ahead came a faint throbbing from generators and heavy machinery. Finally, they saw brighter light, thick windows, rectangular plates that shone through to another world, a subterranean complex that seemed like a mythical land. Inside huge grottoes, pale ethereal people moved about wearing bright colors. Plants of a shockingly lush green, garish hues that Barto had never seen before drew the two of them forward like magnets.
“What is this?” Arviq asked. “Some kind of trick?”
“Paradise.”
As the soldiers approached, unable to believe what they were seeing, they crossed an unseen threshold, a booby-trap. They heard a brief hum, a crackle of power-surge. Barto reacted just in time to feel a sinking despair—but not fast enough to get out of the way.
A pressing white light engulfed both of them, swallowing them up. In an instant, Barto’s visor turned black, then so did his eyes.
***
When he awoke, the assault on his senses nearly knocked him back into protective unconsciousness. Sounds, smells, colors bombarded him like weapons fire. His armor and helmet had been stripped away, leaving him vulnerable; without it, he felt helpless, soft-skinned, like a worm.
The bed beneath him was warm and soft, disorienting. A gentle and cozy light surrounded him instead of the familiar garish white to which he was accustomed back in his own barracks. Each breath of the humid air was perfumed with a sweet, flowery scent that nauseated him.
Was this an infirmary? Barto turned his head gently, and a raging pain clamored inside his skull. The place reminded him, oddly, of the time he had been helpless and healing from his previous injury ... but he saw no hairless chimpanzees, no robotic medical attendants. The sheets were soft and slick, vastly different from the other rough, sterile coverings.
Grogginess smothered h
is mind and body. Barto tried to return to full awareness ... but something was wrong. His body remained sluggish and unresponsive, as if the accustomed chemical stimulants were not being released according to program. He needed adrenalin; he needed endorphins.
Arviq lay on another bed beside him, similarly prone, similarly stripped of his armor. When Barto turned his head and directed his gaze in the opposite direction, he was astonished to find another person by his shoulder. Not one of the enhanced animals bred to attend the regiment ... but a woman, a lovely creature with short, honey-brown hair and a shimmering purple garment so brilliant and dazzling that it made his eyes ache.
Responding with combat readiness, he sat up with a lurch—but the woman rushed over and shushed him with a gentle touch. “Quiet now. Everything’s all right. You are safe here.” Her voice sounded like sweet syrup. Alien.
Arviq stirred beside him, groaning in confusion and growing rage.
Then Barto remembered a legend, a story told on the field during the quiet times between battles when some soldiers were more frightened than others. It was a hopeful myth of what happened to brave and dedicated fighters after a death in battle. Was this ... Valhalla?
He glanced over at Arviq, his face contorted with confusion. His eyes glimmered with dark fires. “Are we dead?”
The woman laughed like tinkling crystal. “No, soldier. We are people like yourselves: human beings.”
She didn’t look like him, though, or any other person he had ever seen. Barto shook his head, refusing to acknowledge the pain left over inside. He’d had enough experience with pain. “You’re not ... soldiers.”
The woman smiled and leaned closer to him. A warmth radiated from her scrubbed and lotioned skin. He had never noticed a person’s physical features before, never paid attention ... and he’d never seen anything so beautiful in his life.
“Everyone is a soldier,” he said, “either for our side, or the Enemy.”
The woman continued to give him a slightly superior smile. “You are soldiers, my friends ... but we are not. Not here.” She gave a gesture to indicate her entire underground world. “After all, it’s a war. You’re fighting and dying.” Her thin, dark eyebrows rose up in graceful arches on her forehead. “Did it never occur to you to ask exactly what you’re fighting ... for?”
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