They arrived back at their headquarters just as the war sirens were wailing the start of the day’s hostilities.
3.
After five days, Ewen had become accustomed to the hustle and bustle of the battalion workshop, and even enjoyed it. Most of the work for the twenty or so men in his unit consisted of making up usable PD weapons from those that had been recovered. It was straightforward dismantling, inspection, and reassembly. Damaged components were consigned to the mobile recycling plant, but Ewen’s training enabled him to apply his skills to some of the more sophisticated equipment that filled the booty bags.
Occasionally combat troopers came swaggering in to reclaim favourite PD weapons. From their conversation, Ewen learned that the Diablons were an uncouth, uneducated bunch of thugs with a callous indifference to themselves and everyone else. Many were mentally retarded, and had just enough intelligence to fire a PD weapon at a grey uniform. They were the ones that died first. The criminal, street-wise types survived a little longer, but they were all doomed to die. There were no tours of duty for the combat troopers in the Diablon Army. Their officers ordered them to fight until they died. Rumour had it that their walking wounded were flung in a cavern and left to die of their injuries. None ever returned home, wherever that was. Ewen’s few casual questions about Diablon social structure had been greeted with laughter.
“If they have got a cultural and social structure,” an officer had declared, “I reckon we’re doing them a big favour by wiping-out the criminal scum they enlist in their army.”
A voice broke in on Ewen’s thoughts.
“Mixed lot for you this morning, tekkie,” said the NCO in charge of the workshop. He emptied a bagful of infrared visors, radios, and miscellaneous gear onto Ewen’s bench. “Do what you can. Don’t waste time on rubbish.” He moved to the bench behind Ewen to collect some cannibalized PD weapons.
Ewen sorted through the cascade of junk. Those items that were obviously beyond repair he dropped in his recycling bin. He opened a radio transceiver carrying case and discovered that it contained several Araman army ration packs with unbroken seals. The logo on each one depicted a man eating. Interestingly, there was no fingerprint panel on each carton because soldiers received general purpose ration packs that were not designated for particular individuals. Ewen’s own food packs were diverted to him at the battalion headquarters for him to collect each day.
He glanced quickly around to ensure he wasn’t being watched and slipped his fingernail under the seal. The vacuum pack opened with a soft hiss. Inside were the biscuits and vitamin capsules that he’d seen soldiers eating. He stared down at them, wondering.
What if…?
No - it was food intended for others; it would be certain to poison him. Even the act of picking up one of the biscuits required an effort because even to touch someone else’s food was breaking the conditioning of a lifetime. But, like his curiosity about flies, Ewen had taught himself to question his conditioning. He took a cautious sniff at the biscuit. It smelt good. He broke a piece off and nibbled experimentally, ready to spit it out if it tasted foul. A rich, indescribable flavour filled his mouth and roller-coastered over his taste buds. He ate the biscuit with guilty relish while pretending to examine an infrared visor. Never had he tasted anything so good. It even seemed to make him feel good. There was less guilt when he ate the second biscuit, even less on the third, and none at all on the fourth.
4.
On his 7th evening Ewen was allowed to queue at the battalion communication trailer that was parked in the HQ cavern and make one call. Voice only. Jenine was delighted to hear him and bubbled over with questions about his well-being and safety.
“Is your food getting through to you, Ewen?”
Ewen assured her that he was eating well. Which was true: he had taken to surreptitiously collecting soldiers’ ration packs on his daily battleground forays. He now had a large horde in the kitbag under his bed.
“Guess what, Ewen. I’ve been selected for the faculty’s 11th year womens’ team.”
Ewen chuckled. “Here I am, fighting a war, and all you can do is go on about your silly games. Have you no sense of proportion?”
“You are not fighting.”
“Ah. You’ve been snooping?”
Jenine got angry. “I checked up on what you were doing. Believe it or not, I was worried about you, although on second thoughts, I think it would be an excellent idea if you had luminous targets tattooed on you, and you were paraded naked up and down the front line.”
“Jenine, I need a favour.”
“Ha!”
“It’s only a small favour. I wouldn’t dream of undermining your vindictiveness towards me too much. I need the complete maps of Arama that are on my main datapad. Is it within your ability to transfer them over this line to my pocket pad?”
“It is, but I don’t see why I should.”
“Because your doing me such a favour will make me feel guilty about the way I treat you. It will cause me sleepless nights. Surely that makes it worthwhile?”
“Is that your lateral thinking at work?”
“Just my scheming nature.”
“Have you cleared its memory? Those toys don’t hold much.”
Ewen glanced down at his pocket datapad that was plugged into the telephone’s data bus. “Yes… All ready.”
“Hold on.”
The troopers in the queue behind Ewen got impatient so he pretended to hold a conversation. He stopped talking when Jenine came back on the line.
“Okay, Ewen, standby.”
A light flashed on the datapad to indicate that it was receiving data. It glowed steadily when the transfer was complete.
“How’s that?”
“Jenine you’re wonderful. Must go now. There’re others waiting. The comms facilities here are antique. See you in four days. Try not to break too many legs on the pyramid.”
He cleared the line, pulled his pocket datapad from the bus slot, and hurried across the compound to the accommodation hut.
Corporal Nive entered the hut an hour later and saw Ewen on his bed, studying a pocket datapad.
“What’s that? Lists of woman to look up when you’re let out? Oh I forgot. You lot don’t have nothing to with women, do you?”
Ewen looked up and grinned. “Studying. The 11th year finals are the last and worst. After that, I become a fully ordained technician.”
Nive grunted, yanked his boots off, and stared thoughtfully at Ewen. “Hard to think of you as one of those guys that we walk four blocks to avoid. Looks like you need one of these. It’ll last a lifetime if you always clean it.” He reached into his kitbag and tossed something to Ewen.
“A razor?”
The corporal grinned and pointed to Ewen’s face. “Always thought the army would make a man of you.”
Ewen put his hand to his chin. His fingertips discovered the rasp of an incipient beard.
That night Ewen had a dream in which a woman emerged naked from a strange reservoir and walked towards him. The woman had a fully developed body but her features bore a likeness to Jenine. Her skin was the colour of polished bronze. The sky framing her voluptuous body was a rich, colour-saturated blue. He woke up, confused and frightened.
A dream!
Hitherto no-one had ever featured so strongly in his dreams about the beautiful blue dome. Of course, it could not have been Jenine. She was a technician; technicians’ bodies did not develop like that. And yet the woman had the same jade green eyes, and the same blonde curls - matted against her head. His heart rate gradually fell and then picked up again when he realised that something was wrong. His body felt that it didn’t belong to him. It wasn’t until he turned over that he realised what was amiss.
The dream was alien enough, but the erection, pushing with painful insistence against his army-issue pyjamas, was infinitely more so.
5.
Sergeant Jode Altir’s initial reaction to Ewen’s request was one of amazement.
“You wa
nt to what!”
Ewen met the NCO’s incredulous gaze. “I’d like to do a guard duty stint for my last night, sergeant.”
“You’re crazy, tekkie. No-one volunteers for guard duty!”
“It’s safe, sergeant. I mean it’s only a ritual, isn’t it? The Diablons never attack at night, and we never attack them.”
The sergeant nodded. “True enough. But it’s the most boring job there is. Usually a punishment. So what’s the real reason?”
Ewen shuffled his feet and contrived to look embarrassed. If pushed he had decided to say that he wanted to find out what it was like to wear a combat uniform and carry a PD weapon.
Sergeant Altir gave a sudden laugh. “Let me guess. You want a holo-pic of yourself in full combat dress to take home and show around, eh? The return of the hero. And have girls throwing themselves at your feet.”
The hologram notion hadn’t occurred to Ewen although, to his surprise, he found the idea of girls throwing themselves at his feet not unattractive. His nod was convincingly sheepish.
Sergeant Altir considered. The tekkie was right of course: the posting of a guard at night was purely ritual and served no practical purpose other than punishment. If anything, it was the safest job in the army. Also Ewen had worked hard and stayed out of trouble. In fact he had proved so useful that a report had gone through suggesting that a technician be posted to every battalion maintenance unit.
“Yeah why not. Request granted.”
Ewen gave a delighted smile. “Thanks, sergeant.”
“On one condition. Any spare girls you send to me.”
6.
There was one addition to the grey combat dress that Ewen was wearing: an active infrared imaging visor that enabled him to see in the dark. The gadget had come his way for repair in the workshop. A simple repositioning of the atomic battery’s contacts and it was working again. Such valuable devices were not issued to night duty guards because they were not deemed necessary.
He shouldered his PD weapon in the approved manner and sauntered across to the other guard who was settling down for a 12-hour night vigil by sleeping behind a rock.
“Thought I’ll take a walk out there,” said Ewen casually. He jerked his thumb beyond the yellow markers towards the darkened battleground. “Pass the time.”
“If you had to do this every night for a week, you wouldn’t be so keen,” the trooper muttered. “Okay. Don’t go waking me up by stepping on any mines.”
Ewen strolled away. As soon as he was safely out of earshot, his movements became purposeful. He walked for ten minutes, skirting trenches and craters, and trying to reconcile the strange green images he was seeing through the visor with the landmarks he had fixed in his mind during daylight.
He stopped, withdrew his pocket datapad from a pouch on his leg, and consulted the softly glowing screen. He was off course but not seriously so. Another ten minutes and another course correction took him to a complex pattern of foxholes that had been carved out of the ground with laser cutters. He was now in the centre of the mighty battle cavern. No images reached him from the high, vaulting roof when he tipped his head back. He estimated that he was now fifteen-minutes’ walk from the gully where he had seen the dead Diablon soldier.
As he neared his objective, his movements became more cautious. Before venturing across any open space, he first surveyed it thoroughly to ensure that there were no Diablon advance guards in the offing. But the terrain was cold and silent. There were no smears of body heat red visible through the visor. The chances were that the enemy was as lax over mounting a guard as the Araman army.
He reached the rim of the gully and stared along it towards the ominous patch of absolute blackness that marked the opening to the cavern held by the Diablons. According to the maps and his own observations, all four entrances leading to Diablon-held territory were through similar openings in other gullies. Militarily the Diablon position was hopeless; to advance meant their forces had to come under fire from an enemy occupying high ground. The scale of the daily carnage in the gullies was horrific.
He descended slowly, taking great care not to dislodge stones. He worked his way steadily along the bottom of the deep rill towards the cavern opening. His heartbeat quickened and his mouth felt dry, but he pushed on.
At the entrance he raised his helmet for a few minutes so that he could hear better. The silence was such that he could hear the surge of his blood in his ears and the pounding of his heart. He ventured a little way into the tunnel-like opening and increased the visor’s gain. The images became distorted but he could see that the huge tunnel curved to the left. He unslung his PD weapon and released its safety-catch before advancing into the unknown.
According to Ewen’s datapad map, the tunnel should open out into a cavern that was nearly as large as the one held by the Aramans. In fact it was a good deal smaller although still large. Ewen backed off the visor’s gain to sharpen distant images. He could see faint lights in the distance. He debated with himself whether to skirt the perimeter of the cavern or take the more direct route across the centre. He decided on the shortest route to save time.
The floor of the cavern bore relatively few scars of battle although it was difficult to see what that signified; either the Diablons were successful at repelling Araman attacks, or the Aramans never advanced, being content to hold their ground in the adjoining cavern.
The lights became more distinct as Ewen drew nearer. He thought he could hear voices. Certainly there seemed to be more activity in the Diablon positions at night than in the Araman forward camps. He kept a large pile of roof fall boulders between himself and the lights. A shock was waiting for him when he reached the roof fall and peered cautiously around the boulders. He was nearer the lights than he had anticipated. It wasn’t his closeness to the enemy camp that surprised him, but the similarity of their heavy equipment. The mobile zargon light battery was identical to those made in Arama, as was the field communication centre. At the workshop the identical nature of Araman and Diablon PD weapons had been explained by the NCO in charge who had said that the Diablons based their designs on Araman models. Now Ewen was wondering if, during a past battle, the Diablons had captured some Araman heavy equipment. It seemed unlikely. Perhaps there was illegal trading between the two sides?
The sound of a dislodged stone above and behind him jarred his senses. Such was the hair-trigger state of his nerves that he threw himself to one side before realising that he had heard something. There was a bright flash and the harsh crack of a narrow angle PD beam vaporizing rock where he had been crouching an instant before. Even before he completed his roll in the dust, he twisted himself around and loosed off two bolts in the direction of the blasts. A groan of agony and the slightly-built figure in the red Diablon uniform buckled, dropped its PD weapon, and fell from the rocks. He lay writhing in the dust. Blood was spurting from the around the soldier’s fingers as he clutched at his stomach. Distant shouts. Pounding boots.
Ewen looked frantically around. There was no cover around the outcrop. In desperation he scrambled up to the soldier’s former position and threw himself into a hollow between the boulders. The boots pounded nearer and stopped close by. Two men as best as he could judge. He kept his head down and prayed that they wouldn’t hear his heart jackhammering against his ribs.
“So what was that?” demanded the first voice, some way off. “Diablons?”
A powerful zargon lantern splashed light on the rocks around Ewen.
The second voice was scathing. “After hours? Don’t be stupid. The Diablons know the score. A guard shooting at own shadow more like.”
At first Ewen thought he had misheard the comments then he caught a glimpse of what looked like a red uniform through a crack in the rocks. He flattened his body in case the questing beam chanced on the gap. These men were Diablons so what was the meaning of their curious remarks?
For a few moments there was silence as the beam skipped about the scene. A choking cough. The beam whippe
d away. Footsteps moving off and stopping.
“Yeah, found him. Looks like he shot himself.”
“It sounded like three shots,” said the first voice.
“Probably had his PD on auto… Yep - auto. Safety catch off. Crazy idiot. Still, what do you expect after one week’s basic training? Clowns like this - no wonder we’ve got Diablon scum jumping all over us. Okay, leave him. He’ll be dead by morning. The meat details will pick him up.”
The two men walked away, talking in low voices. Very slowly Ewen raised his head. They were soldiers. One made a joke and the other laughed as they headed towards the camp.
And their uniforms were definitely red.
Ewen waited 10-minutes in case more men came. It was deathly quiet apart from the erratic, gurgling noises the dying man made when he exhaled. He pushed himself to his knees and waited another minute to be certain before climbing stiffly down, flexing his limbs to restore circulation. For a moment he was undecided about the soldier he had shot. The incident a few days ago with the booby-trapped corpse had unnerved him, but he wanted to get a good look at a Diablon (But WHICH one of us is the Diablon?) without using the infrared visor and its distorted colour rendition. He switched the visor off and touched the panel on his breast pocket that it gave off just enough light to read by.
Ewen knelt beside the injured man. The shot he had fired had damaged the helmet’s demisting system so that the inside of the dying’s man’s visor was clouded with condensation. He took his own helmet off and carefully loosened the man’s helmet strap.
“You don’t ever look at their faces. They say their stare can drive a man mad even after they’re dead.”
Superstitious rubbish!
He eased the helmet off.
The eyes that stared up at Ewen were not those of a dead man, yet the sudden collision of world-shattering moments, that would be etched in fire on his consciousness for the rest of his life, were of such an intensity that Ewen thought that he had gone insane.
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