After War

by Tim C. Taylor

  I got to my feet, shaking with so much rage that I couldn’t take the shot without risking the bookcase behind the old chair.

  I yelled in frustration before calming down and explaining. “You see? This is why I hate frakking aliens. I can’t even kill you properly.”

  “I know what you’re feeling. That’s why I came here, because I feel the same things. We can help each other.”

  That did it. The alien’s lie fixed whatever had been wrong with my resolve. My arm steadied, and my aim settled on the creature’s gut. “Tell it to your alien gods, pal. I’m not buying it.”

  “But, NJ,” screamed the alien, “it’s the truth!”

  You have a firing solution, said the Sarge. Take the shot!

  I blinked. “What did you call me?”

  “NJ McCall. Your real name is Ndeki Joshua, but so many alien dumbwads assumed Joshua was your first name that you added McCall as a joke. Over time, you came to prefer the new name. NJ McCall, the farmer, needn’t be the same person as Sergeant Ndeki Joshua of the 247th Assault Marines. Only as McCall can you escape your past.”

  “What the frakk?”

  “You were nearly sent to a penal world for gross dereliction of duty in the face of the enemy, but your CO intervened personally. She said that now that the war was turning to peace, we needed more people like Sergeant Joshua.”

  “The colonel had no right to be merciful,” I said, remembering the time she visited my cell. Colonel Hrolfa was a Jotun: a shaggy seven-foot-tall alien with an over-abundance of limbs. She didn’t know me at all, had never spoken directly to me in the forty years she’d been my CO. It was the kind of political gesture that was way too far over my pay grade to understand. Since that day I had been in debt to an alien, a debt I could never repay, and all because during the final engagement of my war I’d shown mercy.

  “The enemy situation was hopeless,” I explained to Silky. “We’d been sent to mop up a battalion of Gliesans dug into a hillside. They had no support, no chance. We all knew the war was ending. I felt sure they were about to surrender.”

  “I understand.”

  “I’d done enough killing. By the end of the war, I was commanding a heavy weapons squad. We had missile locks on their position, and I had a Gliesan spotter in the sights of my carbine. But I couldn’t pull the trigger and I couldn’t order my people to fire.”

  “What happened?”

  I shrugged. Then I wondered why I was talking at all. Sanaa was always telling me to interact with other people, I told myself. Maybe this counted as a good thing?

  “It would have been a waste of ammo anyway,” I continued. “The captain had already ordered a salvo from divisional artillery, and they had seriously big guns. Ten seconds later and the hill had transformed into a crater. That was the end of my war.”

  “I know,” hissed the alien. Now, as a rule, people don’t really hiss when they speak, unless they’re in space with a major suit-integrity problem. But although the translator system’s words were as neutral as ever, the alien voicing them was hissing like… well, like a pressure suit with a leak. Not knowing Silky’s species, I couldn’t tell whether the hissing was meant to convey sincerity, or was simply the consequence of a surfeit of legumes in last night’s dinner.

  “You could have pulled the trigger,” said the alien, “but you didn’t… Same as you hesitated earlier today – out there with your SA-70. You had me bang in your sights and didn’t fire. That’s why I chose you. Why I came here.”

  Damned alien is laughing at you, said Bahati. Can’t you see? Kill it before it gets inside your head. And I mean that literally.

  Bahati’s right, said Sanaa. There was something odd about the way you felt compelled to exit the gully and run back to the deck. I feel the same oddness now.

  I brushed the voices aside. I didn’t need dead people to tell me how to deal with this alien. “Nice try, Silky. You see, the only aliens I’ve ever known have either used me as plasma fodder or shot at me. Oh, and let’s not forget my friends left to die because they never made the grade as Marines. I came out here to get away from your sort. So if you really knew anything about me, you would never have come a-visiting.”

  “I do know about you, NJ. I came to ask for sanctuary.”

  I laughed. The story was getting more bizarre by the moment. “Now I know for sure you’re lying. And a final piece of advice for your next life. If you ever want to visit an old soldier on his land, come openly. Don’t sneak in under cover.”

  “I didn’t. I only took cover when I thought you weren’t alone.”

  The rain started drumming against the window. I didn’t fancy going outside to dump the alien corpse once I’d shot it.

  “I heard you talking to other people,” it rambled, as if I cared. “A conversation. When I met you, I needed it to be alone. So I scouted your property.”

  It was talking about the conversation I was having with Sanaa and Bahati on the deck. I guess that sounded like there were other people. Just how good was this Silky’s hearing? He had been over 700 meters away.

  Silky stated the obvious. “There aren’t any others, are there?”

  “No one living.”

  “It’s okay, NJ. My own people talk to their friends who didn’t survive the war.”

  I laughed. Damn freak thought I was a lunatic.

  Problem was, it was probably right.

  I looked out the window at a wall of rain so heavy that it had moved from pitter-patter, through drumming, into a constant roar. It would be the easiest thing in the world to shoot this bastard and dump him in the floodwater, but he was right. I didn’t want to pull the trigger.

  I’d done enough killing.

  I flicked the safety on, and began unbuttoning my shirt. “You think I’m talking to myself,” I told him, willing the alien to make a run for it so I could punch him again. “You think I hold conversations with memories of fallen comrades. Well, you’re right. After a fashion.”

  I put a little distance between me and the armchair, turned around and took off my shirt to reveal my back.

  — CHAPTER 3 —

  Some people have scars, unsightly hairs, claw marks, birthmarks, marks of ownership, or tattoos that seemed like a good idea until the next morning. I even knew of units called Wolves who deliberately infected themselves with a parasite that transformed their skin into brightly colored scales that could protect against shrapnel.

  Me, I had bumps.

  When they settled me on Klin-Tula and told me I was now a reservist-colonist-nice person, I did what every good soldier does on liberty – I made my way to the bar closest to the Legion base, and started blowing my demob money on drink and easy companionship.

  Even the paid kind of companionship hesitated to take my business when they saw my freaky back.

  Just as well, because their revulsion inspired me to sober up while I still had enough time to buy a farm in the back end of nowhere, where the land prices were so low that they practically paid me to come here.

  At first glance, I’m a mutant with two lines of muscular bumps either side of my spine, kind of a human-camel half-breed, as several people have been kind enough to suggest in the past.

  The origin of those bumps came from the opposite end of my military service, and another drunken night when solemn oaths were made between brothers and sisters on the eve of their first posting.

  A lot of squads got themselves tattoos to show they belonged to each other. I’ll never know what brain juice someone spiked our drink with, but we decided we just had to go beyond team ink. Lightyears beyond.

  Every squad member grew 36 lumps of fast-grow muscle, plugged by false skin that covered a universal access port with a crude connection to the spinal column. Essentially, these were amateur versions of the AI ports we later had under our ears, where my AI partner, Conteh, had lived for decades when he wasn’t secured inside the chest band of my battlesuit.

  We were known throughout the 247th Marines as Stegosaurus
Squad. All 37 of us in the squad, because – with surprising alacrity – Veteran Sergeant Chinelo Fofana joined in.

  Then war happened.

  As my comrades began to fall, we would cut their AIs out of their flesh, or eject them from their armor, and place them into the waiting ports in our backs. We had to move fast. Most AIs went insane within minutes of following the link to their human partner through death and beyond. Our AIs were different, reprogramed to take a constantly updated simulation of their human partners that merged with the AI personality on the death of the Marine.

  And it worked… mostly. Maybe giving the AIs a duty to perform after the death of their human partners gave them enough of a distraction to make it through the psychological wrench of bereavement more or less intact.

  “Why doesn’t the skin match?” asked the alien.

  To be honest, I had completely forgotten he was there. I do that far too often. Get lost in my memories and can’t find my way out. “I took skin plugs from each of my fallen brothers and sisters.”

  “But this one on the left. The skin tone is too light”

  “That’s Bahati’s, the last to die. We humans don’t all look the same.”

  “I’ve never seen a human with skin so pale.”

  “Yeah, well. We’re a complicated species.”

  I knew why Bahati was so pale. Years after her death, I’d seen the records. The slaves who’d seeded our regiment centuries ago were 85% Tanzanian, 10% Greek, and 5% unlucky. I’d been to Greece on Earth, and recognized traces of dear Bahati in some of the faces there. More than traces, to be honest. Far too much. I’d fled back to Africa, where I’d been billeted, searching for somewhere to belong… I was losing myself in my thoughts again, and there was no way I was about to tell this alien of my pain.

  “You have AIs for company,” said Silky. “It is a strange ritual but explains the voices. I thank you for explaining.”

  “They’re more than AIs. Over the years they’ve come to identify ever more with their human component. They’re digital shades of my brothers and sisters.”

  Said shades had gone very quiet. They talked as if they were my human comrades, not digital echoes, and I think they found any reminder of their true nature to be deeply wounding. It was a topic I always evaded.

  “And they still function?” asked Silky. “Battlesuit AIs would fetch a lot of money in the open market. You should not reveal your secret so readily.”

  I laughed at the thought of me murdered and skinned, butchered for my AIs. Death would be worth it to look up from hell and see the surprise on my murderers’ faces when they got to know my crazy AIs.

  “You think this funny?” Silky was turning out to be annoyingly serious. I added this to his scorecard of faults. “Military AIs are forbidden to civilians. You are worth a lot of money, NJ. But this is not why I chose to seek refuge with you.”

  “I’m worth money? Not a chance. Why do you think the Legion let me keep my ghosts? They took back Conteh, my own AI, and left me with the others because they wrote them off as worthless ex-military junk. If you put my dead friends into a battlesuit, or tank, they would run amok for about one minute before exploding with excitement. Eighteen slots are empty, three are half mad, and the balance are plain bat-shit crazy. Most haven’t spoken to me in decades. The diagnostics say they’re still functioning. I think they’re still there, they’ve just chosen to withdraw.”

  “Like you, NJ?”

  “Look, pal. Thanks to my ghosts, I have a head filled with constant revelations, few of which are ever actually helpful. So I’ve no need for help from an alien. Anyway, that’s plenty about me. Tell me what mess are you trying to land me in? Who are you running from?”

  The alien licked its lips, probably a learned human gesture but it sure looked nervous. Like a lot of worlds in the Human Autonomous Region we’d carved out for ourselves in the war, peacetime hadn’t brought milk and honey and a life without taxes. Klin-Tula had its gangs, bent politicians, and private armies – many of whom hired themselves out for a fee. There were a whole lot of bad people for this alien to have pissed off. And that was just here on the planet. Compared to the moons, outer planets, and the mining habitats, Klin-Tula was a frakking utopia. Who was he running from?

  “The Human Legion,” said the alien.

  I frowned when Silky’s words threw a wrench into my musing. I’d asked him a question but couldn’t remember what. “Go on, what about the Legion?”

  “I’m running from the Human Legion, NJ. I’m a deserter.”

  My home suddenly felt ice cold. I shrugged my shirt back on, but it didn’t warm me in the slightest.

  A deserter!

  Even to form the word in my mind made me gag with disgust.

  — CHAPTER 4 —

  “No, no, no!” I shouted. “Do I have to hit you again?”

  The alien ignored me and kept trying to explain why it had deserted, and I kept yelling that I didn’t care. It had run when so many had stood their ground and died. No amount of pretty words could justify that.

  It finally realized I wasn’t going to be persuaded, and changed tack. “You don’t have to report me,” he said.

  “Actually, I do. I wasn’t discharged dishonorably, and unlike you I didn’t run away. I was demobilized.”

  “So, you’re in the reserves?”

  “Of course I’m in the frakking reserves. Look, NJ the Farmer says you can walk out that door and take your chances in the floods. Sergeant Ndeki Joshua of the 6th Brigade, Second Reserve Army says you gotta stay, because he’s obliged to place you under arrest until he can turn you over to the proper authorities. And that’s what I’m gonna do, just as soon as the floods recede.”

  “Which are you, NJ? Farmer or soldier?”

  “Haven’t I just told you? Besides,” I shrugged, “the farm’s a bust. I’ve never been much good as a farmer.”

  “I can help with that. I was a farmer myself, before the war. Tell me what you need to get the farm working the way you want. I’m asking for sanctuary, not a free ride. Just let me help you for three days until the floods recede. Then turn me in if you have to.”

  “Yeah, right. Three days to work on me. I’ll give you credit, alien, you have a way with words, even words in my language. That doesn’t mean in three days’ time I’m going to be scurrying around on all fours on my own farm, begging to heel and licking your pasty alien butt on command. If that’s what you’re planning, then think again. I’d rather die. Better still, I’d rather you die.”

  The alien shook its head, flicking its fishy dreadlocks. I hated when it acted human. “I know I can’t bind you to me, NJ, and I will not try. I am certain I can earn your loyalty and your trust – maybe more – but not in so short a time.”

  “Good,” I said. “Just so we’re clear.”

  I chewed over the alien’s offer of help. It hurt to admit, but it made sense. What had I to lose? It wasn’t as if he was going to persuade me to set him free, and I was half-hoping he would attack me, because I was sure who would win that fight. So I told him everything about Sijambo Farm. About the pigs, and the fields of adapted maize and barley. About how the yields were always disappointing, and the market price seemed to drop the moment I stepped into town, and how, frankly, buying my own farm was one of those snap decisions for which the initial enthusiasm had died a prolonged and agonizing death. After a while I started rambling about drent that had nothing to do with farming, because my mind was focused on more difficult and immediate questions. The area around here would be a lake for about three days. What were we going to do about food, sleep… and messier bodily functions? He might be an alien deserter but I couldn’t make him pee on the floor. I mean, I only bought the carpet four months ago. Maybe I should shoot him after all.

  “Say that again?”

  Eh? I wasn’t expecting the alien to interrupt and ask me something. I backtracked and tried to remember what I’d been talking about. Oh, yeah. “Yields. They go right down after every
flood. I figure the ground saturates, drowns the roots.”

  “But you’ve flood defenses.”

  “Sure. The gully you took cover in diverts the surge of water coming down from the hills, so it isn’t like it washes the topsoil away. But the farm becomes an island in a lake that stretches nearly to the horizon. That’s a lot of water.”

  “This area is semi-desert, NJ. You must irrigate.”

  “I do. My water’s pumped straight from the Bay of Bundy desalination plant.”

  “And when they put in the irrigation system, they would have ensured good drainage at the same time.”

  “That’s what I paid for,” I snapped. “What are you saying? That I’m a dumb old soldier who got taken for a ride? That they never did the work?”

  “No, you idiot. I’m saying you’ve done far worse than that. These floods that come when the moons align… they aren’t drowning your plants, and they certainly aren’t a freak occurrence. They’ve happened regular as clockwork for millions of years. It’s a natural cycle.”

  “What are you getting at?”

  “I mean, Farmer McCall, that life on this planet has evolved to cope with the floods. Some species even exploit them as part of their lifecycle.”

  Out of long habit, I asked Conteh for the answer to the alien’s annoying riddle, but my best friend who’d saved my life so many times was no longer there, taken away from me on the shaky grounds that the battlesuit AI was Legion property.

  “Meskilot Blight,” said the alien.

  Conteh had always been the smart one, but I didn’t need him to know I’d gotten myself into deep, deep drent. A little late, I felt an icy blast of wind on my face followed inevitably by an electric shock up the ass. When I was suited up in my ACE/2 armor, those sensations had been Conteh’s amusing little ways of warning me I’d messed up, without doing or saying something that would be noticed by other Marines on the squad BattleNet.