After War

by Tim C. Taylor

  Denisoff cleared his throat and most of us snapped automatically to attention.

  “My name is Assistant Squad Leader Viktor Denisoff, and it is my privilege and duty to welcome you to Camp Prelude.” Denisoff’s thick accent fizzed with its strange, buzzing burr. Maybe his voice was a clue that he had been gene-spliced with an insect. Probably sounds ridiculous, but I’d seen stranger things.

  “Many of you have experienced Marine novice school, Legion base camps or similar. Don’t mistake Camp Prelude for those familiar environments. This camp is not specifically a training establishment, but is Revenge Squad Inc.’s center of operations for the Tata-West branch. The branch commander is Holland Philby, and he is also acting base commander, which means it is Director Philby who is responsible for keeping you warm and safe at night. The total complement on the payroll is 73, and that includes one Goat.”

  A laugh came from one of the recruits to my left, bringing an instant frown to Denisoff’s face.

  “Think that’s funny, Recruit Magenta? Until you prove me otherwise, Goat is worth ten of you. He’s not just a mascot, he keeps the grass short and his nose is the kind of sensor system that can’t be neutralized by cyber-attack. Whereas you so far are nothing but a drain on corporate resources.”

  The long shadow thrown over us by Blockhouse ‘B’ rolled back enough to let the early morning sun touch the top of Denisoff’s spiky hair. Its gold coloring made it glow like burnished metal. I had to admit the look suited the assistant squad leader with his pale skin and cheekbones like launch tubes, and reminded me that I hadn’t cut my hair for over six months.

  “Later today you will be issued with your Aimees, a PE-1621 Artificial Intelligence, Individually Mounted Electronic. These wrist-mounted computers were the Human Marine Corps’ predecessor to the modern BattleNet most of you are familiar with. If this were an army, I would be sorely riled at the prospect of using obsolete tech abandoned by the Corps centuries ago, but you are not in the Army. This is Revenge Squad. For the rest of your period served with us, you are forbidden to refer to the company as an army. You must avoid linking Revenge Squad with the words force, paramilitary, militia, soldiers, warriors and similar martial terms. We want civilians to trust us, not feel threatened by us, because otherwise they won’t pay us to beat the crap out of anyone who pisses them off. Do I make myself clear?”

  The chorus of “Yes, sir.” came in immaculate unison. Even the Littorane, who looked like it was struggling to be out of water, slapped its long tail on the ground. I didn’t know much about Littoranes, but I decided to interpret that as a salute, even though it could just as easily be signaling the onset of explosive diarrhea. Aliens can be such filthy creatures.

  “As a more or less legal and civilian organization,” continued Denisoff, “the lists of roles and responsibilities that will be ready for you on your Aimees will not be referred to as a TO&E, but as the corporate structure for our branch of Revenge Squad Inc. You will study and memorize this branch structure. For now, you need to know only this. The Tata-West branch is expanding rapidly. Currently we have two squads, and of particular interest to you is 2nd Squad with its agents currently broken into two sub- squads: ‘A’ section, and my own ‘B’ section. I will select up to 6 of you to join a new ‘C’ section that I will lead myself, probably swapping one or two of you for veteran agents from the existing sections. The selection process for these vacancies is already underway.”

  “Hold it!” shouted one of the recruits. “I signed a contract, and you countersigned it yourself. You owe me a job.”

  Unbridled violence flashed across Denisoff’s eyes. He stifled that glare almost immediately, but I recognized that look, and it confirmed my early assessment of my new commander. Denisoff was an earlier model of human Marine – closer to the time when humans had been bred as a terror weapon, the attack dogs of the White Knight Empire.

  Denisoff was a berserker.

  “You are correct,” Denisoff told the recruit who had raised the objection. “You signed a contract. One you didn’t read properly. Revenge Squad Inc. has an option in your future. It does not guarantee you employment.”

  Uh, oh! That was news. Half the other recruits flinched at about the same time as me. I bet the other half were smirking. The smug vecks.

  “What if we don’t get picked to join your ‘C’ Section?” asked the guy. I sneaked a look at him – after all, I’d just been told we weren’t in the Army, so it wasn’t like I was really on parade. He had the build of a Marine, but not the bearing. His hair was cut short and neat, short enough for me to see he lacked the tell-tale ridgeline of calloused skin at the base of the neck where the helmet clamped onto combat armor. He must have been born here to reservist Marines.

  I gave this guy credit for asking a question I hadn’t even thought to ask, but I was rapidly losing patience with him. His voice was whining with entitlement. I’d had to battle for everything I’d ever possessed – including my freedom and my life. We’d fought and died so our children would be raised in a world where they were entitled to peace and freedom by right. I still stood by that, even though I’d never been lucky enough to have children of my own. But I sorely wished those future generations had done the decent thing and waited to be born until after mine was dead and buried. From beyond the grave I would be happy for them to act entitled because I wouldn’t have to hear the smug little drellocks.

  Denisoff had been raised during an even more brutal time than my own. His eyes narrowed, and I could almost imagine him squeezing venom out of the corners of his eyes. “Convince me to pick you,” he told the Marine who was not a Marine. “Prove you’re a winner, Chatravedi, not a loser. And don’t ever ask me again what happens if you don’t get picked. If you don’t believe you will succeed, why the hell should I do so?”

  “No, seriously…” replied the guy, Chatravedi.

  Shut up, I thought at him, but he plowed on regardless. “We deserve to know what happens if we are not selected.”

  We? Don’t include me, buddy.

  I recognized the smile that slid across Denisoff’s lips. Some very unpleasant people had worn a smile like that in the last moment before ending someone else’s existence.

  “Very well,” he said. “All of you, if you obey instructions and do your best, Revenge Squad will look after you, even if I do not select you as a ‘C’ Section agent. There are other roles performed by associates. And it sometimes happens that associates are promoted to be agents. But in your case, former recruit Evan Chatravedi, you disobeyed a clear instruction to drop the subject. You have wasted my time, and since I selected you to be here, you have embarrassed me. I hereby terminate your contract.”

  “Hey! You can’t do that. You might think you’re a big man in your petty private army, but I’ve got rights. You can’t do this.”

  “Someone shut him up,” pleaded Denisoff.

  I marched over to Chatravedi and punched his lights out.

  Only in that last moment did he start bringing his arms up to protect himself, which meant he was a liability as well as a whiner. The veck wouldn’t last five seconds around some of the bad people I expected us to be up against.

  You can relax, by the way. I didn’t hit him that hard, just a slap really. Besides, he was biologically a Marine, even if he didn’t act like one, and we’re the ruggedized version of humanity. In fact, as I returned to my place, noting the nods of approval from my fellow recruits, Evan Chatravedi was already coming round.

  Most of us here had upbringings similar to mine. As a cadet or Marine, if you ever even hinted at insubordination in front of an officer, her claws would sneak out and she would slice your head from your body. Even Marines couldn’t knit themselves back together after that. And if you were on parade during a comrade’s decapitation you had to stay at attention as if nothing untoward had happened, even if wet through with arterial spray. Make a fuss and you might suffer the same fate. Chatravedi had gotten off very lightly, and we all knew that.

>   Take his fate as a warning, advised Efia.

  She means keep your nose clean and don’t frakk up, added Sanaa when I didn’t respond.

  He knows what Efia meant, Bahati said. But we all know our Ndeki’s reputation before he made sergeant.

  Unfortunately, Bahati was right. When I was younger I used to have a reputation for treading a nanoscale line between having fun and getting decapitated for insubordination. I could feel the air around the camp growing heavy with the potential for trouble, mischief the memories of my youth were summoning. Then my imagination failed and the moment passed.

  Not at my age, I told Bahati. I just do what I’m told.

  Denisoff chose that moment to start issuing orders, but I couldn’t make out what he was saying because my mind echoed with the hoots of laughter from my ghosts.

  — CHAPTER 19 —

  The chow hall greeted us with the surprisingly inviting odors of fresh root coffee, bacon, sausages and eggs. With a belly full of such a feast anything would feel possible. At least, it would if you were human. The two aliens in our group of recruits had the gut adaptations to eat with the rest of us, but chow that you can digest but not enjoy doesn’t fill you up with the same satisfaction.

  I wondered what Chatravedi was going to have for his breakfast. No one discussed him. He’d be all right physically, but he’d had his chance and blown it sky-high. Like most sensible people, we didn’t discuss losers because no one wanted to risk infection by talking of bad luck or failure.

  Silky and I were coming a little late to this party, the other recruits having had a few days to get through all that ritual sniffing crap to figure out who was top dog. It turned out we were still in the growling and sniffing-at-butt stage. Three were acting as if they were the natural leader of the group, and most of the others were sitting things out, refusing to commit to any faction. The Littorane, the Tallerman, and the farm girl looked isolated, as if they couldn’t wait to for the others to get all this crap out the way.

  If it weren’t for the choice breakfast, I’d find this all profoundly depressing. Klin-Tula was a sparsely populated system – maybe three million souls – though no one knew how many Hardits were scurrying around and pawing at each other in their underground cities. No one human, anyway. Here were thirteen people supposedly in the same group, and they were vying for dominance, splintered, and most them looked like they couldn’t wait to get shot of the others. It was Klin-Tula in miniature.

  A pang of sorrow hit me unexpectedly. The emotion felt like acid reflux. Damn! I set my sausage-laden fork down on my plate and looked over at Silky.

  I was going to lose her.

  Watching the bickering around this table, her fate was obvious now, inevitable.

  How had I been so stupid? I’d let her sink her alien self under my skin until now I felt affection for her. I didn’t exactly like her, but she was a comrade. I cared what happened to her and… and she was going to die.

  This Klin-Tula mess was on a one-way descent into civil war and anarchy. Factions would spring up that would define a boundary and judge everyone on the planet to be either inside that boundary or an enemy.

  Yes, I know, I’d spent several years keeping away from aliens. But my self-imposed exile was different. I think. There was only one person inside the boundary I had defined, and I had no desire to dominate, exploit, convert, or exterminate outsiders. I just wanted them to keep the hell away. The factions I saw in Klin-Tula’s future would not be so forgiving, and Silky would find herself an outsider to every group.

  She would die like Bahati, Sanaa, the Sarge, and all the others.

  The universe jerked, dumping me out of my fears and back into the chow hall. My heart was pounding, my skin slick with sweat. A few curious glances came my way but most pretended not to notice my episode. Silky did. She was sitting opposite with a face filled with concern and head tentacles broadcasting the same.

  Gods, how I wished I’d never met her.

  Stop feeling sorry for yourself, said Sanaa. You’re pathetic when you weep.

  Oh, you’re back again, are you? I haven’t heard from you for days. Where have you been?

  We haven’t been anywhere, she snapped. You’re only interested in us when you are unsure of yourself.

  Not true, I replied. But was it? No, it damn well wasn’t. Why are you even saying that?

  I’m afraid it’s true, said Bahati, and I could tell from the pain in her voice that she meant what she said.

  Didn’t mean she was right. She wasn’t even real. Not human. And she’d never said this before.

  Shut up and listen, said the Sarge, though I caught Efia’s essence in his voice, as if he were speaking for both of them. That goes for all of you. Joshua, Silky is your sister Marine now. You might not have chosen her, boy, but that doesn’t mean a damn. She is your responsibility.

  I couldn’t believe what I was hearing. I mean, that was the kind of thing the real Sergeant Chinelo would have said, but the rusty old AI plugged into my spinal column hadn’t exactly excelled in sentence construction in recent years. This was the second time he’d managed an entire paragraph in the last month. What was going on?

  We’re here when you need us, explained Efia. When you don’t, we atrophy.

  I prefer to think of myself as a goddess, added Sanaa. I am nourished by your worship.

  Bahati snorted in derision.

  I told you to shut the frakk up, growled the Sarge. I could almost hear the ghosts of Bahati and Sanaa snap to attention. For better or worse, Silky is your partner now, he told me. She has your back. Be sure to have hers. Maybe one day she’ll turn on you, but we will warn you well in advance. Now stop crying about something that hasn’t even happened, and get your head back into what is going on right now.

  “Don’t look so worried, we’ll crush this.”

  “How can we?” I replied. “She’ll die. Like all the others, and there’s not a damned thing I can do about it.”

  “That’s… not the response I was looking for.”

  My brain did a kind of dimension shift and I discovered I was already engaged in a conversation with one of the recruits who was standing beside me.

  I blinked, and he seemed to understand.

  I could see that he had the look in his eyes, and the scars and plasma burns over his neck that spoke of his experience in the war. He nodded, and I felt certain that I wasn’t the first veteran he’d encountered whose mind had a habit of being somewhere other than the here and now.

  “My name is Chikune,” he said extending a hand. I took it, and he gave me a few seconds to come back to myself before continuing. “I read your file, McCall. A solid record. I myself was in the proper Army, not one of you Marine glory boys. I was a sub-lieutenant in the 621st Infantry. Not that our history matters.”

  Then why mention it? I didn’t like the ghost of a sneer on Chikune’s face. What was his game?

  “When you say you read my file,” I told him, “do you mean you hacked into confidential data stores, or do you really mean you heard my name mentioned while sniffing around the cheapest pleasure shacks of the Port Bundy docks?”

  “There are ways of obtaining information, McCall, if you have the initiative and the resources. Your notoriety amongst the Bundy whores is unknown to me, I’ve only seen your Legion record. Of who you were before you switched sides, I’ve seen nothing, but watching you I’d say you were bred on Nanatsu-7.”

  I threw a longing glance at my half-eaten sausage. I didn’t want trouble. And I definitely couldn’t risk letting such a glorious breakfast go cold. So I gave him a straight answer. “Yes, I was born on Nanatsu-7. Kappa City.”

  “Ahhhhhh.” It was a single vowel that escaped Chikune’s lips, little more than a sigh really, but it packed such immensely corrosive power that my body went rigid. I heard the scratch of a chair as Silky got to her feet.

  “That explains a lot,” said Chikune. “I heard you Kappa Marines used to speak Kiswahili until a generation or so b
efore your time. Is that right?”

  I squeezed my eyes shut. Maybe if I couldn’t see this smug veck’s face, I wouldn’t have to punch it. “What difference could that possibly make?”

  “Well, it’s nothing to be ashamed of, but…”

  That was it! I shot to my feet and stood toe to toe with Chikune. “But what?”

  Chikune didn’t flinch. He stood there all loose and limber as if we were the best pals in the world. “Well, McCall, your grasp of the standard tongue is obviously more limited. Your grammar is basic and your sentences short. And you know what they say… If your vocabulary is stunted, then so is your thinking. I mean no offense, but if you can’t formulate your thoughts so easily, you can’t construct sophisticated ideas. And that makes you just a bit. Dumb. No offense.”

  All the while, Chikune mocked me with his eyes. I don’t mean his peepers popped out and began making obscene gestures. I mean he was smiling. The bastard. Not even a sneer, he was so friendly and innocent he looked as content as a Marine who had just won free beer for life.

  If you’ve been paying a little attention, you’re probably wondering why I hadn’t tried to break the skangat’s neck by this point. If you’ve paid more attention, you know I hate being pushed into doing things, and this frakktard was trying to play me like a musical instrument.

  As the contradictory urges to hit this guy warred with a desperate need to not be manipulated into doing the same, my ghosts screamed at me inside my head. Bahati urged me to break this joker’s legs while the Sarge was barked over the top of her to keep my cool and suck it up. Even the memory of Sergeant Chinelo wasn’t compelling enough to stop me pounding this guy.

  I pointedly directed my gaze right between Chikune’s eyes. He knew exactly what I was signaling. This was where I was going to land my first punch.

  The strange thing was that he still didn’t sneer, didn’t egg me on, but he did relax. I got the sense that he knew I was committed by that point and he no longer had to wear his placid façade. Now I could see his true nature through his eyes. Cold. Heartless. I had thought he was a bully, but bullies are all about feeling the thrill of power robbed from their victims. Chikune couldn’t care less what I felt. He was a sociopath.