After War

by Tim C. Taylor

  If I threw the first punch in a brawl would that get me disqualified or marked down? I doubt he knew any more than I did, but he’d seen an opportunity to score higher than me in Denisoff’s eyes and taken it.

  The realization that Chikune wasn’t just an arrogant bastard, but a sociopathic arrogant bastard, stayed my hand. Just for a fraction of a second, but it was enough.

  As I drew my arm back to feint right, feint left, and then punch him in the face, Silky appeared from nowhere and launched a snap kick at Chikune’s temple that sent him sprawling over the table, ruining the last mouthfuls of several breakfasts that frankly deserved a better ending.

  “You insult my husband, you insult me,” she shouted.

  She launched a mean kick, but although Chikune claimed to be Army, he had the build of Marine and it takes a lot to put us down. He got back to his feet, glaring at Silky.

  “I don’t have your bulk or your muscle,” Silky shouted, “but I will fight you to the death for my husband’s honor.”

  I watched, mesmerized, as the two glared at each other. Chikune backed down first, looking away but saying, “I don’t buy it. You’re married to McCall? You’re a bit of a mystery, Silky. I don’t know your story, not yet, but whatever you and McCall are to each other, you definitely aren’t a real couple.”

  If Silky was angry before, now she was so enraged that I could see half the recruits jerk with shock when Silky’s head attachments broadcast her fury straight into their brains. She launched a flurry of punches at Chikune, screaming at him as he tried to block her attack. “I spit on your despicable insult. He is my husband. He belongs to me. Apologize! Crawl! Submit! Abase yourself, human!”

  Chikune just about managed to block Silky, but he said nothing and did not hit her.

  And when she paused and gave me a questioning look, I realized I wasn’t doing much either.

  “Well?” she accused.

  “Forget him,” I told her. “He’s not worth it.”

  Her eyes went wide with anger. I mean, really wide, maybe doubling in diameter.

  “Thought so,” Chikune sneered. “I’m sorry, Silky. I’m truly sorry.”

  “I don’t want your apology,” she said. “I want you dead. Hand-to-hand. Here and now. Come on, or are you a coward?”

  Chikune put his hands up to ward her off, and shook his head. “I have nothing to prove on that score, Silky. I see I may have misjudged you both. Your marriage is stronger than I imagined, and your support makes McCall a far more significant individual that I realized. When I told you I was sorry, I meant I was sorry that you were married to this individual who has stood and watched you fight his battle for him. But now I apologize to you, Silky. I upset you, and for that I am truly repentant.”

  Silky bristled but no longer looked as if she were about to leap on Chikune.

  It felt like my eyes had widened even more than Silky, and that was not a good look. What the hell had just happened?

  I was still reeling. Silky had kept our marriage secret for less than the time it took to eat a plate of cooked breakfast. That much I knew, but as for the rest of it I still didn’t understand. Whatever had just started, it sure as hell wasn’t over.

  Chikune turned to me and extended his hand again. “I do hope our little misunderstanding doesn’t impede our collaboration this morning. I still think we can crush this.”

  I refused his hand. “What are you talking about?”

  Thankfully, he didn’t say a word in reply. Instead, he handed me an electronic device. This had to be the Aimee that Denisoff had talked about. I must have zoned out earlier because I could see the others had all received one. It seemed to be a ruggedized smart screen that could strap around a wrist or secure to the wrist attachment points on a combat suit. Its on-screen controls were chunky enough to use with fingers inside gauntlets. The topmost document on the Aimee was Denisoff’s instructions for that morning’s exercise and the pairings he had decided upon.

  No prizes for guessing my partner.

  Chikune.

  — CHAPTER 20 —

  The exercise was designed to send us out into the grounds to learn the layout of Camp Prelude and some of the people we shared it with. It made sense, but that didn’t mean I liked it. This was the sort of exercise they gave me when I was a Marine novice, back when I was about ten years old. It didn’t take me back to my youth, just emphasized my age.

  I was born in 2464 by the Terran calendar, which made me 297 years old. As for how many years I’d clocked up outside of cryo sleep, I couldn’t tell you. I had lived 41.27 years when my internal timers were blown up along with the rest of me in the Great Rift Valley Campaign. I’d put about a decade on my clock since then, maybe two, but it was very difficult to be precise.

  You might think it strange that I honestly couldn’t tell you how old I was in a civilization of technology that can supply limitless energy (sort of), instantaneous communication across light-years (if you can afford it), and bred bio-engineered military cyborgs (although I prefer the term ‘Marine’), but frankly I don’t care. In the world I grew into, adults were divided into three classes: fit for duty, wounded but under repair, or dead. Age didn’t come into it.

  I’m not even sure how decrepit I was. Although I grumbled about the many parts of my body that ached, sagged, or no longer functioned, was that honest wear and tear, or was I so worn down that I should do the right thing and turn myself in to the recycling plant? That’s the problem with growing up in a culture where no one was allowed to grow old. I had no benchmarks.

  Age was the topic of the morning because the exercise was to search the grounds and identify the oldest member of Revenge Squad out of doors that morning. I hoped the answer wasn’t myself.

  To make the exercise challenging, we had a communications choke – which Denisoff explained reflected the difficulties communicating with agents who are working undercover. Out of each pairing, one of us would be a controller issuing orders during periodic ten-second comm windows, and the other would be the field agent who was not allowed to show initiative, only to obey the controller’s instructions to the letter and update them in their own comm window. Chikune wanted to be the controller and I didn’t fight him. I liked the idea of stalking the grounds and always felt more comfortable if I knew the terrain I might one day have to fight over.

  The sun was shining brightly, though there was still a morning chill in the air. Despite my run-in with Chikune, and ignoring the fact that everyone there now knew I was a deviant who had married an alien, there was a spring in my step as I explored.

  The camp was situated on a hilltop plateau, and beyond the graveled parade and training ground, and the three large blockhouses arranged to give each other supporting fire, the ground was lush with grass. I’d seen natural grass on Earth, but this Klin-Tula strain was a hybrid popular for its ability to provide grazing for a wide variety of animals originating from several planets. It had the same bladed structure of Earth grass, but with the rich purple color common to most foliage on planets where I had been stationed. The blades folded over like dog ears, soft and comforting rather than springy, but nutritious in the right animal bellies. I’m not a botanist, in case you’re wondering, but I knew something of grass because I had considered using such winter fodder for my pigs.

  My overall impression of the camp was of a hastily constructed forward operating base that had been built as a botch job and already needed fixing up. In fact, near the westernmost limit of the camp, where it nestled against a swift-flowing stream, I came across a work gang doing just that. They were digging up the perimeter security system trenches to line them with overlapping plates of viscous ceramalloys that would isolate the cabling and sensors from interference, and harden against blast damage and water seepage.

  To Chikune’s fury, I traded a half hour of digging trenches in exchange for information from the work gang that might help in the exercise. They told me that Denisoff was the oldest man in camp, born in the 2370s. The v
eteran Wolf, Xeene, was the oldest woman, but not the oldest person there.

  I was pondering their intel when I came across Goat, a four-legged grass-muncher stalking the grounds under the direction of his Hardit keeper, Imelda. Animal and keeper looked similar, both possessing a furry coat, a tail, and a long snout tipped with a nose far more sensitive than any human’s. The main difference was that the Hardit walked upright on two legs, and you could almost imagine her as a bandy-legged human in an animal costume. Goat looked more like a warthog the size of a small horse. I’d seen smaller armored vehicles, and I’m not exaggerating. A pair of wicked tusks curled from its lower jaw, but they looked designed to root in the ground for food rather than to stick into people it didn’t like. Mind you, in my experience you could never fully trust animals. Or Hardits for that matter. So I followed Imelda’s instructions diligently when she ordered me to submit to the animal’s sniffing and scent mingling, so that Goat would know me as a legitimate member of his extended family and not an intruder.

  I’d heard that you could get a Hardit chatting happily, even with other species, if you started them talking about their engineering projects. Imelda was like that but with Goat. With his keen sense of smell, and a scream so loud it was technically illegal, she told me he was an integral part of camp security with his own Revenge Squad serial number and pay account, which was exchanged for treats in the form of food scraps soaked overnight in beer. Form, function, and good taste in one armored package. I liked the big guy. Once he’d gotten his paws off my chest.

  As for Imelda, before I could ask her any questions, she told me she wasn’t the oldest one there, followed immediately by yelling at me to clear off and leave them alone.

  And she was one of the good Hardits…

  Deciding that Denisoff was the answer to the puzzle we had been set, I set off for home, despite Chikune telling me to gather more data. I decided that the best way to show initiative was to overrule the order not to show initiative, and advised Chikune to go explore himself in an intimate manner.

  Silky intercepted me on my way back. She had nothing better to do than harass me because she’d already finished the exercise.

  Being shown up by the alien didn’t improve my mood. I was still fuming because, as I reminded her, she’d promised not to mention our sham marriage to anyone else.

  “No, NJ,” she shot back. “You asked me not to tell that we were married. I didn’t agree to anything. You don’t own me. And whilst you might be ashamed of our marriage, I’m not. Not yet, anyway. And you’d better not make me change my opinion of you.”

  “Why? Because then you have to kill me?”

  “Yes,” she replied. And I didn’t think she was kidding.

  Then she said something that surprised me, because it was actually useful. Well, not so much said as hinted, on account of collaboration between teams was strictly forbidden in this exercise. She asked me to imagine I was back at Sijambo Farm a year ago and consider who would be the last kind of companion I would ever hook up with.

  Even I could see what she was driving at. An alien. The oldest person here was an alien.

  “Silky,” I asked, feeling a little stupid that I had never posed this question before. “How old are you?”

  “Now you ask me! After we’re married!” She shook her head, and I was convinced she was teasing me. Where had she learned to be so human? “In Terran standard years, I’m sixty-one on the calendar, and twenty-nine in subjective years. On the clock as you put it.”

  Twenty-nine! I had clothes older than my wife. No wonder I found her so annoying. She wasn’t merely an alien. She was a youthful alien.

  If the answer wasn’t a human, and it clearly wasn’t Silky, I could think of only one answer: the Tallerman.

  I made straight for home, but seeing my answer in the rocky flesh, I detoured to ask the Tallerman to confirm his age. The big gnome, who gloried in the name Nolog-Ndacu, looked like a humanoid hillside with hands and face fashioned out of a primitive road surfacing material. He was okay for an alien. Rather than treat me with suspicion, it was all I could do to shut him up when I struck up a conversation with him. He wanted to talk about the Invasion of Athena because I’d let slip that I’d been there, and we realized we had both been a part of Army Group Sky Strike’s opening assault.

  I didn’t want to talk about it. I just wanted to know how old he was.

  He yielded the information with good grace when I promised we would swap tales over beers. The big fella was 568 years old and the oldest Tallerman on the base. Perfect.

  I hurried back through the looming presence of the blockhouses and to the low-rise office buildings sat alongside, where I collected Chikune before reporting in to Denisoff.

  As soon as we stepped into the office Denisoff shared with the other assistant squad leaders, Chikune gave our answer before I had a chance to speak. “The oldest member of Revenge Squad out on the grounds this morning is Recruit Nolog-Ndacu.”

  Denisoff gave nothing away. His skin was as pale as ever, and his blue-gray eyes made him look positively icy. I couldn’t read him at all. “Well done, gentlemen,” he said. “Good answer.”

  I sighed with relief.

  “Unfortunately,” continued Denisoff, “not the correct one.”

  — CHAPTER 21 —

  After an afternoon of fitness assessments – who could run ten miles without keeling over, that kind of thing – we were treated to a Spartan meal of universal rations, or ugly food as we veterans knew it. I’d spent years living off the bland cubes that never felt satisfying because the food could only be digested by the augmented segments of our guts, though Bahati had been a grand mistress of adding flavor to ugly food no matter how alien the ecology of our posting.

  This meal was intended as a punishment for our collective poor performance in this morning’s exercise and was consequently served as bland as it could be, seasoned only by the disgusted scowls of the farm girl and the younger of the two Wolves who didn’t seem to have experience of ugly food. The older Wolf, Xeene, didn’t touch her food and I suspected the younger Wolf would soon learn why if his digestive tract lacked the upgrades to be compatible with universal food.

  Yet there was one amongst us who was not taking his punishment properly.

  “Hey, Nolog,” I called out to the Tallerman who seemed to be tucking in with relish, “you’re not supposed to enjoy it.”

  “But, NJ, my proto-friend,” he replied, “this feast is so delicious. A little rich for my taste but any disagreement I may have with my digestive tract is a matter I leave to the future. For now I enjoy the well-earned fruit of victory.”

  “Fair enough,” I said and so it was. Only two teams had correctly identified Goat as the oldest member of Revenge Squad outside that morning. Seemed a stupid answer to me, but Silky and her controller Xeene had figured it out, and moments before the exercise ended, Nolog with an ex-Marine called Magenta also gave the correct answer.

  That wasn’t good enough for Denisoff. Not only were we subjected to the green and brown striped cubes, but he had announced that we had not yet earned bar privileges.

  We must have looked a sorry crowd of losers as we made our way from the chow hall in the first underground level of Blockhouse ‘B’ up to our dorm that took up most of one side of Floor 2.

  Our new quarters for the foreseeable future were generous with comfortable seats and plenty of space in addition to the ten sets of double bunks, one reserved for use by the only married couple amongst the recruits.

  Most importantly there were coolers set into one wall that had been stocked with a range of beers and other forms of drink that I’d never seen before but delighted our Tallerman and Littorane.

  We useless maggots weren’t fit to be seen in the bar, but Denisoff clearly understood that unit cohesion needs lubrication.

  Naturally, I helped myself to a couple of bottles and then retreated to my bottom bunk to watch everyone else have fun. Magenta made an immediate play for César
the younger Wolf, although he in turn seemed terrified of the Marine. I couldn’t see why. For a Wolf he was very sturdily built and Magenta was easy on my eye with a copper-colored tattoo along her cheekbones that looked beautiful running through her dark skin. The design, based upon a stylized DNA helix, looked like a unit tattoo to me, and by the way it glittered under the light, the ink had been infused with actual metal.

  I wouldn’t say no to Magenta if I were in César’s boots, I decided, but there was no accounting for taste. Then I realized with a jerk that that’s probably how all the humans there thought of me.

  The source of my embarrassment was making friends with the other two aliens. Figured. Nolog was living the dream of adventure by associating with these exotic aliens. I couldn’t figure the Littorane out. It was called Jo, though I’m pretty sure that’s not the name it was born to. Or more likely, hatched. I didn’t like thinking of the alien as an ‘it’ but I didn’t know if it was male, female, something else, or flipped from one gender to another when you weren’t looking, just like the Frobeki we shared a troopship with once.

  I decided to talk to Jo later. I actually felt sorry for the alien. Littoranes are happier in water than air and its orientation was fundamentally horizontal. It must feel out of place amongst the humanoid recruits who were vertical for the moment.

  You do realize that the longer you sit in isolation, the more you look a loser, pointed out Sanaa.

  Leave him alone, said Bahati.

  Sanaa is correct, said Efia, although we could all do without your abrasive tone, sister.

  While Sanaa’s anger-capacitor was charging up in readiness to strike Efia down, I pondered my dead colleague’s renaissance. Like the Sarge, I’d had the sense of Efia being rubbed away over the years like an eroding coastline. But she was back now.