After War

by Tim C. Taylor

  And they were headed our way.

  — CHAPTER 49 —

  We exchanged glances. Our anger transformed instantly to fear.

  Well, mostly. I was still pretty pissed at Silky.

  “They can’t find you here,” she whispered. “Get your stupid fat human ass out the window and deny everything. I’ll take the blame.”

  I shook my head. “I’ll take my lumps. You go.”

  “Clear!” called a voice from the archive room next door, before being told to keep quiet.

  “Quickly,” I whispered. “Go!” I was so frightened for her, my words came out as a squeak.

  She reached for my hand, but I refused it. “We will face our future together,” she said.

  Stupid, dumb alien. Now I was really angry.

  “This is not a time to be a hero, Silky. Go!”

  She turned and proudly faced the door to the corridor.

  “Look, Silky,” I pleaded, “these Revenge Squad people trade in influence. They must do to be given the leeway they obviously have with the feds. If you’re no other use to them, they’ll trade you in as a deserter to win a few scraps of consideration. And once the Legion gets a hold of you, they’ll shoot you as a deserter. If they find you here, you’re dead.”

  She grabbed one of my hands. She meant it as a sign of unity, but I used it to spin her around. I hunched down, bringing us face to face.

  “Please,” I begged her. She flinched, I think because she caught the intensity of my fear for her. “I’ve already lost too many people I care about. My life lies behind me. You’re still young, Silky–”

  The door opened.

  “Too late,” she whispered. “We face this together. Ever since you cried to sleep at my breast, I knew I couldn’t leave you. You wouldn’t understand how strongly that binds me, you’re human.”

  I was almost wishing the guards would find us and shut her up, but the door paused, half open. Which meant… what? They knew we were there. I realized they must be getting ready to rush us. And that would mean guns blazing!

  All those thousands of nightmare fantasies of Silky’s death replayed simultaneously, along with one more image of Silky’s ruined corpse splattered across the office floor, next to mine. It was my fault. The contract I’d signed with Revenge Squad was her death warrant. I’d sealed her fate.

  But accepting fate was for losers. I was NJ McCall, a mule-headed Marine. I made my own fate.

  I hit Silky hard between the eyes.

  I couldn’t stand by and let them take you away to your death, I told her in my mind as I watched in horror as she crumpled and the spark faded from her eyes. There was no other way.

  My rationalization held steady for about half a second before fear flashed through me like electricity. I’d smacked her hard once before, on the day we met. But back then I hadn’t much cared if she lived or died. Now that she’d fallen down onto the office carpet tiles like a sack of manure, I was terrified I’d broken her. The line between knocking someone out and giving them permanent brain damage, or worse, is fuzzy and vague – and that’s for someone with training in how to stun. I was trained to kill. For me, stunning someone with a blow was more like rolling a die: four, five or six means you just killed your wife.

  Silky’s breathing restarted in great heaving rasps. I couldn’t allow myself to feel hope because I heard footsteps outside – reinforcements for the security detail at the door. I stuffed Silky under Denisoff’s desk, pushing her as far out of sight as I could.

  I know I like to tell people I solve problems with my fists, but it’s been my thing for such a long time I don’t know whether I really believe that or whether I was acting out a part. At that moment I was so horrified with what I’d just done that when the security detail burst in, I could feel my eyes bulging wide and my hands tremble. It’s quite possible that this saved my life because the guards saw my terror and thought I was scared of them, and would be no trouble.

  I wasn’t, I was scared I’d broken Silky.

  Two of the guards covered me with their machine pistols while the others searched the room.

  “I’m sure there’s another one,” said one of the guards whose name I thought might be Danielle. “I heard them talking,” she explained.

  “I don’t think so,” said Fleming, the Security Section leader. “That’s NJ McCall. He talks to himself.”

  “Jeez. Where does Denisoff pick up these losers? The mental bin?”

  He’s NJ McCall and he talks to himself? Was that how the entire camp thought of me?

  “Come on then, loop head,” said possibly-Danielle. “Your quest to become an agent is over. Maybe if you cooperate they’ll let you stay on here and clean out the garbage. And if you don’t cooperate…” She gleefully made a cutting gesture across her neck.

  A faint groan lifted up from under the desk.

  I groaned myself to cover the fact of Silky’s presence, fighting the urge to look down at the Kurlei sprawled over the carpet tiles.

  “Stop that noise!” snapped Danielle.

  Silky didn’t. So I couldn’t either.

  “Stop or I shoot,” ordered Danielle.

  I don’t like being told what to do. Did I ever mention that? Hell alone knows how I ever survived the soldiering life. I stood at attention and defiantly raised my groans into a loud and tuneless humming.

  Fleming came over to Danielle and pressed gently down on the arm pointing her gun at me. “I just looked up his war record,” she said – something that should be entirely confidential, although I had to admit I’d talked with Freya Fleming off duty in the bar. She shook her head at Danielle who reluctantly lowered her weapon. Thankfully, Silky had shut up by this point, and so I stopped my humming.

  Fleming approached me with her hands open and weapon holstered.

  “It’s okay, Sergeant Joshua. I know you’re confused but you’re safe. We’re here to help you.”

  “But…” I flicked a wild glance at Danielle. “The garbage…” I pointed in horror at Danielle, enjoying my acting enormously. “She said I had to clean garbage. But I don’t want to.”

  Fleming smiled. “Don’t listen to Danielle. She’s just blowing off steam. I expect the pressure of trying to qualify is putting you under strain. Too much strain. Right?”

  I nodded eagerly.

  “We’ll fix that so you don’t have to worry about qualification anymore. We’ll find you something useful to do, Sergeant. You’ll have a role, and it will be an important one. It might not be glamorous, but you already know it’s not the glamour boys and girls who win wars, don’t you?”

  I was still nodding.

  “How does that sound, my friend? Good?”

  “I’d like that,” I grunted.

  “Let’s get you out of here, pal. We’ve got a spare bed in the security block. You can sleep there as long as you like. You’ll feel good in the morning and then we’ll talk some more over bacon, eggs and coffee. Shall we go there now?”

  I returned to my nodding. I never knew acting could be such fun.

  As they led me away to my cell, I could feel Silky touching my mind. Normally, I strained to block her out, but this time I welcomed her in, so overjoyed that she was okay that nothing else mattered. I didn’t hear words as such, but the feelings were simple and clear enough in this instance that we had a rudimentary telepathic conversation.

  Thank you, she said.

  I tried to form a one-word reply. Sorry.

  I felt the equivalent of Silky pinching my ears and twisting mercilessly. So you fucking should be.

  Then I passed out of range. To be honest, I was looking forward to the quiet simplicity of being locked in a cell. Perhaps if I asked them nicely, they would throw away the key.

  — CHAPTER 50 —

  You might think I was ripped a new one when Denisoff calmed down enough to spring me out of jail and let me know precisely what he thought of me.

  He didn’t. The man was sometimes violent, and often angry, but he w
as never one for using words when his steel gray eyes could glare out of that chiseled face that I’m sure was gene-optimized for looks of disapproval.

  So my initial experience of this dressing down, in the same office where I’d been caught the night before, was largely silent. And it wasn’t just Denisoff’s full-frontal disapproval I had to endure. For a reason I couldn’t yet fathom, Chikune was there too.

  By degrees, Denisoff’s expression took on extra shades of iciness – impossible though that seemed – but coming from Denisoff that look of disappointment was all I needed. I’d been raised under Jotun officers and their regime of decapitations, ritual scarring, and growls so fierce that they could turn a grown Marine’s guts to water. Denisoff did none of that. He set me off to marinade in my own sense of failure and that was more hellish than anything else he could do.

  “You have potential still,” he told me, which almost sounded nice at first, but he was a merciless bastard because he forced me to watch a display of the recruit scoreboard while he studied me with his cold eyes.

  I was halfway up the list and I was damn proud of that achievement. Was Denisoff telling me that my progress was the reason why he was still bothering to talk to me? Made sense. I was proud to have picked myself up off the floor of that scoreboard. It showed what I could do.

  Then Denisoff showed what he could do. My name disappeared from the list, my rivals shuffling up to replace me. Then I reappeared once more at the bottom. Denisoff had deducted 500 points.

  “How long before we graduate?” I asked, sounding like a green cadet, eager to go off to fight.

  “You won’t ever graduate. This is not a military cadet school, McCall. The scoreboard is merely a tool to help recruits focus on their training. We will offer contracts at an appropriate time to be determined by Director Philby.”

  “But ballpark figure. You can give me a rough estimate of how long I have to turn this around.”

  “Yes, I can. But I prefer to see your reaction to this turn of events. Are you the sort of person to keep struggling against impossible odds until your last breath? Let me clarify this obstacle. In your case, the score I give you now directly determines whether you will be considered for agent positions. If you finish in the top two then I might consider you. Below that and you can forget it. That goes for both of you.”

  I sensed Chikune stiffen at that, but only a little; he was top of the scoreboard.

  But then, to my delight, Denisoff repeated the same trick with Chikune, dropping him 300 points.

  I grinned. What can I say? Despite what those bigots on Earth might think of my race, I’m only human.

  “You claim to be a hacker,” he told Chikune, “yet even our minimal active security saw through your anonymous tipoff to Security Section and the trace led back to you. Let me make something clear here, Chikune. Your actions display initiative and ruthlessness. So long as your actions do not endanger an employee or stockholder in Revenge Squad Inc. then I applaud your attitude. You are not being punished for setting McCall up for a fall. I’m punishing you for allowing yourself to be caught. Don’t be so sloppy next time.”

  “No, sir.”

  “Good. Is there anything else either of you needs to tell me about this incident?”

  Denisoff flipped his expression from disapproving glare to suspicious glare. Did he know about Silky?

  We hadn’t had a chance to agree our stories, me not having seen her since last night. I resisted the desire to glance beneath Denisoff’s desk. For all I knew she was still there.

  “No, sir,” I gambled.

  The assistant squad leader only raised his eyebrow a fraction of an inch, but with Denisoff that was as good as telling me he didn’t believe a word.

  I glanced back at the leaderboard, half expecting to see Silky deducted points or removed altogether.

  But her points remained the same, which led to an interesting situation now that Chikune had been shoved to the back with me. The two of us and Xeene were far adrift from the others.

  But not Silky. She was now top of the scoreboard.

  — CHAPTER 51 —

  “What are we going to do?” I asked Silky that evening at the Wreck Bar. “I don’t think I have enough time to climb back up the scoreboard. Plus, Denisoff hates me.”

  Silky raised an eyebrow at that last statement. Okay, strictly she didn’t have eyebrows, but she had ridges over the dark recesses of her eyes, and I took the hint. I’d forgotten Denisoff had asked to share rack time with her husband. She evidently hadn’t.

  My gaze was drawn to the wound Silky was sporting between those eyes, an accusation in purple and livid lilac that matched the shape of my fist. I didn’t expect she’d forgotten that either.

  Nolog was sitting with us. He half drew in his head at the sudden turn in conversation before mumbling an excuse and retreating to take up a seat at the bar.

  My gut was a tumble of nerves as I awaited Silky’s answer. In the early hours of that morning, I’d knocked her out. I’d tried telling myself that I’d done it to protect her, and in a perverse sort of way I had done just that. Probably I had saved her life, but that defense lasted less than a millisecond. Truth was, I’d acted on instinct, and I didn’t like what that said about me.

  “You’re going to do the best you can,” said Silky. “You will get a job of some sort, and pray or beg them to keep us together. And I will do the same.”

  “What if I get a job cleaning the ditches back at the base? You said–”

  “– that it will kill you. I only said that because I am correct.”

  “No. No, I don’t think you are. You’re smart about people, Silky. Except maybe to keep hanging around me. I admire you, I really do. But you’re still learning about humans. I’m not like Chikune. I don’t have a superiority complex. I don’t need to be top dog.”

  “It’s not about pride. Answer me this. How did you feel when you broke into the office block?”

  “Bruised. Out of shape, but alive. So very alive, Silky! It was wonderful.” I stopped proving her point and sighed. Did I really want to tell this? Might as well, I was all in by this point. “Silky, I haven’t felt like that since Bahati died. It’s as if I slept through the last years of the war, and all the way through the peace.”

  Her face said I told you so. Her voice said, “Let’s discuss this in private.”

  I got up to leave, but she pushed me down, waving a short, stubby cable by way of explanation.

  Oh, crap. “Really? Here?”

  She didn’t bother to reply and I was in no position to protest about anything. The last time she did this to me, I wept until my ducts were dry.

  A hush descended on the bar as its patrons became aware of the spectacle about to present itself.

  In short order, Silky arranged us so we were sitting back to back with that dammed cable linking us.

  What’s to discuss? I asked in my head.

  Nothing.

  Look, Silky. I’m no good with regrets or apologies but for what little it’s worth, I’m sorry I fell for Chikune’s goads. Sorry that meant I panicked and… Hey, what do you mean there’s nothing to discuss?

  That was misdirection, NJ. Thank you for being so discreet about my own presence in Denisoff’s office, and being so patient waiting to hear what I found. I picked up a lot of data.

  Good. When she said nothing, I added: report!

  I felt her reluctance. What’s stopping you? I asked.

  I have to share my memories. You humans have a phrase: to bare one’s soul. I think it will be like that. This isn’t easy for me. Not with my tainted soul. NJ, when I fled my life, I plunged into a darkness so choking I never thought I’d escape. You have no idea how desperate I was when I came to Sijambo Farm.

  Dammit, Silky. We’re so very different you and I in many ways, but we were both Legionaries. And that means we get the job done. Stop worrying and do it!

  She paused for three breaths, building up her courage. Then I fell into her mind and wa
s swallowed by her alien memories.

  — CHAPTER 52 —

  During the war, I’d plugged reports from scouts into the cerebral port beneath my ear. The ability to actually see and hear what the scouts had seen meant they weren’t filtered by anyone’s interpretation but mine, or the experts I shared them with. Even if you weren’t in the military, you can see how valuable that could be.

  Valuable, though, isn’t the same as easy.

  Philosophers have speculated since the dawn of time: in our solipsistic mental bubbles, can we ever truly know how other people experience the world?

  Well, now you can, and I tell you: it frakking hurts.

  Everyone experiences the world differently. Language, race, gender, age – all such additional differences are inconsequential blips compared with the fundamental gulf that separates any person’s experience from another’s.

  Some Marines were driven insane when they first plugged into memories from another mind. I was prepared more than most for this dislocation because by the time I faced this myself, I was already used to hearing the voices of my dead comrades in my head.

  Yes, I realize that last statement isn’t a ringing endorsement of my mental health.

  And if I was a little insane, that was probably exactly what I needed because I was about to plug in the memories formed by an alien mind.

  And that had to be a whole lot worse. Right?

  Right!

  Silky’s mind greeted me with a white noise of sensory overload. Sights and sounds and emotions were jumbled together and shot at me like a belt-fed automatic blunderbuss.

  I couldn’t make sense of any of it. All I could do was hold tight and pray the tattered threads of my sanity would not snap altogether.

  Time lost all meaning other than it moved forward at an unknowable rate until I heard a sound amidst the confusion. It was my only fixed point in this maelstrom. I grabbed at it, and realized it wasn’t coming from Silky’s memory but was happening now in the real world. It came from me.

  I was making a retching noise that I sensed somehow was making everyone nearby back away, even though they must have known my vomit reflex had been removed (apparently puking in helmets caused unacceptable attrition levels in early Marines). Anyway, I didn’t feel nauseated so much as disoriented. An utterly lost, panic inducing, where-the-hell-am-I kind of disoriented.