by Ben Weaver
He let out a long sigh and massaged his eyes. “So what’re you doing here? What happened at South Point?”
We sat, and I gave him the abridged version, omitting the conditioning and finishing up with the crash-landing, my stabbing, and the fact that I would now spend three precious days with him before heading back to the war. My failure to include Jarrett in the summary should have raised questions, but I think he had already discerned the truth and had reasoned that if I did not voice it, it would not be real.
“My office has been closed since the attack. Nothing to do but read. Only thing on the screen is the military channel. Bunch of threats and brainwashing, and I’ve seen every movie in our collection at least twice. God, I heard about the Seventeen coming here. I wouldn’t have imagined that you’d be with them. It’s a miracle.”
“Well, Ms. Brooks worked that out for me and this other lieutenant, guy named Halitov. He comes from Vosk.”
“I see. You know, I’m looking at you now, and I can’t believe I endorsed this.” He tugged at the sleeve of my black utilities. “I don’t want to sound negative, but you’ll go out there and die. And for what? Loyalty to the colonies?” He rose and retrieved a pamphlet from the countertop. “Someone shoved this under my door. It’s propaganda from a rebel group. Look at the quote there.”
I read the words: “Histories are more full of examples of the fidelity of dogs than of friends. Alexander Pope.”
“In all their rhetoric, that’s the only thing that makes sense.”
“Dad, these rebels helped us take back the city.”
He snickered. “You ever wonder why?”
“Yeah, because this is their home. It’s our home.”
“So that makes them loyal to the colos?”
“Yeah.”
“Scott, they’re loyal to their own desires. That’s it. And that’s our damned curse. We’re a greedy, selfish bunch. And we’re poised to kill ourselves.”
My father, the mineralogist, the pragmatic scientist who had little use for philosophy and had spent the better part of his life staring at magnified core samples, had voiced one of his rarely heard opinions about something beyond our colony. The Alliance occupation of Gatewood-Callista had robbed him of much more than decent living conditions. He had always had a comfortable cushion of research on which he would lay his head at night and sleep, dreaming of his minerals and venturing no farther than Ro and its environs. The science that had always reassured him had been stripped away. He had finally realized after all these years that there was a magnificently large galaxy out there, a galaxy that encompassed our moon and affected it for the better and for the worse. He could no longer deny that.
After a meal of canned meat and vegetables that actually made military food seem appealing, we spent several hours walking around the old neighborhood. My father pointed out damage caused by the Marines and swore over their actions. We visited Katka and Vivian, two of my father’s scientist friends. The elderly couple asked me to describe my war experiences and probed me until the details became too painful. The two women gazed at me with admiration, the kind I had expected from my father, but I realized that they could offer their support and remain fully exempt from losing a son. They asked about my brother. Before I could answer, my father suggested that we go.
Programmed twilight befell the suburb as we returned to the apartment. My father switched on the screen, and one wall of our living room lit with a news report. Members of my battalion stood at posts on every corner of the city. Citizens had emerged from their apartments in droves to applaud the Guard Corps’s actions. One exuberant group hoisted a private into the air and carried him down H10 Street, while a female reporter narrated the action. My father called down the volume and stared grimly at me. “How long you think this’ll last?”
“I don’t know.”
“The Seventeen can’t keep troops here indefinitely. Maybe they’ll leave a small force, but we’ll be attacked again. Maybe the next time there won’t be any survivors.”
Though I had already prepared my retort, I held it back. My father’s depression was speaking for him. He had lost a wife, a son, and another would soon tawt off. At the moment, he could find nothing positive in his life, and all I could do was try to understand.
He cooked me another meal, apologizing for his meager culinary skills, then produced a bottle of real Kentucky bourbon and poured us glasses. Though my father and I had shared drinks before, we both coughed against the burns with an air of reverence.
Pleasantly numb, I headed off to the room I had shared with Jarrett for most of my life. Our gelracks slid out of the wall, and I pulled out Jarrett’s and climbed into it, sweet traces of his cologne still clinging to his pillow. I spent maybe an hour just staring through the shadows at our Guard Corps paraphernalia, at the posters of bikini-clad women that adorned our walls, at Jarrett’s collection of colonial flags, at my collection of rare minerals given to me by my father, at the conventional photographs of our family on vacation last year in the winter resort at Isyil. That vacation was the last time we had all been together.
Muffled footsteps resounded near the door. I pretended to be asleep but kept one eye open to a slit. My father paused in the doorway. He stared at me sleeping in my brother’s bed, covered his face with a hand, then turned away, weeping softly.
I barely slept, despite the reassuring familiarity of my old room. I could not decide whether my visit was a happy homecoming or the somber return for a funeral. Back at South Point, I would lie in my rack and address my homesickness by pretending I was back in my old bed and chatting with Jarrett. But now I wanted nothing more than to be in my old rack at South Point, lulled to sleep by the shraxi and triplets and shouted awake by Pope.
In the morning, my father and I ate in silence. Afterward, I told him I had to get back.
He shrugged. “Tired of being depressed by your old man, huh?”
“No.”
“Well, it’s okay.”
“Dad, I should tell you about Jarrett.”
He went to the kitchen window, eyes growing vague. “Just tell me how.”
I described our rushed conditioning and about how Sysvillian had notified me of Jarrett’s death.
“They didn’t tell us everything about that conditioning,” my father rasped when I finished. “They never said it was experimental, let alone Racinian.”
“We learned more about it when we got there. I guess it was all classified. They wouldn’t let me see his body.”
“And they haven’t contacted me. This is bullshit. Once the comm’s up again, you can bet I’ll be contacting them. I’ll demand to see those remains. I’ll hire an attorney if I have to. I don’t care if there’s a war on or not.”
“I have to go.”
He slapped palms on my shoulders, gazed hard at me, soaking up as much as he could, then locked me in a final hug. “I love you, Scott. Please come home.”
I hurried outside but lingered on the bottom step. Then I turned back and saw my father staring at me from the kitchen window. He gave a ragged salute, which I returned.
Martial law had been lifted, and people jammed the train back to Metra. I swore over having not changed into civilian clothes. My uniform had me answering so many questions that I eventually retired to a rear car, found a seat in the back, and asked not to be bothered. I thought about my father, alone in that little apartment, and I began feeling sorry for him, for me, for our family. Things had happened quickly, and more often than not, I could find no reason in them. I wondered what would happen if I got off the train and took a taxi back. Could my father hide me from the Guard Corps? Would he? Did he even deserve to be placed in that position? I wanted to blame someone for what had happened. I wanted a name. But the enemy had become amorphous and out of reach, its will carried out by the unsuspecting.
The train doors finally opened at my stop. I got off and trudged my way to Battalion Command, which had been established on the first floor of a bank building,
while the Quonset huts of a more permanent post were being constructed across the street, in an open lot. I found Captain Elizabeth Bentley-Jones’s desk. The company commander narrowed blue eyes on me as deep grooves branched her cheeks. She had probably grown up on a warm world, its sun having weathered her face. Or, perhaps, she wore the burdens of command a little too heavily. “Your folks live here, don’t they, St. Andrew?”
“Yes, ma’am. I saw my father, ma’am.”
“That’s good.”
“I’m ready for reassignment.”
“Conditioning makes you gung ho, too?”
“Ma’am, I’m not sure, ma’am.”
She eyed the chair beside her desk. “Sit, Lieutenant.”
As I complied, she rooted around in her breast pocket, came up with something, and held it tight in her palm.
“We haven’t confirmed the number yet, but we think you and Halitov killed as many as sixty enemy troops. Those may very well stand as the highest kill ratios of single combatants engaging in hand-to-hand.”
“Other people were conditioned before us. I’m sure given the same circumstances, they would’ve done better than us. I’m still not even sure how this all works—or even why it does.”
“Don’t be modest, Lieutenant. You’re arguably the most powerful conditioned officer ever produced. And the Seventeen has every intention of rewarding you for your efforts, though I wish we had the resources to put together something more formal.” She held up a first lieutenant’s star between her thumb and forefinger. The star matched the one already pinned to my breast, save for the princess-cut sapphire in its center. “Approval just came in this morning. Congratulations.”
I accepted the star. “Thank you, ma’am.”
“It took me ten years to become a captain, young man. Maybe it’ll take you another ten weeks, if that.” She eyed my birthmark. “The underdog gets his revenge. I was the outcast in my family. But I’ve made out better than any of my brothers and sisters. I’ve been in all seventeen systems, seen things they’ll never see. I don’t regret anything. Neither will you.”
“Yes, ma’am.”
“Now, as for your reassignment, well, they’ve asked me to loan you out to the Thirty-first Regiment, Quasar Company, First Battalion, First Platoon. They’re on Mars. Thaumasia region.”
Mars. Dina and Beauregard were there. Was it sheer coincidence that I was bound for their sector? Not at all. For a time, though, I thought my transfer was solely orchestrated by the Guard Corps.
“Battalion commanders are putting together some kind of black op. I don’t know much, but they’re teaming up a bunch of conditioned officers. Halitov’s going with you. As a matter of fact, he cut his R&R real short, too. Got in last night. We’re bivved at the hotel down the street. You’ll find a rack over there. You still have forty hours until your transport arrives, so I suggest you head over and relax. Could be your last break for a long time.”
“Yes, ma’am. I’ll do that, ma’am. And one more thing. At the hospital they said I don’t need a shrink because all of my defense mechanisms are built into my cerebroed data. But a lot of that stuff I still can’t get to.”
“You want to talk to somebody?”
“I don’t know. Maybe. Got a minute?”
“Lieutenant, I wish I did. Besides, I don’t think I’d be much help. This might come as a surprise, but while a lot of people recently died under my command, I have never taken a life myself. Were I you? I’d go talk to my buddy, Halitov. He might be the only one who really understands.”
Because Halitov would not open his locked door, I enlisted the aid of two privates, who summarily smashed it in.
We found the newly promoted first lieutenant lying naked in his hotel room bed. He had slashed open his wrists and had cut a series of curving lines across his pectorals, like the gills on a fish. He had smeared blood all over his face and neck, and now it cracked and flaked off. He held his first lieutenant’s star between his gritted teeth.
The two privates turned back and retched. I stood frozen a moment until I realized that the son of a bitch had not killed himself. His gaze seemed vacant and focused on the ceiling, but his chest did, in fact, rise and fall.
“Rooslin?”
He spit out the star. “Get the fuck out.”
“He ain’t dead,” said one of the privates.
I turned to him, a soldier about my age. “Leave.”
Actually, the two could not wait to get out of there. I closed the broken door after them, then approached Halitov. “The captain told me that I should talk to you. She said you might understand.”
“Oh, I do,” he snapped. “I understand everything. I see through it all. You can pile five million kilometers of bullshit in front of me, and I’m lookin’ right through it like it’s a fuckin’ window and I’m seeing my mother and stepfather lying there in their apartment, both fuckin’ shot in the head and fuckin’flies are buzzing around ’em. And nobody’s even gone in to fuckin’ check on them. They’ve been lying there for weeks, and nobody’s gone in to check on them. Nobody’s gone in to check on them. NOBODY’S GONE IN TO FUCKIN’ CHECK ON THEM!”
“I’m sorry.”
“Bullshit! What the fuck do you care? Not your parents. Ain’t your sister who joined the Alliance Navy. Have you ever smelled a body after it’s been dead for two weeks? How would you like to carry one out of your apartment? How would you like to carry your dead mother’s corpse out of your apartment? Do you know how that locks you in? How that seals you up? How they laugh at you? They’re not gonna let you out until you’re fuckin’ dead—just like her.” He sprang from the bed, stood in front of me, a ghastly, wounded being, then raised his fists, howled at the ceiling, and passed out.
I skinned up and got on the general frequency, requesting a corpsman to come up and help me get Halitov to the hospital, where we would spend our remaining time before shipping out. I thought for certain they would issue Halitov some form of medical discharge or time away to grieve. They pumped him with drugs and sent him on his way.
As we boarded the transport to tawt out to Mars, I realized that the captain had been right. Halitov was the only one who really knew how I felt. Trouble was, neither of us really knew how to listen.
PART 4
The Walking Wounded
15
Our transport pilots initiated a tawt drop to Mars. We arrived in geostatic orbit, our computer calculated known threats, then it tawted us to evasion inclinations as needed. Nine separate tawts later, our stomachs felt as though they had been removed and tied around our ankles. Speckled curtains of darkness obscured our peripheral vision and would not fade for several hours, according to one of the gunners.
While our original orders called for a drop into the Thaumasia region, we received an addendum as we broke into the atmosphere. We headed southeast of the original coordinates and eventually landed on a makeshift tarmac approximately one kilometer northeast of Darwin Crater in Mars’s southern hemisphere. We skinned and stumbled out of the hold, along with about twenty other officers we had picked up at Kennedy-Centauri.
Halitov’s cuts were nearly healed, and the sleeves of his utilities hid most of the powdery residue of synthskin. I knew his happy pills were beginning to wear off when he paused on the ramp, turned to me, and muttered on my private channel, “They killed my fuckin’ parents. They’re all gonna die.”
“I’m sure they will. Let’s go.”
Most of the others had been to Mars before and glanced perfunctorily at heavily cratered uplands. Scott St. Andrew the tourist ventured a few meters from the ramp, raised his hand to the small orb of Sol, haloed in blue by atmospheric distortion, and marveled at the rust-colored terrain that terraformers centuries earlier had sworn would soon support vegetation. They might have pulled it off, were it not for the lack of funding. Instead, Mars continued on in slow decay, as it had for millions of years. We slapped mining complexes on the planet, and over the past two centuries depleted nearly seventy-
five percent of its resources. When we were finished, we would simply abandon it in favor of more lucrative sites.
“Lieutenant St. Andrew?”
A stocky corporal whose skin had been set to crimson camouflage turned his face transparent and cocked a bushy brow as he crossed in front of me.
“Yes?”
“I’m here to escort you and Lieutenant Halitov below.”
The corporal led us along the tarmac, toward a hemispherical bunker entrance that had risen from the regolith. We walked down a long flight of portable steps, then trudged along a freshly burrowed tunnel with permafrost laced through its heavily grooved walls. We reached an airlock, passed through, and came into one of ten or twenty interconnecting hallways that divided a series of twenty or thirty small compartments. The corporal suggested that we de-skin, then he read our expressions as we stared at the unadorned metal. He explained that the entire command center had been set up in a matter of hours. The walls, floors, and ceilings folded in on themselves, as did the halls. You simply burrowed a chasm large enough, inserted your alloy sections, and hydraulics mounted to the exterior plates did the rest. The corporal compared the setup to pulling the cord on an inflatable life raft. He was approximately one second into his explanation when the cerebroed data regarding temporary command post operations flashed in my head, with images lifted directly from training holos. I feigned my interest and nodded politely.
At the end of the hall, he keyed open a door. We sighed at the basic briefing room. Lightweight folding chairs formed a semicircle around a rather beat-up-looking table where about fifteen or so cerebros had been haphazardly stowed.
Two officers whose blue utilities IDed them as pilots sat in the front row and glanced back at our entrance. One rose, a dusky-skinned man whose gaze targeted my cheek. I suddenly realized he was a captain and snapped to. “Sir.”
“Stow that, Lieutenant.” He proffered a hand. “I’m Andropolus, Andrew A. I’ll be your G-Twenty-one pilot. And this is my right, Lieutenant Caylyn Goosavatic—but don’t let her name scare you. She’s really a nasty bitch once you get to know her.”