The Genetic Imperative

by P. Joseph Cherubino

  The young soldiers marched past these symbols of their nature and duty, but Nina was certain they had no idea what they were seeing. Nina was no longer certain herself. It was natural for the young to desire the experience they were created for, but their ignorance bothered her. They couldn't imagine what was truly in store for them. They coveted her for the trappings of experience; ogled her campaign pins and admired her wound. They assessed her and whispered among themselves, and it made Nina ill.

  Nearly half the passing soldiers would die on some planet halfway across the galaxy before they had the chance to reach middle age. The young ones wished for death, and they didn't even know it, Nina thought. Worse still, it was engineered to be that way. On the heels of this sudden jarring realization came a question; did Nina resent their ignorance or the circumstance that created it? How could it be that they were created to die like this and do so with such fervor? She’d witnessed life on many planets, and none of it resembled this. Most planets had no concept of violence until contact with the Silicoids. Life in the rest of the galaxy seemed to evolve in equilibrium within its own sphere. One question opened the door to another, and her throat tightened to choke them back.

  The Warrior was trained from birth to purge doubt, hesitation and fear; to discharge her duty without question, but Nina couldn't shake these new thoughts and the new apprehension that came with them. She even wondered how it was possible to have such thoughts. After all, Nina was part of an Advocate Race; the most highly specialized species of any Genome. Her kind existed for a single reason: to preserve life in the Galaxy. Her sole purpose was to die fighting toward that end.

  But since the Third Arm, the thought of death brought sickness to her stomach, and she began to covet her own beating heart. The doubt and fear filled her mouth with the taste of metal, and her jaw clenched to grind it away. Nina suspected something was gravely wrong with her. Advocates were not supposed to be this way If she went to a medical engineer, what would Nina say about these ill feelings? She had trouble describing them herself.

  She moved through the crowd slowly, almost dreamily, lost in the purpose of these forbidden thoughts. It was rare for a Warrior to be frivolous with her time and she drew disapproving glances from a few passing High Officers. With spite, she made a point of slow progress. These were the same High Officers who somehow came to the conclusion that sacrificing eighty-thousand of her sisters was a good strategic move. She thought it was about time that the Advocate language developed some form of profanity. Maybe their lives were profane enough.

  This day was meant for her, after all. She had only just left a ten-hour ceremony that set this fact in stone. Nina suddenly realized she was faced with a choice—to let this misery overtake her or to go forward on this day and try to enjoy the most precious commodity of an Advocate Warrior: life itself. A sudden sense of entitlement straightened her spine, and her slow pace became an act of spite to divert the dangerous thoughts that dogged her.

  Why shouldn't she take her time in public? By timeless tradition, she was meant to reflect on her life this day. Let the elders take offense. They had their day, and now it was Nina's turn. Alive, she was. The Warrior had exactly five hundred years of potential life and today, Nina's life was half over. For the privilege of those years, the Warrior paid a debt of blood. Nina might never get the chance to spend time like this again. With her next step, she decided to enjoy the life she had left.

  She stared back brazenly and strolled on. She felt more certain that this time belonged to her and began to claim it with every step. It was the Time of the Middle not only for Nina but also for the remainder of an entire generation. Her sole duty of this day was over, and she had nothing but time till next evening's muster.

  At its peak, Generation Gaav numbered one-hundred-fifty-million. Today, only forty-million survived to celebrate Middle. The elders praised this remarkable statistic as a testament to the high honor of her generation. The Gaav generation was born at a time of unusually pitched conflict, and this attrition rate was high even by Advocate standards. Nina lived through hell, and it was not likely she would make it to the Last Day.

  Because of their pre-determined life span and their purpose, the three most important moments in the life of an Advocate Warrior were birth, mid-life and death. There was little the Warrior could do about the first and the last, but anything in between was an open book. Death in battle was considered a high honor but death on the Last Day was considered the highest honor of all. It was believed that only the strongest, fiercest and cunning Warrior might survive to the Last Day. After three-hundred-seventy-six campaigns and countless battles on hundreds of planets across the galaxy, Nina understood that survival was mostly a matter of chance. Skill was only a minor factor and being tough only meant you could pretend better than most.

  The Ceremony of the Middle reached its pinnacle when each Warrior received her service record. The terse record of Nina's fighting career was stored within a tiny diamond that now hung from a thin silver chain around her neck. Nina reached into her robes and rolled that rock between her thumb and forefinger absently as her thoughts tumbled back in time. She didn't need the diamond or the tedious ceremony that went with it to remind her of the many battles fought in service to her Queen. She didn't need the rock to remind her of the solar systems she fought her way, though. She didn't need it to tell her about the campaigns that earned her many wounds and the rank of Captain. She certainly didn't need it to remind her of all the faces of her fallen sisters. She could not put a number on those faces. They were too many to count because they died so quickly. They were all a blur, but they all had the same eyes that Nina could sometimes see before falling asleep.

  While recalled from the front for this ritual, her sisters were still engaged in battle in the far reaches of the Galaxy. Nina told herself that her deep desire to be with them would only cause needless pain and help no one. She renewed her resolve to enjoy her time in spite of this sudden heavy sadness.

  Snapping out of her reverie, she found herself standing in the southern region of the Great Hall. Here, massive rectangular slabs of stone were carved out where the dome itself pushed up against the mountains rising above. Roughly three-quarters of the dome stood out from the base of the nearly vertical mountain face. The rest was carved into the mountain itself. She realized that she’d covered about a kilometer―a third of the Dome’s diameter. Soldiers funneled through passageways leading down to the transit system. She could hear the distant humming of the trains as they hovered rapidly through the tunnels below.

  Throngs of Soldiers moved past, abuzz with the latest gossip and speculation about the next duty assignment or which division team was going to the Storm Field playoffs. She vaguely realized that she was the only Warrior still in ceremonial garb. The robes of the crowd had all changed to evening fatigues. She’d been wandering for several standard hours. Here and there, tight groups of cadets filed along briskly on the way back from afternoon drills. It was late. Nina began to hurry. She was wasting time.

  At the train platform, she couldn't decide whether to go home to change or simply loosen her robes, stow her pins and medals and head straight for her favorite wine hall. She hadn’t seen her closet-sized home chamber in twenty-five years. It would take almost an hour to break the preservation seal just to get in. She finally decided to go home when a strong hand clamped around her forearm. Nina instinctively jumped away and struck a fighting posture that shook loose a few crisp pleats from her formal robes. She grabbed absently for her staff.

  "Look out!' a familiar, laughing voice called out. “It’s a real veteran!”

  Chanise Thazh stood beaming at her in the midst of the crowded platform. The younger Nina didn't speak as the two Warriors fell into step. The chance meeting pleased Nina because it brought her further from the burden of her thoughts. Chanise was relieved when a deep, subtle smile crept across Nina’s full lips.

  "Great so see you too, Nina," Chanise started with friendly sarcasm.
"Talkative as ever I see. How is your return?"

  Nina replied in her usual clipped manner.

  "Almost three months in transit from the Third Arm, two days back. Still in a fog. Feels like I'm still back there. "

  More than a few heads whipped toward them at Nina's mention of the Third Arm. News traveled fast of the slaughter there. Rumors of a mutiny were taking off like birds into a sky of their very own. The threats from High Command kept information fairly well contained, but people still talked. They were calling the Spore contact there 'The Anomaly." Chanise’s face tightened at the mention, and it was evident to Nina that her friend was suddenly uncomfortable. It was very rare for the boisterous Chanise to fall silent.

  "We here get a lot of news from the Third arm, and all of it's bad. I’ve been watching three heavy cruisers a month heading out that way," Chanise broke the silence with intense gravity, "Your exploits on that front are well known by more than a few of the Planet-bound."

  Nina glanced at her friend and noticed the limp from her replaced right leg was more pronounced than when last they met. The medical engineers could replace a limb, but it was never the same. It was like living with a stranger, and the limb never gained full strength.

  Such a wound took a Warrior off the front lines and bound her to a supporting role, usually on the home world. This was particularly hard for a Warrior's heart. It was better for Chanise because she was almost a General and her work on the fringes of High Command was very involved. But the sadness was with her just the same. Chanise was tired. The warrior was a century older than Nina and appeared even older. The sidelined Warrior usually worked many times harder in their alternative role in order to compensate for being away from heavy action.

  Nina chose to lighten the mood.

  "Oh, I just thought I'd impress these young ones with my, ah ... what did you call them - 'exploits,'" Nina joked, and Chanise smiled with obvious gratitude.

  The pair snaked casually through the crowd and Chanise roped her arm maternally around the shoulders of the younger Warrior.

  "Can't you find some other way to make friends?"

  "Need all the friends I can get. Been back two days and I’m probably facing a tribunal. Right now I need a dark, quiet place, a soft bench and an unknown quantity of deep, thick red wine," she added “And not nutritional wine either.”

  "Well, if that's the case I have a plan. We stop by my quarters, you clean up, borrow a casual robe, then head to Cordelia's place. She is entertaining tonight and she likes to keep soft things around. You can get drunk and lie about on her cushions. It's your day and you are a much-mentioned war hero."

  Chanise pulled her closer and gave her a rough, affectionate shake as they walked to the train.

  "Come on!" she urged "Just a while longer, hang in there. You'll be swimming in fine wine soon enough."

  The warmth of contact was comforting. Chanise was the big sister now. For the first time since her return, Nina found herself on the comfortable side of normal. At that moment, the war seemed just far enough away. They waited on the platform as the long-distance trains hovered by, and the locals began to appear.

  "You know," Chanise mused, "most of these cars are two thousand years old. They've have seen four generations of Warrior."

  Nina considered this. To her, the long cylinders with rounded ends seemed like drop pods. Too many things in the Warrior’s life resembled artillery. From the drop pods to the sleeping chambers, everything appeared to be another piece of ordnance. Fire it at the enemy and it is expended. Some get to sleep at the end of the cycle, and others never wake. Another planet, another infection and they fired again. It was much more significant for her to realize now that the trains come from the same metallic ore as the birthing chambers. She didn't care for the seamless, textureless form of the train cars but at least they had windows. Drop pods don't have windows. Warriors don't need a view from inside a missile.

  Nina had been on deployment for twenty-five years. She found herself wishing desperately now for something, anything that did not serve some grand Warrior's purpose. She longed for some trivial conversation in a room with comfortable benches. She just wanted a bath and some soft robes. At least, the train offered a little comfort in the form of thinly padded seats.

  They finally spotted a passing local segment and filed inside. Pocket doors parted silently into thick walls, closed again. They found themselves in the rear car among a crowd of boisterous younger soldiers. Everyone began to relax on the trains. Transit time was the beginning of free time and travel allowed socializing. Inside the gray car, with its textureless walls, the only color game from the vaguely yellow light spilling from rectangular sections set a meter apart near the ceiling. Otherwise, the interior was a smooth and even, lead-colored tube with rows of bench seats facing forward, supported by curved stalks formed from the floor.

  As Nina and Chanise entered, three cadets made a hasty show of vacating their seats for the approaching veterans. The older soldiers accepted the seats with polite dignity and sat heavily. The segment hovered through the tunnel and moved deeper into Central District.

  The Great Dome defined Central District as its highest extent. If removed from the crust and placed upright on the surface, it would resemble a silo with the Dome as its roof. The District extended deep below the crust in a series of disk-shaped caverns. Fifty meters of stone separated each of the four-hundred levels. The last fifty levels of the column held most of the machinery and power sources that made the whole arrangement run.

  A series of train tubes spiraled the column from base to dome, sending out branches, junctions and interchanges. Some transit tubes ran on the decks of caverns while some crossed ceilings. Most opened at the chamber bases near the decks. Soldiers walked everywhere once they reached a level, although vehicles were sometimes used for priority travel within.

  The train stopped a few times. Some soldiers were not socializing, but heading out on deployment. The upper layers of the District are where Warriors assembled before shipping out. The top fifty levels serve administrative functions; mostly things like logistics and supply happened up top.

  Having discharged local passengers, the segment bearing Nina and Chanise made its way through a long sweeping curve to join an outer spiral that wound down past the remaining administrative levels. Moderate speed pressed them against the seats, followed by a small lurch as their segment joined with more cars with similar destinations. It wasn’t long before they were more than ten kilometers beneath the surface.

  An hour later, their train sensed its target region and broke off into another sweeping curve that brought it parallel to the floor of Chanise’s home chamber. The train slowed for the last kilometer as it approached the chamber extent, then smoothly pulled into the station.

  Nina immediately recognized the place. It was about fifty levels below District Midpoint in a region mostly occupied with Range Force soldiers like Nina and her friend.

  The platform was traditional, containing a high vaulted ceiling that opened out into the chamber to form the main concourse. A few floral carvings decorated the borders of the entryway and a few statues stood to break up the traffic flow. Some planter boxes sprouted with green, violet and yellow leafy plants that interrupted the otherwise slate-gray surfaces.

  The chamber was busy. Large groups of Advocates walked together toward what Nina hoped were leisure activities. They all certainly appeared relaxed. Most were Range Force with a scattering of the ubiquitous engineers among them. The two Divisions seemed to form an affinity for one another and mixed well.

  “My place is not too far,” Chanise led the way through the crowds.

  As they left the concourse, residential buildings rose up around them and channeled them through long avenues in a grid system. The buildings were all variations on the shade of gray, from the almost-white to the darkest slate. The avenues themselves were perfectly black basalt, polished to a flat finish by constant foot traffic. Many oval-shaped windows and doorway
s broke up the blocky scheme of exterior walls.

  While the streets themselves were perfectly square blocks, the buildings seemed to be randomly constructed. The effect was that the bottom levels of the buildings were broad square bases while the upper levels were a collection squares and cubes and rectangles of differing proportion, all set atop one another to form castellations and cantilevers and pockets of right angles. The placement afforded balconies to some apartments and cubby holes to others where soldiers sat to look down onto the streets below. Many of the buildings rose up to the chamber ceiling a hundred meters above, where ample and bright full spectrum lighting globes made all the gray shades stand out independently in surprisingly interesting contrast.

  “I visited here once,” Nina remarked as they strolled deeper into the city chamber “But I don’t remember the buildings being so high. And their shapes were regular.”

  She found the buildings strange.

  “Yes. I moved here shortly after your deployment twenty-five years ago. Many others followed suit and the building started soon after. It’s almost doubled in capacity since I moved. Construction has slowed, though.”

  “It seems like there is a lot of movement while I’ve been away. I don’t remember so many people changing residence. It looks like the Divisions are choosing to live among themselves more.”

  “That does seem to be a trend,” Chanise replied. Nina believed there was more behind that statement. A long walk straight, a left turn and a short distance later, they reached her building.

  “It must be nice to live in a chamber where you just have to pick two directions to get home,” Nina said.

  Instead of a door, a thick spinstone curtain covered the doorway arch. It was engineered to respond automatically to bodies passing through. As they approached, it turned from the appearance of a carved curtain to billowing fabric as its threads separated and its folds parted. The sound was a gorgeous combination of thousands of tiny wind chimes and the hush of rushing sand. The curtain closed behind them. Nina wanted to pass through again to hear the sound.