The Sword

by J. M. Kaukola

  Clausen snapped his attention back towards the threat, where another armored behemoth stood in the gap.

  “Well, shit.” He said, flatly.

  He was unarmed, profiled in the hallway. He was good as dead.

  He charged this one, too.

  It didn’t move. He slammed into it, and it toppled back, like a turtle on its shell.

  As it fell, it revealed the charred hallway behind, and the lines of naval infantry, weapons drawn. Several held smoking k-guns, and two crouched around an expended pulse-laser. Clausen knelt on the broken armor, his karambit wedged under the helmet seal. He looked around, to the wide eyes and flash goggles. They stared at him, stunned. “What?” He asked, fingers still white on the trembling blade. “Go find your own.”

  “Good to see you, Sergeant, but this one was mine.” The gruff voice answered.

  Clausen looked up.

  To the side of the fallen colossus, Section Chief Raschel waited. The Chief was dressed for combat, his tie tucked into an armored vest, and his glasses wedged under a garrison cap. Raschel twisted the head of the juggernaut, to reveal a second knife, slammed into the back of the neck-umbilical. “Terrible weakness.” Raschel said, as he worked the knife free. “One of the reasons we canceled the damn project.” He stopped, and added, “You could use a doctor.”

  “Fuck you.” Clausen answered. His head was pounding. Adrenaline was fading, and the painkillers were taking their toll. He tried to raise his hand, but it was clumsy to move.

  “Fuck you, sir.” Raschel corrected.

  Clausen glared at him.

  “Glad to see your advance unit was able to clear the drop zones. The navy will take it from here.” The Chief explained. “Your people did enough.”

  Clausen broke his glare. He’d hashed this out, he and Berenson. Did he want payback, or to stop Striker? Vendetta commanded him to spit in the old man’s face, tell him to shove his sudden conciliation up his own ass. The mission demanded that he reconcile.

  Clausen stood, slowly, his legs almost giving way, and nodded. “My team-”

  “Needs medevac. We’ve got you.”

  “What then?”

  Raschel looked at him, at the TACNET camera on his helmet, and then back to him. Clausen could almost read the man’s thin smile. ‘Good man, play ball.’ The Chief answered, “Then, you get gratitude, rehabilitation, and my heartfelt apologies for the mud you got drug through.”

  “I want you to say it.” Clausen demanded. “Right here.”

  Raschel watched him, his leathery face ticked, just slightly. There was no need to ask what was wanted. Raschel said, into the camera, “Bill Halstead was a goddamned hero, and I burned him.”

  Clausen nodded. “It’s a start.” He sat down, against the far wall, because his legs wouldn’t hold him up any longer.

  Raschel nodded. He paused, for a moment, glanced to Clausen, and to the wreckage. The infantry flooded past them, left them alone in the rubble. Raschel held the dagger in his hands, wiped it clean on his pants. He stared at it, for a long second, and then held it out.

  On the pommel, Clausen could see the sigil, the clutched swords and eagle. ASOC.

  Clausen asked, “I thought they stopped making those?”

  “They did. Too damned uncivilized.” Raschel said. “This was Bill’s. It was…” he trailed off, lost in thought. He corrected himself, and said, “You should have it.” He held it out.

  Clausen reached up, took the dagger. It was finely made, dark steel and a contoured grip, with the seal on the pommel. A line of silver flared along the back of the blade, and a masters mark was upon the base. Clausen sheathed it, and glanced back to Raschel.

  Clausen said, “Just keep away from the southern spoke. Keep everyone clear.”

  “Why’s that?” Raschel asked.

  “Berenson’s got a plan.”

  #

  The explosions rocked MacPhereson, but the world did not end.

  At the first blast, Striker giggled. But, when the wall of monitors behind him kept their broadcast, when the signal did not stop, when the explosions grew no closer, he fell silent. He stared at Berenson, mouth agape. His silent laugh twisted, into a mad smile. When the dropships crashed down around the compound, their triumphant landings echoed on every screen, Striker burst into a wild cackle, one part ecstasy and one part rage. “Brilliantly played!” He cried. Quicker than a blink, he snatched his fusion pistol from his holster, pointed, and fired.

  Berenson was fast, and he was not stupid. The moment Tiberius fell to his laughter, Berenson stopped closing, and dove for cover. He snapped his pistol up, and fired. His draw was faster than nearly any man’s, alive or dead. It occurred in less time than it took the eye to register the movement. It was not fast enough.

  Striker’s shot caught him in the side. The golden bolt spun him about, like a broken top.

  His own shot merely gazed Tiberius.

  Berenson clawed to his feet. He raised his pistol, tried to ignore the taste of metal and blood that filled his mouth. Blood poured from the wound. He rose, and fired, half crouched. Striker fired back, and retreated behind his chair. The battle was joined.

  The fight was a mirror duel, a man battling his reflection. Every move was perfectly countered. Every shot, every twist, every turn, combined a dancer’s grace and beast’s primal fury. Every attack was made with utter precision. Every motion was perfect, no more, no less than required for absolute lethality. Every blast was calculated to either wreak devastation, or open the next attack. Every action was optimal, in form and function, executed so quickly that sight and sound ceased to matter. They battled, on a calculation of where the other should be, and where the self should not be, barrage after barrage of pre-canned attacks, defenses, and counters that only responded to touch, balance, and intrinsic spatial awareness.

  The deadly ballet played in the light of the monitors, punctuated by the golden-white blasts of the fusion pistols, and marinated in the rising stench of ozone and charred flesh.

  All things being equal, Tiberius was faster.

  They closed on each other, as the roar of gunfire rose into a crescendo. Their magazines emptied as one, and both denied the other the option to reload.

  Now, it was time for blade work, a fight so close a man could taste the blood in the air.

  Tiberius slid inside his brother’s guard. He drove his knife like a steam hammer, unleashed machinegun strikes. His attacks were short, fast, and brutal. Blood fountained after the assault. Berenson staggered back. His own attack was interrupted by the sudden violence, so he adapted. He twisted, dropped below the attacks, stabbed his knife into Tiberius’s side. Again and again, he punctured organs, and sent rivers of crimson after the flashing steel.

  Neither watched his own attacks. They answered only to the feeling of metal on flesh, or flesh on metal, and the sudden kinesthetic feedback of an unpredicted collision.

  It was not beautiful. It was not artistic.

  Two perfectly conditioned killing machines met in battle, and dismantled one another with ruthless efficiency.

  Strike met strike, parry to parry. Every blow was lethal. Every counter crippled.

  In seconds, both lay on the ground, mere feet apart, skewered, shot, burnt, and broken from a dozen fatal wounds.

  For a moment, the room was still.

  Beyond the ceiling, the dim roar of heavy weapons and descending vertols faded into distant thunder. The dull cacophony of war became a heartbeat. The wall of monitors above them had gone blank. Only a few screens still shone against the black tableau. Men had died, but the world yet turned. The globe had burned, but the stars still shone. The starlight shined down, through the eye of the maelstrom, but in the raging heart of the Waste, it was as quiet as the great black beyond.

  Berenson could feel the cold metal beneath his broken body. He could feel the fire in his bones, the ocean of agony in every inch of him. The painkillers weren’t enough. He could feel the tiny shifts as the repair weaves gr
ew into place. He could feel muscles tear as limbs reworked. Every pinprick was unique, every tingle and pulse a different color of pain. He would not die so easily.

  He couldn’t see, not clearly, not yet. From his right side, there was no feeling, at all. That worried him, more than the agony. The pain was constant, it could be filed away. Function was important, comfort was not. One organ at a time, one muscle, one synapse, it would come back. Lightning raced through his mind, and his vision snapped clear.

  The lights on the screens were too high, too blue. They dimmed, retreated from the shadows, and dulled to orange. Sound restored, a white noise scream that filtered down to whispers. He could smell meat, sweat, and ozone. The deck under his hands wasn't cold, it was freezing. He could feel the moisture on his hands, on his face, slowly bleeding away heat. He could feel the warmth pooling on his chest. He could feel the pain. There was nothing but pain.

  A single finger snapped into place. Every grind of bone on bone shook him. Each muscle twitch sent ribbons of fire through his broken arm, where it joined with streamers in a grand parade that assaulted his mind.

  There was no time for this.

  He twisted his head upwards, regained equilibrium. He was reclined against the wall, his right side mangled from his elbow to center mass, his pistol lay useless in a stilled hand. His vision flickered, blossomed into silvery light again, the shadows vanished into brilliant curtains of white. It faded in an instant, but now he could see only in grainy, under-saturated images, that flickered in and out of that cursed light.

  System failure. Limbs crippled. Autonomic functions under direct driver control. Repair time: approximately eight minutes. Tiberius had done well with his attacks. Nothing less was expected, of course, but Berenson was compelled to grant credit where it was due.

  Tiberius would be moving, already. He'd taken less damage.

  Berenson straighted his left hand, snapping the last two fingers into place. The pain would have to wait. He reached across himself, left to right, and felt the movement rip open repairing systems, watched the repair timer extend. This was inefficient, but there was no choice.

  He glanced from the corner of his eyes, his neck freezing before he could complete the necessary rotation. He improvised. He picked up his own mangled arm with his good hand, and dragged it into view, dropped it onto his chest. More irrelevant pain.

  He used his gunbelt as a fulcrum. Slowly, carefully, he released the expended magazine and let it fall. Point by point, action by action, he began to reload the weapon. Time to complete, thirteen seconds. Too long.

  Opposite him, Tiberius used a wedge of the table to force his ribs back into place, methodically building up the body integrity to pull out another gun from his shoulder holster. He'd been faster in the previous fight. His wounds were just slightly less crippling. That was a critical advantage.

  The seconds were long and painful, a race between two demolition engines to see which could return to the fight, faster. By four point two seconds, Tiberius was winning. The next round would not be so nearly matched.

  Tiberius withdrew a dart gun from his jacket, lazily aimed it at Berenson's chest. His gun arm wobbled, just slightly. Slowly, carefully, and raggedly, as if his speech centers weren't quite operational, he said, “This is a nanophage, just as the dormant dose inside you. This will kill you. No rebuilding, no regenerating. Done.”

  Berenson stared him down. Without emotion, he finished his reload, and raised his own weapon in his good hand. “Actualize it.” He commanded. “Or I will end you.”

  “There is no need for this, brother. I win, like you said, and we play again.” Tiberius said.

  “Will you stop?” Berenson asked. Blood burbled up through the holes in his chest, with every word.

  “Never. Actualization must occur.”

  “Then shoot me now, or I will end it.”

  Tiberius shook his head, as if disappointed to have won the match so quickly. He said, “You can not. I have analyzed your game. Even if everything works as you had hoped, they will still fall apart, in time. Entropy wins. Inertia wins. Actualization occurs, and the Authority dies. Born in fire, dies in fire, all of them. They should have died in the cradle, and had better poetry for it.”

  “One option, outside rational parameters, remains.” Berenson said.

  “No moves. There are no moves. I have predicted everything. The best you can do is delay.”

  “You predicted everything?” Berenson asked. The question was answered, the choice was clear. He dropped his gun, let his hand fall to his chest.

  Tiberius smiled weakly. He said, “The ending was always defeat. There was no arguing it.”

  With tremendous effort, Berenson pulled his jacket open, to reveal the third dial-a-yield nuclear device, strapped to his abdomen, below the knife and gunshot wounds, its trigger armed by the sudden motion. “I disagree, brother. Behold, my counter-point.”

  Tiberius's eyes flashed wide. For a moment, his face twisted into confusion, shock, and anger, but all of those melted into the first breaths of a cackling fit.

  “Ta-da.” Berenson whispered.

  There was light, and nothing more.

  #

  “The myth has existed since man first put meaning to sounds, and carved reason from darkness and fear. Myth serves to explain our world, to let our primate brains put sense to a terribly vast universe. Consider: stars were bound into constellations, because giants in the sky made more sense than distant balls of incandescent gas. More importantly, however, those storied forms were crafted not from boredom, but because they enabled better navigation and agriculture.

  “Myth, then, is, and always has been, a tool, one long employed to bind your above-average socialized primates, to reinforce loyalties beyond blood or mate. United under a common myth, a people may say, “We value the freedom our fathers have granted us”, or “We honor the traditions handed down to us”, or even “We believe in order and rule of law”. Philosophers, prophets, and poets perform the same vital function: they establish the characteristics that the individual uses to define self, to define 'us', and to define 'other'.

  “These binds are directly tied to the myths that forge them. Primitive societies unite by family, and then by clan and tribe, later by city and village. Only after does the the State form, and only then follows thoughts of hegemony and sovereign power, of delineated borders, of apparatus and bureaucracy, the tentacles that bind the construct together. At each level, there are stories, from campfire tales of great heroes, to the anointed boulevards and monument parks, but these are one and the same. From the campfire tale to the national myth, these are stories, lies, that we tell ourselves to glue the chaos together. We talk about folk heroes and warriors, wanderers, and lone lawgivers. We exalt the worker, or the poet, and we pin our identity upon them. We hold as brethren those who share our stories.

  “Do not think, however, that my dissection, here, belies some disdain for myth. I may speak of it in clinical terms, or with derision, but only because I recognize its pervasive necessity, and rail against all things forced. These stories grant us a powerful tool, in that they allow us to embrace the 'other' through more complex measurements than blood or bone, but rather by ideological and rational conceits, both broader and more flexible. It is a dangerous tool, for it is powerful, and often insidious, but we should never be blind to its utility.

  “Consider that, with each iteration of human growth, the myth becomes more potent, and more far-reaching. Oral traditions could unite tribes, the written word could bind the city-state, and the telegraph gave us the transcontinental empire. It is a softer form of power, and blunt men often forget how potent it truly is. The Authority puts great stock in swords, and in fire, but these things may only kill, and occasionally compel, but will never inspire. This is their greatest failing. They turn away from the most potent weapon, for it is too ephemeral to be grasped, and too immaterial to craft in a millwork, but far more greatness has been achieved through inspiration th
an compulsion.

  “A spoken word may turn a man. A pen, change him. A camera, control him. But, we have at our fingertips a still greater measure. The modern world is interlinked, interwoven, with information and entertainment, interactive media that requires not passive observation, but active participation. In this maddened nest of Skinner Boxes and echo chambers, the proper message can become memetic, can transcend the rationality that birthed it, and alter not a man, but a nation. When you put a pipeline into your brain, when you let the floodgates down, you remove the barriers, the filters, and let the myth take you. Truth, then, is not appealed to, but defined, and reality must heel to this truth.

  “Tiberius must be given credit, for he has laid the groundwork, through methods both vile and brilliant. He has constructed the emotional mechanisms required to prime the well, placed every stake at its required, highest threshold. He has put the world on the edge of catharsis. Every seat in the house is full, seated on edge, awaiting the climax and the meaning of it. What we do here is bind everyone to that moment, ensnare the zeitgeist for just one small instant, and then subvert and elevate his apparatus. With the entire world ensorcelled, I will do what has never been done. I will give the entire species its united, foundational, myth, and let them choose whether to take it up.

  “This is a story, you see, a lie at its core. To sell the lie, the audience must accept it. They must project themselves upon it. We do not speak of heroes because we admire them, we tell of heroes because in some deeper delusion, we believe we are them. We are the snake oil salesmen of the soul, pushing our opiate into the psychic veins of our race.

  “You should know, however, that it will not be without cost. In order to close this sale, a sacrifice is required. Like blood for an ancient god, the narrative of this myth requires sacrifice. This dark urge is written into mankind from our earliest moments, borne out in crop cycles and holy wars, in trails of blood and 'final measures' since before history was kept. Blood is powerful, you see, and blood is redeeming. The audience will require it to believe. The myth must have its champion, and that champion must bleed.