From the Torment of Dreams

by Iain McKinnon

  “If only we'd picked up a few blankets from the ambulance,” Telfor moaned.

  “We didn't expect to be wandering around fields all night when we left it,” Speg snapped back.

  “What the hell happened to Cope?”

  “Security forces must have picked him up.”

  “He wouldn't have talked, would he?” Telfor said.

  “They'd try to extract as much information from him as quickly as possible using any means available. It wouldn't take long to get him to crack and tell them what they wanted to know. Anyway it doesn't matter now. We’re way off script. I doubt there’s anything useful he could tell them. For now we've just got to get as far away from the city as possible.”

  “For God's sake, call for help,” pleaded Telfor trailing behind.

  The first rays of light were just forming over the horizon and being scattered by the cloud cover. Snow fluttered down as it had for most of their retreat.

  Speg looked around. Ahead were gently sloping meadows bordered by trees.

  In the half-light the world was polarised, everything black or white, the white icy pasture and the black towering woods.

  He was cold. Colder than he'd ever been. His arms were tight against his sides trying to conserve heat. There was still some warmth in him as the snow on his chest melted and soaked its way through, drawing even more heat away. It wasn't a thick arctic snow but a light, weak splattering. By midday it would all have melted away making the ground soft and muddy. But midday was hours away and the pair would have frozen from wind-chill long before then. The blood Speg had lost from his bullet wound and the pain it caused weakened his resolve and reduced his body’s ability to stave off the cold.

  A breeze stirred up by the dawn's approach whistled in Speg's raw ears.

  He stopped for a moment. Like a turtle emerging from its shell his hands appeared from within his sleeve. He tucked the pistol under his arm and squeezed his index finger.

  The raw pink digit turned white from the pressure. Slowly, very slowly, blood started to return and the skin reverted to its pink hue.

  Telfor came trudging up beside him. His whole body aching from the exertion of their escape.

  “What are you doing?” thick clouds of steam billowed from his mouth as he spoke.

  Speg shivered in the cold wind.

  “Checking for,” as if on cue his teeth chattered loudly, “hypothermia.”

  “Have you?” asked Telfor.

  “Probably,” came the reply.

  “Look, call for an evacuation,” pleaded Telfor.

  “Yeah I think you're right.”

  Speg passed the gun to Telfor and with a cold hand delved into his shirt for the radio. He fumbled with numb fingers to open the transmitter's casing. The backing snapped clear, jolting the nerves in Speg's cold hands, the buzz of pain bringing an uncomfortable warmth to his fingers.

  The procedure for an emergency transmission was well practised but in the bitter cold it was a long and arduous task.

  First Speg took a reference from an orbiting satellite of their exact position. This information would be encoded into the signal they sent. He then recorded a short message. The microchip on board condensed the information to a fifth of a second and checked the reserves in its batteries.

  The computer displayed its findings.

  “There's enough power for a one blast message. Hopefully a Terran ship in orbit will pick it up but that's depending on the atmospheric conditions,” said Speg looking up at the cloud cover, “May be tricky on a day like this.”

  “Then what do we do?” asked Telfor.

  “Wait to be rescued.”

  “But won't the Neotrans hear it?”

  “They will. But it's a compressed signal, hopefully they won't have time to triangulate our position,” Speg flicked the switch, “Or if they do we need to hope we get picked up before they get here.”

  A green light came on and grew in intensity. It became brighter for a full five seconds and was replaced by a fleeting burst of red.

  “There, it's sent.”

  “But if the Neotrans triangulate it they'll come and capture us,” said Telfor nervously.

  “Would you shut the fuck up! Of course the Neotrans will come looking for us. They've been looking for us all night,” Speg snapped at Telfor, “We've given them a great big neon sign saying, 'Come pick up a wounded Special Forces officer and his retarded sidekick'.”

  Speg walked up to a pine tree and crawled under the low branches.

  “Why the fuck were you chosen as a support specialist?” Speg muttered, “No, don’t answer that, I already know. There was no one else.”

  “I didn’t ask for this!” Telfor spat out, “I wanted to get my qualifications, get my way paid through college. That’s why I joined up. I didn’t join up to become a macho killing machine. I didn’t expect I’d be in this shit.”

  “You’re a soldier. Whatever else you are when you put on that uniform you are a soldier. You swore to uphold the freedom of Terrance Alliance against all threats even if it meant your life. And that’s where we are.”

  “You relish this kind of thing though don’t you, the death the destruction you get off on it.”

  Speg sat against the snow free trunk and looked up at Telfor, “I've been shot and I'm freezing to death. I've had better days. And I don't need you pestering me about not wanting to die on a strange planet! No one wants to die. I don’t want to die! Now we sit down, shut up and wait to be picked up.”

  Telfor shrugged his shoulders and crawled under the branches, “Shall I start a fire to keep us warm?”

  “God your brains are in your ass. What are you going to burn, the snow!” Speg barked.

  “I was just trying to be helpful.”

  “Look, we're both tired, we're not thinking straight. It's the cold and the fatigue. Let's just take shelter, sit next to each other for warmth and wait.”

  Telfor knew that this was as close to an apology Speg would give.

  He crawled under the branches and sat next to Speg in silence.

  The two men huddled together under a snow laden pine tree for warmth. His shuddering had stopped and Speg was getting groggy. He tried desperately to stay awake, knowing that to sleep in this condition would be death. He remembered the scariest statistic he had learned in training was that four out of every five deaths in war were temperature related. What that meant was fire and frost, maybe incinerated during an orbital drop or frozen in the vacuum of space. A soldier in the Terrain Alliance had less than a ten-percent chance of dying from an actual bullet. When he was just a fresh squaddie he had always imagined that if he died in service it would be by a gunshot wound in the throes of battle.

  “One consolation is hypothermia isn’t painful.” Sped thought, “To just close my eyes and sleep.”

  “Apparently you even feel warm before you slip away,” he reminded himself. Speg closed his eyes and surrendered.

  “Speg... Speg wake up and listen!” Telfor chirped enthusiastically.

  “Wh..a...t is... it?” asked Speg in a slurred drool.

  “Listen! It's an engine.”

  They sat quietly trying to make the sound out over the wind.

  Yes, there it was, the whine of a turbine. They crawled out from the shelter of the branches to see the dark podgy shape of a landing craft slowing over the clearing. Even Telfor with his inexperience could make out the familiar design of a Terran transport.

  Telfor ran to the edge of the clearing and waved frantically to the craft.

  Speg tried to haul himself to his feet fighting against the resistance of his numb muscles. He stumbled and fell to all fours in the snow.

  The pilot of the transport dipped his ship's wings to signal that he had spotted them and started his final descent to the clearing.

  “We're saved!” Telfor cried.

  Speg managed to form a smile with his anaesthetized lips.

  The dropship banked and started its descent into the clearing.
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  From behind the trees on the far side of the pasture a flash of light grabbed Speg's attention. A rocket leapt into the air and smashed straight into the landing craft.

  The dropship burst open in a ball of orange flame. Chunks of black fuselage hurtled into the air and the main bulk of the burning ship plummeted to the ground like a stone.

  The concussive wave of the explosion thumped into Telfor and Speg throwing them back into the woods, a second later burning fuselage rained down.

  Speg spat out a slushy mouthful of snow and forest debris and rolled over onto his back. A fractious buzzing scolded his eardrums so severely that his double vision vibrated along with it.

  Even through the concussion of the blast Speg could hear Telfor nearby screaming. Half rolling over onto his side Speg could see his companion pinned to the ground with a long twist of ragged shrapnel through his groin.

  Speg heaved himself into an upright position, now he could see that in the centre of the field surrounded by snow lay the blazing debris of their salvation. From behind the heat haze of the flames and his blurred vision he could make out half a dozen jeeps driving towards the crash site.

  The Neotrans had traced their broadcast.

  Speg pulled the gun out from inside his jacket.

  “No energy left to run,” Speg's reasoning was calculated and calm.

  He slipped the magazine out of his pistol and checked the ammunition, “Six shots left. No way we can make a fight of it, not enough to stand them off until air cover can be called in.”

  Speg casually waved his gun at Telfor, “You know too much about Alliance equipment to be taken prisoner,”

  Telfor was still screaming oblivious to everything but his own pain.

  “And I am a Bavashee,” Speg shook his head, “The torture they would put me through for a few lines of information.”

  He slid the magazine back into the handle of the gun until it clicked into place and chambered a round.

  “Well,” Speg said levelling the gun at Telfor, “in spite of it all we will join that small ten percent.”

  Section 25

  Kalim sat in his starched dress uniform. It was a nice change to be out of fatigues but all the same he would prefer not to be here. On his way over to the command bunker he had caught the eye of one or two girls. A smart uniform had always bolstered a man's sex appeal. It had been a small boost to his confidence, but now he was sitting waiting to be received, that boost was ebbing away.

  In the reception where he waited, a newscast was being shown, Kalim turned his attention to that to try and stave off his nervousness.

  The broadcast was fronted by a solemn newsreader, “...as the world grieves for the loss of a great man.

  “A known Waden terrorist is in custody in connection with the assassination. John Cope, twenty-six, is charged with murder and treason. He was apprehended after a gun battle in downtown Jala. In a separate but related incident, two other terrorists were killed in farmland just south of the city. Their details have yet to be released,

  “And today Field Marshal Hanno was confirmed as the acting Head of State in the wake of the recent assassinations.”

  As the newscaster spoke a picture of the new head of state appeared on the screen. The Marshal was a thick-set man with dark hair and a well trimmed moustache.

  “The decision was announced from the Marshal's command bunker only hours after the death of the President. The swift action was, in the words of the government press office, to 'retain continuity and our strength of purpose in the light of a new Alliance offensive.'

  “The new Terran assaults have devastated many outlying towns and villages with the loss of thousands of innocent lives. We have a special report from one of the hardest hit...”

  “It was funny,” Kalim thought, “never once had he heard about the attack on Mendus in any news bulletin. The humiliating defeat had destroyed Neotra's biggest missile base. But not one mention had ever been made of it.”

  The only items were of Neotran successes or Terran atrocities.

  The images of a torched village flashed across the news screen. Here and there were scattered items of shattered lives. The roofless smouldering remains of a home, a half burnt mattress that was once someone's bed, a child's doll, broken and abandoned.

  “The propaganda machine in top gear,” Kalim mused as he waited, “It blurs the truth to fuel the hatred of war. Our black deeds lightened, a white lie smeared further. Polarising the issues, them against us, us against them. With the media a potent tool for perverting the truth.”

  Kalim's line of thought was broken by a harsh buzzing noise.

  The secretary answered the intercom.

  “Yes, Sir,” she finished with a sugary tone and called over, “You can go in now.”

  Kalim pulled himself away from the reporter's narrative and addressed the door to the Field Marshal's room.

  He faced the door and paused. Inside this room were the men in charge of his entire world. Kalim took a deep breath and used one of Nasim's breathing techniques to still his nerves. He was about to be interrogated on the content of his controversial, possibly even heretical report about Nasim. The next few minutes would make or break his career, not only in the army but also after his discharge.

  He rapped out of courtesy and entered.

  Inside the room were five high ranking officers and another secretary.

  “I'll be frank,” said the thick-set, dark haired Marshal Hanno as he smoothed down his moustache, “why have you brought this to our attention? Everything in this dossier we already know.”

  The Field Marshal poked at the document on the table with a chubby finger.

  “Yes, Sir, and that's the point,” said Kalim, “That information was written down at the precise moment it took place, before the attack was public knowledge. I was in the room with the subject when he did it and I can assure you this is no fraud.”

  “That might mean he was in league with the assassins,” pointed out a suspicious General.

  “We've had him under lock and key since the attack at Mendus. There's no way he could have collaborated with Terran troops even if he had wanted to,” Kalim turned back to face Marshal Hanno, “My profile shows that he is what he says he is, just a lost kid who strayed onto an army base on the wrong day.”

  “Maybe he found out the Terran plans by accident and he's just playing you for a sucker,” said the General, reiterating his cynicism.

  “Everything he wrote down is one hundred percent accurate, from what the attackers were wearing to the descriptions of wounds on the casualties in the hospital. I find it hard to believe that the Terrans planned the attack down to the last bullet hole,” Kalim opened his copy of the report.

  “Here”, he said opening a page in the dossier.

  “The blue eyed one,” Kalim looked up from his passage, “That's the Terran assassin.”

  He looked back down and continued, “The blue eyed one returns fire. The man in the robe who was shooting, there's a flash of pain it's all through him. It seeps back, back up to his shoulder, he's been shot in the shoulder,”

  Kalim rifled through the attachments and found the page he was hunting for.

  “The man in the robe was one of the patients who President Onodera was visiting. He received a single bullet wound to the upper shoulder, ah...” Kalim leafed through the rear of his papers to verify what he had just read with the official report, “not fatally, and so on.”

  Kalim glanced around the room to see that a few of his audience were half-heartedly trying to follow him in their own copies of his report, “There are dozens of small details like that. It would have been impossible to stage this.”

  The Marshal looked perplexed by the implications, the thought struck Kalim that Hanno hadn't actually read his report. Kalim gently lay down his copy on the Marshals desk and tried to still the annoyance he felt at his commander-in-chief’s lack of understanding.

  “The events in the report about the assassination w
ere only to demonstrate how accurate and unerring Nasim has been. He's achieved other seemingly impossible feats. The assassination dictation is just one that illustrates his abilities in a tangible way.”

  “So this subject of yours can see the future?” asked one of the Generals.

  Kalim thought to himself, “Hold your tongue. You won't have a career if you ridicule the Generals.”

  He took a breath and tried not to sound patronising, “Not quite, Sir. He can focus in on people and virtually see what they're doing.”

  Kalim's earlier nervousness had been dispelled at the realisation of just how ignorant these people were. He was appalled with the command staff's inability to comprehend his report. He had written it plainly enough, when compiling it he had consciously decided to keep it simple to avoid misinterpretation. This was a phenomenal discovery he had made, one that challenged much of orthodox science. Reporting on this kind of topic had to be precise otherwise he would be discredited, and how would that affect his career in civilian life?

  “Well if it works, let's get this boy to look into the Alliance commander's office and see what he's planning,” sneered Marshal Hanno as he stroked his moustache.

  The other Generals sniggered.

  Kalim explained, “Unfortunately it doesn't appear to work that way. Nasim has to have been in contact with his subject, if not on a physical level, certainly on an emotional one.”

  “And this boy has a link with the assassins? How can we trust him!” demanded the suspicious General.

  “Because it was the same Terran who massacred his village who killed the President,” said Kalim.

  “In the wake of this atrocity, and as a sign that we won't tolerate Earth's underhandedness, I feel we should make every effort to apprehend this criminal. There were two soldiers among the survivors at the hospital. Can they make an ID on the assassin who evaded us?” Marshal Hanno looked over to his secretary.