Inside his ears, the helmet commanders shouted, ‘KILL THE ENEMY! KILL THE ENEMY! DON’T LET HIM ESCAPE!” With a weird disorientation, Barto thought the voice sounded like Gunnar’s.
Without letting go, Arviq fought like a wild thing, clamping his knees on either side of Barto’s armored chest, trying to tear the helmet off. When Barto staggered backward, slamming his comrade against the metal wall, Arviq let out an explosive exhale of pain and surprise. Barto recovered his balance and slammed him against the wall a second time.
Arviq struggled, but would not let go. He continued pounding with naked fists against the impenetrable armor.
“Come with me!” Arviq shouted loudly enough to penetrate the heavy ear coverings, to break through the harsh command voice. “Let’s go back to HQ. Back to our lives, Barto! We don’t belong here.”
Barto bent over and butted him against the wall, hearing ribs crack this time. Arviq’s grip finally loosened. He wheezed in pain, coughed blood. “Let me go then. Just let me run from here. I’ll leave.” Arviq slumped to one side and scrambled to his feet. Blood from his raw wounds smeared Barto’s scuffed armor.
“Can’t let you do that,” Barto answered. “You must stay here. The commanders gave their orders. Defy them, and you’re a traitor.”
Arviq stood up, glaring at him. His face was uncovered, his emotions unmasked. “This isn’t what we were made for. We are soldiers. War is our life. Not this . . . where we’re pets on display.” Barto had never really studied his comrade’s face before. “What happens when they get bored with us?”
Barto pressed his gloved palm against the hilt of his ID-coded blaster weapon. The device detected its proper owner and released its grip in the holster. Barto yanked the weapon free, held it in his hand.
Not far down the corridor, he could see the tarnished rungs that rose up the dark shaft. It would take so little for Arviq to scramble up the ladder, pop the heavy hatch—and be out, all alone on the blasted battlefield. Without armor or weapons, he didn’t have much chance of survival—but Arviq seemed desperate enough to take that option.
Arviq gathered himself up, glared at his former comrade and stepped away. “I know what I am, and what to do.” With the back of his hand, he wiped a smear of blood from his mouth. “Which one of us is the traitor, truly?” He turned and, moving slowly, not threateningly, took a step toward the ladder, the escape.
Barto raised the weapon. “Halt.”
Arviq turned to look at him with flinty, determined eyes. “I’m dead down here anyway. If I can’t get back onto the battlefield, then you may as well blast me now.”
Barto powered up his weapon.
The other soldier took two more steps down the corridor.
Inside the helmet, Gunnar’s voice shouted, “KILL THE ENEMY! DON’T LET HIM ESCAPE. YOU MUST PROTECT US. KILL HIM!” Barto leveled the blaster at the target.
Then he heard another voice—Juliette’s—muffled and distant, but coming closer. She cried out, running down the long-abandoned corridors toward him. “Don’t shoot, Barto. You must learn not to kill if you’re going to stay here.”
“Kill! Kill!” Gunnar’s voice bellowed.
Arviq turned as Juliette appeared, all alone, her elfin face distraught. Then he used the moment of distraction to a dash toward the rungs.
“KILL!” shouted the voice in Barto’s ears again. And he did.
Depressing the firing stud, he blasted his former comrade in the back as he ran. Arviq had no armor, no protection whatsoever. The bolt flared out and incinerated him, turning the other man into a smoking pile of burned bones and cooked flesh that fell in a heap on the floor, as if still trying to run.
“No!” Juliette cried out, but it sounded like a pout. Barto turned to see her standing there. Her expression was stricken, and then even more terrified as he faced her, the charged weapon still in his hand. “I wanted you to stay here with me,” she said. “It’s a better life, but you’ve got to learn not to kill. Stay away from violence. You’ve earned it. You could live here with me in peace and enjoy your life, escape the horrors of war.”
“They’re not horrors,” Barto said in a flat voice. He refused to take off his helmet. He was a soldier now, fully armed, ready to fight. “It’s the only thing I know.” He holstered the warm blaster. “I can’t stay here as a prisoner of war.”
“But you’re a free man among us,” Juliette pleaded, refusing to come closer. She seemed as much confused as saddened. She couldn’t understand why he would make this choice.
“I am still a prisoner,” he said. “War holds me prisoner.” He stood at attention, as if the feline spies were watching him from the shadows. “I must live by fighting, and I must die by fighting. I have no way to escape that.”
He understood now that this place, despite its comforts and its new experiences, could not possibly be for him. Not for a soldier.
He didn’t begrudge Juliette her civilian life, her pampered existence—and if these people were indeed the commanders in the war, if he was a soldier charged with protecting them, then he must go back and do his duty until death inevitably claimed him on the battlefield. And if he should happen to survive, then he would grow old and train other soldiers until the war was won and the Enemy completely vanquished.
There was nothing else for him to do.
Juliette watched him with despair, then a flash of anger in her brown eyes. Finally, her slender shoulders drooped in defeat. She said nothing else, just watched him with a flush in her cheeks.
Barto didn’t know what he had really meant to her . . . if he had merely been a trophy from the battlefield, something that increase her prestige among her people—or if she had really cared for him, in a way.
At the moment it didn’t matter. It was irrelevant information.
Leaving his dead comrade behind, sad that the bloodhounds could never retrieve Arviq and take him back to where he could be buried with full military honors, Barto climbed the rungs of the ladder.
It was a long way to the surface, but when he released the hatch and climbed out under the open, bruised sky, he stared for a long moment. He breathed the burnt air, studied the roiling dust from distant explosions.
He lifted his visor to stare out across the stricken field with his own eyes, then he shut the hatch behind him, sealing Juliette and her world underground, keeping her secret safe. And then he strode off, heading in the direction of his HQ.
It would feel good to get back to the business of fighting once again.
* * *
About Kevin J. Anderson
Kevin J. Anderson is the author of nearly 100 novels, 48 of which have appeared on national or international bestseller lists; he has over 22 million books in print in thirty languages. He has won or been nominated for the Nebula Award, Bram Stoker Award, the SFX Reader’s Choice Award, and New York Times Notable Book.
Anderson has co-authored eleven books in the DUNE saga with Brian Herbert. After writing ten DUNE-universe novels with Herbert, the coauthors created their own series, HELLHOLE. Anderson’s popular epic SF series, THE SAGA OF SEVEN SUNS, is his most ambitious work, and he recently finished a sweeping fantasy trilogy, TERRA INCOGNITA, about sailing ships, sea monsters, and the crusades. As an innovative companion project to TERRA INCOGNITA, Anderson co-wrote (with wife Rebecca Moesta) the lyrics for two ambitious rock CDs based on the novels. Performed by the supergroup Roswell Six for ProgRock Records, the two CDs feature performances by rock legends from Kansas, Dream Theater, Asia, Saga, Rocket Scientists, Shadow Gallery, and others.
His novel Enemies & Allies chronicles the first meeting of Batman and Superman in the 1950s; Anderson also wrote The Last Days of Krypton. He has written numerous STAR WARS projects, including the Jedi Academy trilogy, the Young Jedi Knights series (with Moesta), and Tales of the Jedi comics from Dark Horse. Fans might also know him from his X-FILES novels or Dean Koontz’s Frankenstein: Prodigal Son.
His website is www.wordfire.com.
Kevin J. Anderson, Alien Landscapes 2
Alien Landscapes 2 Page 9