The land itself struggled against them. Mud sucked at their boots as they marched toward the hedgerows that lined the town’s perimeter. Flak lit up the starless night from a town more than 10 miles away as drones passed overhead. The gloomy woods and endless fog followed them. Isolated them. Sound echoed and bounced back, carried oddly by the whims of the hollow.
They tromped along the base of a hill that hid them from the road above. Meshner held up his fist. Branson cocked her head at the distinct sound of biomech marching on cobbled roads. A lone Heathen soldier. Branson kept one eye on Meshner, the other on her squad. This was the dangerous time for green soldiers. She knew how their hearts stammered so hard they might not be able to catch their breath. Trying to maintain their composure as they stared into darkness. Trying to distinguish between normal and abnormal shadows. Praying that their anxiety for something to happen, anything, just to get the nerve–jangling waiting over with, didn’t make them do something stupid.
Goldy had wandered too far from the squad before they could do anything about it. Maybe he figured he had a better angle to see their situation from his position. Slinging his rifle over his shoulder, he was climbing up the hill to sneak up on the Heathen soldier. “Hey, buddy,” Goldy said in a mock–conspiratorial whisper.
The Heathen soldier had little opportunity to react before Goldy’s kata slipped between his ribs. His body crumpled to the ground. Goldy turned to them, pleased with his actions, but failed to notice what Branson had: This wasn’t a lone soldier separated from his unit. He was a lead advance scout clearing a path for the entire tactical unit, replete with two biomechs supporting the newcomers. The stutter of pulse fire shattered the night, muzzle fire like angry lightning bugs in the darkness. Goldy dove off the road.
“Get up that hill or I’ll have your balls for breakfast!” Dooley yelled above the whine of charges building to fire, focused light spat out as hot teeth. Dooley roared up the hill, the men quick on his heels.
A shot whizzed by Branson and she nearly choked on the accompanying adrenaline rush. She tumbled into Dooley’s position and returned fire. “You’re going to get me killed.”
“Not you,” Dooley smirked with a knowing grin. “Not today at least.”
Dooley’s eyes betrayed his attempt at humor. He was reveling in the slaughter. There were no innocents to consider, no waxing on about misguided soldiers. They were all “Heathen bastards that had to be killed” and be they men, women, or children, they would die if they stood between him and accomplishing his mission.
There was something monstrous in Holland that night.
One of the replacement soldiers took a bullet right through his mouth, sending his helmet flying and spilling him to the ground. Branson crawled over him to get to a better position. A battle still had to be fought, which left no time to mourn him. She shut down another piece of herself and wondered how much she had left to shut down.
One of the Heathens broke through their ranks. Branson intercepted him. No matter what The Order preached, there was no honor in battle. Fights were not won by adherence to rules of some imagined, gentlemanly engagement. Violence was the most primal language of humanity. Pain was the universal translator. Branson jammed her right index finger through the Heathen’s eye socket. When he recoiled, she punched him in his genitals with her left. She grabbed her pulse rifle and hammered his head with its butt.
§
The shooting eventually stopped. MK–241 incendiary attacks left scorched trees. Holes pockmarked the earth. Branson prayed that they hadn’t wasted these men on a bloody joyride.
All Branson wanted was to reach a command post, get a shower, and feel human again. Dismissed, she went to check on Dooley.
“How’s the leg?” Branson asked.
“Just practicing to be the dummy,” Dooley winced. He had caught a ricochet, but Branson knew that he wasn’t going anywhere.
“It’s all such a waste.”
“I’ll be patched up and ready to go again before chow time.”
“All for the church to claim another bit of real estate, to justify the use of the sword to fulfill God’s kingdom.”
“Careful. Questions like that might make some think you’re losing your beliefs.”
“The only belief of mine anyone needs to worry about is my belief in following orders. I’m just… tired.”
“Yeah, we all get tired like that sometimes.”
Goldy huddled over a body hidden in the shadows. Branson tried to make as much noise as possible when she walked toward him in order to avoid spooking him, but Goldy whirled at her approach, weapon ready. Branson calmly raised her hands. “A little jumpy?”
“I guess, ma’am.”
“Got anything good, kid?”
“Good?” Goldy demurred, not quite hiding his guilt at being caught.
“Souvenirs.”
“I found this.” Goldy pointed to a fallen Heathen soldier. “He’s the seventh body I’ve found like that. Most nowhere near any shelling.”
“Maybe someone’s collecting more… exotic souvenirs.”
Goldy’s face suddenly seemed too young to know the taste of war. “How do you do it, ma’am?”
“Do what?”
“Live with the constant fear.”
How could she explain to him that each day was a struggle to believe that life was worth living? That people were supposed to be created in God’s image, that there was a point to any of this?
“There’s no fear on stage,” Branson said. Goldy shook his head, not understanding. “It’s like an actor’s performance anxiety. Our holo–training, all that rehearsal, takes over. Resign yourself to your own death and you can do anything. Especially live.”
§
Branson watched her breath curl languidly in front of her. The cold air stabbed at her lungs like a swarm of needles. The treacherous, man–made forests had been planted specifically as a defensive barrier. The unrelenting shelling reduced her squad to shadows backlit by burning trees. She could barely feel her fingers despite the flames erupting in the woods. A miserable downpour, closer to sleet than rain, left thick, slimy mud that slowed their every movement. The thick fog rolled in, damp and cold, leaving the men disoriented, isolating them in their own private Ragnaroks. The thought of roads seemed like bedtime stories told to give hope to the weary soldiers. The hours might as well have been days.
Branson heard the Devil’s Whistle, the whine which made every soldier’s blood run cold. Drones gave little warning before their attack. “If you can hear the shells, you’ll be okay,” she taught. She hugged the ground, certain that this time a missile had come for her head. The earth trembled beneath her, spitting dirt in its death throes.
Then the shelling stopped.
War held Her breath. After being fired upon all night, the silences proved just as eerie. The earth stilled. Gold flames illuminated the trees. Like prairie dogs, the medics popped their heads up to scan the terrain. They scurried out of their foxholes to tend to the wounded. With diabolical timing, the shelling started again. Bleeding limbs, shorn to their rent bones, lay scattered on the field, bereft of bodies to connect to. The smell of burnt flesh filled the air.
Branson feared for her men. She eyed every fog–dulled silhouette with suspicion, not trusting any sound. At a branch snap, she whirled, finger on trigger, ready to fire until she recognized the man’s helmet. She breathed a sigh of relief. She’d just wanted to get them on the line and through a couple of days of combat. Then they’d be fine. They were good men, only green. The cries of the wounded filled her ears. But even without translation psi ops training, she understood prayers when she heard them.
When the fog lifted, decapitated soldiers littered the field. Bodies strewn about, half buried in the mud. Blood from friend and foe alike seeped into the soil. Replacement troops puked their guts out at the sight of mangled corpses. Branson inspected the bodies. A hint of suspicion tickled the back of her mind. Many of the wounds should have left some of th
e men hurt but not dead.
Goldy stumbled about, sure that the last round of shelling was indeed the last. He was young. And inexperienced. And oblivious to the fact that the Heathens had all night to play in the woods with their special brand of toys.
Like sniper rifles.
“Stay down, kid! Keep your head down!” Dooley yelled.
The blast tore into Goldy’s throat. His hands clasped his neck, a thin trickle of blood escaping through his fingers even as the shot cauterized itself. Men returned fire in the direction of the shot. A medic scrambled toward Goldy, not seeing the booby–trap wire. The explosive device threw his body into the air like a discarded toy. The cloud of dust and smoke made it difficult to breathe. The medic struggled to stand up on just one leg. Dooley was the first to reach the still–thrashing Goldy. Branson dashed over to help hold him down as best she could. The medic was already dressing his own leg.
“Medic!” Dooley yelled. He fumbled about his jacket for his emergency aid kit.
“I’m sorry, Sarge. I goofed up. I goofed up,” Goldy spat through his own blood.
“It’s not that bad. Hang on, kid.” Dooley slapped a bandage over it, and injected him with morphine.
“Tell me about Valhalla,” Goldy said in his treble rasp.
“It’s a huge palace, kid. Big enough for all of the warriors. All you do is drink, eat, and tell each other lies about your greatest battles.”
“It sounds great, sarge. I’m tired of fighting.” Goldy’s head fell to the side in a relaxed beatitude.
A signature dull thrum in the ear signaled everyone to scramble for cover. Branson dove into a nearby hole. Its occupant whirled to face her. Each of them brought their weapons to bear.
“Lieutenant,” Meshner said in a flat voice, not unlike a man sitting down for afternoon tea.
“Lieutenant,” Branson responded, matching his nonchalance. She lowered her weapon, but only as Meshner dropped his.
“We’re on hallowed ground.”
“We are, sir?” Branson ducked down at the renewed thrumming and then fired in its direction.
“Tilled with the blood of our enemies.”
“A lot of our blood, too, sir.”
“War has always been with us. She whispers to me. I try to silence Her, but She continues every night. I hear Her voice in the groans left in Her wake, and She only stops when the earth streams with blood. She whispers to me. She told me all about you. Her cup bearer. Always thirsty. I thought you were the one. It’s in our nature. It’s why we fight,” Meshner raised the kata. “The same spirit in which Cain killed Abel. Where we walk, the earth groans with blood in our wake.”
“Something’s not right with you, Meshner.” War did strange things to people. Sometimes Her whispers simply drove men mad. A glint of light from Meshner’s side drew Branson’s attention. A Nil’s dress kata. Her stomach tightened like a clenched fist.
“We’re both orphans of a sort, no family, no name.” Meshner drained his flask, upturning it completely to capture the last drops. “I wasn’t always ‘Mush’ the paper pusher. I had skill on the battlefield once. Then one day the war was done and I found myself back home. The white picket fence, the possibility of a normal life, was like ashes in my mouth. I had no interest in family. In friends. In any kind of social mask. What I did on the combat field was what I was. Nothing else mattered.”
“There’s blood on our hands.” Praise be the blood.
“I know. Blood that rivers couldn’t wash away,” Meshner said. “So all we’re left with are our dreams. Mine are of you. It’s always you. The two of us could…”
Branson shook her head, her eyes wanting no part of whatever it was he offered. She had the feeling that he really wasn’t speaking to her at all. She wondered if Meshner had been a burnout like Goldy. Perhaps before conversion he, too, had struggled against an inner darkness, one that clawed at him just under his surface.
“You have many guises,” Meshner said. “You die, you come back. But I can see you now. Cursed to fight and suffer over and over again. Like the others. We have sown nothing but death and blood.”
“Praise be the blood,” she said. Branson had been to the cliff’s edge of madness herself. She knew how tempting it could be to give in and dive off into the awaiting embrace of the abyss. So many nights she thought she was losing that tenuous grip on her humanity. Every night it seemed harder and harder to choose to remain human.
“As you have sown, so shall ye reap. For now is the time for harvest.” Meshner raised his kata.
Too many times she had laid awake imagining someone trying to butcher her. Her rifle blocked his kata thrust, throwing him off balance. In close quarters the rifle was otherwise useless. His strength superior to hers. He continued to drive the blade down. Fueled by desperation, she found the strength for survival. Up close the only sounds were their gasps as they struggled. He grunted when her elbow smashed into the bridge of his nose. They were reduced to animals as he grabbed her head and drove his knee into her throat. He tried to get her in a stranglehold. She bit through his hand then butted him in the jaw. She jumped to the side and drew him backwards. She caught him by the head, her fingers gouging his eyes. She pulled his head backward. Planting her foot into the back of his knee, she threw her weight into him as he fell. He rolled over, freeing himself of her. His hand fished about, retrieving his kata. He stood up slowly, his head above the foxhole. A mad, feral smile glinted in the wan light. His blood stained his teeth. His mouth twitched as if itching for a drink.
His head exploded. Shrapnel of bone, brain matter, and blood sprayed her. The sniper round, more missile than bullet, had shattered his skull. His body dropped to its knees and he fell forward.
Waump. Waump. Waump.
She recognized the sound as well as she knew the sound of her own heartbeat. The Heathens were launching mortar bombs their way.
An explosion, pure concussive force, smacked them like the backhand of God and showered them in a storm of dirt, dust, and stone. All sound became muffled, taking on a looped, distorted quality. The woods erupted in a tumult of fire. A thick haze of smoke rose against the backdrop of flame. Men advanced like ghosts along the horizon. Branson scrambled for cover. Something hot burned through her three times. Her body betrayed her and her legs began to give out. Blood splayed across fingers she no longer felt. She fell alongside Meshner, burying her face under him to hide her breath. Not every monster was meant for redemption.
Praise be the blood.
One Million Lira
Thoraiya Dyer
THEY MIGHT SEND THE OLD woman, Sophia thought. If she is still alive.
Draped in light–bending cloth, stretched out along the nacelle of the monstrous, hundred–and–twenty–metre–tall wind turbine, she swept the crosshairs of her .50–cal sniper rifle’s scope over Ehden’s gaping, ruined restaurants and shattered, snow–blanketed hotels.
Seemed like nobody was left alive here.
But according to the aircraft’s computer, seven passengers of seven hundred were left alive in the wreck of the skycruiser, Beirut II, which had crashed into the side of the mountain during yesterday’s snowstorm and now rested at the foot of the wind farm’s twenty–one towers. Its delicate, mile–wide wings were reduced to fragments of solar panel glittering in the midday sun. Beirut itself was over the border, roughly eighty away.
It would take two days for the Beirutis to equip a mission to reclaim the fallen cruiser from its poorer neighbour and rival, the city state of Tripoli; until then, Sophia’s instructions were to defend it from Tripoli’s Maghaweer commander, Amr ibn–Amr, called Amr the Unbeautiful by the sniggering, glamorous inhabitants of the Beiruti Sky Collective.
Patience is everything.
Sophia took a sip of melted snow from a pouch she’d filled with fresh flakes piled by the wind against the vanes. The great blades of Turbine Two turned in front of her, transforming the powerful and constant westerly into current that ran, like the Kadisha River, a
ll the way west to Tripoli on the Mediterranean Sea. She didn’t dwell on the artillery that could potentially be brought to bear against her. Instead she watched replays of her mother’s famous Egyptian films in her mind’s eye.
I am forbidden to leave the house, Badr said serenely on screen in tortured voice–over as she dipped her pen in the ink, dark eyes shining with unshed tears. I am a caged bird.
Interviewers begged the actress to repeat those lines at age forty, even though Badr had been in The Broken Wings at seventeen. A hundred times she’d smiled and shaken her head while her long, gold earrings danced. She’d said the lines again, in the end, to Sophia, when her oncologist denied her a discharge from hospital.
This bird will stay truthful and virtuous to the very end.
Sophia’s mother had starred in over two hundred romantic roles, many of them ending in death. None of them featured leaky breast implants, the cause of her true death. It was why Sophia shot her victims through the left side of the chest, always.
The left breast, the one the Amazons had removed, the one that Badr had removed, to no avail.
You have one, too, Old Woman, saggy as it must be these days. You mocked me because I couldn’t look them in the eye. You’d better stay by the fire. I will shoot you through the left breast, if you come.
The sunset over the sea attempted to blind her. Sophia was not so distracted by the movie replay that she failed to spot the scouts of the Mountain Combat Company when they arrived, white–swathed and carrying their skis.
They were twelve hundred metres away and poorly equipped. Some of their helmets were damaged. None carried cases of the current standard insectoid nanobots that could have infiltrated the wreck and given them the information they needed without having to directly approach it.
Sophia scrutinised each face, in search of Amr the Unbeautiful, but there was no sign of him. She flipped through a series of faces, directed to her left eye by her own highly advanced helmet’s HUD, while her right eye tried to match them with the men on the slopes below.
War Stories Page 12