Upon returning to Draco, Jetah Indeva Bejuda was censured and expelled from the Dracon Chamber. Indeva returned to its estate in disgrace and died from its own hand a year later.
The Jetai of this Talman Kovah demanded Tora Soam’s resignation as Ovjetah. Tora Soam, and its child, Tora Kia, returned to the Tora estate to rear Kia’s child, Tora Voe. Three years later, Tora Soam was murdered by a supporter of the Amadeen Mavedah.
Tora Kia took its child to the planet Lita and assumed a new identity. Kia entered its child in the Talman Kovah on Lita and gave lessons on the tidna. Tora Kia died four years after its child graduated from the kovah. Tora Voe is now the Jetah of this Talman Kovah here in Pomavu known to you as Hadsis Jiia. With this announcement, Tora Voe resumes its rightful name.
Ana Rafiki returned to Earth and was dismissed from the United States of Earth’s diplomatic service. She lived for a year on Earth, but after the second attempt on her life by supporters of the Amadeen Front, she left her home planet and dropped from sight.
Joanne Nicole returned to Earth, stood court-martial for aiding the enemy, was found guilty, and was dismissed from the USE Force and sentenced to fifteen years imprisonment. After three years, her sentence was commuted for compassionate reasons and she was released. She then began a search for the child she had abandoned. While this search was in progress, Joanne Nicole founded Earth’s Talman Kovah.
Leonid Mitzak, replacing with faith the talma he had helped to devise, eventually went to Amadeen in an attempt at achieving peace between the Front and the Mavedah. He was executed two days later. That was almost thirty years ago, and they still fight upon Amadeen.
Twenty years after Mitzak’s death, the Dracon Chamber entered the Ninth Quadrant Federation. A year later the United States of Earth came to the end of its rebellion against entry and the USE planets became members of the Ninth Quadrant.
It was then, shortly before her death, that Joanne Nicole told me the story that I have placed before you. I offer this story to the Talman Kovah as the Koda Nusinda, the eighteenth book of The Talman. I do so as Ovjetah of Earth’s Talman Kovah, Tessia Lewis, daughter of Mallik and Joanne Nicole.
Truth of nature and import of meaning are not matters determinable by a consensus. If only one being understands the meaning, the meaning is understood. If only one being sees the truth, the truth is seen.
The Talman
The Story of Atavu. Koda Sishada
THE LAST ENEMY
ONE
Miati Ki hides in the rubble above us at the lip of the dry stream bed. I see only its right boot and the top of its energy pack. The sun is hot and the heat radiating from the desert sand and boulders flails my face and steals my breath. Only the dense humidity remembers that this was once a jungle. There are no birds, no flowers, no trees. Everything beautiful and gentle that once flew or grew here left this part of the Shorda countless lives ago. Still, the stinging greenflies have survived. They will outlive us all.
Pina is eating the last of its share of the rations we captured. As it took its share of the rations, Pina made a joke, holding it to its lips. “This is the fruit of the Irrveden, for which the Mavedah fought, that we eat at the second repast”
I laughed with the others at the words of the repast ceremony, from times when there were formal repasts, tables, and food. Rick before any of us were born. When I was very young, before my parent’s death, Yazi Avo would recite the ceremony at meals, when there were meals. I laughed, but Pina’s joke made me want to cry.
I hold to my ear the little receiver I keep in my pocket. Its screen is broken, but it still produces audio. The Mavedah station at Mijii Heights still sends, which means the eastern flank of the Front’s invasion of the Shorda is still stalled. The music is that rapid effervescent confusion of human and Drac folk sounds we call zidydrac and the humans call mancho. The recording was made before the war. I scan for the Amadeen Front’s mobile station, or one of the others. Sometimes I can get the Black October station, but not today. Nothing new supporting the rumors of another attempt at a truce. Even if a truce should take place it would be only a matter of days before The Rose, Black October, or some other uncontrollable faction of the Front violates it, throwing us all back into war. Still, there would be a day, possibly more, without death.
Ki’s hand makes signs to us. First the fist, one finger pointed down, then all three fingers together followed by a fist. Chaki Anta is back.
There had been an explosion at the bunker. We all heard it, saw the smoke and dust carried by the wind over the lake. Qat Juniki told us about it before it died. A human had come out of the bunker, his hands above his head, and Chaki Anta took the man’s surrender. The human’s hands were held as fists. “I saw the wire,” said Juniki. “I told the man to open his hands before he came any closer. I told him in English. I told him again. When he opened them, the world vanished.”
A walking bomb with a dead-man’s switch. Such a human way of killing. Juniki thought Chaki Anta had been killed, but now Anta is back. As I turn off the receiver I am relieved. Anta is an old fighter, a survivor of many raids and battles. It helps me to know that not all of us must die in this war. My relief is mixed with dread, for when Anta comes back, the killing and dying resume. Anta walks with death. Perhaps that is how it has acquired immunity.
We will soon move into a fight. No one says any of this but it is in everyone’s eyes. We swallow the last of our ration bars. I see Pina take a touch of happy paste with its tongue. Its eyes close as the drug spins Pina away on a transitory cloud of peace, safety, and joy. I look at my ration bar and wonder why food is so scarce but happy paste is everywhere. In the end we will probably die of malnutrition within the mist of a spittle dream.
We looted the ration bars from the humans, but they are good to eat. They are viyapi rations the humans looted from us. Some of the human rations are good, too. I like the containers of fruit and the candy bars, but they are rare. There is something in plastic envelopes called scrambled eggs and ham that even the humans refuse to eat. For that reason, of course, scrambled eggs and ham are all that they have left. Their rations, like ours, are left over from the war.
Chaki Anta slides and stumbles down the dust of the stream bank, followed by Ki. Anta’s face is deep ochre, an old scar along the left side of its forehead. Although our commander smiles with its mouth, its deep yellow eyes betray all of the dead they have seen. Anta nods as it points toward the east with its battered energy knife. “Only a few left in that bunker at the foot of the bluff. I heard firing coming from inside. They were not shooting at me or at anything outside the bunker.” Its brow climbs in an expression of hopeful possibility. “I think they were fighting among themselves.” His cold smile becomes a cold grin. “We will get Taaka Liok a present and end them this time.” Chaki Anta’s eyes narrow. “We are the Twelve.”
“The Front Twelve,” we mutter back more out of habit than pride. Our eagerness drowned in oceans of blood years ago, buying presents for Taaka Liok with our blood. My whole life in the Mavedah has been spent serving at the pleasure of this mysterious warmaster, who in turn serves at the pleasure of the Denvedah Diea.
I glance down at the helmet in my hands. It carries on its once sand-red surface the scars of thirty years of death. Only five of those years are mine. The sensors and readout still work, but the voice link is scratchy. I can do without the voice link. Hand signals are silent, instant, clear, and do not send out electro-magnetic pulses for eager probes to pick up. Besides, I prefer to dedicate my hearing to my immediate surroundings. That is where the threats to my life lie.
The helmet is military issue, of the Tsien Denvedah back in the war. The names of seven Mavedah soldiers are scratched in the surface exposing the dull brown fiber beneath.
Ritan Vey
Ada Nitoh
Lioseh Akiva
Ivat Mikotath
Sed Tura
Riwis Achavneh
Enot Fal.
We all know the stories of the great hero
Ritan Vey, once second warmaster of the Tsien Denve of the Ninth Shordan, conqueror of New Aetheria. Only a few of us remember Enot Fal. Fal’s first day after training saw it crushed beneath the treads of an Amadeen Front tank in the attack on Stokes Crossing in the Southern Shorda. I had no helmet of my own, so I claimed Fal’s.
I wonder who will get the helmet after I am gone. It is irrational of me, but I am afraid to scratch my own name into this pathetic monument. Besides, the seven names already there are burden enough to carry.
We are the Front Twelve, Anta had told us long ago. Tsien Siay. The pride of the Okori Sikov. There are only five of us left now. Ragged, tired, and thin from meager rations. We were twelve at the beginning of the battle six days ago. When the last of us falls, perhaps there will be another twelve to replace us. Children, ancients, and fools. Onward marches the grand Mavedah. I slip my shoulders into the straps of my energy pack and adjust the piece of plastic foam between the pack and the small of my back to ease the chafing. Something I learned from a dead human.
I glance sideways to see if my few remaining comrades somehow detect the treason that echoes in my thoughts. Anta is positioning its energy knife in the harsh sunlight to absorb that last bit of energy before we go. Miati Ki is strapping on its equipment, most of which was salvaged from dead Amadeen Front soldiers.
How can we be so different from the humans, yet so alike? We can use the same weapons, wear the same rags, eat the same food, scratch at the same rashes and slap at the same parasites. After decades of close horror, we even speak each other’s language. But, breathing the same air―that is something that demands death.
Varo Pina and Skis Adoveyna are waiting for the order, their eyes tired and yellow, staring at the top of the bank. I can see that Pina already sees its own death. I want to touch its hand, to tell Pina that we will survive, but my friend would reject my words. My friend Varo Pina knows it must die. It has talked about nothing else for days. I think it wants to get done with the experience. “I am calm about death,” Pina once said to me. “Waiting for death is the strain.”
Once, in the dust of memory, Pina and I loved. Neither of us conceived. The humans have us there. If a Drac is certain it will be dead or otherwise unable to care for its young, it cannot conceive. To humans, though, the prospect of death and deprivation seems to drive them into a rutting frenzy. We are told that it is a primitive survival mechanism to preserve the species. They also live longer than Dracs, barring traumatic intervention.
I no longer have those feelings for Pina, and Pina has no feelings left for me. I wonder if any of us have any feelings left for anything.
Without speaking, Chaki Anta puts on its helmet and signals Miati Ki and me to take the front. I do not hesitate. Instead I take my energy knife, climb the bank, reach the lip, and begin crawling through the rubble, checking automatically for remote sensors and probes. It has been a long time since any of us saw a working remote or probe, but we stay cautious. Assuming they are all down or destroyed seems to jinx them into existence. There are still scanners and missiles. Humans also have eyes and those big ears.
I note the position of the sun. By the time we reach the bunker it will be behind us, burning our hacks but glaring into the eyes of the humans.
I can see the bunker by peering through a crack in the ruin of a stone wall. The heat radiating from the wall washes my face. The fortification is to my front, the bluff farther on and more to my left. To my far left is a low hill. To my right stretches the lake named Sharing in both Drac and human languages. The lake was named a long time ago, before the war, back in a fantasy time when Dracs and humans were supposed to have lived and worked together.
“Yazi Ro,” the voice link scratches into my ear membrane. “Keep moving.”
My head is filled with so many minds, but my body follows Anta’s orders as though it has its own will. I crawl from behind the broken wall, around a pile of still smoking wreckage, until I reach the body of one of the Twelve’s fallen. A primitive projectile caught the Drac beneath its left eye. The back of its head is missing, exposing an ochre goo that was once a brain.
What do you leave behind, comrade?
A parent?
A child?
Did you have someone who loved you?
Does anyone care how you died? that you died? for what you died?
What did you die for, my nameless comrade? If I meet my own death this moment, I am at a loss to say for what I died. I am an automation; a creature that responds to orders. Perhaps I die for glorious habit.
There must be a grander way than that to record me in my line’s archives, if they still exist. The language Dracon, however, is suited more to facts than fantasy. There are few ways to express an event except with truth. To spin dreams the language English was designed. Here lies Yazi Ro, dead because it couldn’t go no mo’. Pooped, perhaps, from a penchant for proclivity.
Yazi Avo, my parent, taught me my English. Avo once said that if there is ever to be peace, we must first talk. I laugh at this now. All either species knows how to do with words is to wound. My parent had a crippled foot, mangled in an Amadeen Front raid when it was not even half a year old.
I look at the body of my comrade. The young one, barely an adult, was given to the Twelve just before the battle to fill out our number. Young, but a good soldier, nevertheless. I saw its knife take down at least three humans before the bullet found its mark. Dead bodies: a strange way to measure occupational proficiency.
Two paces beyond the nameless Drac is a nameless human who must have been dead for quite awhile. I cannot tell if it is male or female. Its skin is swollen and black, the eyes crusted with thirsty greenflies, their swollen iridescent bodies like so many droplets of jade.
Human dead turn black when they lie in the sun for a few days. The odor is beyond description. I make a wide path around it. To the human’s side I see the white flash of an anksnake beneath the body, out of the direct sun, feeding on the corpse’s guts. They only go for decaying flesh, so I am in no danger from the snake. But it might have startled me. Had I cried out, or raised up, or used my weapon, that would have been the end for all of us. But I do not draw attention to myself and must pay attention to the instant.
Again I face the bunker. It is an ugly fire-blackened shelter of poured stone. It has rounded corners, gun ports, and a huge hole blasted into its left front. To the right of the hole a deep red rose is painted, the sign of the Amadeen Front. The three remaining weapon ports are spaced evenly to the right of the hole. Between the bunker and my position is a field of rubble. I see a dark shape just for an instant. It runs from in front of the bunker to a position among some rocks part way up the bluff. I am not certain, but more than one human seems to be there.
I glance to my left and wait until I catch a glimpse of Ki forty paces away. Ki turns its head toward me for a moment and I raise my hand and point. Ki looks forward, sees the rocks, and nods. It begins bearing toward the left and the rocks, while I continue toward the bunker.
So many times have I faced death to do more death. And after the effort and sacrifice there are still more humans to kill, more comrades to watch die, more fire to burn, more things to destroy. The bunker ahead of me is part of a village that exchanged hands four times this year alone. How many hundreds or thousands of lives has this ruined heap of debris cost? I cannot even guess. And for what reason? It sits astride a road crossing with surfaces impossible to traverse by wheeled and tracked vehicles that no longer function.
My knee strikes a small rock which clatters into a larger rock. I freeze. Motionless, no breathing, willing my heart to quit its pounding. I am almost afraid to move my eyes for the notice their motion might draw. Still my gaze quickly searches the ground between me and the bunker. Broken walls, rubble, twisted towers of metal. I can see nothing threatening.
The pebble had not made a loud noise, but if the humans have a listening post out or a sensor buried nearby, the noise would be loud enough. Without looking at it,
my right hand steals down the length of my weapon one finger’s breadth at a time. It reaches the power switch and I energize my knife. Neither the switch nor the weapon powering up make a sound, but I can feel the power pulse. I am grateful I took advantage of the time in the sun waiting for Anta’s return to add to the charge. The touch gauge shows seventy-three percent.
My voice link crackles in my ear, startling me. It is Miati Ki reporting to Chaki Anta. “Anta,” Ki whispers to the old fighter. “There are four of them in those rocks behind and to the left of the bunker. Their field of fire covers almost all of the ground in front of Yazi Ro.” The words, once I allow myself to understand them, make my skin writhe.
Another crackle, then Chaki Anta’s voice. “Ki, have they seen you?”
“No, but they see Yazi Ro. They are staring at Ro this moment, weapons trained. I think they wait to see the rest of us before they open fire.”
“What weapons?” asks Anta.
“Two rifles and a captured energy knife. I cannot see what the fourth has.”
“Stay in place, Ki,” answers Anta. “I’m coming up on your left with Pina and Adoveyna.”
By the breath of a kiz, I am fisher’s bait! I fight down the urge to bolt and run. It seems insane. As the battle started there were hundreds in this sector. Now it has come down to four humans and five Dracs? Is this when I die, when it is all but over?
“Stay in place, Ro,” comes Anta’s voice. “Give no sign that you are aware of the humans in the rocks.”
“As you order, Anta.” Fine words from my leader and a terribly brave response, but I have already given a sign by signaling Ki. How do I take that back? Perhaps no human saw it. Or if one of them did, perhaps that one mistook my gesture for something else. “Look, the Drac is saying hello.”
A mind in fear takes comfort where it may.
I swallow against the moisture in my mouth. Human mouths grow dry with fear. Dracs fairly drool. I occupy my mind trying to figure out which is worse. To drool or not to drool, that is the question.
Enemy Papers Page 39