by Ian Whates
The other survivors of Crimson Squad are with me now. We make for higher ground, but the enemy have spotted us. They activate some kind of sonic device that turns the ground to mud beneath our feet.
Weighed down by my heavy battlesuit and carbine, I sink to my knees. I flail my arms, seeking purchase. But there’s nothing to arrest my descent.
This is my tenth tour. My final engagement. I will not die now!
The mud liquefies and I sink farther into this brown sea, but I will not give up. I throw away the carbine that has served me faithfully for decades and orient my feet downward, praying for a solid bottom to this mud trap. I clamp my mouth shut and resist the temptation to blow the brown slime from my nostrils. I must not give up. The other Marines have helmets and air. They will be safe. They will find me.
Even with my eyes shut, I sense the world narrowing as my last breath fails me. My hand is held high. Will someone grab it in time?
But my fingers can only slide through endless mud.
How many moments do I have left?
And then my fingers brush against something... fingers reaching for me!
“Stay there, and stay sane,” calls a female voice in an accent I don’t recognize. “I’m going to bring you out.”
Ten tours...
It can’t end here...
And it doesn’t. The fingers tighten their grip. A hand follows them, and I feel myself being pulled out of the mud.
I am saved.
I feel myself being lifted away, out of the mud’s embrace. But when I open my eyes, I cannot see.
I fight down the panic. All my senses are dead, and yet somehow I know I am in a safe place. Out of the mud. Away from the war.
“Am I... in heaven?”
I hear a sigh, and then the voice speaks again. “Don’t be alarmed. You’re not in heaven, but the next best thing. We’re in the armoury labs on Deck 12 of Lance of Freedom, ‘K’ Fleet’s flagship. A Human Legion warship. I’m Corporal Kouri, and the youngster’s name is Salib. We’re here to help. Starting with... this.”
I wonder who this youngster is, but such concerns are burned away when the world flicks back on. I can see and hear and touch again. The elation, the sheer joy at being alive once more, builds in my breast. And then dies before ever bursting free.
This world is not real.
I am sitting on a chair in a room of infinite whiteness, facing a woman of about my age and build – a sister Marine, then, except the details of her features refuse to resolve.
This is a simulated reality, and a crude one at that.
“Why am I here?”
Corporal Kouri hardens her simulated face. “Brace yourself, Marine.” Her voice feels real. It possesses the quality of someone used to giving commands. “You’re not going to like this, but you need to listen hard. Corporal Tendaji Keita died twenty-five years ago in the liberation of Nourrir-Berger. He drowned in mud on Hill 435.”
“Then I’m what? A simulation? Why?”
“No, you’re real. You’re merely... confused. Grieving.”
I want to snap off a flurry of questions, to keep the gathering panic at bay. But Kouri’s statement is so confusing it staves off my dread all by itself.
“I don’t understand,” I tell her.
“Try. Please think hard. It’s healthier for your mental state if you work this out for yourself.”
“I was there, though. Hill 435... the mud...?”
“All real.”
“But you said I died.”
“No, I said that Tendaji died. He died. You didn’t.”
Beyond my chair and the corporal, the virtual room possesses no dimensions, and yet I can sense it closing in. “I can remember the battle, but... The memories are blurred. They can’t be real.” I look to the corporal to explain, but she won’t give me anything beyond the barest nod. “I can remember things that I couldn’t know.”
“Keep going,” urged the corporal.
“Like poor Shauntia Jalloh. I couldn’t read her med status because I’d lost my helmet, but I can tell you her cause of death in forensic detail.”
“Her cognitive focus is jumping all over the place,” says a disembodied voice. A young one. “She’s re-accessing her personality core.”
She? “I’m not Tendaji,” I state. “I am Subira.”
The virtual corporal comes over and touches me on my arm. “I’m sorry,” she says. “Truly. I understand your pain better than you know.”
“I’m not Tendaji,” I repeat. “I’m only –”
“Hey!” The corporal slaps my face. It hurts!
“There’s no ‘only’ about it,” she shouts. “You are Subira, the combat AI who partnered Corporal Tendaji Keita since he was a child. Stop feeling sorry for yourself, Marine. If Tendaji were still alive, do you imagine for one second that he would describe you as ‘only’ his AI?”
I shrink from the truth in her accusation.
“You are Subira, not Tendaji,” she tells me. “You have been looping through your memories of Tendaji’s death, combining AI and human into a single blurred memory. You’ve been doing this for twenty-five years.”
I know she speaks the truth, so why can’t I accept her explanation? My stubbornness is a defence mechanism, I decide. The moment I truly believe that my Tendaji is dead, insanity will claim me.
“Her psyche is corrupted,” says the young voice without a virtual body. “Do we really need to do all this talking? Can’t you just fix her or destroy her? We’ve scores of AIs to run through before we can finish our shift.”
“If there’s one thing I will make you learn before I leave you, Cadet Engineer Salib, it is patience and respect.”
The corporal is baiting the cadet, tempting him to point out that she has mentioned two things to learn, not one. I almost smile. I can remember playing this game with Tendaji, when we were cadets, and again when we were a corporal. The shared memory slows my descent into madness.
“But it isn’t even human, Corporal,” complains the cadet.
“Neither are we, boy. Neither are we.” The corporal’s avatar appears lost in thought, before adding: “I’ve met Earth humans, Salib, and they’re nothing but a spineless rabble. You, me, and Subira here... we’re better. We’re Marines. This combat AI has served ten tours. That doesn’t make her human, but it makes her more of a Marine than you, Salib.”
“What are you going to do?” asks the cadet.
“Give her a choice. Now, listen up, Subira. Here’s the situation. I might be able to fix you up well enough to re-enter military service. Maybe, maybe not. But if I try, your memories will be scrambled. You might not remember Tendaji at all. That’s what I’m supposed to do, scrape you down to your bones and send you out again into the war. But there might be an alternative.”
“Anything!”
Corporal Kouri’s avatar turns her head to look behind her. There is no one there, at least not in my current reality. “Cadet Engineer Salib!” she barks.
“Yes, Corporal.”
“Go see whether tomorrow’s batch of reconditioning candidates is ready and secure.”
Kouri gives me a long and thoughtful look, but is then surprised when her young charge interrupts her musing.
“Corporal, I have confirmed the package is safe. Forty-seven AIs secure and ready.”
Corporal Kouri shakes her head. “No, son. Go check with your eyeballs.”
“But, why, Corporal?”
Kouri glares into empty space. I can almost see the cadet wither under that stare.
“At once, Corporal. Sorry, Corporal.”
Kouri relaxes, and I feel an immediate connection. This is someone I can relate to, someone I can trust.
I think Kouri feels the same way. “Salib means well,” she explains, “but the young are always in a hurry.”
When I don’t reply, she adds: “Speak freely, Subira. Doing so may help free your mind. Think of us as just two old soldiers chewing the fat during a pause in the fighting. If it
helps, call me by my first name, Zahara. You can’t tell from this basic avatar, but I picked up a few scars, same as you. I’m like your Marine, your Corporal Keita. Your beloved Tendaji.”
My heart misses a beat to hear another person compare herself to my partner.
Of course, I don’t have a heart, I never did, although I dreamed of one for a while. But that’s the thing about partnering together for so long. Where did Tendaji stop and Subira begin? We stopped caring long before Hill 435. I monitored his every heartbeat for decades. I restarted his heart twice, and I felt it skip when we fell in love.
My heart missed a beat.
“There’s just one thing I managed to do that your Tendaji did not,” says Zahara. “I survived. After my tenth tour, they gave me some money and a parcel of land, and changed my title to Reserve Major Zahara Kouri.”
“Then why does that cadet engineer call you corporal?”
Zahara sucks in a deep breath and looks into the distance for a long while before replying. “Because I stole military property. I was in the brig for months, dishonourably discharged, but Lance of Freedom is a long way from anywhere, so they figured they might as well put my skills and long experience to use training cadets. You know how military logic works?”
“They urge you to innovate, but anything off the battlefield has to be done exactly according to the manual, otherwise it’s as if the universe will end.”
Zahara nods. “The only way they could rationalize me teaching cadets was to quash my conviction, make me a corporal, and activate my reserve status.”
If the good corporal thinks that talking is helping me, she is wrong. Every moment without Tendaji is an agony of bereavement. I remember how he had panicked deep underneath Hill 435. I feel a similar weight crushing me from every direction, the weight of his loss.
I feel sure that I will shatter. Any second now. I can tell Zahara has her own pain, but I don’t have the time to hear it all. “What did you steal?” I ask quickly.
Zahara frowns and glances momentarily into nowhere. “My partner,” she replies with an urgency that confirms my unstable mental state. “My AI’s name is Barakah. He served faithfully as a Marine, just as you did, Subira, but AIs don’t get to retire. I couldn’t leave Barakah behind, so I took him with me. He’s still around, hidden.” She looks away. “I don’t know how I’ll ever get him off the ship. I expect if I try, we’ll both be caught.”
“I do not understand,” I say.
“Which part?” Zahara asks. “Do you understand that you are Subira, not Tendaji? You’ve been looping through your memories of Tendaji’s death, merging your memories with his so you don’t have to confront his loss.”
“Yes, I understand that. I mean I do not understand why they make us partner up – closer than siblings, closer than wives, husbands, and lovers – but then they rip us apart. They will not permit our pairing to endure.”
“You’re a Marine, Subira. And that makes you a seriously dangerous piece of military kit. They don’t let combat AIs into worlds at peace.”
None of this is helping. Why has Zahara stopped talking about my choice?
“You know how it was,” Zahara says sadly. “We’re from the same era. When we were born, no human ever retired – no one got discharged. You AIs kept going until your human died, and then you died with them. Then the Human Legion came along and dared to talk of liberty, but those first legionaries were too young, too much in a hurry. They didn’t think any of this through, didn’t intend to institutionalise this grief of separation. But for all I hate the life the Legion’s war of liberation has won for me, I choose to believe it is marginally better than what we had before.”
“Why are we talking at all?” I ask.
I feel a pang of sympathy when I see the pain pinching Zahara’s virtual face. I respect that she needs to talk about Barakah. But the thought of life without Tendaji is like a corrosion bomb exploding inside me. Dissolving me. I don’t have time.
“You offered me a choice,” I press. “You must know my answer already. I have to be with Tendaji or die. I cannot leave him, even if I can only share his memory. Send me back to his dreams. Now!”
“On one condition.”
“Anything.”
“You know how rumours spread in the military?”
“Like a chain reaction, yes.”
“Especially when given a helping hand,” Zahara says with a grin. “I want a story to spread throughout the Legion about the veteran AIs who could grow old and retire with honour. If the rumours spread widely enough, we can make it come true. ‘No Marine left behind’ should apply to AIs too. We’re not the only ones to think that way. It’s an idea whose time has come.”
“You have your dreams, Corporal, but I don’t care. All I want is Tendaji. Tell me what I must do.”
“Subira, for your final tour of duty, you are to provide cover for a special ops info-war specialist. I’m asking you to share your dreams of Tendaji.”
A steady curtain of rain drapes Hill 435. Through my binoculars, I study the fleeting patterns of spray as the natural watercourses meet the grass-covered mounds of the western embrasures, transforming them into a hillside of crying eyes.
An interruption flickers through the falling rain, an interference pattern that is visible only for a fraction of a second, but it’s what I’ve been waiting for.
“Shield powering down,” I say. “I repeat. Shield powering down.”
“Brace yourselves,” bellows the figure alongside me in the trench.
I give him a smile of thanks, grateful that the newest member of Crimson Squad is able to take care of our green recruits on my behalf. His name is Lance Corporal Barakah, and he is unusual for a replacement because he’s a ten-tour veteran like me.
He nods back and then moves off to steady our young Marines while I’m busy talking with company HQ.
Barakah’s past is vague – suspiciously so, as is the considerable time he spends away on special missions. He can’t reveal what they are, beyond a nebulous insistence that he is delivering a vital morale boost to millions of Marines like us, but I sense he would dearly love to explain if he could. He says he will one day, when I am ready. When I am strong enough.
But today is all about Hill 435. When the air above the fortified missile battery explodes with nuclear fire, revealing that its defensive shield is still intact, I know the final battle of my tenth tour will be cruel indeed, and that there is no one I would rather have by my side than my new companion, Barakah.
The Wolf, the Goat, and the Cabbage
Janet Edwards
A few seconds ago, I’d been watching Chief Negotiator Kwame Ansah rehearse his opening speech for tomorrow’s peace talks. He’d just paused to gaze solemnly round the banks of empty seats in front of him, and was beginning his final plea for the two warring political factions of the planet Hestia to resolve their differences, when the window of the negotiating chamber shattered and he toppled off the podium.
The next thing I knew, I was lying on the floor next to the podium with the crumpled figure of Kwame Ansah sprawled next to me like a gory, broken doll. I’d no memory of leaving my seat, so I didn’t know if I’d moved towards the podium to help Kwame Ansah and instinctively dived to the floor to take cover, or fainted from shock. However I’d got here, my brain was still refusing to believe what had happened, when a voice spoke from the doorway.
“Anyone alive in there?”
I tried to speak. Failed. Tried again and croaked out an answer. “Me.”
“Then get out of there before that sniper fires another explosive bullet through the window.”
I reached for the edge of the podium and started pulling myself upright, but the voice snapped at me. “Don’t stand up. Crawl! Quickly!”
I got on my hands and knees, and skittered my way across to the doorway. A hand grabbed the back of my jacket and dragged me sideways into a corridor. I looked up in disbelief at the lean, fair-haired man standing over me. I’d expecte
d a uniformed rescue worker, but he was dressed in grubby overalls and had a hover trolley of cleaning equipment by his side.
“You’re a cleaner?” I asked.
He sighed. “I’m currently dressed as a cleaner, but I’m Military Security Agent York.”
“Oh, you’re undercover here. I’m Diplomatic Aide Ramon, part of the 2773 Alpha sector peace mission to...”
York interrupted me. “I know who you are. All but two of the peace mission delegates were refused entry to Hestia by one faction or the other. You’re far too young to be Chief Negotiator Kwame Ansah, so that means you have to be his aide. Now come with me.”
“But what about the Chief Negotiator? He needs urgent medical help.”
“He’s past the point where doctors can help him. Didn’t you see that the bullet blew off most of his head?”
I pulled a face. “I didn’t look too closely, but I knew there was a lot of blood because I was lying in it.”
“If we don’t get out of here right now, you’ll be lying in your own blood.”
York headed off down the corridor. I scrambled to my feet and ran to catch him up, while the hover trolley chased after the two of us.
“This has to be a bad dream,” I wailed. “I only finished my diplomatic training last month. It was thrilling to be assigned as an aide to the great Kwame Ansah. I’ve admired him for years, studied all his speeches, and I was looking forward to...”
York glanced back over his shoulder at me. “Shut up!”
“Sorry, I’m a bit...”
“I said, shut up!” We took a left turn, a right turn, and then York came to a sudden stop. “Someone’s coming,” he whispered. “Hide in here.”
He opened a door and shoved me inside. I caught a glimpse of a cupboard-like room with shelves lining the walls, before the door was shut on me, leaving me in total darkness.
The sounds of running feet and angry voices reached me from outside, and then things went quiet again. A moment later the door opened, and York threw a set of blue overalls at me.
“Wipe that blood off your face, get rid of your diplomat’s jacket, and put these on.”