by D. P. Oberon
Her eyes caught her mother, Wattana, who knelt by her husband’s side holding his hand. Her eyes still roamed searching. She stopped. Bheemasena Anantadevi, her fifteen-year-old younger brother, sat behind a group of people as if too afraid to get close to his dying father.
Bheemasena’s eyes met hers across the crowd of people and they both smiled. A thrilling sensation filled Saradi’s heart.
“Stay here,” she said to Claas, her boyfriend. “I’m going to sit with my family. There’s food outside if you’re hungry.”
She made her way to Bheemasena first, took his hand, and then urged him to come with her as she made a place for herself and him at their father’s head.
“Hi, Ma,” Saradi said to her mother, as she bent down and gave her a hug, before going to sit opposite her on the other end of her father’s body. She didn’t ask if her mother was okay. Her parents had been together for over thirty years. They probably didn’t even know where one began and the other ended. They had truly been one for a long time now. Her mother was losing a part of herself. She was not okay.
Her father lay on the bed with his eyes closed. A whitish film coated the edges of his cheeks. She tried to feel a huge hole, the one she knew should be there upon facing this loss. But she had never been close to her parents. They’d always been away working.
“You okay?” Saradi said, turning to Bheemasena, patting him on the back. Outside, the wailing Indian trumpets began to play. She threw an annoying glance toward them.
“I quit school,” he said, looking down and playing with the fibers alongside their father’s bed.
Saradi sighed. “What are you thinking of doing?” She’d just graduated summa cum laude from the Confucius Business School, with a Master’s degree in Business Administration.
“Papa wasn’t proud of me. Not like you,” Bheemasena said.
Saradi huffed ruefully and pressed his head close against hers. “Growing big aren’t you? At least you haven’t given up eating.”
“I love going to gym, lifting weights.” Bheemasena nodded. “Look, Papa is waking.”
Ghana Anantadevi’s crinkled eyelids unfurled. He smiled for the first time since he had been in that deathbed, he lifted both his shaking hands. Saradi brought her face down so he could cup her cheeks, and stared into her father’s eyes.
“Saradi,” his peppery breath blew into her face like a warm caress. “Please look after your younger brother. I want Bheemasena to have his own children one day. Then he’ll understand why I’ve been so hard on him.” Her father’s coughing came violently in a sudden fit and his head slumped into the pillow. Saradi leaned over him holding his hands.
“Papa?” she said.
“Promise me, you’ll look after him,” her father said, tightening his grip on her hand.
“I promise,” Saradi said.
Ghana Anantadevi released his grip. He turned his final gaze on his wife and his life essence passed away. He died like many people dreamed of doing — surrounded by his family and loved ones, peacefully.
Wattana began to wail, her voice joining that of the other women outside.
Saradi couldn’t sleep that night. She felt hot despite wearing the thin nightgown her mother loaned her.
She said goodbye to Claas and watched as he parted with the rest of the guests. Even as the house began to empty it didn’t help. She kept thinking about her childhood with her parents. She’d been lucky to have such parents, but she’d known other parents who were more affectionate and loving.
She lay on her bed in her old room and that felt weird. She worked as a senior manager at Autobus-Mannschaft and rented an apartment in High Paris. One day she would move back to High Melbourne, she decided. Maybe when she had a child. She reached for her handbag and pulled out the bottle of Remy Martin Louis XIII Rare Cask Cognac. It had cost her six hundred thousand, but she thought it worth it considering the event. She called the house’s AI to send her a serv-bot, but it didn’t reply.
Sighing, she got out of her bed and went to her brother’s room. He wasn’t there. Frowning, she went to her parents’ room and the door swished open.
Bheemasena sat on their parents’ bed with his back against the headstand and the quilt wrapped around him.
“I can feel him right here,” he said, patting the bed.
Saradi sat next to him, unstoppered the cognac, and sipped it cautiously. She handed it to him.
Bheemasena gulped at the liquid like it was water. She took it away from him as his eyes burned and he inhaled sharply through his nostrils.
“Papa was proud of you, Bheem — and Mummy, too. They aren’t the type of people to tell you that.” She twisted about, her long legs splayed out over the bed, pushing the sheer fabric up to her thighs.
“Are you staying?” Bheemasena asked. “It’s been five years and you hardly come back.”
“Missing me?” She took a gulp and passed him the bottle and watched in admiration as he gulped a quarter of it straight.
“I’ve joined the cadets,” he said. “It’s for people too young to join the full army. In three years’ time, when I’m eighteen, I’m going to join the army.”
They sat next to one another and talked. It felt like the good old times. It didn’t feel like she’d been away for five years. Soon enough the bottle of cognac lay empty and Saradi laid it down on the side of the bed.
“I should’ve tried harder at everything,” Bheemasena said.
“Bheem,” Saradi said, pushing herself closer to him, letting her nightgown fall on his bare chest. She cupped his cheeks. “You are a good son. You didn’t do anything wrong.”
Gently she kissed his tears, then she kissed lower, just above his lips, and then she kissed his lips.
She slid out of her nightgown her and took his hand and put it against her breast. She grabbed the back of his head and kissed him hard. Bheemasena struggled for a moment and then the craziness all made sense. The hot breath of his sister’s lips and her writhing body against his awoke a primal need.
Saradi took her younger brother four times on the night their father died. And then once more just to be sure.
When Wattana came in to see both her children sprawled in her bed she choked with emotion. She knew they missed their father and had come here to capture his spirit, the bed that he used to sleep on. Wattana joined her children at the foot of the bed, feeling their restless feet caressing her back as she curled against them, too grief-stricken to smell the scent of sex that lay thick in the air.
PART TWO – AUSTRA-ASIAN EMPIRE DEFENSE FORCE
Chapter 16 – Fort Windradyne
Selection, Week 1
The octocopter shuddered as it began its descent into the largest military base on Earth. Fort Windradyne was situated in Central Australia, right in the middle of the Red Desert. The copter’s nose tilted and pointed at the black designated landing zone, its runways filled with a steady stream of arriving and departing aircraft and their blinking lights.
Four of the octocopter’s rotors clanked and whirred as they pointed rearward and flared to life. The gees shoved the twenty potential recruits into their carbonmite seats.
Saradi watched from a tiny transpasteel window whose vent unfurled to let in the dusk orange light. Fort Windradyne sprawled over three hundred thousand square acres and its combined square acreage — its underground large as its overground — made it larger than the three largest cities in the Austra-Asian Empire combined: Sydney, Jakarta, and Singapore.
“Screw me, that’s one big ass mofo,” said the huge dark man besides Saradi. Buckingarra’s mahogany face smiled within his beard. He possessed the thickness of a rugby player. He took up too much space with his widespread legs always squashing against her. What was it with men and leg spreading? A part of her desperately missed her comfortable aero-jet.
Buckingarra Freeman hadn’t stopped talking since they’d left High Melbourne Spaceport. His large fingers had crushed hers in a hand shake as he introduced himself as, “Th
e Greatest Rugby Player Ever.” At age twenty-six, he’d been the youngest inductee into the Rugby Hall of Fame. He’d singlehandedly led the Torres-Strait Boomerangs to seventy-two wins, a record still undefeated. He was a true red Australian, his genetic line undiluted by any white rapist. His lineage traced back all the way to the namesake of the fort, the Aboriginal warrior named Windradyne. He had told all of this to Saradi with an utterly serious face. Now, he had retired, and decided to do the greatest thing: serve his country. When he had asked her what country she was from she just stared at him, kept a moment silence, and then said: “I was born in Australia.”
Saradi couldn’t wait to disembark and rid herself of the oaf. She firmly decided to avoid initiating any conversation with him.
“Aero-coaster!” Buckingarra shouted as the imminent landing alerts beeped. He held up both his hands as if he were in a fun park ride and shouted in delight.
The octocopter cut through the clouds, descending so rapidly it felt like they were going to crash, and right at the last moment it jerked to a halt.
Saradi’s heart beat so rapidly she could feel her neck muscles shudder.
“Welcome to Fort Windradyne. Local time is nineteen hundred hours. Disembark leftwards and follow further instructions from the serv-bot. All your items will be taken to your barracks,” said the octocopter’s AI.
Saradi wondered if the AI told a joke. They had been told to bring nothing except the clothes on their back.
The recruits exited from the left side of the octocopter via a ramp. Tarmac signs guided them to an area marked off with a dotted lined. According to the battered and pitted display Saradi now waited at Stop 5. The display clung to a pole in a flag-like fashion. A list of incoming aero-karts soon appeared and their scheduled arrival times blinked rapidly. The first arrival was scheduled in minus sixty seconds.
Saradi could make out three other stops in the illumination from the overhead las-vapor lamps. Each stop contained a gaggle of newly disgorged recruits squinting their eyes at the display panels. Saradi counted four octocopters and eighty recruits.
“Well these guys don’t piss about,” Buckingarra said, appearing right next to Saradi and smiling. She tried not to groan. He nodded at the octocopters.
The octocopters that had deposited the new recruits were already being filled with a new set of troopers ready to be sent out.
Fort Windradyne assaulted all the five senses. Marching feet echoed in the distance, the clank of a group of giant mechs as they strode in formation, their large heads bobbing up and down past the hangars. The overwhelming smells of fuel, melting rubber, and mech lube hung in the air. The air itself was moist and hot and sent sweat trickling in rivulets down Saradi’s neck.
Was this what Bheemasena had seen when he’d arrived?
“Home sweet home!” Buckingarra shouted, smacking his fists.
In the distance, box shaped aero-karts with blinking orange lights flew toward Stop 5. They came to an abrupt halt, forming up neatly on the dotted lines. Saradi counted five of them. Spherical serv-bots ejected themselves from each of the kart’s engine bays and flew toward the recruits. One serv-bot flew toward Saradi, its beady eye whirred and clicked as it stared.
“Saradi Anantadevi, aero-kart six.” Its voice came out of a tiny speaker grill to the sides of its chassis that turned blue as it spoke. The number 91 was etched on its right side. It held a surprisingly deep voice.
Saradi found out later that everything in Fort Windradyne had a number assigned to it. Even the bathroom taps.
The aero-kart hovered a foot in the air. Its grav-sensors whined loudly as Saradi clambered onto her seat. A thin railing lay across the front and rear seats.
“Well, well met there, stranger!” said Buckingarra Freeman as he clambered onto the right seat causing the grav-sensors to whine even more under his ponderous weight. “I wonder what it means that we’re in the same kart?”
The serv-bot flew over a fat Chinese recruit and said, “Peng Huizhong, aero-kart six.” The recruit couldn’t have been more than eighteen. His chubby baby face and porky gut made it look like he spent all his time in virtual reality. He took the seat behind Buckingarra. Saradi swore the aero-kart dipped to half its initial float level.
“Yoriko Ueno, aero-kart six,” the serv-bot said, hovering near a slim Japanese woman with gray hair. She wore what appeared to be a lab coat. She took the seat behind Saradi.
Saradi turned to introduce herself but the seatbelt shoved her into the seat.
The serv-bot’s voice said, “Hold on to the railing.” Its spherical body locking into the engine bay at the front so that its top half sat visible.
The aero-kart’s two grav-sensors whined shrilly as the kart took off. It took a while to gain speed but within a few seconds it was making reckless time, and Saradi gritted her teeth and gripped the railing until her knuckles showed white.
They passed a row of huge warehouses filled with mean looking troop transports whose noses had been painted with gnashing teeth. The fat Chinese kid said they were megabats, apparently used by elite troops. The exceedingly busy Fort Windradyne spaceport stretched out into the distance, but their aero-kart veered down an off-ramp, going over a bump that Saradi could feel right in her coccyx, and joined lots of aero-karts on a wide street. An aero-bus zoomed overhead and to their left an aero-train rumbled along, flying through the air, its two levels crammed with inventory and troops.
Saradi realized it wasn’t so much a fort she entered as a great city dedicated to warfare. She felt a yearning to have her husband by her side. These were times he gave her strength just from his silent presence. She felt alone. No Claas, no Novalie, no mother, no brother.
As she looked around, taking all the sights of Fort Windradyne she wondered what Claas would think of her. Her husband encouraged her to spend more time with Novalie; he wouldn’t like it that she’d joined the Austra-Asian Defense Force. He wouldn’t understand.
The aero-kart eventually pulled into a cathedral-ceilinged garage. Saradi got off and stretched. She tentatively smiled and held out her hand to Peng and Yoriko, exchanging names. An AAEDEF flag fluttered from a flagpole by the side of a slender door that swished open. The serv-bot ejected itself from the engine bay and hovered near the door. “This way please.”
The four of them entered a small narrow passageway with a banner of yellow fonts that glowed in the air, proclaiming, “In Our Mateship We Trust.” They passed under the motto and stepped into a small room with five air-seats, a hovering glass table that held an e-scroll entitled “Huckler and Farzogba GmbH—Weapons Catalog ver. 5,” and a holo-display that showed soldiers fighting. Everything in the building was painted army green. The carpet in the room worn through and barely serviceable.
“Wait here,” the serv-bot said, “Warrant Officer Trisdale will arrive to witness your service oaths.” It flitted forward in the air and then bounced off something and shook its chassis. It moved to the corner of the room where its single beady eye stared down at them.
“Is that a live battle?” Saradi asked, pointing at the holo-display.
Soldiers dressed in black armor ran through a junkyard of overturned tanks, chunks of buildings, and heavy rain. Behind them shots fired and the enemy rushed at them. As Saradi watched, a soldier turned and threw grenades at the enemy … and died as bullets scorched his back, throwing blood in the air.
“That was the Battle of Dead Zone, specifically the rescue of Sergeant Rangi Topeora. That young man shouting maniacally is me. I provided cover fire for my team. That other young man who sacrificed himself was Nathaniel Trisdale, my younger brother. Twenty years ago now,” Warrant Officer Christian Trisdale said as he walked in the room.
Saradi had to admit it was an impressive introduction. How much of it had been tailored? Buckingarra muttered that he was sorry, then Yoriko, Peng, and Saradi followed suit.
“Sacrifice, that’s what’s required,” the officer said, waving his hand. His square face exuded confidence, a
nd the steely flint of his blue eyes let it be known that he’d not put up with nonsense. His khaki shorts revealed an artificial left leg that glowed dully.
“Saradi Anantadevi-Alfsson, formerly Autobus-Mannschaft’s CSO, and one of the most powerful women in corporate Austra-Asia.” He winked at the others. “And a level ten upgrade,” he added conspiratorially. Trisdale pumped Saradi’s hand. “Your brother, Bheem, was one of our best soldiers.” Saradi felt the warmth of pride mixed with the tinge of annoyance at his announcing her upgrades. But Trisdale had already gone on to the next person.
“Yoriko Ueno, the inventor of the Brain Interface Module. Code-Poet Laureate granted by University of Tokyo and neuralnet-warfare expert. Your daughter, Michiko, served us well. I’m overjoyed to have your service.”
Yoriko bowed and wiped at the tears gathering at the corners of her eyes. Saradi found herself wondering about the woman’s daughter.
“Peng Huizhong, advanced robotics expert. The first person to download human consciousness into a robot. Great to have you. Did you bring Ganmi?” Trisdale asked eagerly.
“Yes, Ganmi is here,” Peng said. The air above him melted, revealing a one meter by one meter cube. It consisted of glowing colorful squares like a giant sized Rubik’s cube. One side of the cube entirely white with a smiling face and large eyes. The floating robot bobbed its head.
“Say hello, Ganmi,” Peng said.
Ganmi’s face turned red and she darted behind Peng, hovering over him. Just as quickly as she appeared she camouflaged and disappeared.
Trisdale stared as if entranced and forgot himself for a moment. “You’re going to show me Ganmi’s abilities, the ones we talked about, right?”
Peng nodded his head. “Absolutely.”
“Wonderful.” Trisdale turned to the rest of the recruits. “At nineteen Peng is the youngest to be selected.”