Virtue of War

by L O Addison

  She touched his forearm, and he flinched, stirring to look down at her. Good. He was out of it, but not totally unaware of his surroundings.

  “Hey, Lio,” she said softly. “Can you tell me what’s hurting you right now?”

  He blinked a few times, clearly struggling to process her words. Then he said something in the flowing words of his native language.

  She shook her head and gently patted his forearm. “Lio, I need you to speak in English.”

  He frowned, taking a moment to absorb this. Then he said, “Everything hurts.”

  “Okay, that’s actually a good thing,” Kaylin said, keeping her tone calm and soothing. “If you can feel the pain everywhere, it means you don’t have any major damage to your spinal cord.”

  At least she was pretty sure. As far as she knew, humans and Rhuramenti were pretty near identical in terms of biology, but she could be wrong. She glanced over her shoulder at Marin, who stood with her pistol pointed at Kaylin’s head.

  “Anything I need to know about his physiology?” Kaylin asked.

  Marin’s eyebrows rose slightly, as if shocked to hear an intelligent question come from the mouth of a thief. Then she said, “Not that I’m aware of. Our species share almost the same DNA.” She paused for a moment, as if considering whether to admit something, and then hesitantly added, “But the journey here was difficult for him. He has travel sickness. It weakens his muscles and causes a fever.”

  Kaylin nodded and fished through the medical kit for a temperature patch. Luckily, the kit Liam had grabbed from the cargo craft had been brand new, so it had all the supplies Kaylin would need.

  She found the small, square patch of plastic and stuck it on Lio’s forehead. The opaque plastic quickly changed color, turning a bright red, and small numbers appeared near the bottom: 102.1.

  “Marin, what’s the normal body temperature for a Rhuramenti?” Kaylin asked.

  “About twelve-point-four UHUs,” the bodyguard replied.

  Kaylin bit back a curse. Of course the Rhuramenti didn’t use the Fahrenheit scale. Everyone on Earth had decided ages ago that American units were stupid, so why the hell would aliens think differently?

  “What’s a UHU?” Kaylin asked.

  “Universal Heat Unit,” Marin replied.

  “Okay, and what’s the conversion ratio from Fahrenheit to UHU?”

  Marin scowled impatiently at the question and leaned over, pressing her palm against Lio’s forehead. “He has a fever,” she said, the impatience in her tone suddenly replaced by worry. “And a high one. It wasn’t this bad earlier.”

  Kaylin nodded and fished through the kit, finding an air syringe and a vial of fever reducer mixed with a light painkiller. She gave him the shot in his bicep, and the syringe hissed as its pressurized air delivered the medication straight through his skin. He relaxed almost immediately, and she set back to work examining the rest of him.

  She went through the rest of the medical exam with him, inspecting to see how his pupils responded to light, taking his pulse and blood pressure, double-checking that there was no numbness or loss of motion in his limbs. Everything confirmed what Marin had suspected—no spinal injury, but he had a damn serious concussion.

  Kaylin carefully examined the area on his head where he’d struck the cabinet, parting his hair to get a better look at the deep cut. Best she could tell, the skull was intact. But there could have been fracturing she just couldn’t see. He needed a full scan to examine the bone and make sure there wasn’t any more serious damage, but that wasn’t going to be possible until they got to an actual medical facility.

  “There’s really not a whole lot I can do right now except for sealing the wound closed,” Kaylin admitted. She looked at Lio as she spoke, but she could sense Marin hovering behind her, listening to every word. “I’m going to patch up your wound and give you an IV with some saline solution. Aside from that, you just need to relax. But try not to sleep, at least not for another few hours. If you start to feel worse, make sure we know.”

  “And if he does start to get worse?” Marin asked.

  Kaylin bit her lip. “We’ll take care of him.”

  It was a lie, and they both knew it. A first aid kid was no match for a brain injury. But Kaylin wasn’t about to admit that in front of Lio. The last thing they needed was for him to start panicking.

  Marin’s eyes narrowed into a glare, but she gave a sharp nod. “Very well,” she said.

  Kaylin slipped an IV into Lio’s arm and got to work patching up his wound. She worked quickly, sterilizing the wound, cauterizing it with a painless laser tool to stop the bleeding, and then stitching the flesh together.

  Right as Kaylin was finishing, a quiet growl broke through the silence in the barn. Kaylin glanced over at Red and found him facing the stalls at the far end of the barn, his tail lashing back and forth.

  “What is it?” she asked.

  Red took another step toward the corner, and the spines on his back slowly raised until they pointed straight at the decrepit roof. Condensation dripped from the wooden planks above, plopping down on his scales. But Red didn’t even flinch.

  A sound came from the stalls. At first, Kaylin thought it might just be a cricket joining the chorus outside. But then she strained her ears and caught the sound again. Not the chirp of an insect. A dull squeak. Like something moving across a creaking floorboard.

  She reached for the cauterizing laser. It wouldn’t cause harm, but it was shaped like a gun, and it would trick most people into thinking she was holding a pistol. Kaylin held her breath as she waited to hear the noise again. And there it was. The dull squeak, and this time there was another sound that followed. A soft rustling, like something dragging across the ground.

  Beside her, Marin’s eyes narrowed. The bodyguard pulled away from Lio, drawing the gun from her waist. Kaylin held a finger to her lips. Apparently, that sign was universal, because Marin nodded in understanding and stayed silent.

  Kaylin waved over to Beck and Liam, but they didn’t notice. Both of them were sitting in the opposite corner, their heads ducked and their backs turned to her as they examined Beck’s jammed comm unit.

  Kaylin gave up trying to signal them and stood, pointing her laser at the stalls. Two of them were missing doors, but the one farthest in the shadows of the corner still had a rickety door attached, concealing whatever was inside. Kaylin crept toward it, Marin shadowing her closely behind.

  The rustling in the stall stopped. Kaylin lunged forward and kicked at the door, knocking it off its rusted hinges. It thunked to the ground, and a muffled yelp rang out. An unmistakably human yelp.

  Kaylin trained her laser on the ground. A flash of movement snaked toward her, followed by the glint of sharpened metal. Adrenaline surged through Kaylin’s veins, and she leaped straight up in the air, avoiding the knife. The moment she landed, she kicked out, slamming her boot into the hand holding the blade.

  The knife skittered across the rotted floorboards, and Kaylin trained her cauterizing laser on the figure lying on the ground. “Don’t move,” she hissed.

  Wild eyes stared up at her. They were a golden brown color, highlighted by red blood that was smeared across freckled cheekbones. It was a man. A man wearing the dark navy uniform of a Warden.

  He raised a hand to shield his face and blurted something out in French. He had a quiet, melodic voice, cracked at the edges by panic. As he stared up at her with wide eyes, Kaylin realized he was young. Really young. Under twenty, if she had to guess.

  She took a deep breath, trying to calm the adrenaline surging through her veins. “Do you speak English?” she demanded.

  The Warden nodded frantically and gasped out, “Yes.”

  Kaylin kept the gun trained on him and then glanced over her shoulder. Marin was standing in the doorway of the stall, her feet spread in a wide, defensive stance, and her pistol pointed toward the boy in uniform. Beck and Liam both sprinted over, training their weapons on the stall.

  �
��Don’t move!” Beck barked, skidding to a halt beside Marin.

  “How the hell did he get in here?” Liam demanded. “We checked the perimeter!”

  “Clearly, you didn’t do a good job of it,” Marin said, her voice a low growl.

  “Liam, do another check,” Beck commanded. “And take a closer look in the stalls this time. Make sure no one else is lurking.”

  Kaylin glanced down at Red, who was crouched at her side, his teeth bared in a snarl as he narrowed his eyes at the soldier.

  “Red,” Kaylin said, and the lizard glanced up at her. Kaylin made a circling motion with her finger. “Perimeter check. Go.”

  Red chirped at the familiar command and began dashing around the barn, sniffing closely at the ground and hunting out any other foreign scents. Kaylin mentally cursed herself for not sending him to check earlier. Usually, she was careful about that sort of thing, but she was falling back into her old habit of trusting Resistance soldiers to do their jobs properly.

  And that never turned out well.

  She turned her attention back to the man at her feet, keeping the cauterizing gun trained on him. “Who else is here?”

  The man gulped as glanced between the weapons held by Kaylin, Marin, and Beck. “It’s just me.”

  Beck scoffed. “And why should we believe that?”

  “Because it’s the truth,” he replied.

  Kaylin peered around the stall, and her gaze settled on a crumpled sack in the corner, an old-fashioned one that probably used to hold grain. It was large and caked with mud, making it the same color as the ground.

  The Warden soldier must have pulled it over himself and laid still when Jamison and Liam first checked the barn. In the dark shadows of the stall, he would have been nearly invisible.

  “I’m going to ask you questions, and you’re going to answer them,” Beck said, keeping his voice cold and sharp. “Do you understand?”

  The man nodded, but it immediately made him wince. Kaylin looked him up and down, searching for the source of the blood smeared across his face. His right arm was resting limply next to him, and his shoulder was sticking out at a sickening angle. Dislocated for sure. The soldier’s other arm clutched at his ribcage, and blood had seeped through his uniform, turning the navy-colored cloth black.

  He’d been caught in an explosion, no doubt. But why had he dragged himself into a barn, instead of seeking help from the other retreating Wardens?

  Beck crossed his arms and stared down at the soldier. “Who are you? What are you doing here, and where’s the rest of your unit?”

  “I’m Matteo Laurent,” the soldier said. “And I don’t have a unit, not anymore. I deserted.”

  Beck raised his eyebrows. “That’s awfully convenient, isn’t it? You deserted right when you got caught by the enemy.”

  “It’s the truth,” Matteo insisted. His voice was quiet, and his French accent thick, but he spoke English perfectly. “Why do you think I came here instead of retreating with the rest of them?”

  Red trotted back over to Kaylin’s side, his spines laying down along his back and his scales fading to a neutral grey color. She relaxed, knowing that there was no one else in the barn. If there was, Red would have sniffed them out and sounded an alarm, just like she’d taught him to.

  Beck gave the soldier a hard stare. “Just because you stumbled into a barn doesn’t mean you deserted.”

  Matteo opened his mouth to respond, but his words caught in his throat as he spotted Red. He blinked hard, and then shakily whispered, “Is that...an alien?”

  Red let out a low hiss, the spines along his back slowly rising as he locked eyes with Matteo. The soldier tried to scramble back, but he gasped in pain as his dislocated shoulder dragged along the ground.

  “That’s Red, and he’s a vater lizard,” Kaylin explained, keeping her voice calm. “He’s not going to hurt you, as long as you don’t try to hurt him.”

  Matteo ignored her and kept trying to drag himself back, but he only managed to bump against the wall. He let out a choked groan. Kaylin peered closer at him, noticing for the first time just how ghostly pale his skin was.

  He was still losing blood from his wound. A lot of it.

  She turned to Beck. “Let me close up his wounds. He’s no use to you if he’s dead.”

  Beck nodded curtly and then said to Matteo, “I’m going to search you. And you’d damned well better not try anything funny, or else I’m going to shoot you straight in the skull. Got it?”

  Matteo nodded weakly and slumped back against the wall, his eyes still wide with terror and locked on Red. Beck knelt beside the soldier, patting him down and searching every pocket for weapons. After a tense moment, he stepped back and nodded to Kaylin.

  “He’s got nothing.”

  Kaylin lowered the cauterizing laser and tucked it into her waistband as she headed out of the stall and jogged over to the medical kit. Marin had already packed up all the contents of the kit, and the bodyguard held the handle out to Kaylin as she approached. Kaylin tried not to show her surprise. Considering the Wardens had just nearly killed them all, she hadn’t expected Marin to have any sympathy for the soldier.

  But as Marin handed over the kit, her eyes fell on Matteo, and she quietly said, “He’s so young. Hardly more than a child.”

  Kaylin nodded. She knew Marin meant it as an insult, as a way to point out how barbaric humans were compared to the Rhuramenti. And Kaylin had absolutely no defense.

  She carried the med kit back over to Matteo, suddenly feeling exhausted as the last of her adrenaline faded. She did her best to shake off the numbness as she knelt beside Matteo and pointed to his chest.

  “I need to look at your wounds,” she said, doing her best to keep her tone calm and reassuring. “Can you take your shirt off?”

  He nodded and reached down with fumbling fingers to undo the buttons. He managed to tug the top one free, but his hands were trembling with terror and exhaustion, and he quickly gave up on the others.

  “It’s all right,” Kaylin said softly. She carefully drew the scalpel from the med kit, making sure to keep it fully in his view. “I’m just going to cut it open. I’m not going to hurt you, I swear.”

  She cut open his shirt quickly, working as gently as possible. The soldier gritted his teeth and winced, but he stayed silent as Kaylin worked. She peeled his shirt away from his bruised and bloody skin, and before she could even ask for help, Beck held his water bottle out to her. Kaylin nodded in thanks and poured the water over the boy’s chest, clearing the blood away from his skin.

  She knew the soldier must be in excruciating pain, but his panic seemed to have frozen him. He only flinched slightly as she felt along the left side of his ribcage. At least two ribs were broken, probably more, and most of the blood seemed to be coming from a deep gash a few inches below his collarbone.

  “What happened to you?” Kaylin asked.

  “I was deployed with the ground troops,” he said. “I tried to run from my unit, but an artillery blast hit just a few yards away from me. I managed to drag myself in here after.”

  “Why did you desert?” Beck demanded, crossing his arms as he stared down at the soldier.

  “I never wanted to hurt anyone,” Matteo said. His voice was quiet, but it held a surprising firmness. “I don’t want anything to do with this war the Wardens are starting.”

  Beck scoffed. “Then why the hell did you join the Wardens in the first place?”

  “Because I didn’t have any other choice.”

  “They don’t draft anyone into their ranks,” Beck said, his tone accusing. “Joining is optional.”

  Matteo shook his head, and his tone grew defensive as he said, “I was only sixteen when the Syndicate invasion ended. Everyone I knew was dead. The Wardens were offering food and shelter, so I signed up.” He swallowed hard and looked away. “I never thought they’d actually go to war. I thought it was just talk.”

  Beck frowned at this, but he gave a small, hesitant nod
. Kaylin knew he understood, even if he wouldn’t admit it. Beck hated talking about the past, which was one of the reasons Kaylin had gotten along so well with him. But he’d let a few details leak, and Kaylin knew his basic story—mom ditched when he was young, dad raised him and then got killed in the invasion.

  The Resistance was the only family he had left. They’d taken him in just like the Wardens had taken in Matteo. The only difference was that the Resistance was harsh and sometimes cruel, while the Wardens were harsh, cruel, and batshit crazy.

  Beck rubbed at his forehead and said to Matteo, “You’re going to need to answer more questions later. A lot more. But, for now, just...” He trailed off and made a vague gesture toward Matteo’s bloodied chest, and Kaylin got the unspoken message. “For now, just don’t die.”

  Matteo nodded weakly, and Kaylin patted his hand. “I’m going to reset your shoulder, stitch up the gash on your chest and give you some antibiotics. We’ll take care of those broken ribs when we get you back to a medical facility. Okay?”

  He nodded and then quietly said, “Thanks.”

  Despite his terror, Matteo’s tone was shockingly earnest. As he stared at Kaylin with his bright hazel eyes, she felt a surge of protectiveness well up in her chest.

  He had eyes like her little brother’s. Deep, gentle, intelligent. Eyes that had seen too much, but somehow still hadn’t lost their softness.

  “You’re going to be okay,” she murmured.

  She’d make sure of it. Kaylin had failed her brother, but she wasn’t going to fail again. Not this time.

  By the time Kaylin finished patching up Matteo’s wounds, his eyes were starting to droop closed. Beck stepped forward with a pair of silver handcuffs. He knelt and quickly snapped them around Matteo’s wrists, activating their magnetic field and binding Matteo’s hands together.

  Beck pointed a warning finger at Matteo’s face. “Don’t try anything stupid.”

  Matteo nodded weakly and closed his eyes. Kaylin patted his leg. “Sleep well. We’ll get you to a real doctor as soon as we can.”