|
The lizards wanted to frag the lieutenant, which
pissed me off, because I knew it meant they had to do me too. How is
that fair? Did I get the unit lost halfway up a mountain and then
pinned down by shellfire? No, I didn't. But they had to kill me too.
Otherwise, I'd report they killed an officer and High Command would
send a pointy letter to the lizard brass. Officers are expensive.
I could have slept, even with the shelling, but I made myself stay
awake. Boots on, pack on, helmet on, rifle in my hands. And I
watched the lizards sitting around the heaters and hissing at each
other, flicking glances from their big yellow eyes at the lieutenant
and me.
I smiled at them, like I was their mate.
"What you lads talking about?"
They looked at me for a long time. Most of them didn't speak Earth,
so couldn't know what I'd just said anyway. Finally the corporal
spoke.
"Females, Sergeant Jadeth." He hissed the s sounds like a snake.
Yeah, sure you are, boys.
The lieutenant didn't have any trouble staying awake. Everyone knows
the lizards are touchy buggers and he'd got fifteen of their pals
barbecued down in the valley two days earlier. Now he couldn't get
the rest of them back to base. He should be scared. The scaly
bastards would probably eat him. Most of them looked scrawny anyway.
Probably only joined up to get regular meals.
Soon as it all kicked off I'd be gone. I've always been good at
getting out from under right before the non-survivable shit hits.
Skills honed from years of experience.
But the damn lieutenant nearly screwed that for me. Soon as one of
them came at him with a knife the lieutenant grabbed me by the arm
and shoved me in front of him. The knife glanced off my body armour,
but I knew I wouldn't be so lucky next time.
The shell exploded just as I raised my rifle. It seemed like a
couple of metres over our heads, though it was probably more like
two hundred. Shrapnel rained down and the lizards scattered,
screaming in weird, high shrieks that I'd still not got used to. I
looked myself over and even though I'd felt shrapnel patter down on
my helmet I hadn't a scratch on me.
The lieutenant was a different story. A much gorier story.
No sense in pissing about here then, I decided, and took off like a
blue streak. Dodging the chunky bits of lizard and lieutenant that
fouled the ground, I ran into the darkness, searching for cover. I
engaged night vision mode on my helmet visor. The lizards didn't
have that, but they had better natural night vision than humans, so
I couldn't rely on the darkness to hide me.
They yelled a lot behind me and I tried to get my head around it.
Never been much good with the languages. Were they pursuing me, or
were they too busy trying to take care of their wounded?
I stopped and crouched behind a rock. After a moment I spotted them,
two of them, coming after me. They moved around the rocks and
stunted shrubs, but were just a bit clumsy compared to me. I'm
trained to move around silent and invisible, leaving no trace.
Unless I lay down and went to sleep and one of them tripped over me
they wouldn't find me.
I knew they were after me for revenge now, not to cover up a murder
they hadn't even managed to pull off. Right now they just wanted to
stick their knives into some soft human flesh. I kept moving
downhill. Things looked hot in the valley. I could see the flashes
of fire fights and rockets from up here. But that meant I had a
chance to hook up with a friendly unit, maybe even an all human
unit, and get my sorry arse back to base. Out here for a week and I
hadn't taken my boots off once.
A few minutes later I lost the lizards and breathed easier. I slowed
my pace, wary of the treacherous ground underfoot. Loose screes of
stone could give way under me any time and take me off down the
mountain a lot faster than I'd gone up it.
We'd climbed up the damn thing because the lieutenant thought there
was a pass over into the next valley. He'd been wrong wrong wrong
and like a typical bloody officer he wouldn't admit it and kept us
marching until we reached a dead end. A dead end, which just
happened to be right under where two artillery positions had decided
to start blasting shells at each other. The shelling cut off our
retreat and we were in prime position to catch any that fell short.
Though I felt knackered my training told me to keep moving. Don't
sleep in the open. Find cover. Find someplace safe, where you won't
get your nodding head blown right off. I had to wonder if anywhere
on this whole damn planet qualified. So I trudged on through the
darkness. Way above me the shells kept on falling, and I wondered if
any of my unit was still breathing.
The explosions were dull and muffled now, so I engaged the scanner
mode on my visor and started watching out for a cave or even just an
overhang in the rocks. I didn't want to get into the valley until
first light. Less shelter down there and it would be hard to find a
friendly unit in the dark. Besides I'd likely get myself shot if I
approached at night without a password.
There. More an indent than a cave, a metre or so deep, and not much
taller, but sheltered from the wind and dark as a tomb. Tomb? Oh,
nice, Jadeth, real cheerful thought. I crawled into it, took off my
pack and took my bedroll out. I folded that to sit on. The air
wasn't too cold, but sitting against cold rock would leech the heat
right of out my body.
I checked my watch. At least six hours until dawn. Six hours sleep
would just about fix me up. I set an alarm on my watch, then drank
some water and scarfed down half of an emergency combat ration bar.
Checking my pack I found I only had three more of those. I started
to regret not having the time to snag the ones from the lieutenant's
pack before I bugged out of there.
Time to rest. I put the rest of the bar away and settled down,
leaning back against my pack. My rifle lay across my knees and my
hand lay near the trigger. I can't even start to count the number of
times I've slept in this position. All I know is it's too many in
comparison to the times I've slept in a nice warm bed with a nice
warm girl.
~/~/~ The light, or perhaps the quiet, woke me
before the watch alarm did. Down in the valley smoke rose from
several places, but the guns had stopped. So had the shelling up the
mountain.
First things first. I ate the rest of that protein bar while I
heated up a cupful of my water and made a brew. The tea helped me
get my eyes all the way open and I dug in a pocket of my jacket for
my Snapper. I could access maps on it, info about what I could eat
around here. Might even manage to get the communications working, if
I was outside of the jammers and maybe get in touch with some
friendlies.
"Oh shit."
A piece of shrapnel stuck into the back of the Snapper, one sharp
point poking right through the shattered screen inside the front
cover. Without the Snapper in the way the shrapnel could have
penetrated my armour. Well it had kept me from getting a chunk of
metal in my belly, but on the other hand without the information
stored in the Snapper I could be really screwed out here.
Okay, spilt milk and all, no sense crying over. I looked at the
broken Snapper. Just useless weight now. But if I dumped it I'd end
up getting charged for a new one. I already had enough bloody
stoppages. Combat damage was the only excuse for getting a new one
gratis, but you had to prove it. I shoved it back in my pocket. Then
I thought for a second and put it in a different pocket.
I pulled my visor down, tapped it to put it in magnify mode and
scanned the valley, looking for movement. I soon spotted some. A lot
of movement, possibly a column of troops moving through the
vegetation. I'd aim for that and if they were friendlies, I was
golden. If not I'd follow unseen and for damn sure they'd run into
somebody on my side soon enough.
I loaded my kit into my pack, got up and settled it on my back. My
rifle hung on its strap in front of me. The sun was already bright
in a sky the colour of emeralds. I increased the level of shade on
my helmet visor and left behind my rocky bolthole. ~/~/~
Well, Jadeth, I told myself as I sank down onto a rock, you're going
to die. No two ways about it. A day and a night and another day now
wandering around this fucking valley. And did I mention days around
here are thirty seven hours long? I'd not seen a sign of intelligent
life in all that time. I'd heard it, plenty of it. Gunfire, rocket
fire, but never managed to find any of the people, of whatever
species, who were kicking up the fuss.
I'd found enough water to keep me going, but food proved trickier.
I'd eaten all the combat ration bars before nightfall the day
before. They told us that one of those things could fill a man up
for a day, but, in my humble opinion, as one of the poor bloody
unfortunates who had to eat the things, that was a load of bollocks.
Or maybe, like my instructors used to say, I'm just a greedy
bastard.
I'd racked my brain to remember what I could eat around here, plant
wise. Mostly I just went by my old drill sergeant's advice.
"If it tastes crap it's probably okay, if it tastes good, prepare to
die." Well that about fitted in with what I'd learnt of life in my
thirty two years in it. That life liked to screw with you. It sure
screwed with Sarge. Only man I know who died of cynicism. When
someone pointed out he'd just walked into a live firing range his
last words were:
"Those amateurs can't hit the broadside of."
I'd actually reached the other side of the valley now, a good sixty
klicks from where I started and felt worn out, hungry, filthy, and
pissed off. The last time I'd had this much fun I'd been having a
big hunk of grenade shrapnel taken out of my leg by a hung-over
field medic.
Well I had a couple of choices. Climb up this side of the valley and
before it grew too dark try to get a fix on a better landmark than
yet another BFR. Or make camp now and figure something out in the
morning. I suspected I'd wandered way off from the combat zone and
into some wilderness area that nobody would fight over, there being
no big world shortage of bugs and stunted bushes made entirely of
thorns. Then again I'd seen people fight over bits of land not worth
spitting on, so what the hell do I know? Left that sort of thinking
to the officers, that's what the buggers are paid for.
I'd just about decided on the camping out option when I saw the
light. A dim glow, a few miles off, along the lower slope of the
valley side. I watched it for a minute and it stayed still. A
lantern. I grinned like a maniac. A lantern meant a camp. Friendly
or hostile, right now I didn't give a fuck. At least they'd feed me.
I climbed back onto my feet and engaged the night vision on the
visor. It fritzed out a couple of times before it settled down. The
batteries wanted replacing. I had a couple somewhere in my pack.
That could wait for now though. I set off for that beautiful glow.
Chapter 2
I approached with caution, hungry but not suicidal. My night vision
flared and I turned it off as I looked into a small clearing in the
bushes. Several tents were set up, a few lanterns scattered around.
Humans, six of them, four men and two women, moved around or sat on
the ground. I sighed with relief at that. Humans, so I could assume
probably friendlies. I wasn't one hundred percent sure though,
because they were a weird looking bunch. Different uniforms, a mix
of Marines and star ship crew by the look of it and one of them
actually in civvies. None of them showed any insignia.
Lying low behind a bush, on dry grass that prickled my face, I used
the magnifier and checked out the tents. A heap of packs lay by one
of them, all various sizes and issued by different units.
Could they be deserters? We didn't get many. What was the point?
Where would you go? Just earn yourself a demotion and six months in
the glasshouse.
Whoever they might be they had food, and the scent of the meat
cooking over an open fire drove me mad as it drifted on the breeze.
Might as well introduce myself and finagle a dinner invite.
I stood up, checked my rifle and approached the camp, watching for
guards. Not a sign. Sloppy, very sloppy. Which told me this lot
weren't engaged in the action going on in the area. Deserters, they
had to be, on their way out of here. But where did the star ship
crew come into that? And I'd not heard anything about Marines
stationed nearby.
I walked into the camp unchallenged. As I emerged into the glow of
the lanterns the man in civvies saw me first. A skinny looking
fella, with light brown hair worn too long for a soldier. He gasped
and his jaw dropped. The others turned and jumped to their feet. I
held my hands wide, well away from my rifle.
"Don't shoot, I'm friendly," I told them. I smiled. "You boys and
girls are pretty slack. I shouldn't have got this close without
somebody pointing a gun at me."
"You didn't."
The voice came from behind me and I spun, ducking, bringing up the
rifle. Just on the edge of the camp a woman pointed a pistol at me.
She wore a Marine uniform. I got myself under control and
straightened up, taking my hands away from the rifle again, letting
it hang on its strap.
"Friendly," I said again.
"Identify yourself," the woman ordered. No insignia, just like the
others, but the tone of her voice told me right away that she was an
officer.
"Staff Sergeant, 54th armoured infantry, serial number -"
"Name?" she interrupted me. I was surprised. Most officers didn't
care about your name. "Hey you" being good enough for them.
"Jadeth."
She moved closer, looked me up and down for a while. I returned the
favour. Five six, lean and fit with short red brown hair and blue
green eyes. Can't say I'd kick her out of bed.
"Maiga," she said. "Captain, Marine Corps. You look like shit,
Sergeant."
I saluted as soon as she said "Captain", but she didn't return the
salute. I glanced over my shoulder for a second. A couple of the
others stood close behind me and I thought they had weapons out.
"My unit was hit two days ago, ma'am, all wiped out. I was assigned
with a Lieutenant commanding a platoon of liza… er… Muaan Qacia. Got
hit by --"
"I don't care." She waved a hand, cutting me off. "You want
something to eat, Jadeth?"
"Very much, ma'am." Her attitude had me baffled, but I didn't care
if she was barking mad, as long as she let me have a crack at that
stew pot.
"Stop calling me ma'am. Call me captain or Maiga." She holstered her
gun and walked right past me to the rest of the group. I turned to
see them all looking at me nervously. "Relax," she told them, "Just
a stray. Give him some food." I frowned. Stray? Cheeky cow. She
looked around. "Where is he?"
Another Marine, a young man, dark skinned and keen looking pointed
at a tent.
"Said he was tired."
"Thanks, Rish." She jerked a thumb back at where I stood like some
kind of museum exhibit with the others goggling at me. "Look after
our guest." She went to the tent he'd pointed out and crawled
inside.
Rish came over and offered me his hand. Another officer, I reckoned,
reckoned they all were. Something about the way they looked at me.
Scared of me. Aside from Maiga and the bloke in civvies, who looked
mid-thirties, the rest were all under thirty and the only thing that
scares a young officer more than the enemy is a sergeant.
I shook Rish's hand and returned his nervous smile with one that
probably scared him even more. He wrinkled his nose when he got
close to me. Well yeah, I'd not had a bath for a week, what the hell
was I supposed to smell like? Maybe I could clean up here later, but
right now if I didn't get at that food soon someone would pay.
"Sergeant, ah, sit here, won't you?"
I sat, shedding helmet and pack. A woman filled a bowl of stew and
passed it to me along with a spoon. I gave her a big smile and she
blushed. Cute piece, Middle Eastern looking, star ship crew. Rish
handed me some bread. A bit stale, but right now I'd have eaten it
even if it had green fur growing on it. I shut out the voices of the
weirdo squad and just lost myself in the food, speaking only to ask
for seconds. And thirds.
After I ate, I shook out my bedroll and lay on the ground, near the
fire. One of the youngsters suggested I could use a tent but I waved
that off. I liked the sky over my head. Liked to look at the stars
and wonder which of them might be home.
~/~/~ I woke to dawn light casting a sickly green
glow over the horizon. Looked like rain. I sat up and stretched.
Real food and a proper kip definitely made a difference to my
outlook. I still didn't know what the weirdo squad's game might be,
but if they could help me get back to base then they could do
whatever they liked.
It crossed my mind that they might be some sort of black ops unit
out here up to mischief, but I dismissed that. Aside from Maiga
maybe, who seemed to have some clue, they came across too amateurish
for that. I'd run into black ops and intelligence units before. They
made you happy just to get away with your skin still on. This lot
didn't inspire that kind of fear.
"Good morning, Sergeant."
I looked across the now low fire to see a man standing there
watching me. He wore civilian clothes but he wasn't the same fella
I'd seen last night. This one was taller, at least six feet. His
blonde hair reached right down to his shoulders. Didn't see that
very often.
"Coffee?" He offered me.
"You bet." I thought about adding "sir". He had the same officer
vibe as the rest of them.
He poured some coffee from a pot that stood on the stones around the
fire and handed me a cup. His hands looked soft, but had chipped and
dirty nails. He smiled as he handed over the cup. His blue eyes
looked amused about something.
"Thanks."
"You're welcome, Jadeth isn't it?"
"Yeah."
"My name's Ilyan. I'm pleased to meet you."
"Sure. You too." I sipped the coffee. No rank? I could believe this
one was a full bird colonel, though maybe one that sat behind a
desk. I watched him as he sat down across the fire from me. Who the
hell are these people? Who the hell is this guy?
"Excuse me not sitting any closer, Jadeth." He smiled. "I hope I
don't offend you when I say it's clear that you've been away from
base for several days."
I grimaced. "I guess I'm pretty ripe. Any chance of a clean up
around here?"
"I think that could be arranged." He drank his coffee, still
watching me. I stretched some more, rotated my head making the bones
crack gruesomely and making Ilyan grimace.
"Any breakfast on?" I asked.
"The others will be up soon," Ilyan said. "We'll get some then. Will
you want to get on your way after you've cleaned up?"
I shrugged. "To be honest, I haven't a clue where I am or how to get
back to HQ." I took out my broken Snapper and showed it to him. "No
maps. I've been trying to tag up with a unit, but I swear the
bastards are all hiding from me." I grinned at him. "Maybe they can
smell me coming."
He laughed then turned more serious, looking at the Snapper.
"That was pretty close, wasn't it?"
"You're not wrong there, mate. Um, sir," I added, trying to rein
myself in a bit. This lad had a way about him that made me relax. I
had to watch that, I still didn't know what the story was here, had
to be on guard.
"You don't have to call me sir. Ilyan is fine."
"Okay."
"You were assigned to a native platoon? Maiga told me."
"Yeah," I nodded. "Me and a lieutenant. We got hit by a shell."
"And the rest were all killed?"
"Yeah."
Well let's not mention that some of them were still alive when I
bugged out of there. Hey, the bastards were going to eat me, why the
hell shouldn't I run?
We drank our coffee in silence for a while. A cold breeze started
up, stirred his long hair. After a while he put down his coffee cup.
"When were you last home on Earth, Jadeth?"
I had to think about it for a moment, trying to recall. "About five
years ago I think. Why?"
"Do you miss it?"
I thought about the question. Did I miss it? One place is pretty
much like another isn't it? Except…
"The sky," I said. "I miss the sky." I looked up into the green sky
above us. It was beautiful actually. Silver streaked clouds scudded
across it. Beautiful, but wrong. "Nowhere else has that blue, you
know. Never the same, waking up to a sky the wrong colour." I
sighed. I remembered training, camping out and waking up to the
blue. Nothing like it. "When were you last there?" I asked, wanting
to ask him if the sky was still blue. That was stupid, what else
would it be?
"Three months ago."
"Barely had time to miss it then."
"No. I hope I'll get to go back one day." He looked wistful
suddenly, sighed.
I frowned. "Why wouldn't you?"
He looked at me and smiled. "Long story."
I glanced at the sky that the sun lightened only slowly. No movement
came from the rest of the weirdo squad yet.
"Long day," I said, looking back at him. Come on, pal, spill it,
what the hell are you lot doing out here?
"Yes. Yes it is, I suppose." He poured himself more coffee, sipped
it and winced. Either cold or stewed, I guessed. He didn't speak
again at once, just sat there looking thoughtful. I almost gave up
on it and started thinking about that clean up, when he finally
spoke.
"Jadeth, what would you say if I told you I think the aliens will
turn on us?"
I shrugged. "Wouldn't surprise me."
He frowned. "It wouldn't?"
I grabbed a stick from the ground and poked the fire a bit then held
my hands out to it, trying to warm up.
"To be honest, that's what happened to my unit. The L.T. fucked up
bad and the lizards took the hump and tried to frag us. Can't blame
the scaly sods."
Ilyan stared at me, looking shocked.
"So how did you get away?"
"Oh there was a shell, like I said, right when they were about to
gut us." I grinned. "Kind of distracted them a bit. Shell killed the
lieutenant and I had it away on my toes before the lizards got their
wits back."
"Right," Ilyan said slowly. Then he stopped staring at me and pulled
himself together. "But what I mean is something on a larger scale.
And not just the Muaan Qacia, but the Kitsnujitar, the Chiamajan and
the Ayokidishi."
The names of "the big four", as us grunts called the major powers,
tripped off his tongue naturally and with the accents and
pronunciation perfect. Shame he spoke so beautifully about such a
bunch of crap.
"What all of them? Turn against us all at the same time?"
It seemed unlikely. Right now humans fought on the side of the Muaan
Qacia in one of their usual territorial disputes with the Chiamajan.
Elsewhere we worked for the Ayokidishi in some religious themed
trouble with the Kitsnujitar. Of course, if the Chias or the Kits
offered us enough cash then things would change sharpish.
"I believe," Ilyan said, "that they are about to settle their
differences, at least temporarily, and deal with Earth." He took
another sip of coffee and looked back at me. "And when I say 'deal
with', I mean 'destroy'."
Strange thing, he didn't look like a madman.
"Are you nuts?" I shook my head. "The Kits blew up the Oki's capital
city. Twice! The Qacians and the Chia have eaten each other's young.
Every one of the lizards is under a general order to kill any Chia
they find."
"The Chiamajan and the Kitsnujitar are under a general order too. In
battle, always kill the humans first. They know we're the most
dangerous."
"Yeah, well, we are," I said and grinned. "We're the best and they
all know it."
"But twenty years ago we fought alongside the Kits, against the
Muaan Qacia. And the Qacians had that same general order."
I shrugged. "So that's a sign that we're good isn't it? It's just
the same way we're trained to kill the officers first."
"Of course. But what if they all decided to apply that order at the
same time? Even the ones we're currently working for?"
"But they would never team up!" I argued. "Have you ever met any of
them? They hate each other more than they could ever hate us."
"Are you sure about that?"
I shook my head. "Who the hell are you? Where the hell do you get
such a mental idea?" I laughed. "Don't tell me. You had a vision of
the future!"
He smiled that wry smirk again.
"Perhaps." He glanced over at the tent I'd seen Maiga go into last
night as she came out of it, stretching. She nodded to him, ignored
me and strolled off to where someone had pointed out the latrine to
me last night.
More movement followed, a few other people emerged, including the
other civilian. He looked grouchy and severely mussed.
"Good morning, Tesla," Ilyan said. "Tesla, Jadeth here wants to know
who I am. Why don't you tell him?"
Tesla glanced between the two of us, and then spoke.
"You're the Prophet."
Chapter 3
Just my luck, to run into not just weirdoes, but actual full-on
nutters. Maiga came back then and started bossing people about to
get some food on the go, so I didn't have a chance to ask Ilyan any
more questions. Not sure I wanted to really. I knew crazies when I
saw them.
After we ate they boiled up a pot of water for me and I took it
round behind a tent to wash. I'd started dressing again in my last
set of fresh clothes when the Tesla bloke poked his head around the
corner.
"Are you decent?"
I didn't even know what the hell that meant.
"What can I do you for?" I asked, pulling my undershirt over my
head. As he approached he tripped on my boots and I scowled at him.
"Watch it," I snapped. Nobody touches the boots.
"Sorry." He looked at my gear, which I'd unpacked and laid out. "My,
you manage to fit a lot into your pack don't you? How do you carry
it all?"
Stupid question. Doesn't he know a soldier carries his life on his
back?
"Do you want something?" He got on my nerves. Weasely little sort.
"I just thought I should explain what I meant before when I called
Ilyan 'the prophet.' I don't want you to get the wrong end of the
stick."
I thought I had a pretty firm grip on the right end of the stick,
but I let him talk. He didn't look much good for anything else.
"Ilyan is an intelligence analyst. I am too."
"Spooks, huh?" Might have guessed.
"Yes." He laughed. "Spooks. That's what you people call us, don't
you?"
I started packing my gear away, thinking about the phrase 'you
people'.
"Well Ilyan's speciality is making predictions. About where trouble
may occur. He's very good at it. Very good. That's why he ended up
being nicknamed 'the Prophet'. In fact, well I came up with that
nickname. As a joke really. But it caught on." He smirked,
apparently proud of himself. When I didn't answer he went on.
"Anyway, Ilyan was so good that High Command themselves considered
him a top advisor."
I frowned. A man who had the ear of High Command and now he's
camping out in a combat zone on Muaan Qacia? How did that happen,
huh? Maybe they noticed he'd gone howling off round the bend? I sat
down and started putting on my boots. Tesla didn't seem to mind me
not answering him, he still rattled on.
"Then he told them about the prediction, the one he told you about.
He says he analysed the data twenty different ways and they all led
him to the same conclusion. Within a year the big four will settle
their differences and come after us."
"Sounds unlikely," I said.
"High Command thought the same. They rejected it out of hand!"
"Yeah, well High Command usually knows what they're doing."
"I've checked the data too," Tesla said, his face turning serious.
"I have to agree with Ilyan."
"Oh well then, that's me convinced."
His face darkened into a deep scowl.
"There's no need to take that tone." He gestured impatiently. "I
suppose there's not much chance someone like you would understand."
I stood up pretty fast then. I was only a couple of inches taller
than him but he backed off quick, almost falling over on the rough
ground. I smirked.
Maiga appeared at his shoulder, scowling at me.
"Tesla, get your stuff together, we're moving out." He nodded
meekly, gave me a dirty look and hurried off. Maiga turned to me.
"Leave him alone." I heard a clear warning in her voice.
"Nothing would make me happier. Ma'am." She added to the morning's
collection of dirty looks and then folded her arms and watched me
finish packing my kit.
"What are your plans, Sergeant?"
"Try and find a friendly unit and get back to base."
"Right. And when you get back?"
I looked up. Her hand rested on her sidearm. I saw her point.
"Who the hell would believe that I met a bunch of weirdoes camping
out in a combat zone? Must have been hallucinating. I get like that
when I'm hungry."
She took her hand off the pistol. I heaved my pack up and settled it
on my shoulders.
"Well see you, ma'am. Have fun with the nutter patrol."
I'd taken five steps when she called out "wait." I stopped and
looked back.
"What makes you think you'll find a unit?"
"I found you lot."
She smiled and glanced back over her shoulder, gave me a wry look.
"Yeah, that's something to boast about." She looked thoughtful and I
waited. "Look, we're on our way to an infantry unit, I'm pretty
certain I know where they are. Why not tag along? You can share our
food and help me keep my people from getting killed, and then we'll
leave you with them."
I thought about it for a moment. Nutters this lot may be, but they
had food. And her "pretty certain" about the location of a unit beat
my "zero clue".
That was the moment right then, when I made the choice that changed
everything.
"Okay, whatever." ~/~/~ I took rearguard. That way
I could keep an eye on all of them. The military sorts kept up a
pretty good pace, but the spooks were slower and obviously found the
going rough. They needed to toughen up if they were going to hang
around in the wilds.
After an hour or so Ilyan stopped to adjust his boots. I caught up
and waited for him. He smiled up at me and then stood up and we set
off walking together.
"So you've decided to join us for a while, Sergeant?"
"For a while."
"Good. We could use an experienced man like you. Aside from Maiga
I'm afraid most of my group are rather young and inexperienced."
"Yeah, well you've got me till we meet up with this unit she thinks
she knows about." I nodded to where Maiga led the way.
"Oh, she knows about them. Their officer is a friend of hers. He's
agreed to let me talk to them."
I frowned at him. "About your prediction?"
"Yes. I believe Tesla explained a little more about it to you." I
glanced at Tesla, who seemed to be having trouble with the bugs,
swatting like mad.
"Yeah, said you told High Command your idea, and that they weren't
having any of it. I suppose then you got the hump and came out here
to…" I shrugged. To do what? He'd not explained that part yet.
"Got the hump?"
"Took the huff, sulked."
"Ah. Yes, I, um." He grimaced. "I suppose there's an element of
that. I was accustomed to being listened to. And when they wouldn't
listen, well then, my ego may have been bruised."
"See, that's the part I don't get yet. What are you doing out here?
Long way to come for a sulk."
"Yes." He looked thoughtful for a while, eventually spoke again.
"Well, back at university they taught me there are two ways to
approach a problem. Top down and bottom up."
"Yeah? Sounds like the way I approach the problem of women." I
grinned and he looked mildly shocked, which made me grin some more.
"Er, quite. Anyway, I'd tried the top, High Command, and that didn't
work. So I decided on a different approach."
"The bottom. Well…" I looked around at the grim terrain and the
distant smoke rising into a sky now heavy with rain clouds. "You
found the bottom all right."
He sighed, looking around. Maybe he missed the blue sky too. "Yes.
But what I mean is I want to get out and meet and talk to the troops
at the sharp end. The humans who are out here fighting other
people's wars, when they should be back home, preparing to defend
Earth."
"So, what are you going to tell them to do?" I asked, intrigued.
"You gonna stand up in front of a bunch of grunts and tell them to
mutiny?"
"I'm going to tell them to stop fighting."
I laughed for at least a minute. He waited me out, not even looking
at me. I guessed he'd had the same reaction before.
"Stop fighting?" I said in the end. "Stop fighting?" I almost
started laughing again. "You really are bonkers. Fighting is what
people are for."
"Really?"
"Yeah. Didn't you go to school?"
"For too long I suspect."
"So you want us to stop fighting. And do what?"
"Go home. Go back to Earth and prepare. Oh, we will have to fight
again. But at home."
I looked at him long and hard. He'd lost the amused little smirk and
the look in his eyes that suggested something funny was going on
that I couldn't even understand.
"You're really serious about this?" I asked, surprised by the hush
in my voice.
"It is going to happen. All we can do is fight to defend ourselves
when it does. If enough of us are not at home to fight then Earth
will be destroyed and the remaining humans hunted down until we are
all gone." He looked away, looked ahead again, walked on in silence.
I noticed he'd started limping slightly, probably blisters. But he
kept walking.
These intelligence types. They had it pretty cushy. Nice
accommodations, good pay. And this one, top advisor to High Command,
he must have been living the high life. And he gave all that up for
this?
"What about the others?" I asked, nodding at the weirdo squad.
"Tesla is an old friend of mine. He believed in me and he agreed to
come with me when I… left Earth."
He almost said 'ran' there. Maybe doesn't want to think of himself
as running.
"The rest are people we've encountered on the way, who've decided to
follow because they believe me."
My gaze instantly settled on Maiga. Nice view from the back.
"Because they believe you," I said with a touch of cynicism in my
voice I'll admit. "No other reason?"
He frowned at me, some disapproval there.
"Maiga agreed to come with me before she and I began --"
"None of my business." I cut him off. More than I wanted to know
about.
Perhaps Maiga sensed us looking at her because she glanced back and
then turned and gestured to the group, called out.
"Break. Ten minutes." The others stopped and dumped their packs.
Tesla sank to the ground and clutched at one of his feet groaning.
An Oriental looking woman, sat beside him. Tanashi, I recalled her
being introduced as, star ship officer, doctor. She ran a med
scanner over Tesla as he complained about his feet.
Ilyan and me caught up with the others from rearguard position and
Maiga came to meet us.
"Want to take point for a while, Sergeant?"
"Sure, if I knew where the hell we're heading."
She scowled at me and pointed to a nasty jagged looking outcropping
sticking out of the ground, about ten klicks ahead.
"Just get us to that BFR. Think you can manage that?"
"I'll give it a go, ma'am. Think the kindergarten class can keep up
with me?"
"We'll give it a go." She stalked off.
Ilyan watched her leave, maybe appreciating that nice back view too,
and then he turned to me.
"What's a BFR? Is that a military term?"
I shook my head and laughed. "Shit, you lot really are screwed out
here." I pointed at the outcropping. "That's a BFR."
"It's a rock," he said, not getting it.
"What kind of rock?"
"Damn, I knew I should have brought my Big Book of Geology with me."
He smiled at me sidelong and I grinned.
"Nah, I meant size."
"Oh. Well, I suppose it's a… big rock?" He frowned, face thoughtful.
Then he lit up and grinned back at me. "Oh! It's a Big Fucking
Rock!"
And I laughed because, well hell, he just sounded so pleased with
himself for figuring it out. Maybe he didn't have a clue how to
survive out here, but he caught on fast.
He glanced at his watch, winked at me and turned back to the others.
"Come on then, everyone," he called out, clapping his hands.
"Sergeant Jadeth is going to lead us to the Big Fucking Rock."
They stared at him like he was crazy, but started getting up.
"That was never ten minutes," Tesla moaned. Rish and another Marine,
Rin (did they assign these guys alphabetically I wondered) helped
him to his feet. I started to move ahead, and then I stopped.
"Ilyan. Just tell me one thing." I paused, shook my head. "Why? Why
would they turn on us? We fight their wars for them. They pay in
money instead of blood. Why would they want that to change?"
"Later, Sergeant," Ilyan said, the serious expression on his face
again. "When we meet your colleagues. Then I'll tell you and them
why I have the blood of millions on my hands."
Chapter 4
"Five hundred years ago humanity accepted its destiny."
Ilyan stood in front of an infantry platoon, most of them sat on the
ground. In the dark and under their helmets and armour I could
barely pick out the men from the women. Could pick up their attitude
though. They were sitting still for the crazy spook cabaret act only
because their officer ordered it.
"Humans are good at fighting, we've always been good at it. Why not
accept that and profit from it?"
"We all went to school, pal," someone shouted out.
"Yeah, cut to the chase, bud."
"All right." The glow of a lantern threw Ilyan's refined features
into sharp relief. Behind him deep in shadow Maiga lurked, scanning
the crowd. She didn't seem to be listening to him. Heard it all
before, I guess. Me, I leant back on my pack, listened to the
speech, and wondered who would laugh first.
"I am an intelligence analyst. I made predictions about where
trouble would break out. That way our envoys could be in place
quickly to negotiate a deal. To get us the job of fighting the war
for one of the sides. It doesn't matter which side. Whoever pays the
most."
I yawned. We know all this too. We're a mercenary army, a mercenary
species. We get it. The other grunts had started fidgeting. At least
a couple of them were asleep. Behind me a woman giggled. Not at
Ilyan, more at something somebody was doing to her.
"I was good at my job," Ilyan went on. "So damn good I started to
get suspicious of myself. How could I have a hundred percent success
rate?"
Hundred percent? Bloody hell.
"Predicting the future can never be an exact science. There are too
many variables. Yet everywhere I said trouble would happen, it
happened. My colleagues started to call me a prophet." I glanced at
Tesla who sat at Ilyan's right.
"So I tried an experiment. I picked a place where there was some
tension, but that I believed had no immediate likelihood of
violence. I wrote a report predicting imminent conflict. I listed
the various things that might trigger a war."
He paused and looked around, his face pained now. But he had the
full attention of the grunts. He sure had mine.
"A month later the war started. Out of a clear blue sky a skirmish
over a family feud escalated into full scale conflict. And we had a
man there on the spot, ready to negotiate a contract." He gave a
bitter laugh. "But of course we had a man there. He went there to
make the trouble happen. I had believed that my work predicted where
trouble might happen. But in fact my superiors used it to identify
where trouble could be made to happen."
The other soldiers had gone real quiet now and sat watching him
intently.
"I wrote that report ten years ago, six months after I started
working for intelligence. After the war that I had manufactured
broke out I confronted my superiors." The bitter laugh again. "They
congratulated me on working out the reality of our work faster than
most and offered me a promotion."
Ten years ago? I had expected him to say he had only just figured it
out. Not that he'd worked for them for ten years knowing what he
knew.
"And I accepted it. You see they explained things to me. They made
me believe what we do is justifiable. I talked myself into believing
them. Yes, I accepted it for ten years. And then I made a new
prediction…"
He started talking about the "prophecy" he'd already explained to
me, and the grunts sat spellbound. Not me though, I stopped
listening. And not because I already knew about the prophecy but
because I started remembering something.
Five years ago I'd been wounded and laid up for a couple of months
in a hospital back on Earth. For weeks I lay by a window watching
the blue sky, feeling the cool breeze and smelling the sweet grass.
Hospitals are about the nicest places on the planet. I didn't want
to leave. But in the end I had to and on my first mission back on
active service I served in a small squad, acting as bodyguard to a
spook going for a meeting. High in some mountains on Kitsnujitar he
met a bunch of guys that looked like bandits. Hard to say with the
Kits. Their dark grey fur and pointy teeth makes me think of wolves.
At the time I thought they probably had some kind of intel to hand
over to him, but I remember that he didn't talk to them for that
long. They didn't give him anything. He gave them something though.
A box, with locks on it, which the leader of the group handed
straight over to the biggest bastard in his gang to carry.
A few days later I heard over the broadcasts that Kit 'terrorists'
had blown up a temple or some such place and killed a bunch of other
Kit folks. And another couple of weeks after that the whole region
was in flames and our "envoys" were deep in negotiations with both
sides over who bought our services. "Envoys" is a really just a
polite word for 'salesmen'
I remember at the time thinking how dumb the Kits must be, fighting
over whose god is best. We kicked the whole religious crap into
touch centuries before. Waste of time. But I never gave a second
thought to the spook and his meeting in the mountains and his locked
box. Never thought that had anything to do with the place suddenly
exploding. Now I saw it clear as day. We paid the bandits to destroy
a carefully chosen target, pretending to be terrorists. We caused
the war, just so we could sell our services to fight in it.
This was why the big four would turn on us. They'd finally figured
out that we'd kept them at each other's throats for five hundred
years, so we could make money off it. "Let us fight the wars for
you," we said. "Let us train you. Let us lead your soldiers in
battle." We neglected to mention, "by the way we started this
conflict." If just one of them worked it out and got together with
the others long enough to compare notes... well you could see how
they'd be a bit pissed off.
I looked up at Ilyan. He was explaining something about his data,
some evidence about secret talks between the Chias and the Okis. I
couldn't really take in the words, my eyes just riveted on his face,
his shining eyes. He's not insane, I knew, right then. It's much,
much worse than that.
He's right.
~/~/~
That night I dreamt of the blue sky. The sky I
watched from that hospital bed. The sky I used to watch as a boy,
lying on the grass outside the school barracks. And I dreamt of the
eagle. Some of the other kids wanted to go and find its nest. But I
knew the eagle lived somewhere in the mountains whose foothills we
trained in. We'd never find the nest. I didn't want to, content just
to watch it glide and swoop in the sky, watch it stoop and dive.
Sky, so blue, filled my vision until I woke to green Qacian sky and
the sounds of the infantry unit packing up ready to head out. Ilyan
sat near me, staring ahead. The dark circles around his blue eyes
told me he'd not slept.
I got up and put my boots on. Ilyan didn't seem to notice.
The grunts had food on the go, so I wandered over and scoffed some
fresh bread and some bacon and grabbed a couple of big mugs of
coffee. I sipped one as I walked back to where Ilyan sat. When I
nudged him with my knee he looked up, startled, and I handed him the
mug.
"Thank you," he said, with a weak smile. He held the mug with both
hands, warming them, chasing away the morning chill.
I sat down beside him, didn't speak for a moment, just drank coffee
and stared. Between the pair of us we had a classic case of the
early morning stares.
"You worked for them for ten years," I said, quietly. "You worked
for them all that time knowing that you were causing the wars."
He looked at me, and then nodded. He understood. No more small talk.
"Yes."
"It's not only aliens die in those wars." I looked around at the
grunts breaking camp.
"I know." His voice nearly a whisper.
"What now?"
"Now I go on. To the next unit, to the next planet and I try to make
them understand, try to make them do something about it."
"Do you think it will work?"
He put his head down. "I have to try."
"Yeah," I said. "Yeah, you do." He looked up at me again. I got up
and started to gather my gear.
"Well, good luck, Jadeth," Ilyan said, sadness in his voice. "I
enjoyed meeting you."
I clicked my tongue and shook my head as I fastened the chin strap
of my helmet.
"I thought you were meant to be clever?" I shouldered my pack and
walked over to Maiga who was stood talking to the infantry unit's
commander.
"Morning, Captain. Which big fucking rock are we heading for today?"
~/~/~
By lunchtime I'd started wondering what the hell I'd
done. A morning's stroll with the weirdo squad left me wishing I'd
stuck with the infantry, got my arse back to base and just forgotten
about Ilyan.
Maiga had been giving me the evil eye since we'd started. When I
told her I was tagging along permanently she'd taken Ilyan aside and
flapped her lips at him for a good ten minutes. Too far off for me
to hear, but I guessed she wasn't telling him what a brilliant idea
it was for me to join the party.
Tesla spent the morning glowering when he wasn't actually whining.
He slowed the whole group down. Even more than the star ship
officers, who at least were fit.
Along with the doc, Tanashi, and the tasty Arab bird, named Jia,
there was a boy, well barely more than that, an ensign, called
Vimal. Vim they called him. He was full of vim all right.
Then we had the interchangeable marines, Rish and Rin, the only
thing you could use to tell them apart was their skin colour. One
each of black and white. Maybe I'd eventually remember which colour
went with which name.
I took my lunch away from the others, found myself a nice flat rock
to sit on at the edge of the forest clearing where we'd set up a
temp camp site.
I needed some time alone to think about an important question. Why
the hell am I teaming up with these crackpots? Okay, so I thought
Ilyan may be right. Okay, maybe I even felt sure of that. But so
what? Did I really think I could help him do anything about it? What
the hell could a ground pounding death technician do for an officer
spook like him?
Why did I even care? Another important question. So humans died in
the battles that we caused. So what? I remembered when I was a kid,
maybe nine years old, being told my mother was listed KIA. I didn't
even blink. I hadn't seen her in four years, not since I turned five
and moved into the school barracks while she went back on active
service. I barely even recalled her face. She'd once hinted at
something that made me think I might have an older sister, but I'd
never had any confirmation of that. My father was a total mystery.
So if I didn't even care about my own mother getting killed why did
I care about people I never met?
I leaned back on the rock to enjoy the heat of the sun and something
dug into my side as I lay down. I fished it out of my pocket. My
busted Snapper. I turned it over in my hands a couple of times,
looking at the shrapnel. I could be lying dead on the mountainside
now with whatever did the same job as ravens fighting for my
eyeballs. And I'd have died painful and slow with this piece of
metal in my guts. But the Snapper got in the way and, deep thinker
that I'm not, my only thought had been that I'd better take it back
so I didn't get charged for a new one.
"Jadeth?"
I looked around to see Ilyan approaching me smiling.
"Is this an LFR then, Jadeth?"
"Huh?" Then I laughed as I got it. Little fucking rock.
"Right now it's an LFR catching the sun."
"Mmm, yes." He laid one hand on the rock, felt the warm surface.
Then he pulled himself up to sit beside me, crossed his legs and sat
facing me. I sat up, cross legged too. Like a couple of kids about
to play patty cake.
"Jadeth, I wanted to say how pleased I am that you've joined us."
"Yeah." I shrugged. "I guess I can see you're right. And, well, you
lot need all the help you can get, because you've got no clue about
surviving out here. Well, I guess the Captain knows what she's
doing, but the rest of 'em are just kids."
"I know." He looked at me for a while, long enough that I got
embarrassed and looked away. "You're having doubts," he said.
I looked back at him, frowned. "Thought you were a Prophet not a
mind reader."
"All of them had second thoughts after joining up with me, it's only
natural."
"Thing is, thing is. Well, I'm not sure what I can really do for
you. I'm a soldier aren't I? That's all I know. Fighting is all I
know how to do."
"Yes." He looked down for a moment, at his own hands. Then he held
them out. "Take my hands."
"What?" I gave a nervous laugh.
"Go on, take them."
I did, not sure what his game was. His hands weren't small, but they
felt almost childlike in mine and I handled them carefully.
"What do you think of my hands? What do they tell you about me?"
Now I felt really awkward, I looked away from him, embarrassed
again.
"I dunno."
"Yes you do. Tell me. Be honest, I won't be offended."
I looked back. Well he asked for it.
"They're soft. You've never done a day's work in your life. You've
never cleaned a rifle or dug a latrine. You've never had to scrub
blood off them." I cringed at that last part, remembering what he'd
said yesterday about the blood of millions. "Sorry."
"Don't be sorry."
I tried to pull my hands away but he resisted and I left them there.
"Everything you just said is true. Jadeth, you are a soldier and
that's what I want you to go on being. Not just to help us get
through the wilderness, not just to protect me and the others. But
because I'll be talking to men and women who are like you. Whose
hands are as rough as yours and who have no reason to listen to a
soft handed spook who doesn't even know what a BFR is."
He took his hands away finally and when he did I was suddenly sorry.
His right hand swept his hair back where it had fallen over his
face.
"But if they see that someone like you thinks I am worth listening
to, then you will be more valuable to me than ten officers. I don't
want you to stop being a soldier, Jadeth. I just want you to be a
soldier for me."
I sat silent for a moment. He had a way with words. Either with a
crowd, or twelve inches from your nose he had a way of talking right
to some bit of your brain that gave you your orders and decided you
were going to do what Ilyan asked.
I stood up and he leant back to look up at me standing tall and high
on the rock. I'd picked up the Snapper as I rose, feeling the
shrapnel in it that could have killed me and killed the machine
instead.
Fate.
Because the shell hit I didn't get fragged by the lizards. The shell
should have killed me but it didn't because of the Snapper. But
because the Snapper didn't work any more I got lost. And because I
got lost I found the weirdo squad and Ilyan.
Fate put me here, at this man's side. Why? Well I guess I'd just
have to wait and see.
I wound up and tossed the Snapper deep into the forest. It vanished
among the trees. I grinned. That felt good. I stepped off the rock,
landed light and turned back to offer Ilyan a hand down.
"My friends call me Jad."
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