“Get out here traitor!” says Herus.
Isaac holds his lower torso where he’s been hit. He wrestles about trying to move. I look around for a gun. To my side is a horribly burned marine, scorched black and stuck into place against the exploded carrier he must have tried to escape. In his grasp is a XM. I grab onto it, his leathery fingers break off as I pull and it burns my hands.
“Fuck!” I pile snow over it hoping it will cool it off.
“Peter!” says Isaac, terrified. “Where’d you go?”
I look over at Isaac from the cover I sit behind, a red burst erupts from his shoulder as he screams louder.
HERUS!
“I’ll kill your rebel bastard friends!” says Herus.
I peek out; Herus stumbles towards me passing marines as he reloads his revolver.
I bring out my XM and aim.
“Don’t shoot me!” says a young kid, cowering in the snow before my rifle and wearing pajamas.
What the hell?
I close my eyes and turn away. I peek back out again but am greeted by Herus’ knee. I fall sideways, my nose broken and its blood splattering the snow. I look back up, in my blurry vision is the kid standing over me—then I feel the steel barrel of the revolver resting against my head. I kick out.
The world is quite, and my earlobe rings in the worst fucking pain I’ve had. I grab them to try and stop the ringing while I rise to my knees. Herus is on his back trying to reach for his revolver he dropped. I grab my XM behind me and collapse on top of Herus with it. The world is still soundless as Herus’ face spits at me with rage. I push the rifle up against his chin, lean to the side to doge the barrel tip, and fire.
I feel the warmth of his exploding face coat mine.
I look about from the ground over Herus’ limp arm as my ears ring. Marines fall from the crossfire and others attempt to find cover to fire back. Most of them run my direction and pass me to reach the landing choppers. I look to the side at Isaac. His body is fighting a seizure, his right arm frisking the air desperately at me. I drag myself towards him.
His mouth moves, making the motions of screaming and talking, but still all I hear is the ringing. I rub more snow on his wounds. I rip his medical pouch off and fumble giving him morphine. I watch my useless hands shake violently before me, repeatedly dropping the syringe into the snow. I grab a passing marine tackling him, and aim the syringe at him then point at Isaac. He crawls over and shoots him in the upper chest. He moves to the side to try and help me raise him next, but he falls over, a gaping hole in his neck squirting blood everywhere. He grabs his neck to try and stop the bleeding, and his other hand grabs tightly on Isaac’s face for support. I try to make him let go. Isaac tussles from the pain, the veins on his forehead about to pop, his wounds gushing more blood as the marine’s grip intensifies. I punch the man in the neck, he lets go of Isaac as he hacks blood onto his own visor.
I am so sorry.
I lift Isaac up around my shoulders, and move with the fleeing marines again.
The sound of chaos starts to come back to my ears.
“I’m sorry Peter, I love you! I love you as my own brother!”
“Hold in there! Okay? We’re gonna make it.”
I fall to my knees from an explosion nearby that causes a horrible sting in my thigh from where I was hit. I glance at it to see the muscle is ripped more. I rise with all my strength swallowing the pain. I have to get us there.
Isaac continues crying. “I’m sorry. I’m sorry! God I am sorry! Please. Please! I love you Peter.” I feel him place something inside my thigh pocket.
“Isaac stay in there, we’re gonna make it! Stay with me, okay!” I am meters away from a chopper. The side gunner lays down suppressive fire and waves me on frantically.
I reach the hull, and slide Isaac onto it as I hop on.
The chopper starts to rise into the air.
“He’s dead!’ says the gunner. “Get him off to make room.’
What? I look at Isaac. His face stuck into a motion of terror as his wounds leak blood onto the hull. “No! He’s fucking fine!”
The helicopter rises as marines attempt to hurry to it. Most of them are shot down by rebel fire, and the rest jump into the air crying for us to land back down.
“Get him off now!” says the gunner. His spent bullet shells bounce off Isaac’s body.
My face is against Isaac’s cheek. “Why? We are leaving anyway.”
He drops the turret and kicks Isaac off the hull before I can react. I lean over, my hands clenching the metal edge as I watch his body fall to the ground on top of the jumping marines. All I remember of him is his terror struck dead face.
The horror of death defeating life.
NO! The horror!
I fall back against the hull. I look at my blue frozen hands, still caring his blood on their fingertips. My heart as numb as them.
Isaac, please, please come back.
XXX
“I’m sorry,” says the gunner. “I had to. I don’t think the General wanted to freight the dead.”
“What?”
“Right behind you, Private,” says a voice. I look up to see Jack, sitting in the corner of the hull. His cowboy hat against his chest, and his hands moving along its edge trying to straighten a crease.
The events of the ambush drifts away from the physical as the rescue helicopters fly us away from the scene, but it remains ever present in my head, in the metaphysical in all of our heads. The hull is covered in blood and gore, dirty snow, and vomit from the other marines that hurdle among themselves, lost—Isaac!
Jack grabs the top handles for support and sits down nearby. I let the numbness take me over. His words flow into my ears. “It was me who chose to spearhead the reinforcements to save y’all from getting completely wiped out. Shit, Marshall Hannibal is probably having a fit that one of his most trusted commanders disobeyed direct orders.”
I glance up at him. So he doesn’t know. Nor how fucked we are for not dying nice and easy here.
“You look surprised. I was called back because I was too valuable to lose. The big man Hannibal just said if things went south to report that y’all meet up, and under overwhelming forces were defeated in a valorous fight to the death—or so how the Party would show it. Anyway, you probably don’t know this, but Hannibal loves his army, he loves you Private. This probably comes as confusing to you considering what I just said. But he really does. If there would have been no adverse effect on the army if he abandoned that surrounded division you were sent out to save, he would have not sent you, so that he could have saved your life. More men died trying to save them than if we left them to their own devices, and that’s what Hannibal would have done, but you know the motto, ‘No man left behind.’”
Jack chuckles, opens a container grabbing a cigar, and rolls it about his fingers. “But that’s also why I came for y’all. Hannibal is one of those fatherly utilitarian kind of figures, he doesn’t want to waste any unnecessary lives of his army, of his men, but he will also do whatever necessary to try and keep y’all happy—while also trying to win—to keep you as best content as possible, and I think that’s impossible to do. Obviously he’s done a shit job on the making us all happy part, but not because it’s his fault, this is a goddamn war, not vacation after all. But also, it’s because of this war specifically, it’s a different type of war. It’s a special war.”
He lights the cigar and takes a puff blowing the smoke out to the wind. “I came to save you guys because you’re all we have; there were no more reserves to send, no more reinforcements. The nations at home can’t get along and shit is hitting the fan there. Our whole Coalition is breaking apart as we know it, ironic how it’s happening while we’re millions of miles away fighting aliens, but it is. And I know you hate me, Private, everyone does, and if you didn’t hate me then I haven’t done my job right. It’s not because I like to be hated, it’s because I have learned I am only hated when
I do my job perfectly, so that’s the only way I know I am doing stuff right.”
He puffs his cigar, the red smoldering circle at the end of it continues talking, “As I said though, this is a different type of war. I used you like a part of my tool belt and you became one of my most valuable tools. And I knew I could push y’all far without you needing to hold my hand. Whether you like it or not, you’re a pawn. And I play chess very aggressively. I use pawns to win, I sacrifice them when need to. But I am not a coward or unfair. I don’t play chest from a safe armchair like sweet ol’ Hannibal. I am a marine first, and I wouldn’t ask you men to do anything I wouldn’t. That is why I disobeyed orders and came back to save you. Because I always fight with my men, and two,” he glances at the other marines slumped and bleeding over each other in the hull, “this would have been a waste of a pawn.”
He glances at me for a moment. “You’re looking angry as I expected. You need to hammer that truth into your head Private. It’s what you signed up for, well not really for you, because you were drafted right?” Jack’s mouth grins through the smoke. “Well, it’s what you agreed to when you were born a citizen of the U S of A. You got to see though, Hannibal and I have different philosophies and strategies, but our outcomes and face value decisions are practically the same. See, you would be safe and cozy in your foxhole if Hannibal had his way in not aiding the stranded division, but he had to try even though it makes no sense to me that he did—higher up’s orders I suppose. As for me, you would also be there safe and sound if I were in control, for I would have never sent that division off knowing quite well it would get destroyed. And if I did—even though I wouldn’t—and circumstances were different, I would have sent you out, and then another if you failed, and finally, as what did happened, I still would of rode out to save what was left of my boys regardless. And it looks like you were a lucky one, one of the apples I grabbed out of the orchard that was ablaze and brought home.”
Jack taps his cigar on his boot, and the ash flies off into the wind. “Back to my other point though, this war. When I was young, at the field during recess, I would grab handfuls of ants, and put them near other ants. They wouldn’t fight a lot, mostly try to run away or dodge each other, they only really killed each other if it became a matter of interests, like over a piece of food or if the other colony got to close to home. Well one day I took that handful of ants, and found some termites. I put them down near each other, and you know what happened? They fucking destroyed each other, it was an insect genocide. An insecticide! No mercy, or trying to escape, they ripped each other apart. So I added more to the fight, and for hours they kept on killing. The ants then began building lines from their colony to the termites, and their huge lines swarmed the termite nest. The termites fought back, but at the end of the day, the ants wiped every one of those termites out, even the eggs.”
He takes a long puff from his cigar and stares at me. “You’re an ant Private. This Coalition is a swarm of ants, and those Herculeans are termites. Termites are a lot bigger and scarier, they require lots of ants to take down, but ants are stronger than termites, that’s why they always win. You’re my handful of ants, and when I find a termite, I drop you off around it and watch you duke it out, just like when I was a school kid. These are Herculeans. They are another species, just like ants and termites. And different species like to wipe each other out, it’s an instinct kind of thing. That’s what the Herculeans are trying to do, clearly they see us as a threat, or they need something we’re using. So they are trying to remove us. But my brave handfuls of ants won’t let that happen. And if one handful fails, I send another, the colony will always make more, and more handfuls I’ll send till I win.
“The threat to that strategy is when the colony gets cut off though. And that’s what happened here with Hannibal’s bizarre orders. So sometimes I have to come back and separate the bugs and take mine back. Even though Hannibal loves you, I acted more in your self-interest coming out and saving you, funny huh? Your loving father would have left you, because he has more soldiers he loves elsewhere. But I don’t love you, I can’t, or I couldn’t do this job. When you make the field a chess game and the pawns are insects—or just pawns for that matter—that’s when and how you win a war. Off their skill and use, not some mushy belief that everyone has an intrinsic value to just be alive. Shit, this is war, if we were worried about lives and love, we wouldn’t be having one now would we?”
Jack finishes his cigar, and blows the last inhale of smoke into rings that disappear through the wind, followed by his tossed cigar bud. “You let that all sink in, Private. This war is different, and the Herculeans know that too, that we are all just bugs, pawns, which you use to win. Nothing more. You boys are the cash of war. Before we send you out on a mission, we always estimate first how many body bags we’ll need to order. It seems harsh, but war is a strict merchant.”
The helicopter lands back at base. “This is your stop, marine. Finish this war, and maybe you can go back to your other life.”
“General.”
He looks back at me slightly surprised. “Yes, Private?”
“I will be honest with you,” I cough—you got to finish this. “I fucking hate you. But because you are the only one I can trust now. And because you fucked everyone here who was supposed to die. I have something that I need to tell you.”
XXXI
“You expect me to believe this?” says Jack. We have returned to the northern Kuplar regional HQ base, where I have told him everything in his field office. A clamp has been placed around my thigh wound which takes the pressure off of it when I walk, and my broken distributor cut off.
His radio goes off, “Major General, General of Kuplar Battalion. Answer immediately!” It’s Marshall Hannibal.
Jack turns to the radio, “Yes Marshall I copy. This is Jack, sir.”
“You are to stand down immediately, I repeat, stand down immediately from you post for disobeying orders.”
Jack turns the radio off and looks back at me. “And I thought he was the nicer one. Turns out he’s an asshole too.”
“Is that reason enough now?” I say.
“Well no, I am fucked for disobeying orders…”
The ground shakes around us. An officer runs through the door, “We are under attack!”
“By who!” says Jack.
“It’s an orbital bombardment, our own Fleet I think! Tell them to stop!”
Jack grabs his gear and rifle. “Now I believe you Private.” He turns to his officer. “I can’t. We have been compromised. But if you ever want the truth of your death known you will take this marine to safety immediately.”
“Where will we go General?” says the officer.
“Go to the refugee base ten kilometers south west from here. It’s on your PDA.”
The bombardment continues and we fall from the force of the shelling. “Why there?” I say.
Jack grabs a box and chemical vile and hands it to me. “You will use this vile to undergo facial burning to hide your true identity, so you can get medical treatment there under your new name. You will say you are a native. The ID of a deceased male local not yet reported is in the box. I am giving you refugee clearance and you can take a ship back to Earth.” He stamps a seal of approval on the paper slip of an asylum form. “Fill it out when you get there with the ID’s info. Now get the fuck out of here.”
We exit the field office to the burning base around us. Streaks of bright ordinance rip through the snow gray sky destroying the base. Jack’s field HQ is on a slope on the outskirts of the base, but the bombardment begins creeping towards us.
The officer takes me away on a Humvee and we drive on a trail to a nearby village. The bombardment continues behind me as a lighting storm from the heavens itself. Attacking aircraft are silhouetted in the sky by the bright flashes as they strafe the base.
The office rips my forearm control pad off, then his, and tosses them. He pulls over and kicks in the radio
and schematics box in the jeep. “They can track us through anything info related,” says the officer. He turns his head so the back of his lower neck where the drug distributor is shows. “I need you to rip it out for me.”
“Why?”
“Yours was ripped and cut by the General. I need mine gone too. It may have not been known to you Private, but the military has GPS’s on these.”
“How am I going to take it out?”
The officer opens the glove box to the container Jack gave us. In it is a scalpel. “Use your knife to prop it in and the scalpel to pop it out.”
He takes a shot of morphine. We cover our cloaks over us and the Humvee to blend in with the snow storm. I place his cuff down and cut away at the indentation of where the drug distributor is and ply it out. Next I clamp the cord that goes into the spine. He cusses throughout the procedure begging me to stop, but we are done shortly and on our way again. We abandon the Humvee for better secrecy after drones fly in our direction, and use the cloaks to conceal ourselves the rest of the way. We become white with the land.
On our journey I see that little boy from Nova Carthago in the alleyways and the ambush, appear and disappear in between the wind puffs of snow. “Go back Peter! Fight, fight to your last breath!” he says.
Is this really happening?
He begs again. “Go Peter! I want to grow up and go to college and have a family, but I can’t if you don’t fight for my freedom and protect me against the aliens. Fight or they will kill me! Go and fight, fight till you die Peter!”
One moment he is right in front of us stopping me still. He is in pajamas that have palm trees designs over them, and on his chest is splattered blood. “Don’t follow him you coward! Go back and fight! You’re a filthy alien lover. You never loved humanity, Earth! Or yourself. Go and fight till you die, be something for once!”
It’s me. It’s my younger self.
It is just an illusion. It’s not real Peter.
“I am real, I am you with hopes and dreams! The person you’ll never be because you don’t stand up for anything! You won’t go back and fight!”
Travesty (SolarSide Book 1) Page 31
