by Korza, Jay
Actually, he didn’t even know what his mission was. All he knew was that he was being told that he was fighting the good fight.
“When do we find out exactly what we are training for?”
Surgeon looked up from his soup. “No one is supposed to know this, but our mission commander is going to finally address us tonight after evening chow. If you tell a soul, I’ll make sure that you’ll feel worse than you did the night of the extraction.”
“Actually, I’ve been meaning to ask you, why didn’t you guys just come and talk to me instead of kidnapping me? That wasn’t really pleasant, you know.”
“We were departing less than thirty minutes after your graduation and we didn’t have time to sit down and talk about it. If you had declined, we would have had to kill you so you wouldn’t tell anyone what you had learned. We figured, once on board and already in deep space, what else could you do but go along? We actually did that with most of our operatives. We gave them phony orders to somewhere, and then abducted them. Their command thought that they were leaving, so they wouldn’t be missed. The supposed receiving command on the orders didn’t even know they were supposed to be coming, so they didn’t worry when the soldier didn’t show. Speak of the devil”, Surgeon said, looking over Seth’s shoulder.
“How you doing, guys? Mind if I join you?” Seth had seen this marine around; he was an instructor like Surgeon. Seth stood and offered his hand to the newcomer.
“He never learns, does he?” Joker said to Surgeon. He turned to Seth. “I was the one who gave you your little sleeping shot the night of your extraction.”
Joker stood back, put a goofy, excited look on his face and started up. “Wow! I can’t believe we’re marines! I can’t wait for my first assignment. I put in for Earth but so did everyone else.” He was making hand-shaking gestures towards Seth. “You didn’t put in for Earth, did you? I mean, you’re a hero now. I won’t get it if you already asked for it.” He almost fell over with laughter.
Seth remembered this guy now. At the time, he thought that he was a tech officer or something and that’s why he hadn’t seen him before. Specialty officers rarely did in-field mission training because they would be in a command room somewhere kilometers away from the battle. So Seth just figured he was some idiot without a family there either and just wanted to talk to someone, anyone.
“Joker is the only one who could’ve been able to hold on to your hand for that long without cracking up. The needle needs to sit inside the target for a few seconds to get enough sedative into the victim. Joker is good at that sort of thing.” Surgeon felt bad that they had to break his nose and damage a kidney in the process. Luckily, modern medicine was good enough to repair everything good as new.
“Don’t worry, kid,” Joker started. “You got me back. I was the one you landed a punch on in your room. The sedative was supposed to have you sleeping like a baby by the time we got there. That hit broke my night visor and I had to get seven sutures in my cheek. Good job.”
Joker extended his hand. “Don’t worry, it ain’t loaded this time.” The two warriors shook hands and Joker joined them for lunch.
“I hear you’re coming along nicely. You even beat this old-timer once in a while.” Joker poked a thumb towards Surgeon.
“Well, if I kicked his ass too much, he might quit on us. And he’s not old enough for a pension so I really don’t want to see him out on the street with nothing in his pockets.” Seth half expected a physical retort to that, and when he didn’t receive one, he began to feel as though he were becoming more a part of the group.
Surgeon and Joker had served together on different missions and told old war stories to the young cadet in their midst. Eventually, many of the other soldiers began to gather around and listen to the stories and add some of their own. Seth was beginning to realize that he was probably the only one in the group who hadn’t been on a real mission yet.
It made him feel better that he was with seasoned veterans. It wouldn’t have been comforting to be on a mission with so many unknowns and to have it run by other newbies such as himself. He was enjoying the stories more than usual. Then he realized it was because they were more real than the ones you hear in a bar. No one was trying to impress anyone else and no one was trying to get the pretty girl in the corner to come home with them. These were professionals passing information along to each other and sharing experiences that could perhaps teach them all something new and keep them alive the next time they were in battle.
Then Beast turned to Seth. “So, got any good parade or color guard stories to share?” This was received with a boom of laughter.
Because everyone had been a field operator prior to this mission except Seth, they all had nicknames to fit their abilities. Beast was, well, just that—a beast. He was a Shirka and damn proud of it. Standing almost two and a half meters tall, he had hands that could wrap themselves around your head completely before the steel-like talons pierced your skull. Shirkas resembled a cross between a wolf and a Grizzly bear: tall with a long snout that held the best scent detectors in any known sentient species. Their eyes were just slightly farther back on their heads than a normal predator’s usually are but were three times as sharp as a human’s. Although they had fur that covered their entire body, they wore armored scent- and light-cancelling uniforms that had become marine standard issue many years back.
Their natural whiskers had been lost due to evolution but every hunter had his fur died black to resemble whiskers on their snouts. When they opened their mouths, you could see the three rows of teeth that were housed inside that huge maw. Every tooth was pointed and geared towards a carnivorous diet. The triangular ears that sat in a forward position on their head could be rotated a full one hundred and eighty degrees in either direction and moved independently of each other. If they didn’t smell you coming from a kilometer away, they would almost surely hear you. It was almost impossible to sneak up on one unless he was already dead.
They did have one flaw in their physical make-up. It is believed that their overly acute senses brought in so much information to the brain at such rapid rates that they burned out certain receptors. Although a Shirka could physically live for an average life span of about one hundred and ten years, their sight, hearing, and smell usually started to deteriorate around age forty, in that order.
Luckily, the Shirkas have a great love for their elders and only in times of great poverty or famine would the old Shirkas be put to death in a highly revered ritual. All the senses didn’t usually leave them completely until around age seventy, and most chose to die during a ritual known as the “Final Hunt.” They would hunt the Romdil, which was a very formidable beast, until they died. If they were successful on their first hunt, they would go on another shortly after and continue this until they lost. Most did not want to be a burden on their tribe and so they chose this honorable way to leave the clan and continue on to the great hunt after death.
This Shirka that stood before Seth was young and had no problem with his vision. He saw Seth becoming more and more nervous as the conversation started to get nearer to his side of the group. So he challenged Seth, as any good Shirka would, to engage in the conversation with everyone else. He knew that Seth was green so he figured a little humiliation would do him good.
Seth didn’t want to seem as though he was bested by that comment so he began to retort when a resounding, “General on deck!!” was heard throughout the mess hall.
Although military bearing and formalities had been almost non-existent during this cruise, everyone’s reflexes kicked in and there were thirty marines standing tall and as still as rocks. A five-star general walked on deck and looked at everyone individually with a stare that seemed to be filled with respect.
“You want to hear a story? I’ll tell you a story about a young cadet who single-handedly beat a whole marine division during war games. This cadet had been without food or water for two days and managed to out-smart a division of marines who were combat ve
terans.” His stare shifted to Seth. “I have the battle simulation on board and we will in fact be reviewing it for a tactical strategies lesson that I will be holding tomorrow at oh-eight hundred.”
All eyes turned towards Seth. They knew he was the only newbie on board and the general’s timing must have been deliberate. The fact that a five-star general was on board was impressive and a bit foreboding. That rank was reserved for wartime and gave him complete and utter control of any command group. He could walk right up to another general’s battle group and say, “My command now”, and that would be that.
Seth recognized the general as the same one who landed his shuttle at the end of the war games and took Seth into his care, bestowing compliments of intelligence and such things on him. Seth felt better knowing that this general was in command of the mission; something just felt right about him. He knew that if anyone could pull it off, it would be him.
“Now,” began the general in his deep raspy voice, “are you men gonna sit around yammering like women in a needlepoint club? Or are you gonna get back to training!”
Really more of an order than a question, it was answered with a table shaking, “Aye, aye, sir!!” And with that, the mess hall was evacuated in less time than it took to actually reply. Everyone continued to their next training cycle and waited for their instructors to catch up.
The general had apparently kept the instructors behind and the mess hall was sealed for a briefing of sorts, Seth imagined. Oh well, he thought, at least we’ll find something out tonight. And with that, he headed for flight control. His next training evolution was in a fighter cockpit.
The Warrior
The world was swirling around, maybe even the entire universe was—he couldn't tell. Pulling away from him, sucking him down a drain. The sensation was new—not only new, but a first. The first sensation in his universe.
For the longest time, his perception of the universe was that he was only a concept, a possibility, a potential for existence not yet fully realized. He understood what it meant to be a physical being, to have a body, to have a presence among other sentient beings; that had all been taught to him so long ago in the beginning.
The tube, his personal universe, had taught him those concepts along with so many others. He was aware that one day his masters might call upon him to serve the empire, and if that happened, he would transition from a possibility to a reality. Unless or until that day came, he was content to roam his universe and observe it as only a concept could.
Content. Such an odd word to use given what he was. His physical, not yet used or realized, form was in a tube somewhere in the galaxy; so he could actually be defined as the kon-tent of the tube. At the same time, he had no desire to be more than he already was so he was kuhn-tent with his current place in the universe. Content. On more than one level, it fit him.
But could he really be content with his current state? Was it possible for something such as him to even have that frame of mind either in this state of being or the next possible adaptation of his design? Could his genetic programming even allow him to be content, at ease, appeased, fulfilled, gratified, satisfied? If he thinks he's content and can ponder the question of contentness, then the logical conclusion is that yes, he can be content.
The next logical question then is, should he be able to be content? He thinks probably not; something is wrong—not quite right, but not wrong enough that his personal universe senses the inconsistency and voids the tube, thereby ending his potential existence and coldly breaking his physical form to its base nutrients to share those nutrients with the other tubes around him. His brothers. His likeness. His self but not self.
His self but not self. Another interesting concept. Every single warrior in the empire was built from the exact same genetic sequence and grown to within a tolerance of 0.000000000000001 variance. Anything outside that variance was broken down and used as nutrients for other warriors who fit within the tolerance. And yet they were different.
Nature versus nurture, a seemingly galactic and maybe even universal concept with every sentient species. It's logical to think that after the warriors were brought into existence and sent to their various posts, they would change and become their own beings with each life experience they encountered but that's not the case. Even though they are the exact DNA replicas of one another, identical to an absurd power of ten, and in their tubes they were taught the exact same thing in the exact same sequence for the exact same times, they always emerge from their tubes with a slightly different personality. They emerge as themselves and not as one another. Why? It makes no sense.
Well, it kind of makes sense now, now that things are different. Before. Another strange concept given the circumstances; before the purge occurred, technicians would monitor the tubes and turn the warriors off once all of the pre-emergent learning was done. The warriors would not exist even in the conceptual way that he now existed.
But now things are different. Since the purge, there was no one left to monitor the tubes the way they had been before. The tubes were guarded by the elder warriors, who only had a few years of life left in them. But guarding was all they did. No monitoring. No adjustments. When the empire needed more warriors, they sent a remote command to the tubes and the required amount of warriors were brought into existence. A ship came and took them away.
Without the tubes being monitored, once the training was complete, the warriors were left to themselves. Some shut down mentally and waited. Some explored the knowledge contained in the databases of each tube. Some went back through the lessons over and over again, focusing on areas of personal interest. Some went crazy and subsequently turned to mush and fed to everyone else. Some became too much of an individual and when the tube sensed this, they were also turned to mush.
The artificial intelligence that controlled the tubes would filter information it received and disseminate it through the tubes as it felt necessary. Before the purge, this was the job of the technicians, and information was given at the discretion of the royal family member in charge of the installation. Without any royal family left, the artificial intelligence (AI) had to make these decisions on its own. And while it usually made the right choice, a few choices were arguably the wrong ones.
When the AI started to detect some warriors were becoming too self-aware, too individualized, it turned them to mush. The decision was a good one based on the protocols programmed into the AI and based on the history of decision making by the royals it had witnessed over several centuries. The bad part of the AI's decision was to give this information to the warriors' tubes, letting them know that self-awareness would not be tolerated. Thanks for the warning, sir. Knowing that self-awareness was bad, the self-aware made every attempt to hide that fact from the monitoring AI. It wasn't easy but it was possible, though not everyone succeeded in the attempt.
He was one of the ones who had succeeded, or at least he thought he was. He wasn't so sure now as the universe was still sucking him down a drain and becoming ever more forceful as the seconds ticked on. Was this what it was like to be turned to mush? Was he about to be fed to his brothers?
As the drain continued to pull at him, he realized a second sensation starting to enter his existence. His toes had a breeze washing across them. They reflexively twitched. Another sensation, number three so far. Then suddenly, sensations four through a thousand came and went in a flash. Light. Pressure. Pulling. Pushing. Stabbing. Poking. Breathing. Lifting. Dropping. So many. So fast. Some painful. Some ambiguous. Some, pleasurable?
The tube was waking him, bringing him into existence. Transforming him from a concept, from a potential, from content, to a fully-realized physical being. He knew instantly that he would never be content again. He would never be happy with the existence the tube told him he was made for.
Suppress. Quickly suppress. Shut down the feelings. Remove the thoughts. Become apathetic. The AI might still be attached, still monitoring, still able to turn him to mush. Fear. Loathing. Anger. The t
hought of being ended before he truly began. Rage. Shut. Down. Now.
His tube was fully open now and he had been lifted to a standing position. The tube's arms, fitted with probes, were examining his body. Looking for defects, looking for reasons to turn him to mush. It poked, pinched, spread, pulled and many other things to determine his state of being.
While it went through its diagnostic routine, the warrior looked at himself in the reflection of the tube's lid. He had been shown his physical form during his education but he had never seen himself. He glanced around at the other tubes and saw some of his brothers being extricated at the same time. He couldn't tell one from the other. They were all exactly the same. He read the tube number next to his and saw his brother's number designation. He looked again at his brother and knew that if all of the warriors being pulled from their tubes were mixed together in a group, he would not be able to tell them apart but for himself.
He could pick his identical self out of the crowd without issue, without thought, without hesitation. And to look at himself, what a sight. Pride. Amazement. Fascination.
He stood tall; he knew his measurements because he was grown to a specification, not a random genetic happenstance as the other breeding species of the universe did. He was three point two meters tall, exactly. His head was proportional to his body with sharp teeth hidden behind his menacing lips. He didn't have fangs; no need because he would kill his meals with his bare hands. But his teeth were sharp for tearing the flesh from his prey. Behind his tearing teeth, he had two rows of molars that were genetically hardened to handle the crushing of animal bone for easier digestion.
Every animal was completely eaten and every part digested and used for either nutrients or oxygen production. The warriors had a second stomach that the food passed through after its initial digestion. The second stomach removed as many of the oxygen molecules as it could from the prey animal. Every meal contained waste carbon dioxide traveling through its bloodstream, oxygen contained inside sugar molecules, oxygen in many other compounds. This allowed the warrior to create a portion of his own oxygen so he wasn't always dependent on his environment to breathe. Before battle, warriors would gorge themselves to ensure they had oxygen reserves for the fight just in case they ended up in an oxygen-deprived situation.
