by Ben Stevens
This sucks, Martin thought, and then frowned deeply. His reflexive inner dialogue complaint about the weather—behavior he abhorred in any soldier, especially himself—brought back memories of Nguyen, and the horror-show images from his dream.
He wondered then, and not for the first time since his rendezvous with Matiaba, the Provocateur, if his devil deal, his agreement to work with the former aide, and his use of Invasive Drop-trash would prevent him from seeing a good night’s sleep ever again. He shuddered once more, this time not just from the cold.
Shaking off his troublesome musings for the time being, Martin pulled his overcoat tighter around him and made his way to the quartermaster’s supply tent.
“Attention!” Quartermaster Irsik announced when he noticed Martin entering the tent.
“At ease, soldier. Cold morning, eh?”
“You got that right, sir,” Irsik said, visibly relaxing and going back to what he had previously been occupied with.
“What you got there, Todd? Breakfast?” Martin asked, lifting his chin to better smell the pleasant aroma.
“Yes, sir! Just beans, but you’re welcome to some.”
“Just beans?” Martin asked, closing the gap and coming up alongside Irsik and the gas stove he manned.
“Yeah, sorry to say. But we are just about out of food. It’s going to be a long winter, I fear. What brings you here so early?”
“Tent’s heater is out of fuel,” Martin reported.
“Oh, uh. Well, you can have what’s left of this.” Irsik gestured to the small canister plumbed into the side of the small stove.
“What? That’s it?” Martin asked.
“Afraid so. I hate to say it, sir. But we didn’t bring nearly enough supplies with us from Home.”
Martin scowled, and his belly rumbled. Suddenly, he found his reservations about working with Matiaba and his willingness to partner with Drop-trash not quite as unpalatable. Besides, he thought, it’s only a means to a greater end.
“Don’t fret, buddy. Things are going to start getting better for us real quick. And we will have plenty to see us through till spring. After that? We will retake the Zigg.”
“Sir?” Irsik said, his eyes growing with excitement.
“That’s right, soldier, things are now in motion that will all but guarantee our success. As for supplies in the meantime? Hang on.”
Martin broke away from the cook and his beans and went to the supply tent’s radio table. Picking up the handset with one hand, he punched in the number for Lincoln’s forward guard.
“Forney, you got a copy? Forney? This is Martin, do you copy?”
The speakers crackled with static for half a minute then popped to life with another man’s voice.
“Loud and clear, sir. Forney here. Good morning, sir.”
“Don’t lie, soldier. It’s a shit morning, but maybe you have some good news for me. Have the eagles come home to roost?”
“Yes, sir, they have! I just received word an hour ago that they are due back in Lincoln by thirteen hundred hours,” Forney reported, his voice sounding quite chipper.
“Excellent news, soldier. Carry on, Martin out.” Martin sat the handset back into its cradle and faced his quartermaster.
“You’re going to have a busy day today, Irsik.”
“Sir?”
“Phase one of the plan is done. We have successfully raided the supply caravan from the farmlands that was en route to the Ziggurat.”
Irsik’s eyes grew even wider than before.
“We will have all the food and fuel we require for some time,” Martin said.
“But, sir! Won’t theft provoke Home into open hostilities with us?” the young quartermaster asked.
“I certainly hope so, Irsik. I certainly hope so.”
It wasn’t until they had found Carbine alive, bruised and beat up, but alive nonetheless, that they relaxed enough to let the real hurt of their moral defeat sink in.
After walking out the gates of the city, concern weighed heavy on Jon’s mind. Carbine’s railgun had fallen silent after Fernando had returned fire. It was hard not to fear the worst when hope was in such short supply.
Making their way up the hillside by memory, Jon unslung his hammer and allowed its million pinpricks of swirling blue-white light to serve as a lantern. He held it high above his head, hoping its glow would help his companions as well.
Lucy, not needing light to see, made better time and moved on up ahead, finding Carbine first and calling out to the others.
“Is he okay?” Jon called up the slope.
“Yes, but he’s hurt. Get up here quick,” she called back.
A long minute later, Jon, Maya, and Ratt approached Lucy and the supine form of Carbine. A chunk of what used to be railgun jutted out of a black mass of scab on his friend’s right hip. On the ground lay the scattered remains of both the railgun and its incredible scope.
Although unconscious, Carbine still stubbornly clung to a hand-held torch.
“Oh man, what did you do to yourself?” Jon asked aloud, already knowing the answer. It was clear that Don Luis Fernando’s shot had re-traced the exact path of Carbine’s last slug, disintegrating the railgun and severely wounding Carbine. “Carbine must have used the torch to cauterize the wound,” Jon murmured. The fact that Carbine had finished the painful task before passing out was a testament to the true mettle of a New Breed soldier.
Lucy ordered Ratt to give her the nano-medi injector. Ratt dug around in the pockets of his cargo pants and retrieved a large syringe, identical to the one Jon had seen him use back in the Underground.
“Um, that’s the last one,” Ratt announced, shoulders drooping.
Seeing that his friend was healing nicely with the application of the last of the nano-machines, Jon turned his head southward and entered the pseudo-meditative trance that would recall the images Wyntr had shown him. A second later, the pillar of golden light appeared on the horizon.
It’s going to be tough going from here on out.
“I… I almost didn’t… didn’t see him… in time.” Carbine’s voice interrupted the silence. Everyone turned and looked to see the wounded soldier’s eyelids flutter open and a grimace, one part pain, one part wry humor, spread across his ruddy face.
“I was covering… Maya and Ratt’s escape… but…” He began to sit up, paused and took a deep breath, then let it out. “When they got hit… I lost them in the crowd.” His words were sounding clearer now, and the creases of pain that lined his face were slowly smoothing out. His mouth twisted into a sideways half-smile that, paired with his still furrowed brow, made him appear amused with himself. He had been looking at Lucy since regaining consciousness and continued to do so. “I saw that bastard about to do you in.” Lucy was a silent statue, listening.
“I missed my mark, but it looks like it was enough.” His grin grew twice the size. “You’re still alive.” Then, half-joking, he added, “No thanks necessary. Saving lives is what I do.” He was intentionally hamming it up, taking great pleasure in pointing out to the strong, silent, killer jaguaress—who had at one point wanted to leave him for dead because of his uselessness—that he had, in fact, saved her life.
When the expected insult didn’t come, Carbine’s grin fell off his face in surprise. A small wet spot on Jon’s cheek punctuated the awkward silence. Then another, and another.
Great, rain.
“Can you march?” Jon asked his friend, now sitting up fully.
“Yeah, sure, why not?” Carbine said, chuckling. “Things already suck, so go ahead and bring on some more suck. Though I could sure go for one of those Puebloan tacos.”
A pang of envy stabbed Jon’s heart when he recognized Carbine’s blissful ignorance for what it was.
Lucky bastard.
Carbine had always been happy-go-lucky, but Jon knew the real reason his friend could manage to stay that way, despite the current events. Carbine hadn’t been there when the people of New Puebla had rejected the
ir “liberators.” He hadn’t had to suffer the verbal attacks, the cries of the survivors who had lost loved ones, nor suffer the killing blow that had been the realization that those people had been happier in slavery; that they didn’t want to be free. When it had finally sunk in, there up on the stage, that they had been blinded by their own hubris, that they had forced themselves on the people, that they had done wrong, a part of Jon had died inside.
Turning now to study Maya, he found her back turned to the group, her gaze on the city down below, where columns of smoke still rose from the central plaza.
A part of her had died down there too.
“Wait, what? We’re leaving? Why?” Carbine asked repeatedly.
Jon and the others ignored him, packing up what little supplies they had left on the hillside.
“Come on, it’s starting to rain. We need to move. Maybe find some shelter,” Jon ordered.
“But why aren’t we staying in the city?” Carbine insisted, confused. “They can shelter us! I mean, didn’t we just save those people?”
To everyone’s surprise, Maya lost it.
“Just shut up about it, okay?” She wheeled on him, fresh tears in her puffy red eyes. “People don’t want to be saved! Just shut up!” She walked off from the rest of the group, who were pulling the essential bits of cargo from their pile and loading up and rearranging their backpacks. She only went about twenty meters and stopped, crying into her cupped hands and falling to her already scraped-up knees. Jon had begun to follow her, when Lucy lay a surprisingly gentle hand on his shoulder and offered, “Give her time, Jon. Space and time.” Jon hesitated, but then nodded his understanding.
Several long, quiet hours later, they gave up trying to find shelter, the terrain being flat brush-land as far as the eye could see. Jon and Lucy may have wanted to press on, as it was raining in earnest now, but the others simply were unable. Exhaustion claimed them first, and cold was coming in a close second.
The rain picked up its intensity and Jon hunched his shoulders up, hugging himself. On the other side of the fire they had barely managed to light, now sizzling like cooking bacon with each volley of droplets, Ratt frowned.
“Maybe we should find another place to camp?” the kid suggested, projecting his voice over the sound of the growing deluge. A flash of lightning briefly lit up the soggy companions.
“There is no other place to camp,” Lucy growled. It was true. They were in the saddle two small mountains, had in fact only made it a few peaks away from New Puebla. Tired as they had been that night, none of them wanted to sleep in the shadow of that place. Being that close to what they had done and what had been done in return would surely bring troubled dreams. And so they walked until dawn, just over the southern peak of New Puebla’s valley, and slept half the day.
They soon found, however, that no matter how far they walked, they couldn’t outrun the ghost of their sin.
The party rose at noon and trekked on, deciding that late evening was as good as a time as any to eat and let Maya, Carbine, and Ratt catch up on their sleep.
The booming roll of thunder came the second Lucy finished her statement of the obvious. There were no trees up in this saddle, or anywhere nearby. No rock ledges, no caves. They would be whipped by wind and rain all night, it seemed.
Jon got up and walked over to Maya. She hadn’t spoken all day. She looked like a drowned mouse, or the ghost of a scorned lover—broken in damn near every sense of the word.
“Hey.” One word, simple, but the way in which he said it carried more warmth than the fire had been providing before the rains picked up. She sat, feet flat on the ground, with her legs bent before her, cradled by her arms. She peered over her knees at the dying fire and did not seem to sense Jon’s presence, word, or intent. He took off his jacket and draped it over her head and shoulders. That got her attention. She peered up at him from under the hood his jacket had made. He couldn’t tell the difference between the raindrops and tears on her face. In his characteristic way, Jon sucked his lips into his mouth, inhaling through his nose, then released them along with a long, slow sigh. He knelt down next to her, rain pouring down onto his head and forming two rivers that ran down his face and joined at his chin, to fall off.
“Hey,” he repeated. He could see now that she wasn’t actively weeping. It was just the rain after all. Nevertheless, he reached out and used the back of his fingers to brush the droplets off her face. His military jacket was doing a decent job of keeping more rain off. He sucked his lips in again, making an apologetic face. “I’m sorry,” he tried. She blinked at him and visibly relaxed. She shook her head side to side so subtly that it barely even registered.
“It’s fine. It’s just…” She looked away to the side as if to imply that she couldn’t give power to her thoughts by speaking them as long as she was looking at Jon. That it was too much. The intimacy of eye contact pushing the rising tide of emotion over the breaking point of the levee. “It’s just that now I’m questioning everything. Like why are we even doing this?” Now that it was spoken, now that she had said it, some of its power over her subsided.
Jon nodded equally as subtly and breathed another sigh. Her eyes jumped back to Jon’s face and locked into his own blue eyes, encircled by the rivulets of water. “Let’s say we find the Morning Star. Let’s say we get the answers we seek, the tools we need to defeat the Harvesters and can return Earth to how it was. Will we just be hated? Will we be no better than Warbak, pushing what we think is best onto people without their consent?”
Jon gulped. He did not know what to say.
“How can violence be justified if people don’t even want to be free?”
Jon felt something stir in him. Something he could not explain. A sense of déjà vu. But it was as elusive as those tears had been in this monsoon. He blinked and frowned, prompting Maya to do the same.
Jon noticed the hurt and concern on Maya’s face and dismissed the self-inquiry, rushing his words in an attempt to soothe and calm the goddess. “No, no. No. You’re right. But hear me out. I mean, yeah, okay, maybe we don’t have the right to free people from a situation that we think is deplorable. Maybe it’s morally wrong. Okay. I get that. But—”
“No buts,” Maya interrupted.
“No. I mean, yes. Listen. We messed up back there, that’s obvious now. But we are different than Warbak, all right? He knew better. We didn’t. I mean, we do now! We didn’t mean any harm. I know that doesn’t help how we feel right now, or the New Puebloans, but we can learn from this. Grow from it somehow. Warbak always knew what he was doing. He meant to do evil. His Ministry preached nothing but lies and propaganda. Sure, some nasty things come out of the Drops, like that urchin back there, but he never stopped there. He had everyone believing that everything and everyone who wasn’t fully human was a potential threat. Tagged and bagged. Step out of line just a little, and they’d whisk you away to Social Purity, never to be seen again. All the while he himself was Unpure and working with the Harvesters! Does that sound like something we’d do?”
Maya’s face sharpened as she listened. Encouraged by the sound of his own voice and the feeling that he was at least halfway making sense, Jon continued.
“And let’s look at the Harvesters. These things actively hunt down, capture, and enslave people against their will. Their prisoners don’t get the luxury of even the third-world accommodations that the people of Puebla got! They get pulled into a void, a black prison. Who knows what happens to them after that? I don’t, but I’m sure it’s not good!” Jon stammered a bit. He felt his argument turning into frustration and emotion. Somewhere in there was that elusive teardrop, that nagging green worm of doubt. That feeling that he had had this conversation, this very conflict before, and that he didn’t fully believe himself. The Harvesters were evil, of that he was sure.
“And now, thanks to our meddling, New Puebla may fall to them, the Harvesters,” Maya said flatly.
Jon started, his words forming a lump in his throat. Sh
e was right, of course, and they would have to live with that.
“I just… It’s just that—!” Jon floundered, lost in his rage, almost forgetting that he was initially trying to comfort Maya, not soapbox. Maya’s gaze drifted down to her folded arms and knees again.
Subconsciously, without even knowing it, Jon switched gears. Somewhere between the paradox that was the fear of defeat and peace that was surrender, and the sheer terror that comes to a man who is impotent to banish whatever or whomever is causing the one he adores to suffer, Jon found himself calming down.
“Look, I don’t have all the answers. And maybe there aren’t any. But right now, we keep moving forward. We don’t think about it. We just do it. One day at a time, one step at a time. I know that sometimes leads to horror. Even if you hadn’t shown me all of history, I experienced it for myself yesterday. We all did. I didn’t want to kill those people, but at that point, if I hadn’t, they would have killed me… or you.” She lifted her head back up and stared, somewhat astonished at Jon once more. “And yeah, I know we could have avoided that whole situation if we had just gone around the city. I know we screwed up; I know. We move on. We learn from it. I know what we did was wrong, but I also know that if we don’t find whatever it is that you are looking for and find it soon, the Harvesters will rally to Home first, and then the rest of the planet. What we are offering has got to be a whole hell of a lot better than that. We stole New Puebla’s protection from them, so we must replace it with something else. It’s our duty.” Maya said nothing. Jon sighed, exhausted, defeated, and hung his head. He shifted from his squat to a sitting position and crossed his legs. He tossed his hands maybe half an inch into the air and finished with, “I don’t know. I give up.”
Maya unclasped her hands, stretched her legs out as lithely as a cat, and shifted her weight to one side, bringing herself closer to Jon. He didn’t notice. She reached out and placed her small hand on the back of his large one. Jon’s head, still down, cocked a bit to the side and he stared at the back of her slender, smooth hand and fingers.
