More than a hundred of the deadliest, most powerful soldiers had been turned loose on the battlefield. Rader would join them, without comrades, in a last independent mission to create as much havoc as possible until his systems failed.
–6–
When he finished digging the grave and covering up the fallen recon scout, Rader looked across at Click. His cyborg senses and sensors had remained alert during the burial, but the Jaxxan hadn’t moved.
The alien meditated peacefully, obsidian eyes staring off into nothingness. The air shimmered in front of his face to reveal a scintillating crystal that opened like a rosebud, a projected object half a meter across, glowing with prickly facets and spires—not a weapon like the energy-web, but a crystalline snowflake that hung by unseen threads. Click remained motionless, peering into the facets as if hypnotized.
Rader came closer, intrigued. This seemed delicate, wondrous.
Click spoke without looking up from his scrutiny. “This is my holystal: a holographic crystal that I create in my thoughts. A three-dimensional map of my life, what has happened and what may yet occur. Every possibility has its own facet, constantly shifting and re-emerging as circumstances change. This …” He reached out to touch a portion that was not symmetrical with the others. “This is where you fit in, Rader. Your presence has distorted all probable futures, giving me chances I should never have had, adding dangers that were not present before.”
Rader was fascinated. “Can all Jaxxans do that? Or is it only you?”
Click made a rattling sound, and he realized the alien was laughing. “I am an imaginer, a scholar. My caste specializes in interpreting holystals, advising our leaders. Warlord Kiltik has his own expert on the System Holystal we are constructing in the Fixion Belt.”
“And you disagreed with the expert, so you were punished.”
“Yes. I was transferred to the battlefield.” As Click spoke, the projected holystal shifted slightly, a gentle flickering of one facet into another. He pointed to the most prominent pinnacle. “This spire symbolizes that which is most important to me. It has stopped growing now. My work was my life, back in our home system … before I was assigned here. To this war.”
Rader thought of Cody, their own boyhood dreams, their plans for the future, but nothing so concrete as this crystalline blueprint of the Jaxxan’s life.
Click continued with a distinct undertone of awe. “A team of engineers, scholars, imaginers, and dreamers was working on our race’s History Holystal out in the free, empty space beyond the influence of Jaxx’s sun … a holystal so vast that it took our ships days to circle around it. Every facet, polished down to the finest detail, chronicled the events in the history of our planet, Jaxx’s wars and triumphs, peoples, leaders, arts.…”
Click sighed, and Rader could almost feel the icy pain in his voice. “Then I was dispatched to the Fixion Belt, assigned to construct and interpret the System Holystal here. Now I shall never see my great project finished, or even look at it again.…”
Rader thought of his own brief military career, the capture of the alien supply ship, the assault on the nesting asteroid, and the Jaxxans he had killed, all leading up to a brief encore as a Deathguard. Since being turned loose in the no-man’s land, he had spent much of his solitary time considering the paths that had led him here. He relived all the living he had done.
Now that he objectively reflected on his past, Rader realized he hadn’t accomplished much in his years. His friendships were what he cherished most, how he and Cody wanted to do everything together, and then the close bond he had formed with his squadmates. But Cody, and his squadmates, were all dead now.
“At least you built something,” Rader said. The only things his parents had received were a letter of condolence, a posthumous medal of honor, and a pension.
He realized he was consoling the alien, and the thought appalled him. He had enlisted in the League to kill roaches, Cody had died in the service, every one of his squadmates had given his life to wipe out the enemy. Rader had already killed ten Jaxxans today.
But not this one, who had used a human soldier’s own med kit to try to save his soul, even though the recon scout would surely have killed Click, given the chance.…
The alien was staring at him with unreadable eyes, agitated to feel the waves of emotion emanating from the Deathguard. Rader tried to calm himself, fighting the tension so that it wouldn’t activate the Werewolf Trigger. In frustration, he picked up a handful of dead soil and flung it at the rocks around them.
With a scrabbling of pebbles above, a human soldier came over the lip of the gully, sighted on the enemy, and fired without hesitation. The holystal shattered, dissolving into fragments and then nothing.
Click let out a high-pitched chittering sound as he scrambled for cover. The laser rifle followed him, and the rock wall next to his head ran molten.
The Werewolf Trigger yammered to life in Rader’s head and he sprang into action before he could think, driven by the pounding command KILL, KILL! Unseen in his camouflaged Deathguard armor, he burned a neat hole through the human soldier’s chest.
Click wheezed a terrified gasp and pulled himself to his feet. “Thank you.”
Shock like cold water doused Rader’s berserker rage, and the Werewolf Trigger fell silent inside his head.
Another soldier, the third member of the recon scout team, appeared at the top of the gully, saw his companion drop to the ground, noticed the Deathguard’s laser rifle—and the huddled Jaxxan. “What the hell?”
Rader whirled, raised his laser rifle, but the scout dashed back to the safety of the rocks before the Deathguard could fire. In control now, Rader amplified his voice through the helmet, “Halt!”
He climbed up out of the loose gravel in the gulley, worked his way to higher ground in pursuit of the third soldier. But in the broken terrain with craters and a labyrinth of Jaxxan trenches, the seasoned scout had infinite places to hide. Rader looked half-heartedly, knowing the scout would head back to Base with his shocking report.
Rader returned to where Click waited, looking up at him, and the Deathguard stared at the human soldier he had just killed.
“Oh, damn! What have I done now?”
–7–
Tapping his fingers on the desktop (pressed fiberboard, of course—not real wood, not out here in this godforsaken asteroid belt), Commissioner Sobel pondered the news.
Very serious. An embarrassment. Incomprehensible.
One of his Deathguard had turned sour, abandoning his duty, killing two recon scouts—in the presence of an alien. Had the Deathguard been brainwashed somehow? The Jaxxans did have strange mental powers.
Or had the Deathguard suffered some kind of psychological breakdown? Sometimes, the cyborgs were so damaged mentally and physically that they were unstable, hence the impetus for turning them loose on the battlefield. Over the course of the war, four other Deathguards had failed spectacularly, and three had gone catatonic out on the front lines, where they were quickly killed.
But not a single one had ever cooperated with the enemy before! Sobel was infuriated. They had saved the life of this—he shuffled his papers, searching for a name—this Robert Rader. Earth League cyborg engineers had taken the burned, blasted remnants of a man, patched him up enough to keep going for a final stint on the battlefield. Wasn’t that what soldiers wanted?
He reviewed the records. Rader had suffered extensive damage, but he had agreed to the cyborg conversion; nothing exceptional had showed up on his psychological tests. Given a Deathguard’s typically short service life, it wasn’t cost-effective to waste months on extensive evaluations. The Deathguards were activated, pointed in the right direction, and turned loose on the battlefield.
As soon as the high command learned about a traitor among the lone-wolf cyborgs, however, they would crucify Sobel. The Commissioner didn’t understand it. What would make the man turn against his own kind and consort with the enemy?
Sobel punched a rare
ly used sequence on his communications console. The viewscreen shimmered before him, as if reluctant to reveal the image of his Jaxxan counterpart.
The desiccated-looking alien’s black eyes stared impatiently at him, trying to fathom the human’s expression. All the roaches looked the same to Sobel but, judging by the ornamentation on the rigid hide, he ventured a guess. “Warlord Kiltik?”
When the alien tried to answer, he broke into a coughing fit before he could speak. “Commissioner Sobel? Yes, it is you.”
At least the alien recognized him. “Warlord, you know I wouldn’t call you if the matter wasn’t urgent.”
Sobel looked past the alien, gleaning details from the background of the enemy headquarters. The walls were odd planes, tilted at random in the spirit of insane Jaxxan architecture, but his eyes were drawn to a spiny mass of crystals that hung in the air behind the warlord, like a thousand fragments of glass bound up with threads of light. Some kind of three-dimensional military diagram?
He cleared his throat. “Yesterday I received some very grave news: one of my Deathguards has apparently joined with one of your soldiers. If you have subverted him somehow, hijacked his programming, the Earth League will protest strenuously. Such mental attacks are specifically prohibited in the terms of our interim treaty.”
Kiltik stiffened, though Sobel couldn’t read any subtle change of expression on the alien face. “We have not broken the treaty terms. I myself received reports that one of our soldiers has deserted, possibly kidnapped by a Deathguard in clear violation of our no-prisoners protocol. Summon your cyborg back to base and release our captive soldier to us so that we can address the charges of desertion.”
“I can’t control or recall the Deathguard, Warlord.” Could it be that this wasn’t a Jaxxan plan? “It seems we both have a potentially embarrassing problem. For the past few months, my record here has been impeccable, thanks in large part to the Deathguard program. I can’t have one of them shooting his own comrades and fraternizing with the enemy.”
Kiltik’s staccato coughs interrupted his train of thought. The Warlord composed himself with an effort, then added, “Jaxxans do not break ranks. Jaxxan soldiers are tightly trained. But this deserter was not a member of the soldier caste. He was a holystal imaginer who was improperly reassigned.”
Sobel didn’t understand half of what the Warlord had just said, but he seized on one detail. “So, you’re saying you could be in trouble for this, too.”
“I have been assigned to the Fixion Belt since the beginning of the war. Although I will not lose my position here, I would prefer to avoid an ‘embarrassing problem,’ as you so delicately put it. My superiors will never send me back to Jaxx.” He broke off for a quick burst of coughing. “However, this war was getting tedious. What do you propose we do?”
The Commissioner hid his sigh of relief. “When I received the report, I immediately sent five special commandos to terminate the defective Deathguard. I assumed your deserter would be collateral damage.”
Kiltik did not sound unhappy. “Then the problem is taken care of.”
“Unfortunately, the Deathguard killed the entire team, with possible assistance from his Jaxxan ally. This morning I dispatched another seven on the same mission, but they are going to have a tough time behind your lines. If you send your own hunters, one of the groups should succeed.
The Warlord stiffened. “That is nonsense, Commissioner. A ruse on your part.”
Sobel hurriedly continued, “This matter concerns both of us, Warlord, and it may require all our resources to put an end to it.”
The Warlord coughed once before he spoke again. “The morale of our soldier caste will suffer when they learn of this, and henceforth they will doubt the veracity of our holystal projections that guide this war. I must ponder this further and consult my holystal, Commissioner. I will contact you shortly. Your line will be open?”
“Of course.” Sobel used his sweetest-sounding voice, but as soon as Kiltik’s image faded, he slammed his fist on the desktop.
–8–
They had been on the run for days.
Before he and Click set off again, Rader had insisted on burying the other scout he had instinctively killed. He remained tense, all of his sensors alert, knowing that the third recon scout would report to Base.
With the two soldiers buried, showing a last glimmer of responsibility, Rader had activated his helmet communicator and transmitted the location of the two graves. He added a brief message to let Commissioner Sobel know he was going offline and not to expect any further reports from the field, then he tore out the locator, disengaged the built-in comm, and told Click they had to move.
The Earth League would want to deactivate and analyze Rader. It was absurd to believe he could surrender, explain what he had done, and apologize to his superiors for his mistake. That wouldn’t bring the dead soldiers back to life. Now that he had proved to be dangerously unreliable as a Deathguard, he would be “retired,” and the Commissioner would quietly remove his name from the books.
And the Earth League would kill Click.
Addressing his own situation, Click was certain he would be decapitated in a public ceremony if he ever turned himself over to the Jaxxan military. They could not surrender to either side. Rader didn’t know how much time he had left, but he refused to waste it. They were on their own.
On the day after Rader met Click, five Earth League trackers had found them, set up an ambush, and attacked. Click, the first to spot the trackers, set up a clumsy energy-web that knocked out one of the fighters. When the other four turned their weapons on the Jaxxan deserter, Rader let his Werewolf Trigger take over, and he eliminated them with professional efficiency.
More blood on his hands.
During Rader’s training, the counselors had insisted that Deathguards had no conscience. Although he didn’t think that was true, Rader did not let the guilt paralyze him. While he would not have chosen to kill other Earth League soldiers, they had given him no choice. The best solution to protect himself, and Click, and other soldiers would be to avoid any further encounters.
–9–
Commissioner Sobel’s shuttle touched down on the Détente Asteroid’s shared landing field, as had been previously arranged. It felt strange to be here at the same time as his Jaxxan counterpart. Uneasy, Sobel glanced behind him at the five specially chosen soldiers who rode in the shuttle—not as an honor guard, but as candidates for the unorthodox mission Kiltik had proposed.
It had taken Sobel some time to realize that the Jaxxan Warlord was serious; the idea proved that the alien military leader was in fact alien. Sobel would never have suggested such an insane approach, and yet …
A joint team composed of both human and Jaxxan soldiers to hunt down and eliminate the two deserters as swiftly as possible? If it was a trick, then Sobel would lose five good fighters … but he had already lost almost three times that many in his solo efforts to control the situation. He decided to risk it. This mess had to be cleaned up, swept under the rug, and the fewer people outside of Fixion who knew about it, the better.
Deathguards were the best fighters in the Earth League, although not necessarily stable or controllable, as Rader had proved. His hand-picked soldiers were specialists in their own right; Kiltik had chosen similarly talented Jaxxan hunters.
His five specialists crouched on the benches, anxiously shifting their laser rifles from hand to hand. The Commissioner had given them strict instructions not to open fire on Warlord Kiltik or any other Jaxxans when they disembarked on the Détente Asteroid. That would ignite a powderkeg, and Sobel did not want to deal with the resulting paperwork.
As the door split open and the disembarkation ramp extended, the men jumped out and stood protectively beside their Commissioner. A line of warrior caste Jaxxans greeted them, and the two groups faced each other, as if daring someone to break the agreement.
Sobel said to his team with a scowl, “Enough posturing. We’ve got work to do.”
An alien, obviously the Warlord, walked across the landing field, sliding through the line of stiff Jaxxans. Sobel actually recognized Kiltik after only two viewscreen conversations, picking out distinctive features on the alien face.
Kiltik bowed his head, bending his stalk of neck. “Commissioner Sobel?”
“Good to meet you in person, Warlord!” He reached out to shake Kiltik’s brittle hand, but the Jaxxans reacted as if it were a hostile gesture. The air thrummed with building energy-webs, and the human specialists brought their laser rifles to bear.
But the Commissioner knocked the nearest soldier’s rifle aside. “That’s a friendly gesture among my people, Warlord. We’re not here to kill each other now.”
Kiltik stood silent, as if reading Sobel’s emotions. “I sense hostility in you, but it is not directed at us. For the moment.”
Sobel nodded. “I’m glad your empathic ability can break the ice.”
The Warlord fought back a spasm of coughing. “Please pardon my cough—it comes from breathing this thin, dry air for years.”
“No problem at all.” The Commissioner gestured for his five specialists to follow him toward the normally empty embassy buildings. “Is the conference room ready? We’ve got important things to do.”
–10–
For several days, Rader and Click made their way across the landscape, remaining hidden, staying alive, but without a plan. Each still possessed high-density ration packs, but the food would run out soon enough.
Despite the Deathguard’s best attempts to remain out of sight, they were repeatedly attacked by patrols—both human and Jaxxan—eluding some, killing others.
He and Click sat together at night, quietly brooding, thinking of what they could do next. Night on Fixion was oddly different from how Rader remembered nights should be. The dark sky was strewn with brilliant clumps of asteroids from the Fixion Belt, glittering almost-moons that added to the feeble starlight. He didn’t think he would ever get used to the low gravity, the thin atmosphere, the wrong constellations.
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