Ideal War

by Christopher Kubasik

  As he ran on, Valentine got closer and closer.

  "Blackjack One. Phoenix Hawk One. Listen to me. We're outnumbered three to two. We've got to work together until we've dealt with the Regulan warriors. We can win if we do that."

  But no answer came. He'd made good progress against two of the Regulan 'Mechs; one of them, though, the Rifleman, stayed on his tail. He decided to stop and engage his shadow before Valentine and the other two Regulans arrived. But even as he slowed, his radio crackled: "Masters. Captain Masters?" The voice sounded familiar, but he couldn't place it. "Imagine being caught all alone out in the middle of nowhere."

  Colonel Roush. From the knighting celebration.

  Masters ran for cover behind some trees, but even as he did, Roush got off two good shots that ripped through the Phoenix Hawk's remaining back armor and went internal. Half of Masters' computer displays went out, then the engines made a horrible noise as the 'Mech ground to a halt.

  Instinctively he slapped one hand toward the eject button that would launch him free of his 'Mech. But he stopped centimeters above the red button, for he remembered the thick canopy of large branches overhead. If he ejected, he might not make it past them. He might not die in the flight as he smashed into one branch after another. He knew, though, that he had to get word of the Regulan presence on Gibson to Thomas. There really was no choice.

  He jabbed the button and the eject thrusters fired underneath him. The cockpit rumbled wildly, and then the faceplate blew out as his command chair lifted with a rush. He felt his flesh and muscles forced down as a wash of yellow passed before him. The chair smashed into a thick branch, then another, and then another, each impact accompanied by a solid knock that echoed in Masters' ears with nightmarish volume. The chair leaned right, and then he spun upside down. He couldn't keep his focus, and everything around him looked like a blur of yellow and brown. He slammed into something that stopped his progress cold, and then felt his landing begin. His thoughts slid away as he fell toward the forest floor, and then he remembered nothing more.

  When they gripped him by the arms, he didn't know who they were. They dragged him out of the command chair and into the forest's dim sunlight. Then Masters remembered Gibson and the war and the GFL. He didn't struggle. He had no strength left.

  "Well, Sir Masters," said Roush. He wasn't drunk now but his eyes showed the same loathing from the night of the party on Atreus. Without warning, he brought up his fist and slammed it into Masters' jaw. The pain sliced like a knife, and he thought for a moment he might pass out once more. Then Roush said, "You're the lucky one. We've got something for Word of Blake that's going to make them wish they'd never accepted Marik's offer."

  * * *

  They carried him back to a cave entrance, where Roush told the guerrillas to keep Masters safe until he returned. With a guerrilla on either side of him, Masters was led down a series of tunnels. They tripped him and shoved him into the walls of the cave; a few even came up and glared at him, brandishing knives and promising their "time with him."

  They left him with his back to a jagged wall, his hands bound with coarse rope. He had no idea how to get out again, for he'd been too weak when they brought him in. But sitting and waiting in the tunnel for what seemed hours, he gathered his strength and resolve.

  Some time later the guerrillas brought Spinard down the corridor with his hands also tied behind his back. His faced crawled with cuts and bruised skin. They dropped him alongside Masters, then one of the guerrillas, an Arab, laughed and said, "He doesn't have Regulan protection like you. Until the colonel gets back, he's ours." The man then leaned down and placed his knife underneath Spinard's right eye. "This is what might happen to you," he said to Masters. The tip of the blade pressed into Spinard's flesh, but did not puncture it. "Come to our world, eh? Come to our world with Blake? You want to kill us all, don't you?"

  Masters, wanting to deflect the situation, said, "He doesn't want to kill—"

  But the man grimaced and revealed yellow teeth. "Shut up, Knight. This isn't your war. You're just on the sidelines, letting the Blake people run over us. You and your Captain-General. What have any of you done for us?"

  "The countess—"

  "Shut up!" The man turned his attention back to Spinard's flesh, just below the eye. "What do you say, True Believer?"

  Masters watched the guerrilla carefully, ready to struggle to his knees and defend Spinard as best he could if the guerrilla actually cut him. But then something strange happened.

  As the guerrillas leered at Spinard, his smile faded.

  Masters looked at Spinard, and saw Spinard's eyes looking past the guerrilla, revealing a terror, something quiet and private, so deep it seemed Spinard could never reveal it, nor anyone fathom it. Masters turned back to the guerrilla. "Let him be," he said softly.

  "Shut up!"

  But the guerrilla stood and backed away. "We'll come back later," he said, without taking his eyes off Spinard. The other guerrilla eyed Spinard with equal trepidation, then the two of them left.

  Masters cleared his throat. "Spinard?" Nothing. "Private Spinard?"

  "Yes." Spinard's voice creaked like an ancient tank's hatch opening, an ancient tank complete with the skeletons of dead soldiers inside.

  "Private? Are you . . . ? How are you holding up?"

  "Not, sir."

  "Not? You're not holding up?"

  "No, sir." When Spinard spoke, he kept his gaze fixed ahead, his voice flat and monotone. "They beat you?"

  "Yes, sir."

  They remained silent a long while. Guerrillas walked up and down the corridor past them. "I might be able to get something for you," Masters said. "Do you want something?"

  "No." He remained silent for a moment. "If I could have my metal back, sir."

  "Metal?"

  "My 'Mech, sir."

  Masters almost laughed. "You want your 'Mech back? I don't think we can pull that off right now."

  Spinard ignored him, continuing in his monotone, but as if they were talking casually, perhaps in a mess hall after a good meal, looking at a very red sunset out the window. "I'd rather have my metal. We've got this skin that can be pierced. You know, they can get you, right, sir? The world, I mean. Everything. Everyone. You don't know what they're going to do to you, and you don't want to . . . feel. You don't want to feel it. It's better to be inside the metal, where it's safe."

  "Spinard?"

  "See sir, I figured it out. There's this death, and it keeps piling up and piling up, and I have this thought in my head of all these bodies, like the stars . . . you know, the stars . . . when you look at them at night . . . from space, I mean . . . and they're all there, and it seems like they go on forever, they must never stop, so many of them. And there are some stars you can't even see, some so far away they're too faint—those are the kids, see, sir, those are the kids I keep killing. And then there are the stars that are blocked by other stars, those are the grandparents and grandmothers. They're eclipsed by the closer, hotter stars. And so even though it seems like I could count all the dead, there are more and more, more I can't even keep track of, cause there are as many dead as there are stars. Which is hard to keep in your head. And they keep piling up, the dead, like stars seen from space, overlaid and piled up, and counted and catalogued. ..."

  "Private?"

  "And, see, sir, I don't want to feel them, cause that's the thing. I need the heat of my 'Mech. I need the wall of my metal between me and the cold dead. I don't want to feel the world. I don't want to know . . . I wish . . . That cold will come get you, you know, it'll come and hurt you. You think you can trust someone, you think you might want to feel, but you can't, you know .... You know what I wish, sir?"

  "No. What do you wish, Private?"

  "I wish I could be metal. You know, sir? See? When I got in my 'Mech, if . . ."He sighed, searching for the words. "If my flesh could grow and melt into the metal of the 'Mech. I wish that. I wouldn't have to get in and out. I'd be safe, metal, feel not
hing. I could hurt, kill, do what I had to do, but feel nothing."

  Unable to stop himself, Masters said, "That's wrong, Spinard."

  "No, sir. See, we're killing people like they're . . . bushels of apples to be harvested, if you know what I mean. They're not people. See, people aren't people anymore. Or, we were wrong about people. We used to see people as special, with souls. That's wrong. We're just things to be ground by the paperwork, because the paperwork works, people are too complicated. It's easier. But being alive still hurts. If people are just animals, like a dog or a cat, how come I feel so sad? It shouldn't hurt, see. So if I could be my 'Mech, safe in metal, killing and safe, I'd be all right. I wouldn't feel bad anymore."

  Spinard stopped and stared off ahead, then closed his eyes very tightly.

  Spinard's words chilled Masters, planted the seeds of a paranoid notion that Spinard's insanity on Gibson could spread, a kind of mimetic disease. He had to get to Portent, to the hyperpulse generator, without anyone from Word of Blake finding out about it, so that he could get word to Thomas about the war. Or maybe Precentor Blane. Maybe he could be trusted. But this couldn't wait. Thomas had to know that things were falling apart on Gibson.

  He tugged on his ropes again. Still tight as ever. The only thing he had going for him was that his hands were behind his back, hidden from the sight of people passing by. He began to tug on the ropes gently, squeezing and probing the knots around each wrist. Unfortunately, he'd never paid much attention to knots before, and he realized that although he could touch the entire surface of the knots, he had no clear picture of them in his mind. For a very long time he pulled on pieces of the rope and wriggled his fingers through the gaps between the ropes. He rubbed his fingertips raw against the rough hemp, never certain he was doing anything more than tightening the knots. The whole while Spinard sat silently beside him, eyes closed. After an hour or so Masters' mind wandered and his manipulations of the rope took place without conscious thought. It became a habit more than an attempt to get free.

  Then the knot around his right wrist slipped a bit.

  Not a great deal, but enough that he might be able to actually free his bonds. He became alert once more, and worked another half hour, his fingers sore and tired. As he felt a long stretch of rope come loose, he gave out a startled sigh. As he pulled it through the knot, the rest of the knot quickly fell away. His hands were still behind him as he set to work on the knot around his other hand when a pair of black boots stepped up before him.

  "Hey," a dark-skinned man said. "What are you doing?"

  18

  GFL Base, Gibson

  Principality of Gibson, Free Worlds League

  6 February 3055

  The guerrilla wore black fatigues, and carried a Val-ton machine gun strapped over his shoulder. Masters saw no one else in the corridor and decided the moment was at hand. "Trying to escape," he said. "That's what I'm doing. Trying to escape."

  "That's what I thought," the guerrilla said and laughed, his white teeth gleaming. "Get up and let me check your knots."

  Masters rolled over slightly and got up onto his knees, keeping his arms tight behind his back, as if still bound. He put on a show in his efforts to rise, and finally said, "I'm sorry . . . My arm, I was shot in the shoulder. I can't ..."

  The guerrilla leaned down and grabbed Masters fiercely by the left shoulder, the signal for Masters to suddenly swing his arms out in front of him. He grabbed the guerrilla's shoulder with one hand, and rammed his other fist up into the man's stomach. The guerrilla gave out a tremendous exhalation, and doubled over. It wasn't enough to put him out of the action, however. As Masters tried to stand, the man gave him a swift kick in the jaw, knocking him into the wall.

  "Prisoner escape!" the guerrilla shouted. Masters rebounded and threw himself into the guard with a sharp leap that slammed the two of them into the other side of the tunnel. Masters turned the guerrilla around and grabbed him from the back. Seizing the loose end of the rope still tied around his waist, he brought it across to the guerrilla's mouth, trying to shut him up before anyone else heard the scuffle. The guerrilla struggled and the pressure on Masters' wounded right arm made the pain fresh and new.

  Out the corner of his eye he spotted a second guerrilla coming down the corridor. Almost at the same instant she pulled up her gun to shoot, but Masters whirled the first guerrilla around to block the shot. The sound of machine gun fine ripped through the air and the guerrilla in his arms shook wildly for a moment, his scream garbled by the rope cutting across his mouth.

  Keeping the lifeless body propped in front of him as a shield, Masters lifted the gun that hung from the corpse's shoulder. He pointed it toward the second guerrilla, spraying several rounds down the corridor that sent her diving for the ground around a bend in the tunnel. Masters had just pulled the corpse out of the way as the second guerrilla came in view again. This time, aiming, he fired a full burst that she answered with a loud and terrible scream. Blood shot up from her back, splattering the tunnel walls like dark raindrops.

  Masters looked down at Spinard. The Word of Blake MechWarrior had not budged when the shooting began, and now sat forever still, his skull shattered by a stray bullet from the second guerrilla's gun. Masters sighed heavily, wishing immediately he had more power, more of what he needed to do everything he wanted to do, to protect those who needed protecting. "We do what we can," Thomas had told him once.

  He unlooped the machine gun from the guerrilla's shoulder, then let the body drop to the ground once more. Then he ran over to the other dead guerrilla, grabbed the clip out of the woman's gun, and continued on his way. He had no idea how to get out here, could only hope that constant motion would lead him to better circumstances.

  It wasn't long before he encountered more guerrillas, all of them alerted by the sound of machine gun fire in tunnels. Three times he engaged in a fire-fight, but he had no choice. Either die in combat or die of torture at the hands of the guerrillas. So each time he raced forward, charging the guerrillas, his determination shaking their confidence. Dirt flew off the tunnel walls as bullets slammed all around him. The guerrillas watched in surprise as Masters rushed at them, apparently undaunted by their overmatched firepower. Each time they hesitated, uncertain whether to press the attack or to run for support, and it was in those moments of indecision that Masters was able to take down one guerrilla after another.

  As he ran and fought, he kept changing his spent gun for one taken from the dead and wounded. One gun after another passed through his hands as he sped down the tunnels.

  Soon, though, the guerrillas began to come at him too quickly and in numbers too great. When six at once had him pinned, he had to retrace his steps and cut through passages he had passed by earlier. Not knowing which way he was going, Masters knew he could just as easily be running in circles. Would he soon be trapped by guerrillas on both ends of a corridor, cut to pulpy shreds in a tremendous cross-fire? A wave of fatigue and fear washed over him.

  Turning yet another corner, his spirits suddenly lifted when he saw bright sunshine filling the tunnel a hundred or so meters ahead. He broke into an open run, chanting over and over again, "Come on, come on, come on . . ."

  He cold see now that he was approaching a large cave that led outside. Passing the tunnel's opening into the cave was the silhouette of a guerrilla. Apparently this section of the tunnels had yet to be alerted.

  Masters ran up to the end of the tunnel and peered into the cave. It was broad and low, leading directly outside down to a lightly wooded area. The cave apparently served as a vehicle depot, for he saw half a dozen guerrillas working on light all-terrain vehicles. Some of the ATs had support machine guns mounted on their backs, others small lasers. It wasn't the best way to move valuable heavy weapons around, but probably all the guerrillas had.

  Spotting a stack of crates covered with heavy cloth, he hustled over to them, getting closer to the ATs. As he ducked down behind the crates, he saw the writing on a crate where the cl
oth had been pulled slightly out of place. He made out a portion of stenciled label that said "Davey." Something clicked in the back of his brain at the sight of the word, but he heard a footstep off to his right just as he was going to pull the cloth back to see the whole label.

  "Hey!" shouted a technician. Masters turned and saw a man pointing at him. From behind the tech, a group of guerrillas was closing on Masters. He leaped out from the shelter of the crates and sprayed the air with bullets, sending the guerrillas diving for cover while he rushed for an AT containing no weapons. Something unencumbered to get him moving as quickly as possible.

  He raced through the parked vehicles, using the ATs and their mounted weapons as cover from the guerrillas' bullets. Coming to an open AT sitting in the front of the cave, he jumped into the driver's seat, hoping desperately that it would have a key. It did. He touched the ignition stud, the engine fired up, and he drove the AT down the base of the hill. Behind him came the sound of other engines, and he pushed the AT into higher gear.

  The way he traveled was a dirt road that cut a path through a yellow forest. As soon as he passed the first bend, he drove the AT off the road and behind some trees and killed the engine. A few seconds later three ATs roared past down the road. The ruse had worked, but the guerrillas wouldn't be fooled for more than a few moments. Masters jumped out of the jeep, grabbed the gun, and sprinted through the trees. He expected to hear the shouting of guerrillas any moment, but their voices never came. For a good hour he ran, forging deeper and deeper into the woods, seeking safety in distance.

  After an hour he began sucking in air deeply, gulping at it like a drowning man. He slowed his pace, but didn't stop. As the sun dropped toward the horizon and the stars came out, he slowed to a walk but kept on and on. No one seemed to be pursuing him, but Masters had no idea if the guerrillas knew which way he'd gone. One way or the other he couldn't risk slowing down. Long after the air had turned cold, his muscles stiffened and his wounds became numb, he continued walking into the night. It was many hours later when his eyes became so tired that he began to stumble over roots and rocks. Finally he tripped, falling to his knees and feeling a dull ache spread up his legs from the impact. He laughed softly, thinking there should be more pain. He told himself he would lie down for just a moment, just to rest his eyes, ten minutes at the most. Stretching out on the grass-covered ground, which was much warmer than the night air, Masters gratefully closed his eyes.