From the Torment of Dreams

by Iain McKinnon

  “What about you two?” asked Nasim.

  “We were drafted,” said Jackson, “They applied a bit of leverage to get us to come. They want us to ID some guy, probably the same one you're after.”

  “Why, how do you know him?” queried Nasim.

  “Well we were both in hospital being visited by the President when these two men burst in and shot him. High Command want us to pick out the right guy when they try to capture him.”

  “Ah, I didn't recognise you, there were so many people there. The wound, it was the bullet,” Nasim tapped his own shoulder at the spot where Jackson had been hit.

  Jackson opened his mouth but didn't speak immediately as if his brain were still trying to find first gear. He reached up and touched the scar on his shoulder, “How did you...”

  “Look!” Lan cried interrupting Jackson and pointed at the sky.

  A shooting star fell through the night.

  “It must be a big one it's not breaking up,” Lan said.

  Just then a second meteorite pierced the atmosphere at almost the same spot. The second ball of flame followed the same path as the first.

  “They're bombing some town from orbit,” said Jackson. He pulled his field binoculars from his backpack and started scanning the heavens.

  “There,” said Nasim as he spotted a third light.

  “I see them, I can't make them out but it looks like three ships.” He passed the binoculars to Nasim, “They're moving very quickly compared to the background of stars; that's how to spot them.”

  “Yes! I see them,” said Nasim excitedly, “Wait, they just... winked out.”

  Lan squinted at the sky trying to make out the ships, “Does that mean they were hit?”

  “Was it sudden or were there a lot of bright lights?” asked Jackson.

  “It was like they disappeared,” answered Nasim

  “They must have gone into eclipse,” said Jackson.

  “What's that?” asked Nasim.

  Jackson explained, “We could see them because sunlight was being reflected off their hulls. They've now dipped down below the daylight horizon so they're now in shadow.”

  “Wonder what they were firing at?” said Lan.

  “No way to be sure from here, it might have been the airfield we came from,” said Jackson.

  “We were there at this time a couple of days ago,” pointed out Nasim.

  “I've stopped counting the number of times this war's almost killed me.” Jackson said in a humourless voice.

  Jackson hadn't slept well. He checked the time on his watch. It was still dark but it wouldn't be long until first light. The ground was hard and the night had been cold. He had started out on top of his sleeping bag as it was far too hot inside. Then around one in the morning the temperature plummeted. Jackson had awoken under the clear desert sky shivering with the cold. It still felt chilly, even fully clothed inside his sleeping bag he'd never really got warm enough to fall asleep again.

  Jackson was glad it was time to get up, at least now he would warm up from the exertion ahead.

  Giving a stretch and an exaggerated yawn he got up to make hot drinks. His muscles were stiff and sore from yesterday's hike and he carried a sickly headache from the lack of sleep. His blistered feet, although still tender, were not throbbing. Jackson could only hope that a cup of something hot and the approaching dawn would bring some relief.

  “Morning,” Jackson greeted his two comrades as he nudged them awake.

  “Breakfast is served,” he said as he presented them with hot steaming mugs.

  “Well it's nearly light enough to move out so drink up and let's get going.”

  “How far have we to go?” Lan asked in between sips.

  “We've got seventeen Kliks to cover in two hours and most of it downhill.”

  Ramage stood waiting at the entrance to the canteen. He watched as Jackson, Lan and Nasim walked up to queue for breakfast.

  “Superb effort gentlemen,” Ramage shouted at the group.

  “We were really quite quick then?” said Lan.

  “No. It's zero six forty hours and you were supposed to be back here at zero six hundred!” Ramage scorned.

  Jackson plodded past Ramage on the way to the serving counter.

  “Where are you lot going!” barked Ramage.

  They looked at him with surprise.

  “If you had got back on time you could have had breakfast. As it is you're late,” said Ramage.

  “Oh, but Sarge!” exclaimed Lan.

  Ramage grabbed Lan by the lapels. The rest of the soldiers in the mess hall went silent.

  “I don't know who you think you are boy but I am Sergeant Ramage or Sir, not some childish pet name. For that you're all doing double P.T. If you want to do things the hard way then I will accommodate you!”

  Section 28

  “If Jager hadn't died at Greda I would have had him executed,” General Weston was in the darkest mood Revar had witnessed.

  “You could get naval command to hold an inquiry,” offered Revar.

  “What? Get Admiral Stenel to court marshal Jager! And have me go down in history as the man too busy arresting corpses to fight the war? No, we have far more important matters than apportioning blame,” a more relaxed look came over Weston's face.

  To Revar it looked as if his commander was dejected.

  “Our new Fleet Admiral will have enough on his hands with the Navy in shreds and our orbital supremacy tenuous at best,” Weston waved a hand over a map displaying the fields of fire from the orbital batteries and shook his head, “Each day we have to shrink our scope of containment as we lose more and more ships. The Neotran satellite hunters are ripping our fleet apart.”

  “But their losses are staggering. They can't keep this level of commitment up much longer,” Revar felt that he needed to console his beleaguered commander.

  “They won't have to! They're gaining more and more breathing space each day. It won't be long before we run out of supplies and they can press home their advantage.”

  “But the reinforcements from Earth will be here within the week.”

  “With the Ptolemy destroyed, the escort has lost half its strength. Gredan ships are taking merry pot shots and there's nothing we can do.”

  Revar impulsively offered a solution, “Could we not send some of our ships to help? I know it would weaken our defences but...”

  Weston cut in, “By the time our ships could join them they would be out of range of the raiding parties. And what do we do if they make it? We're looking at an army of reservists. Most of them have been drafted from the slums and the rest should still be at school.”

  “It's only reinforcements, Sir,” Revar tried to sound optimistic, “All we have to do is hold out for the relief force.”

  Weston sat back in his chair and picked up a sheet of paper from his desk. He held it between thumb and forefinger as if a headmaster holding the report card of an underachieving student. He peered down at the summary of Terran battle fleets and their assignments hoping to find some merit in the figures.

  “It will take Earth months to assemble and train an expeditionary force. Even if they pull troops from nearby systems. But what then? Weaken garrisons across the sector inviting revolt on other worlds?” he swatted the document with his free hand, “High command expect us not just to hold our own with the reinforcements, they want us to take the fight to the Neotrans.”

  Weston leaned over the desk and passed the report across.

  Revar didn't even bother to scan the page, it wouldn't help and it wasn't about the numbers, “We've held out well enough on our own up to now, Sir, and with the fresh troops we can take the initiative.”

  “That's just it, we're not taking the initiative any more,” Weston slammed his open palm down hard on the desk, “We've settled into a pattern. We hit their hierarchy and their industry. We harass their supply lines and their troops, nothing more. We're both in a state of cantonment, neither side willing to come out of i
ts shell for fear of getting hurt. We need to engage and eliminate a substantial amount of their ground forces. What can we do with what we've got?”

  Weston was thinking out loud now. No longer preaching, he was working out what he had to do next.

  “We have to take the initiative.” Revar tried to gee his commander's enthusiasm, “We could lame their military by striking at their commanders again.”

  “Too costly, anyway we've eliminated their best men. If we try killing more they'll only replace them and we lost too many good troops in the last exercise.

  “We've been pussy-footing round this for too long!” Weston shook his head chastising himself, “You don't win wars with assassinations you win wars with armies. We need to strike a hard blow against their military. Cripple them as a fighting force, at least for a while. We need to ambush them with a tactically superior force, but how?”

  Revar tried to look like he was thinking through a solution but in all honesty his mind was blank, “Our troops aren't numerous enough to engage them in a frontal assault, not even if we deploy the reinforcements.”

  “We don't attack them headlong we lure them into a prearranged killing zone.”

  Revar declined asking how, and let Weston continue uninterrupted.

  “It has to be somewhere they want to go or have to go,” Weston looked at Revar with an expression that beamed eureka.

  “Revar if you were an Neotran Army where would you want to go?”

  Revar refrained from saying home, normally Weston would have appreciated the aside but right now it wouldn't have been appropriate. He looked down at the computerised map and then back at Weston. He reached out with his index finger to point at the red dot on the chart, “The garrison, here at Veruct.”

  “If they can take it then they've effectively won the war.”

  “But General they won't attack the most heavily defended area on the planet when they know we've been reinforced. Once they arrive we'll be impregnable.”

  “That's it Revar, once they arrive. If those reinforcements don't make it the Neotrans know it would only be a matter of weeks before we crumble. If we stage an accident, say lose a couple of the transport ships to the raids from Greda. We can feign an evacuation. Make it look like we're abandoning the planet because we don't have sufficient supplies.”

  “So when the Neotrans' come in to mop up we can decimate their leading force,” added Revar.

  “More than that. If their attack is a rapid deployment to catch up with us retreating, their supply lines will be stretched. It will take a few days for the logistics to back up their advance. The leading edge will continue to be supplied but at the expense of the rear armies. If we can entrap their offensive force then the reserve Neotran units will be starved of supplies, easy meat even for an army of conscripts.”

  Weston's dour expression had slowly transformed through to contemplation and now to excitement, “We'll let the Neotrans destroy two of our transports; that way they'll think we've lost half our supplies. Make arrangements for the other two skiffs to take on board the troops and equipment from the two we're going to sacrifice. I'm putting you in charge of this show Colonel. Make it look convincing.”

  Revar raised his hand in a salute and smiled. He knew that his commander would assume it was because he was pleased to be given the responsibility. In reality Revar was relieved that Weston had fought his way out of dismay.

  Section 29

  Jackson stumbled into the gloomy billet, behind him trailed Lan and Nasim. The brutal day's training had sapped the life out of all three, but Jackson had managed to dig deep and muster up the energy to be first back. His only thought was the quicker he got back to the bunkroom the quicker he could lie down.

  “Ramage is a bastard,” Jackson cursed their tormentor as he slipped off his backpack.

  Lan shook his head, “I felt sure he'd let us rest after you puked.”

  Collapsing on his bunk Jackson let out a sigh as his weary muscles gave up carrying him, “I thought he'd let up when you scored those bull's-eyes.”

  “Yeah, did they teach you that in the Navy?” Nasim had been genuinely impressed by Lan's accuracy.

  Lan gave a comical shrug, “What can I say, it's natural talent.”

  Jackson closed his eyes and raised a smile, half at the ecstasy of his idle body, half at the banter in the barrack room.

  “I'm going to take a shower,” Nasim threw off his grimy jumpsuit and hobbled off clutching a towel.

  Lan sat down at the end of his own bed and started untying his laces, “That was a bitch today.”

  Jackson managed a faint “Uh-huh.”

  “At least tomorrow we're out with Keir, he'd have let you rest after you threw up,” Lan loosened out the criss-cross of laces on his boot, “Jackson?”

  “Uh-huh?”

  “Do you ever think back about your wife?”

  Jackson didn't move from his comatose position spread out on his bunk, “Sure.”

  Lan slipped off his first boot, “Are they really vivid memories?”

  There was a long pause before Jackson gathered up the strength to answer, “Some,”

  “Is it like you were there?”

  “How?” Jackson's tired voice came out as a whisper.

  “Well, like you're reliving it, like you were really there again,” Lan was still holding the boot as if he was unsure what to do with it, “Like a flash back but really clear, so clear you can't pull yourself away from it?”

  Lan put down his boot and started on the second one, “It's weird cause I keep thinking back to my ex, but it's like I'm there reliving the whole thing. I never used to get that, I mean I can think back and remember things but this is different. These just come out of the blue and I freeze up.”

  Lan finished unlacing his second boot and eased it off, “Do you know what I mean, Jackson?”

  There was no answer, Jackson's chest rose and sank with a slow even rhythm from each slumbering breath.

  “You've all had range practice with your weapons,” Keir addressed his trainees, “But in spite of the aptitude some of you have shown you do not know how to use them yet. Over the next few days I'm going to instruct you on small unit tactics. You will learn to work as a team, how to follow orders and why. For the purposes of these exercises you will be issued with inert markers,”

  Keir picked up what looked like a standard rifle but instead of being made of metals and composites it was made of a dull blue plastic that made it seem like a toy.

  “These are the same weight and size as your regular firearms but they do not fire bullets. Instead they fire soft laser light. There is an onboard computer linked to the scenario program that I control,” Keir demonstrated by lifting the computer housing to reveal the laser and transmitter.

  “When you fire a shot the program determines whether or not you have hit a target, be it personnel or equipment,” he shouldered the weapon and fired a shot at a nearby tree.

  The gun cracked like a real firearm and a faint green dot flashed across the bark.

  Keir unclipped the magazine and showed it to the trainees, “Although it doesn't fire bullets you still need to reload.”

  He pushed the magazine back into the rifle and fired at the tree until it ran empty, “If you are eliminated then you will be told so through your ear piece by the computer. If you are dead your gun will switch off and you are to remain where you are in a prone position until the end of the exercise.”

  Keir passed out a rifle to each of the trio.

  “Oh, one other thing, if you are eliminated the hand grip on the rifle sends an electric shock up your arm,” He helpfully pointed out the unavoidable metal contacts across from the trigger guard.

  “What?” Jackson's exclamation came out high pitched with surprise.

  “Don't panic,” Keir soothed, “It won't kill you. Just lock up the muscles in your arm.”

  “That's great,” Lan piped in with a sarcastic tone in his voice.

  “It's just there
as a reminder to play fair, now let's get started,” Keir ushered the nervous recruits to the waiting training area, “The first scenario is an easy one. Within the borders of this wood is a single enemy soldier. Go and shoot him.”

  “Just go and shoot him? That sounds easy enough,” Jackson said and he nodded his head to the other two.

  The scenario zone was only half the size of a football pitch and the foliage was sparse with little cover.

  “It shouldn't take long for us to find him,” Jackson said confidently.

  “Or for him to find us,” added Nasim.

  The three stepped out cautiously in a loose skirmish line. Nasim walked on the left flank with Jackson in the middle and Lan on the right. They inched forward looking for their prey.

  Suddenly two shots scorched across the mock battlefield.

  Jackson instinctively threw himself flat against the ground. Protected only by the knee-high grass he knew he had to find cover. He scurried backwards on his belly and tucked himself behind a slender tree.

  “You see anything, Lan?” Jackson whispered over his radio.

  “Nothing,” Lan reported back.

  “How about you, Nasim?” Jackson asked.

  There was no reply.

  Jackson called again, “Nasim?”

  He turned in the direction where he had last seen him moving, “Lan, I think we've lost Nasim. We'll move towards the left and see if we can spot anything.”

  Jackson started creeping towards the flank.

  Another shot rang out.

  “Aahhh!” Lan screamed.

  “Lan, did you get that?” no reply, Jackson tried again, “Lan, do you hear me? Come in, over!”

  A minute movement caught his eye and he looked down to see it more clearly. A small green dot danced over the bracken and onto Jackson's chest.

  A tingle of electricity shot up Jackson's arm and the muscles cramped. A metallic female voice came over his headset, “You have been eliminated.”

  “Ah, shit,” Jackson cried as his whole right side juddered.