by Michael Ryan
“I can’t cooperate with you,” I said. “You know I can’t. I know I can’t.”
“Avery,” a familiar voice said over the comm.
“Pow?”
“Yes, it’s me,” he said.
“Pow? How can this be?”
“Avery, don’t be mad,” he said. “I sort of lied to you, but for a good cause. You need to trust me.”
I was stunned by the betrayal.
I looked at Callie, Abrel, and Mallsin. “We trusted you. I went against…I don’t know…”
“Avery, please,” he said. “Listen to the major.”
“My heli is two minutes out,” Major Balestain said. “Put your friends into the hands of the medical teams. I guarantee their safety. Return to your unit. Report them missing. I’ll be in touch.”
“Avery, please, don’t let them die,” Pow said.
As the major had promised, the medi-heli was unarmored and had no weapons systems.
I accepted a ping.
“Sergeant Ford, we need to move quickly.”
“Who–”
“There’s no time to explain. We can’t retrieve your companions without your help. Please verify that their self-destruct features are disabled. Transfer me the keys to enter their CPUs. Sergeant Ford, we have five minutes. If I’m not in the air in two hundred and eighty seconds, we’ll all be dead. My team is risking their lives to help you, so please don’t refuse them. The major might be your worst living nightmare, but he’s a soldier who honors his word. You’ll either choose to live or die in the next few seconds. My fate is tied to yours, so please choose to live. I have a family.”
I looked at Callie frozen in her armor. In an instant, I realized I couldn’t allow her to die. Even if I was making a deal with the devil, I had to save her.
I loaded my three friends into the heli-jet.
It lifted into the sky.
I watched it shrink until it disappeared over the horizon.
CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX
And my purvasts shall hear rumors of coming wars. See that you are not troubled; for all this bloodshed must come to fruition.
~ Holy Writs of Vahobra, 13:19
I walked alone along the boulevard, conflicted over my actions.
The icons that represented my wife and two friends, rescued by a medical heli-jet under Major Balestain’s orders, were no longer displayed on my screen.
Mangled bodies, crushed armor, and burned-out transports littered the streets as if a hellish piñata had been broken apart. I scanned for threats, but nothing of significance appeared. There were still enemy light-armored infantry alive within striking distance, but they had the sense to ignore me. Without support, they had no reason to antagonize a TCI-Armored Specialized Drop Infantry soldier and invite their own destruction in short order.
I headed toward my platoon leader’s new location, following a route highlighted on my screen. They’d been called to assist the Foxtrot Company of the Eighth another five blocks to my west. My map program directed me to make a left turn on a street designated Tango-174. A good click past the crossroads, a loosely packed barrage of rail-cannon high explosives landed.
A squadron of Gurt fighter-bombers screamed like fighting tomcats over the city and dropped their payloads. The rail-cannon fire abruptly ceased. A pall of black smoke hung over the area, clouds of it belching from fires that dotted the landscape like a pox. If death gods existed, they’d been well fed. Civilian casualties were mixed in with the rubble: men, women, children, old and young alike without regard for their innocence in the conflict that had leveled their city.
My part in the carnage wasn’t lost on me. In spite of the fact I’d been sent as part of a “liberating” force, those I was supposedly freeing had paid the ultimate price. I stepped over the body of a Rhan civilian – an adolescent corpse, torn and twisted in the final throes of the agony that had ended its life.
My medical program was near instantaneous in its delivery of nano-pharmaceuticals to eliminate any feelings of sadness or guilt. I wanted to mourn, believing it appropriate; but even this basic response was denied me by my suit.
As I walked down the long block, a Rhanskad woman approached me. She was covered in soot, and trails of ashen tears streaked through the grime that coated her face. Her long, black hair stirred something in my memory banks. She displayed no fear.
I switched on my interpreter program when I realized she was speaking to me.
<
I stopped. Emotions I thought I’d long buried rose to the surface.
She stepped closer and brought her hands to my armored chest. Looking up, her dark eyes bored into my faceplate. A chill ran down my spine, and I couldn’t bring myself to move away. I typed “I’m sorry” with a quick hand motion – it was a common phrase I used often with Callie. I stared at the words on my display screen.
<
The words seemed wholly inadequate.
She understood the translation. She dropped her hands and shook her head. <
I typed “Yes, of course” into the program.
The woman nodded twice and said something my system translated as <
She skirted the bodies of the dead without any visible reaction – probably in shock, I thought. I followed, stepping over them. We entered her destroyed apartment through the window that had previously been my escape route. Parts of the upper stories had collapsed, leaving piles of broken permastecrete in what had once been a home.
She pointed and spoke. <
I eyed the mess.
Nobody could have survived the weight of the destruction unless they’d been protected by heavy armor. I looked at the woman, and she nodded again and continued to point. Her outstretched finger was trained on a small gap in the rubble.
I approached the mountain of debris and inserted my flex-cam into the crevice, and then cranked up the input volume on my external microphone. Sure enough, a little girl was trapped inside. She was alive by virtue of a small miracle: two large pieces of permastecrete had created a triangular cavity, protecting her from the rest of the wreckage. I retracted my flex-cam and considered my options.
The pile was unstable.
One wrong move on my part and she’d be crushed.
<
Shit. I’d used one of Callie’s riskier hacks to block my comm from receiving communications from anything below a sat-burst sent down from a starship. It was a simple way to avoid receiving orders. Occasionally leadership made such reckless decisions that becoming temporarily deaf was the only way to avoid them.
Obviously, Command frowned on such tactics. Using hacks was a punishable offense, but in order to be punished, you had to be alive.
I had a minute, probably less.
The outside edges of the rubble pile were safe to remove. I tossed several tons of building debris out of the way. The woman edged dangerously close, and the expression of fear for her daughter’s safety urged me to greater effort. As I removed more rubble and got closer to the child, the heap became more precarious. My efforts became more dangerous.
<
Lieutenant Gooulling had finally broken through. Because my system had confirmed receipt of his message, I had no choice but to acknowledge and respond. Playing dumb is one thing; direct insubordination has bigger risks.
“Sir,” I said.
“Damn you, Avery,” the lieutenant began. “Don’t give me any bullshit excuses. I need you here now.”
“My engagement mapping shows nothing significant, sir.”
“Sergeant Ford, you’re on the verge of getting written up under article twenty-seven.”
He was threatening me with a capital offense case: insubordination and refusal to obey a direct
order during an engagement, resulting in the direct loss of life. I walked to the window and turned my back to the sky. The sat-comm fed me the latest bursts and I quickly scanned them.
“Ford, are you going to answer me?”
“I need a moment,” I said. I finished reading the latest reports. I viewed the most recent engagement mapping. “Sir, I see no imminent threats or dangers.”
“Goddammit, I’m writing you up on charges.”
“It’s your career, Lieutenant.”
“What the fuck are you implying?” he asked.
“There is no imminent threat; therefore article twenty-seven can’t apply. You’ll be seen as vindictive and incompetent if you file under that article. With all due respect, I have a long record and a lot of friends. I need a few minutes. I’ll rejoin the unit shortly.”
“Avery…” He ended the comm.
He could still file charges under various other articles, but without any damage other than to his ego. He’d only diminish his chances of being promoted, and Command would get multiple requests from other platoon leaders to transfer me to their units. Any freshie lieutenant with a smidgeon of intelligence wants a combat veteran with my experience on his team. I hadn’t lived this long in a brutal war by being incompetent.
If I was a little loose with the rules…well, maybe that was why I was still alive.
My translation program blinked a message on my display screen.
<
I returned to the puzzle and slowly removed the next layer.
Ten minutes later, the child’s arm appeared through a crack. Her mother held her hand and sobbed. I stood back to allow the brief reunion, but I needed to finish the job quickly in case the Teds moved more mechas or heli-jets into this sector. If that happened, the lieutenant’s threats would become a reality, and I’d be forced to abandon my own rescue project or face a capital offense charge.
I moved a large piece of permastecrete, and the debris pile shifted.
I grabbed a piece of protruding steel, wedged it beneath a precarious section that threatened to crush the child, and locked my armor down. In that rigid mode I wouldn’t experience fatigue, even supporting a ton of debris. But I’d created a catch twenty-two – to save the girl, I needed to be mobile. I considered the problem for a moment and decided that I could probably unlock, toss the largest chunk, and catch the remaining pieces as they fell.
My DS lit up with warnings.
<
At least nothing had locked on me. The alarms continued.
<
<
<
“Ford, this is the last time…oh, shit…we’re losing–” The comm went dead.
I pulled up an area map to see if Command had updated the sector. The sat was blocked. I needed to move to the window to receive a burst from the Taihō-Sazanami.
But I couldn’t move without condemning the child to death.
Her mother pleaded with me again. The translation program stuck lines of text between threat assessments.
<
<
The building shook violently. Dust fell from the exposed beams overhead.
The translation program was overwhelmed with the woman’s chatter.
<
I silenced the program.
<
<
I enlarged my rearview display pop-up and could see through the broken window. A company-sized unit of light infantry double-timed past in loose formation, headed in the direction of the lieutenant. Bigger things wouldn’t be far behind them. Mechas, tanks, TCI-Armored infantry.
<
Or more heli-jets…
I returned to my task.
Another explosion rocked the building. Shock waves from nearby HE mortars, not direct hits, shook the structure. If the edifice took any more direct assaults, the entire frame would collapse, and more than just the little girl would die.
I unlocked my suit and gently pushed the mother away.
The translator spat out something resembling, “Please back away for your own safety.”
Once I unlocked, the largest piece of permastecrete stressed my system’s resources. I had only moments to act before gravity triumphed over my efforts. I peered into the darkness and spied the girl’s dark brown eyes. Her arms and legs were streaked with blood.
I tossed aside the chunk, dove toward her, and covered her body with mine in an attempt to shield her from destruction.
<
The orb bounced randomly around the room before detonating. My armor protected the little girl, but her mother’s body was shredded. The translator program caught her dying words.
<
I couldn’t determine if the grenade had been targeted at me, or if it had randomly landed in the midst of the fighting that had erupted out on the boulevard. I heaved aside the last of the wreckage and scooped the little girl’s limp form from the rubble. She was alive, but had gone into shock. I held her in my arms and moved deeper into the building.
Small groups of residents moved down the halls like frenzied ants, the terror on their faces plain to see.
I followed them down a stairwell and was allowed to exit through a thick metal door, the wounded girl serving as my passkey. Nobody reacted as if I were a threat. I assumed they understood I had the power to end their lives if that had been my intention.
A small crowd had gathered in a common area. I found a place to sit and held the child in my lap.
Officially I’d crossed the line.
A point of no return.
If a case was brought against me, my files, video records, and communications would be seized and dissected. Every decision I’d made would be questioned.
Callie, Abrel, and Mallsin were alive.
This little girl was alive.
I switched the translation program back on and asked if anyone knew her name. There was a round of chatter before I received an answer.
<
I regarded the pop-up and then commanded the program to give me the transliteration of the word in Common English. The Rhan word for cherry blossom was Teally. I felt better knowing her name. But I questioned whether I’d condemned her to a worse fate by saving her. As if reading my mind, she opened her eyes.
<
I knew she couldn’t see my face. I wondered if she even knew what I was, or if she assumed I was a machine.
I typed in “I’m sorry” again and hit send.
Upon hearing the translation, she cried.
I left the girl with the others.
Once outside the building, my system received a barrage of messages and warnings.
<
I brushed aside the pop-ups and fired a flare countermeasure, but the flare’s heat signature failed to trick the missile’s guidance system. I dodged the incoming missile at the last moment and threw myself behind the remains of a wrecked troop transport.
At least momentum was still my friend.
A platoon of lightly armored Teds lobbed eight grenades at me from across the street. The fatal mistake they made was not having anything more powerful to back up their initial assault. Once a grenade is in the air, calculating its trajectory is an easy matter for a TCI-Armor soldier’s CPU. Eight projectiles posed no issues for my control system, and it displayed the blast zones in a simple map on my screen. I ran toward them through the green areas and suffered no damage. When I leapt over the sandbags the soldiers were using for cover, six fired at me with their Gauss guns and two of them ran.
I let the retreating Teds go free. They posed no danger to me. I neutralized the others with my armored hands
and a Gauss pistol I’d yet to use in the day’s battle. After they were dead, I swept their area of responsibility. They had nothing heavy in their arsenal, so their mission had clearly been to kill fleeing civilians.
I regretted allowing the two escapees to get away.
I sorted my pop-ups to see if any of the messages were important.
<
I clicked it open and read with amazement. Callie had installed more hacks in my system than I could remember, and most ran unnoticed in the background. The hack that intercepted this message was designed to pick up anything that contained either of our names in a comm.
Having an arrest warrant issued for a capital crime was as serious as it got.
Lieutenant Gooulling had sent a burst right before he and the remainder of the unit had been slaughtered. According to the latest situation report, a massive shift of heavily armored troops had landed a juggernaut of Ted forces almost on top of them. They’d had no chance.
Nobody in a Guritain uniform had survived.
Had I been there, my name would have been included in the obituaries.
Because I’d chosen to save a little girl, I was alive.
In spite of the fact that I’d become a criminal, I had no regrets about my choice. I opened a subprogram that Callie had named Zombie Maker. Its purpose was to mimic self-destruction. I selected a save point from a few hours earlier and instructed the program to send a self-destruct burst with a duplicate of my records up to that point. Any decent investigator would notice the time discrepancy, but the record of my friends being airlifted by an enemy heli-jet wouldn’t be included.
My actions had already condemned me, so additional crimes hardly seemed worth worrying about. Yet I was no traitor. I wasn’t a deserter.
The self-destruct protocol counted down to zero. I watched in fascination as Callie’s program notified Command that I’d taken my own life and had destroyed my TCI-Armor to keep it from falling into enemy hands.
Following the sequence she’d created, my suit reconfigured its identity. I was now a soldier who’d perished in action on Earth six years earlier, at least upon cursory examination.
My suit’s identity numbers were created randomly to closely match existing lines. Anyone scanning deeply enough to pull up inventory numbers would be confused, but it wasn’t uncommon for a piece of military hardware, out of the billions of parts in circulation, to have an irregular code.
