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?”