Prisoner of War
The first Enemy laser-lances blazed across the battlefield at an unknown time of day. No one paid attention to the hour during a firefight anyway. Neither Barto nor any of his squad-mates could see the sun or moon overhead: too much smoke and haze and blast debris filled the air, along with the smell of blood and burning.
A soldier had to be ready at any time or place. A soldier would fight until the fight was over. An endless Now filled their existence, a razor-edged flow of life-for-the-moment, and the slightest distraction or daydream could end the Now … forever.
With a clatter of dusty armor and a hum of returned weapons-fire, the defenders charged forward, Barto among them. They had no terrain maps or battle plans, only unseen commanders bellowing instructions into their helmet earpieces.
Greasy fires guttered and smoked from explosions, but as long as a soldier could draw breath, the air always smelled sweet enough. Somehow, the flames still found organic material to burn, though only a few skeletal trees remained standing. The horizon was like broken, jagged teeth. No discernible structures remained, only blistered destruction and the endless bedlam of combat.
To a man who had known no other life, Barto found the landscape familiar and comforting.
“Down!” his point man Arviq screamed loudly enough so that Barto could hear it through the armored helmet. A bolt of white-hot energy seared the ground in front of them, turning the blasted soil into glass. The ricochet stitched a broken-windshield pattern of lethal cuts across the armored chest of one comrade five meters away.
The victim was in a different part of the squad; Barto knew him only by serial number instead of a more personal, chosen name. Now the man was a casualty of war; his serial number would be displayed in fine print on the memorial lists back at the crèche—for two days. And then it would be erased forever.
Barto and Arviq both dove to the bottom of the trench as more well-aimed laser-lances embroidered the ground and the slumping walls of the ditch. As he hunched over to shield himself, the helmet’s speakers continued to pound commands: “KILL … KILL … KILL …”
The Enemy assault ended with a brief hesitation, like an indrawn breath. The soldiers around Barto paused, regrouped, then scrambled to their feet, leaving the fallen comrade behind. Later, regardless of the battle’s outcome, trained bloodhounds would retrieve the body parts and drag them back to HQ in their jaws. After the proper casualty statistics had been recorded, the KIA corpses would be efficiently incinerated.
In the middle of a firefight, Barto and Arviq could not be bothered by such things. They had been trained never to think of fallen comrades; it was beyond the purview of their mission. The voice in the helmet speakers changed, took on a different note: “RETALIATE … RETALIATE … RETALIATE …”
With a howl and a roar enhanced by adrenaline injections from inside the armor suits, Barto and his squad moved as a unit. Programmed endorphins poured into their bloodstreams at the moment of battle frenzy, and they surged out of the trench. The Enemy encampment could not be far, and they silently swore to unleash a slaughter that would outmatch anything their opponents had ever done … though this most recent attack was assuredly a response to their own previous day’s offensive.
Moving as a unit, the squad clambered over debris, around craters, and out into the open. They ran beyond monofilament barricades that would slice the limb off an unwary soldier, then into a sonic minefield whose layout shone on the eye-visor screen inside each helmet.
With a self-assured gait across the no-man’s-land, the soldiers moved like a pack of killer rats, laser-lances slung in their arms. They bellowed and snarled, pumping each other up. As he ran, Barto studied the sonic minefield grid in his visor, sidestepping instinctively.
From their embankment, the Enemy began to fire again. The smoky air became a lattice of deadly lines in all directions. Barto continued running. Beside him, Arviq pressed the stock of his weapon against his armored breastplate, pumping blast after blast toward the unseen Enemy.
Then a laser-lance seared close to Barto’s helmet, blistering the top layer of semi-reflective silver. Static blasted across his eye visor, and he couldn’t see. He made one false sidestep and yelled. He could no longer find the grid display, could no longer even see the actual ground.
Just as his foot came down in the wrong place, Arviq grabbed his arm and yanked him aside, using their combined momentum. The sonic mine exploded, vomiting debris and shrapnel with pounding sound waves that fractured the plates of Barto’s armor, pulverizing the bones in his leg. But he fell out of the mine’s focused kill radius and lay biting back the pain.
He propped himself up and ripped off his slagged helmet, blinking with naked eyes at the real sky. Arviq had saved his life—just as Barto would have done for his squad-mate had their situations been reversed.
Always trust your comrades. Your life is theirs. That was how it had always been.
And even if he did fall to Enemy attack, the bloodhounds would haul his body to HQ, and he would receive an appropriate military farewell before he returned to the earth—mission accomplished. A soldier’s duty was to fight, and Barto had been performing that duty for all of his conscious life.
As he activated his rescue transmitter and fumbled for the medpak, the rest of the soldiers charged forward, leaving him behind. Arviq didn’t even spare him a backward glance.
* * *
Some said the war had gone on forever—and since no one kept track of history anymore, the statement could not be proved false.
Barto knew only the military life. He had emerged from a tank in the soldiers’ crèche with the programming wired into his brain, fully aware, fully grown, and knowing his assignment. If ever he had any questions or doubts, the command voices in his helmet would answer them.
Barto knew primarily that he had to kill the Enemy. He knew that he had to protect his comrades, that the squad was the sum of his existence. No good soldier could rest until every last Enemy had been eradicated, down to their feline spies, down to the bloodhounds that dragged away Enemy KIAs.
Winning this war might well take an eternity, but Barto was willing to fight for that long. Every moment of his life had encompassed either fighting, or learning new techniques to kill and to survive, or resting so that he could fight again the next day.
There was no time for anything else. There was no need for anything else.
Barto remembered when he’d been younger, not long out of the tank. His muscles were wiry, his body flexible without the stiffness of constant abuse. His skin had been smooth, free of the intaglio of scars from a thousand close dances with death. Barto and his squad-mates—apprentices all—had fought hand-to-hand in the crèche gymnasium, occasionally breaking each other’s bones or knocking each other unconscious. None of them had yet earned their armor, their protection, or their weapons. They couldn’t even call themselves soldiers.…
Now consigned to the HQ infirmary and repair shop, as he drifted in a soup of pain and unconsciousness, Barto revisited the long-ago moment he had first grasped a specialized piece of equipment designed to maim and kill. The soldier trainees had learned early on in their drill that any object was a potential weapon—but this was a spear, a long rough bar of old steel with a sharpened point that gleamed white and silver in the unforgiving lights. A weapon, his own weapon.
He spun it around in his hand, feeling its weight—a deadly impaling device that could be used against the oncoming Enemy.
Later, his advanced training would of course include hand-to-hand combat against other soldiers, human opponents … but not at first. All trainees were expendable, but if the young men could be salvaged, then the military programming services would turn them into killers.
For months, Barto received somatic instruction and physical drilling by one of the rare old veterans who had survived years of combat. The veteran had a wealth of experience and survival instincts that could not be matched even by the most sophisticated computers. He made sure that Barto fought to the limit of his abilities.
Swinging the spear against nothing, feeling his body move, Barto reacted to the barked commands of the veteran instructor. Response without thought. He learned how to make the weapon into a part of him, an extension of his reflexes. He was the weapon; the spear was just an augmentation.
Then they gave him a taste of blood, real blood. They wanted him to get in the habit of killing.
The small metal-walled arena was like an echo chamber, a large underground room with simulated rock outcroppings, a fallen tree, and other sharp obstacles. Barto didn’t question the reality of the scenario. The environment itself was a tool to be used.
During that exercise, the veteran instructor let him wear his helmet … but nothing else. Stripped naked, he gripped the spear in his hand and glared through the visor. The helmet earphones gave him reassuring commands in his ears, directions, suggestions. Otherwise, Barto felt helpless—but no soldier was ever helpless, because a helpless man could not become a soldier.
Underground, the arena door groaned open, and barricade bars moved away. Barto tensed. He gripped the metal shaft of the spear despite the sweat on his palms.
Suddenly, a whirlwind of bristles and scales, sharp hooves and long tusks launched itself like a projectile. An enhanced boar with scarlet eyes snarled and plowed forward, searching for a target, something against which to vent its anger.
And Barto was the only other creature in the room.
On high pedestals in the gallery above, three enhanced cats watched, blinking their gold-green eyes. The feline spy commanders observed for the invisible overlords who wanted to see how the freshly detanked soldiers reacted in their first real life-or-death test.
The boar charged. Barto jabbed with the spear, but he was too tentative. Before, he had only thrust at imaginary opponents and an occasional hologram projected inside his visor. Now, though, the boar came on like a locomotive. The spear glanced off, opening a mere stinging scratch in the creature’s skin. Barto had not imagined its hide could be so tough, its bones so hard. He had made the first, terrible mistake in this duel.
The trivial wound enraged the beast.
Barto dove to one side over a synthetic rock, and the boar rammed into the artificial tree trunk. It spun around, shaking its head, tusks gleaming. The ivory spears in its mouth looked much more deadly than Barto’s primitive weapon. The boar attacked again.
A moment of panic rose up like an illusion, but he pounded it back, and the fear evaporated, bringing a rush of adrenaline. The chemical and electronic components in his body released the substance, making Barto see red rage of his own.
The enhanced boar recovered itself and snorted. Barto knew he had a better chance of striking the target in motion if he didn’t use a tiny pinpoint thrust; instead, he swung the heavy metal bar sideways like a cudgel. The sturdy steel bashed the creature’s thick skull. The sound of the impact rang out in the hollow room.
The cats watched from their pedestals.
The boar squealed and thrashed. Barto saw that its eyes held an increased intelligence, like that found in the feline spies and in the daredevil bloodhounds that retrieved bodies from the battlefield. The boar responded with a calculated counterattack, trying to outthink this naked human opponent, this would-be soldier. Barto smiled; the boar was the Enemy.
In the frenzy of battle, Barto no longer thought like an intelligent human being. Instead, he relied only on instinct and unbearable bloodlust. He rushed in without forethought, without care, without any sense of self-preservation. After all … he had a spear.
The boar tried to feint, to react, but Barto gave the Enemy no chance. He swung again with the staff, drawing a bright red line of blood and putting out one of the beast’s eyes. Crimson and yellow body fluids oozed through smashed skin on the boar’s snout. It leapt forward, driven by insanity and pain.
Now, Barto used the spear with finesse.
A great calm flowed through him, as if the rest of the world had slowed down, and he saw exactly what to do, exactly where to hold the spear. The sharpened point neatly plunged through the ribcage of the beast and skewered its lungs and heart. Showering a wet-iron smell in the air, the creature lay quivering, trembling … dying.
When Barto came back to his senses, he saw that his legs had been slashed open by the boar’s tusks. The deep gouges left him bleeding, but oddly without any sense of pain or injury. He looked down and studied the corpse of his opponent, the Enemy. Now he had killed. Barto had fresh blood on his hands, real blood from a vanquished opponent.
He liked the sensation.
He knew that this had been no simple exercise. He knew the boar could well have killed him, and that other trainees who had vanished from the barracks must have failed this part of their instruction.
But Barto had succeeded. He was a killer now, and he was one step closer to becoming a soldier.
* * *
Time didn’t matter. For a soldier, time never mattered. He awoke hours, or days, later back in the HQ infirmary and repair shop—patched up, drugged, but fully aware. A hairless chimpanzee tended him, leaning over in a cloud of disinfectant scents and bad breath. The chimp medical techs knew how to bandage and fix battlefield wounds. They could do no surgery that required finesse, but the soldiers required nothing that needed delicacy for cosmetic effect.
Once injured, if a soldier could be fixed, he would be sent back to the battlefield. If his wounds caused the chimp med-techs too much trouble, he would be eliminated. Every surviving member of the squad bore his share of scars, burns, scabs, and callouses. No one paid attention to these trophies of war; they were part of a soldier’s life, not a badge of honor or bravery.
Since Barto hadn’t been eliminated, he assumed he must have been fixed.
He sat up on the infirmary cot, and the hairless chimpanzees hurried over, uttering quiet reassurances, a few English words, a few soothing grunts. Triggered by his awakening, a signal was automatically sent back to his squad commander.
Barto listened to an assessment of his repaired leg, his stitched muscles and skin, and his bruises and contusions. Not too bad, he thought. He’d suffered worse, sometimes even in training with other soldiers (especially during the initial few months, when they’d first been given their own sets of armor).
He remembered that back then his comrade Arviq in particular had thought himself invincible.…
During downtime before the soldiers crawled into their assigned sleeping bins, the other squad members were required to file through the infirmary to see their injured comrades. Some came only because of orders to do so; most of them would rather have been sleeping.
But the invisible commanders planted instructions to go to the infirmary simply so that other soldiers could see the wounded, could see what could happen to them if they weren’t careful … but also so they could see that they just might survive.
Recovering, Barto sat up in the uncomfortable infirmary bed and watched the other soldiers come in. His pain went away with another automatic rush of endorphins to deaden his unpleasant sensations … or perhaps his own determination was enough to quell the nerve-fire of agony.
The fighters filed by. He recognized few of them, all strangers without armor and helmets, though he could have identified each one by the serial numbers displayed on their fatigues. These were soldiers, cogs in a fighting machine. They didn’t have time to be individuals.
When Arviq came up at the end of the line, he stood brusque, nodding gruffly. “You’ll mend,” he said.
“Thank you for saving me,” Barto answered. It was the closest thing they’d had to a conversation in a long time.
“It’s my duty. I await the day when you can fight with us again.” He marched out, and the others followed him. Barto lay back and attempted to sleep, to regain his strength. Through sheer force of will, he growled at his cells and tissues to work harder, to knit the injuries and restore him to full health.…
Day after day, lying in the infirmary and waiting proved far more difficult than any combat situation Barto had ever encountered. Finally, after a maddening week of intensive recuperation, directed therapy aided by medical technology and powerful drugs, he was released from his hospital prison and sent back to the front.
Where he belonged.
* * *
The battlefield screamed with pain and destruction, explosions, fire, and death—but to Barto, after being so long in the sheltered quiet of the infirmary, the tumult was a shout of exuberance. He was glad to be here.
The soldiers raced across the ground, each in his own squad position, weapons drawn. They had already driven back the Enemy, and now the fire of laser-lances grew even thicker around them as the others became desperate. They pressed ahead, deeper into enemy territory than they had ever gone before.
Their helmet locators for sonic mines and shrapnel grenades buzzed constantly, but the reptilian part of Barto’s brain reacted without volition, hardwired into fighting and killing. He dodged and weaved, keeping himself alive.
His point-man, Arviq, jogged close beside him, and Barto extended his peripheral vision behind the dark visor to enfold his comrade into an invisible protective sphere. He would assist his partner if he got into trouble—not out of any sense of payback or obligation, but because it was an automatic response, his own assignment. He would have done the same for any other soldier, any member of his squad—anyone but the Enemy.
Precision-guided mortars scribed parabolas through the air and exploded close to any concentration of soldiers who did not display the proper transponders. Amidst screams and thunder, a massive triple detonation wiped out over half of Barto’s squad, but the others did not fall back, did not even pause. They drove onward, continued the push. The fallen comrades would be taken care of somehow, though no one knew how the bloodhounds would ever make it this deep into Enemy-held territory.
This far behind the main battle lines, the Enemy numbers themselves were dwindling, and Barto fired and fired again. The laser-lance thrummed in his gauntleted hands, skewering a distant man’s chest plate and leaving a smoking hole.
But it wasn’t really a man, after all. It was the Enemy.
The chase continued, and the survivors of Barto’s squad ran in the direction of what must have been Enemy HQ. In his dry, dusty mouth he could taste the sweet honey of victory.
But suddenly, unexpectedly, they triggered a row of booby traps that did not appear on their helmet sensors. Camouflaged catapults popped up, spraying near-invisible clouds of netting, monofilament webs as insubstantial as smoke but sharper than the most deadly razor.
The flying webwork engulfed four soldiers near him, and they fell into neatly butchered pieces. But oddly enough, so did three of the Enemy men rushing in retreat, as if they themselves hadn’t known of these defenses. But their own visor sensors must have been keyed to booby traps they themselves had planted.…
Though the questions astonished him, Barto did not pause. His job was not to analyze. Paraplegic computer tacticians and the invisible battlefield commanders did all that work. The voices in his helmet told him to push forward, and so he pushed forward.
Arviq ran beside him, still firing his laser-lance—and numbly Barto realized that most of the other soldiers were dead. His squad had been decimated … but the Enemy was nearly eradicated as well.
War often required sacrifices, and many soldiers died. But a victory would pay the bloody cost ten times over. They had never gone so far.
The thrill of seeing the Enemy nearly exterminated gave Barto all the enthusiasm he needed, even without an adrenaline rush augmented by injectors in his armor. With a shared glance behind opaque visors, he and Arviq both had the same thought, and ran forward with their four remaining companions. They couldn’t stop now.
Then large gun emplacements popped out of the ground, more massive than anything he had ever seen before. Barto reeled in unaccustomed confusion—the Enemy had never exhibited technology like this! Automated fire rained down on them, super powerful laser-lances far more devastating than any of the handheld rifles.
Soldiers screamed. The blasts were like belts of incinerating flame, vaporizing armor and leaving not even bones for the bloodhounds to retrieve. The firepower pummeled anyone who came close, whether friend or Enemy. They had no chance, no chance at all.
An explosion ripped out a deep crater ten meters from them. Someone screamed, but Barto had no voice. The automated superlasers continued to track across the ground, pinpointing armor, crushing any movement. Barto watched the beams sweep closer, vaporizing everything in the vicinity. His four remaining squad members died in a puff of blood-smoke and molten armor plate.
On impulse he grabbed Arviq and shoved him hard toward the fresh crater. Together, the two dove into the raw trench just as the splash of disintegration passed over them. The voices in his helmet turned to a rainstorm of incomprehensible static.
Within moments the battle stopped. Everyone else was dead.
All of the laser fire and explosions ceased. All the Enemy, all of the squad, every living thing had been annihilated.
Without saying a word, Arviq hauled himself to his hands and knees and reached over to shake Barto, who also recovered his balance. The two of them sat panting for a moment, stunned but still determined. Neither of them—in fact, no one they knew—had ever been so far behind Enemy lines.
They rose up slowly and carefully into the crackling silence, afraid of other targeted automated systems. Clods of dry dirt fell from their armor. Dust and crackling ash roiled through the air … but nothing else moved.
“We won?” Barto asked. “Is the war over?”
“I hope not.” Arviq turned to him, his mouth a grim line beneath the opaque visor of the helmet. “The war will never be over. But we may have won this battle.”
Barto raised his helmet over the rim of the blasted crater. No weapons responded to the motion. The battlefield remained eerily quiet with only the faint sound of coughing fires and settling dust.
“Must be the Enemy encampment,” Arviq said with a grunt. “Increased defenses—maybe even HQ.” He grinned. “Success!”
But Barto wasn’t so sure. Moving with tense caution, he climbed away from the crater. “No, not HQ. The defenses killed as many of them as us. ID transponders were useless.”
Arviq joined him, sole survivors on the sprawling battlefield. Barto could see where the huge gun emplacements had raised up. Adjusting his visor filters, he spotted different infrared signatures, metallic traces, solid structures and hollow passages beneath the scarred ground.
Amazed, Barto crept forward. “We’ve discovered something. We’re required to investigate.”
“No, back to HQ,” Arviq said. “We must report. Our squad was wiped out.”
But Barto shook him off. He stood determined, looking ahead across the scabbed landscape. “Not until we have hard reconnaissance. This could be important.”
Arviq hesitated only a moment. Neither outranked the other, and they had no time for argument, but the other soldier quickly came to his own decision. “Yes. Reconnaissance is part of our mission.”
Most of the time, sly intelligent cats would creep through the darkness, observing Enemy strongholds and reporting back to HQ. But the squad had gone farther into Enemy territory than any known advance, and they might have new information. That was the most important thing. They weren’t doing it for the glory or for a possible promotion, or for any sort of reward. Barto and Arviq would take the risk because it was their duty.
“My head, my thoughts … are empty,” Arviq said, tapping his helmet.
Barto adjusted his earphones, but still received no transmission and no commands. An uneasy silence echoed in his head. The speakers growled no more repetitive commands to attack and kill.
“How can you stand it?” Arviq looked at him.
Barto took a deep breath. “No choice. Tolerate it.”
Crouched low, they trudged toward the automated gun emplacements, but the motion sensors did not reactivate. The weapons had gone through their program and wiped out the threat. Somehow, the two comrades had slipped through the cracks. They could move forward.
Barto and Arviq found a metal hatchplate in the half-hidden superstructure of the enormous laser-lances. Barto sat down and pressed his helmet against the hatch, carefully listening for any vibration, fully tense. Any moment now he expected the destructive fire to rain out again.
He tugged on the hatch, looking for access controls. “We can infiltrate,” he said. “It’s an underground bunker. Maybe weapons storage. We can bring supplies or power packs back to HQ.”
Together they wiped off dust and blasted dirt from the plate, used tools at their armor belts to crack open the seals, and finally they lifted the heavy hatch.
Still no voices came to their heads, no instructions. The two soldiers were on their own. Barto didn’t like it one bit.
They dropped down into the opening, where a steel ladder led into a maw of shadows. They descended, gripping rung after rung with gauntleted hands. If this was Enemy HQ, Barto thought, it was a much larger complex than anything he and his squad had ever lived in.
Finally, the ladder ended in an underground tunnel with the hatch cover high above them. Barto paused for a moment to scan the surroundings, then they walked forward into dim silence. The tunnels seemed empty, barely used, abandoned for a long time. Barto realized the Enemy soldiers could not have emerged from this place. No one had walked down these access tunnels in a long, long time.
As point man, Arviq led the way. He strode forward, hands on his weapons, ready for anything. A soldier had to be flexible and determined. The small tunnel lights gave little illumination, but their helmet visors augmented the ambient photons.
Cameras in their helmets recorded everything as reconnaissance files to be downloaded back in HQ. They continued for what seemed like miles, trudging deeper and deeper into the earth. This place was an important facility, possibly a central complex … but Barto couldn’t begin to understand it.
From up ahead came a faint throbbing from generators and heavy machinery. Finally, they saw brighter light, thick windows, rectangular plates that shone through to another world, a subterranean complex that seemed like a mythical land. Inside huge grottoes, pale ethereal people moved about wearing bright colors. Plants of a shockingly lush green, garish hues that Barto had never seen before, drew the two of them forward like magnets.
“What is this?” Arviq asked. “Some kind of trick?”
“Paradise.”
As the soldiers approached, unable to believe what they were seeing, they crossed an unseen threshold, a booby trap. They heard a brief hum, a crackle of power surge. Barto reacted just in time to feel a sinking despair—but not fast enough to get out of the way.
A pressing white light engulfed both of them, swallowing them up. In an instant, Barto’s visor turned black, then so did his eyes.
* * *
When he awoke, the assault on his senses nearly knocked him back into protective unconsciousness. Sounds, smells, colors bombarded him like weapons fire. His armor and helmet had been stripped away, leaving him vulnerable; without it, he felt helpless, soft-skinned, like a worm.
The bed beneath him was warm and soft, disorienting. A gentle and cozy light surrounded him instead of the familiar garish white to which he was accustomed back in his own barracks. Each breath of the humid air was perfumed with a sweet, flowery scent that nauseated him.
Was this an infirmary? Barto turned his head gently, and a raging pain clamored inside his skull. The place reminded him oddly of the time he had been helpless and healing from his previous injury … but he saw no hairless chimpanzees, no robotic medical attendants. The sheets were soft and slick, vastly different from the other rough, sterile coverings.
Grogginess smothered his mind and body. Barto tried to return to full awareness … but something was wrong. His body remained sluggish and unresponsive, as if the accustomed chemical stimulants were not being released according to program. He needed adrenalin; he needed endorphins.
Arviq lay on another bed beside him, similarly prone, similarly stripped of his armor. When Barto turned his head and directed his gaze in the opposite direction, he was astonished to find another person by his shoulder. Not one of the enhanced animals bred to attend the regiment … but a woman, a lovely creature with short, honey-brown hair and a shimmering purple garment so brilliant and dazzling that it made his eyes ache.
Responding with combat readiness, he sat up with a lurch—but the woman rushed over and shushed him with a gentle touch. “Quiet now. Everything’s all right. You are safe here.” Her voice sounded like sweet syrup. Alien.
Arviq stirred beside him, groaning in confusion and growing rage.
Then Barto remembered a legend, a story told on the field during the quiet times between battles when some soldiers were more frightened than others. It was a hopeful myth of what happened to brave and dedicated fighters after a death in battle. Was this … Valhalla?
He glanced over at Arviq, his face contorted with confusion. His eyes glimmered with dark fires. “Are we dead?”
The woman laughed like tinkling crystal. “No, soldier. We are people like yourselves, human beings.”
She didn’t look like him, though, or any other person he had ever seen. Barto shook his head, refusing to acknowledge the pain left over inside. He’d had enough experience with pain. “You’re not … soldiers.”
The woman smiled and leaned closer to him. A warmth radiated from her scrubbed and lotioned skin. He had never noticed a person’s physical features before, never paid attention … and he’d never seen anything so beautiful in his life.
“Everyone is a soldier,” he said, “either for our side, or the Enemy.”
The woman continued to give him a slightly superior smile. “You are soldiers, my friends … but we are not. Not here.” She gave a gesture to indicate her entire underground world. “After all, it’s a war. You’re fighting and dying.” Her thin, dark eyebrows rose up in graceful arches on her forehead. “Did it never occur to you to ask exactly what you’re fighting … for?”
With a sudden burst of energy and an outcry of rage, Arviq lunged up from his bed, reaching out with clawlike hands, his face full of fury. Even without armor or weapons, any soldier knew how to kill with his bare hands. Somehow he found the energy to lash out, to propel himself into a combat frame of mind.
The woman staggered back from the infirmary beds, startled. Barto saw shadows, more people moving behind observation windows, automatic devices activating. There was another flash of white light, and again he lost consciousness.
* * *
When Barto awoke once more, he was alone in a room, clad in soft pajamas with more slick sheets wrapped around him. He found his bed too pliant, too yielding, as if it meant to be comfortable with a vengeance.
The gentle sound of running water trickled from speakers embedded in the wall. The white noise had a soothing effect, the opposite of the perpetual, pressuring commands that had droned into his ears from helmet speakers. Now, the image of a soporific, bubbling brook made him want to lie motionless in a stupor.
He no longer even seemed alive.
This room was smaller, the walls painted pastel colors instead of clean white. The illumination was muted and warm, like sunlight through amber. It made his head fuzzy.
Stiffly, Barto rolled over and found that Arviq wasn’t with him this time. His comrade had been taken elsewhere. Was this some sort of insidious Enemy plan? Divide and conquer, separate the squad members.
Had he fallen into some new kind of warfare that went beyond violence and destruction to this personality-destroying brainwashing technique? Barto snarled and tried to find a way to escape—a captured soldier’s duty was to escape at all costs.
He didn’t hear a door open, felt no movement of the air—but suddenly the beautiful woman stood there with him, setting a platter down on a ledge formed out of the substance of the wall. She leaned over his bed, her entire body smelling of gentle flowers and perfumes. She smiled down at him, parting soft lips to reveal even white teeth. Barto started, ready to fight with hand-to-hand techniques even without his armor or his weapons—but she made no threatening move.
“My name is Juliette,” she said, then waited as if he was supposed to recognize some significance to the name.
He answered as he had been drilled. “Barto. Corporal. E21TFDN.” He rolled off the serial number in a singsong chant, “Eetoowun teeyeff deeyenn.” He had spoken it more than any other word in his lifetime. Then he formed his mouth into a grim line. That was all he had been trained to say. The Enemy rarely, if ever, took prisoners. Everyone died on the battlefield.
“I brought food for you … Barto.” Juliette picked up a steaming, spicy-smelling bowl from the tray on the ledge. It contained some kind of broth laced with vegetables, even a little meat.
Though he could withstand long periods of fasting, Barto realized how hungry he was. He’d been trained to shut off the hunger pangs and nerve twinges in his digestive system. But he also knew to take nourishment whenever possible, to maintain his strength.
She extended a spoon, and Barto raised his head to accept a mouthful. The spoon was metal with rounded edges. Even such a crude and innocuous weapon could be used in many different ways as a killing instrument. He could have snatched it from her—but he did not, taking the mouthful instead.
The flavors exploded around his tongue, and Barto nearly choked. It was too intense, too spiced, too fresh—experiences his mouth had never had. Back in the barracks all soldiers ate a common meal, a protein-rich gruel that served as sustenance and nothing else. He’d never before dined on a preparation in which someone had cared about its flavors. He didn’t find it at all pleasant.
Juliette gave him another mouthful, and he forced himself to eat it. But he did not let down his guard for an instant.
“The stun-field should have no residual effect on you, Barto,” she said. “You’ll regain your strength in no time.” Her voice sounded odd in his ears, pitched with a higher timbre, musical rather than the implacable instructions that had poured into his ears from the helmet’s speakers.
“I’m strong enough,” Barto said. “Where is my comrade?”
“He’s safe and being tended—but we thought it best to separate you.” She took the bowl away, then stood back to appraise him. “I’m curious about you, Barto, Corporal, E21TFDN. I want to be your friend—so let’s just use our first names, all right?” She brushed her hand along his arm, and he recoiled at her touch; it felt like warm feathers tickling across the skin. “Can you stand up? I’d like to take you for a walk to show you where you are.”
Barto did not argue with her. Regardless of her intentions, Juliette’s offer would allow him to continue his reconnaissance. She could show him whatever she wished, and he would gather information. Without the helmet visor and its implanted cameras, he would have to observe with his own eyes, and remember details. But it could be done.
As he swung off the bed, the loose-fitting pajamas felt strange on him, not hard enough, not safe. He walked on the balls of his bare feet, every muscle tense, searching for mysterious threats as Juliette led him out of the room. She took him down underground corridors into even richer light. They passed beautiful images of scenery, forgotten forests and lost mountains … waterfalls and lakes unlike anything he had ever seen on the battle-scarred combat fields.
“Who are you people?” Barto said. “What is this place?”
“We’re civilians. We went underground centuries ago to escape the fighting, while our armies defended us against the invasion.”
Barto tried to assess the information, to fit it like puzzle pieces into the sparse information in his mind. “My squad is … part of the defenders? We fight against the invaders?”
She looked at him with a curious, placid expression. Her pale skin, delicate bone structure, and pointed chin gave her an ethereal, elfin appearance. “No one knows which side is which anymore.”
Other people, similarly pale-skinned and soft-looking, observed the pair as they walked by. Some smiled, some drew back in fear. Many regarded him with cold, fish-like interest. Juliette seemed to enjoy the attention she received just by being with him.
Barto scanned his surroundings for a way to escape and return to his squad. But then he remembered that, except for Arviq, all of his comrades were dead, annihilated by the immense gun emplacements that protected this underground shelter. Back at his own HQ, the databases must have already recorded him and his point man as casualties of war.
Juliette talked as they continued, her voice a pleasant mélange of words. She told him of their days of peace and shelter down below, how the survivors had made an entire world down here by excavating tunnel after tunnel. There, the civilians did what she called “the great work of humanity”—composing music, dabbling in art, writing poetry and literature … though, if they remained isolated down here without experiencing the hard edge of life, Barto didn’t know how they found any material to incorporate into their creations.
Though she turned at intersections, descended to different levels, walked in circles, Barto never lost his bearings. He imprinted a map of everything they encountered, knowing he might need to use it later. On his own.
Juliette took him to a greenhouse where the smells nearly stifled him: humid air, the odors of vegetation and mulch, flowers bursting forth like explosions from mortar fire. Pollinating insects flitted from blossom to blossom, and brilliantly ripe vegetables and fruits made his eyes hurt.
He heard the drip of irrigation systems, saw colorful birds hopping from plant to plant, and a shiver went up his spine. Everything was so quiet here, so gentle. It made him feel too full of energy, too restless.
Barto remembered when he’d been forced to recuperate in the HQ infirmary as the hairless chimpanzees tended to him. He had been bored and frustrated … but with a goal—to heal, so he could go back and fight. He had managed to wait until his body returned to its optimal condition, when he could go out and serve his purpose in life.
Here, though, these people had a quiet calmness about them, an air of superiority … with nothing else to do. Juliette seemed to enjoy it, seemed proud of being a civilian.
Barto had never experienced such vibrant beauty, the smells, the music
… the sense of peace. His body rebelled at the thought, but as the hours went by in the beautiful woman’s company he began to feel his resistance crumbling. This was all new to him.
As she showed him their underground “paradise,” Barto followed her and listened. Finally, in exasperation, he turned to Juliette and asked, “So there’s no war here?” He couldn’t believe it. Such a concept had never occurred to him. “No battles?”
“Oh, we have a little.” Juliette smiled, then gestured him forward. “Here, let me show you. Maybe you’ll find it comforting.”
She led him down smooth passages where the temperature grew cooler, the smell more metallic. They walked down glass-walled hallways until they reached a control center.
Battle plans. Tactical maps. Troop movement displays.
“This is how we maintain our edge, Barto, and our window on the outside world.” Juliette’s people sat at stations in front of the shifting screens, their fingers raised across control panels. Terrain grids spread out in front of them in bristling colors.
High-resolution panels showed other soldiers, people in familiar armor and helmets, jittery point-of-view images transmitted from visor cameras. Civilian men and women leaned over, punching in commands and speaking into microphones.
“Move left. Open fire.”
Another man with a deep voice droned, “Kill the Enemy. Kill the Enemy. Kill the Enemy.” He sounded bored. The others looked very relaxed in their positions.
Barto stared with shock as he realized that these were the voices he’d heard in his helmet all his life: directing him, helping him plan his attack. These were his ultimate commanders in the war.
Astonished, Barto looked over to see Arviq also standing inside the control room, chaperoned by a civilian man, also dressed in a loose jumpsuit. His point man’s chaperone demonstrated the workings of the controls. Arviq’s eyes were wide as he watched the battle.
Sensing the new arrivals, Arviq looked up to see Barto. Their eyes met, and hot understanding flashed between them. This was the ultimate headquarters of their army. Arviq reeled from the revelation, but Barto felt a nagging question in the back of his mind. He wondered if other civilians in this control room might be directing the Enemy troops in a similar fashion.
Safe in their protected bunkers, these isolated civilians played the deadly war like a game, an exercise. They’d lived here for so long, so comfortably, they seemed uninterested in winning the conflict or ending the crisis … merely in maintaining what they already had.
“So you see, Barto,” Juliette said, touching his arm again—this time he did not withdraw so quickly—“we understand what you go through. We’re familiar with the war, we’re there with you inside your head during even the most terrible missions. We know how difficult it is for the soldiers.” She smiled. “That’s why I’m very glad to offer you asylum here. Stay with us.” Now she sounded coy. “I’d be … very interested in getting to know you better.”
Arviq glowered, out of his element. The chaperone next to him nodded toward Juliette, and she said, “You see, Gunnar is also taking good care of your comrade. Stay here. Consider it well-deserved R&R.”
Barto looked around, saw the controllers, heard the familiar command voices. He answered gruffly, “I’m a soldier. I follow orders.” Even if it meant he must stop fighting for a while.
* * *
Once the two prisoners had resigned themselves to their situation, they were allowed to speak with each other, though neither Barto nor Arviq had ever had much use for conversation. For a week they had made no violent gestures and learned to “behave themselves”—as Juliette described it. As a reward, Barto and Arviq were allowed to sit next to each other in the dining hall.
The room was a large chamber with plush seats and long tables. Lights sparkled from prisms overhead, and the air was redolent with the rich smells of exotic dishes. Various salads and broiled fishes and interesting soups were spread before them. The hall echoed with a murmur of voices.
In his training sessions, Barto learned about the horrors of being a POW, should such a fate ever befall him. But he was now confused, not sure which orders to follow, what was the proper course of action. Juliette had insisted he was their honored guest, not a prisoner. Should he still try to escape? These civilians had given him food and shelter, and a soft bed, though he desperately wanted his narrow basket-bunk back. He longed for the decisive voice in his ears that commanded him to do his duty—but Barto no longer knew exactly what his duty was.
Arviq looked at his plate and poked at the gaudy, frilly dishes that had been served to him. Other soft-skinned civilians walked by, staring at them, whispering to each other. One reached out to touch Arviq on the shoulder, as if on a dare; the soldier lashed out like a python, and the two observers scampered away giggling, as if titillated by the thrill they’d just received.
Barto felt as if he and his point man were on display, specimens for a zoo … or humiliated members of a captured Enemy force, dragged before the public as trophies. Shrouded in silence, Arviq seemed to be doing a slow burn as he sat staring at his food, glaring at the other people.
Barto tried to calm himself. His own emotions seemed so much flatter since he’d been brought underground, his mind dulled—as if the adrenaline pump, endorphin enhancers, even his root survival instincts had been neutralized. Listening to the muted drone of conversation and music around them, he thought back longingly to the cacophony in the mess hall at his old barracks.
He remembered the clatter of metal trays, the crash of armor plates as soldiers jostled each other. With wordless camaraderie, the squad members sat on hard benches, grabbed their utensils, and gobbled their tasteless food. Together, they recharged their batteries and stoked the fires that they would need for combat in their next mission.
While none of the soldiers knew each other very well, each knew his place in life, his purpose … and his Enemy. These underground civilians had nothing to compare with that.
Juliette sauntered up to them, her elfin features positively glowing, as if Barto’s presence had increased her own standing among her people. She walked with her tall friend, Gunnar, who had spent days escorting Arviq. She looked down at the food on Barto’s plate and clucked in a mock scolding tone that he should eat more.
Barto felt a strange sensation in his stomach and heart, as if he were basking in the sunlight of her presence. How could Juliette make him feel proud that she had chosen him for her special attentions? He had never been singled out for anything before.
On the days when Juliette brought him to the breakfast hall, Barto was glad to see her, eager to hear her voice, just to look upon her face. As his senses had become accustomed to his environment, his tongue relished the taste of fresh fruits and breads. The flower scents in the air smelled sweet, and he didn’t flinch when Juliette touched him this time, taking him by the elbow. He liked the softness of her fingertips, the way they moved up and down his arm. He felt that he wanted to be even closer to her, to allow her into the walled fortress of himself.
“Do you like it with us here?” Juliette said with a hopeful, even plaintive, lilt to her voice. Ignoring Arviq, she touched the lumpy intaglio of scars on his forearm, tracing patterns and imagining his terrible wounds, as if she had never seen such marks before. “I’d like for you to stay with us, Barto … with me.” She reached across the table to clasp his hand, and he felt the urge to withdraw. What was she doing?
Gunnar’s narrow face seemed drawn and concerned. He shook his head gravely. “You know how he’s been trained. You know what this man has been through. He’s not a toy for you, Juliette.”
“I know exactly what he is,” she answered. They both talked as if Barto wasn’t even there. “And that doesn’t change my wishes one bit.”
With intent, flicking eyes, Barto followed the conversation, the conflict. If Juliette wanted him to stay here—and he vehemently wished that she did—then he would stay.
He’d seen the control chambers, the computer screens. He knew that these were the ultimate commanders of the war, the people who issued the instructions through his helmet speakers. His job had been to defend these civilians, to protect them … and if Juliette should happen to give him leave to stop the fighting and stay here, with her, then he would follow orders.
Moving around behind him at the dining table, Juliette held out a large purple flower, its petals like a soft starburst. With particular care, she slid it into the close-cropped dark hair behind his right ear. Then she clapped at her audacity and at the spectacle she had made. He flushed.
Barto did not remove the flower, knowing it was somehow special to Juliette. The other civilians in the dining hall spoke to each other, pleased and entertained. Then Juliette danced away with tall Gunnar beside her, leaving the two soldiers to continue eating under the scrutiny of the curious observers.
Arviq looked across the table at him, scowling at his comrade’s behavior. He narrowed his flinty eyes at the flower in Barto’s hair. “You look like a fool,” he growled, and snatched it away.
* * *
Back in his too-peaceful quarters with the door sealed and locked from the outside, he lay on his too-comfortable bed and then finally curled up on the hard floor. He would sleep better that way.…
He dreamed of other times, when there hadn’t been so much peace, when he had felt alive and useful and necessary. Where he had known his place in the world.
After one particularly furious foray, he, Arviq, and five other squad members crept ahead, continuing to approach the blasted Enemy territory even after the main conflict was over. They followed trails of blood and footprints, drag marks left by the bloodhounds that had come to retrieve the bodies of Enemy soldiers.
In the dream Barto increased his visor’s sensitivity to search for infrared traces of organic waste or warm blood droplets. The enhanced bloodhounds were not trained to cover their trails, and with their heavy, mangled burdens, they left a path that was easy to follow, even across the blistered landscape.
The squad followed the trail back to a shielded Enemy encampment. Barto and his comrades prided themselves in their bravery (or foolhardiness), and they charged into the bunkers with their weapons drawn, their adrenaline packs tuned to full output. Their laser-lances blasted the hinges off the doors and made short work of the plasrock bricks that shored up the damaged buildings.
Within moments, Barto’s squad had breached the outer defenses and came in firing. No mercy. Many Enemy soldiers were still in their armor, but their weapons were locked in recharging racks. Others fought hand-to-hand, never giving up.
Barto’s team suffered heavy losses, but during the fight he was dizzy with exhilaration. By himself, he vanquished fifteen of the Enemy soldiers; altogether, his squad destroyed the entire outpost. Total victory.
Throughout the combat exercise, during the screams and explosions, the violence and death, Barto had felt a sure camaraderie between his fellow soldiers. He never let doubt enter his mind, never a question. He knew exactly what he was doing here.
The Enemy bloodhounds, locked in their small home-kennels, bayed until Arviq cut them all down. The dogs seemed to know they had been responsible for betraying their masters’ location.
With a resounding cheer of triumph, the survivors of Barto’s team gave a shout to celebrate the defeat of the Enemy. Then, as part of a ritual for such infrequent but absolute victories, the men reached down to tear the helmets off the Enemy corpses, taking them for souvenirs.
Barto removed the helmet from the soldier he had just killed, then looked down to see the visage of the Enemy.
In his dream, the face belonged to Juliette.
* * *
As days of contained rage and frustration built within him, Arviq found that he didn’t even need the supplemental adrenaline pump from his dismantled armor. This was all wrong! His blood boiled, his anger rose into a thunderstorm of fury—and he unleashed it upon the walls, the bed, anything in his room. His cell.
Arviq didn’t want to be a prisoner of war. He wanted to fight, to kill the Enemy. He had been bred and trained for nothing else.
The quiet stillness of this underground civilian world, the soft fabrics, the perfumes, and the too-tasteful food … all pushed him into a frenzy. He tore the coverings off his bed and thrashed about, ripping the sheets to shreds. He howled and screamed without words, a bestial cry of damnation. He pounded on the door, but it only rattled in its grooves. Then he threw himself upon the bedframe itself, yanking and pulling, until finally he uprooted it from the walls.
He didn’t know if anyone was watching him, nor did he care.
Arviq hurled himself against the metal wall, battering his shoulders, bruising his muscles, but feeling no pain. His body was accustomed to running on the ragged edge of energy, and he had been resting here for days, storing up power in his muscles. Now he released it all in his frenzy.
His attack made marks on the wall, left some smears of his own blood. His fists caused dents. The sealed door rattled again in its tracks; it seemed looser now. He pounded and pounded, receiving no answer.
Finally, Arviq returned to the ruined bedframe, wrenching free a strip of metal that he could use as a crowbar. He had to escape. He had to get back. He didn’t belong here.
He wedged the ragged end of torn metal into the door track and pushed, prying … bending. The door began to buckle, and Arviq worked even harder.
* * *
After his nightmares had left him like exorcised demons, Barto fell into a deep slumber and awoke incredibly refreshed. Sometime in the middle of the night he had crawled back into his bed and rested peacefully.
A soldier had to be flexible, had to adapt to new circumstances. At last, he had begun to do just that.
When Gunnar and Juliette came to fetch him, he sensed their tension. The other civilians continued to stare at him, as they had done for days, but now they held a greater glint of fear in their eyes, a more uncertain look on their faces. Barto couldn’t understand it, because for the first time since he’d come to this place of sanctuary, he felt more relaxed, more at ease, as if his life had indeed changed.
Seeing how the underground people had changed, how their attitude toward him had shifted, Barto knew something must have occurred. He could sense it. “What has happened?” he said.
Gunnar looked at him and answered crisply, “Your friend Arviq has gone on a rampage. He broke out of his room, and he’s escaped.”
Barto bolted to his feet. He understood Arviq’s impulses. He had felt them himself, and now alarm bells rang out in his head. “What has he done?”
Juliette took a deep breath and blinked her deep brown eyes, as if the subject itself made her uncomfortable. “He broke his way out of the room. He smashed some windows in the corridors, destroyed one of our greenhouses. That was an hour or so ago. No one has seen him since.”
Barto pushed his half-finished breakfast away and stood tall and strong. Called back to active duty. He didn’t need any more sustenance, no more food to distract him. His mind became focused again, delving into the old hunter/survival mentality.
“I know how he thinks, and I know what he’s doing,” Barto said. “You cannot let him get away.”
“We can’t stop him,” Gunnar said. “He’d kill all of us if we tried.”
Barto shook his head. “You don’t understand what Arviq can do, or what will happen if he gets away from this place. You can’t just ignore him.” Then he looked over at Juliette again. He finally admitted to himself that she was beautiful.
“Can you stop him?” Juliette said. “It would be to protect us.”
“I will need my armor and my helmet if I’m going to do this right.”
* * *
At first the armor felt rough and strange, but rapidly Barto adopted it as a second skin. The protective covering belonged, as much a part of him as his bones and muscles.
Looking at her soldier, Juliette wore a concerned expression, as if he had too easily stepped over the brink. Barto saw something unreadable deep within her brown eyes, a flush on her elfin face, as he picked up the helmet. He looked at her uncertainly one last time, then seated it firmly on his head. He pressed the side speakers against his ears, lowering the visor in place so that he looked at her through filters and scanning devices instead of his own eyes.
Barto drew a deep breath, stretching his chest against the breastplate armor plate. He flexed his arms against the hard bicep plates, the forearm protections, the gauntlets. His torso was solid and impenetrable. His legs and back, shoulders, hips, everything could withstand the worst that Arviq threw against him.
Barto was invincible.
“I must stop him before he leaves,” he said. “He’ll report the location of this place to HQ.”
Juliette hesitated, moved forward and then stopped, as if she wanted to embrace him but was afraid to. Barto was glad she didn’t. He didn’t want to get close to her, like this.
The tall chaperone, Gunnar, stood beside her, his face grim, and he drew her back. “Let him go now, Juliette. He has a mission.”
Barto turned and marched out of the room, summoning up his mental map of the underground civilian sanctuary. He would begin in Arviq’s quarters, where the point man had smashed his own room and broken loose. It would not be too difficult to pick up his former comrade’s trail. Barto knew how to track down a quarry.
Leaving the other inhabitants behind, he followed the tunnels. Most of the civilians reacted with fear when they saw him now. They hid within their own quarters or clustered together in the communal halls, though only one unarmed soldier had gone on a rampage. It was all beyond their experience.
All of these people cowered down here, helpless. And Barto was the only one who could protect them.
Though Arviq had not been able to retrieve his armor or his weapons, Barto did not underestimate him. A properly trained soldier could fashion defensive materials out of just about anything.
At the pried-open door, he stood motionless, assessing Arviq’s damaged room, saw how his comrade had wrenched open the barricade using a piece of the bedframe as a lever, how he had battered the walls with his bare hands. Barto saw blood but knew that Arviq would pay no attention to such minor cuts and bruises. Not Arviq.
Barto had seen him through much worse.
One time on a reconnaissance and destruction mission, Barto and his point man had ventured into the crumbling ruins of what must have been an impossibly large building, now scarred, empty, and blasted. The structure had fallen into rubble with haphazard girders and broken glass protruding from poured stone walls.
They had chased several Enemies into the wreckage. Their senses screamed that it was probably an ambush, but still the two soldiers had followed, weapons drawn, confident that they could defeat their opponents. He and Arviq separated and traveled along different passageways, using their scanners to pick up infrared footprint traces.
Barto had proceeded cautiously, but Arviq, incensed and determined, charged through the darkened halls, knocking wreckage aside. Finally, he had crashed down a rickety iron staircase that shattered into rust as he stepped on it. And he dropped through to the underlevels.…
When Barto had found him later, he saw that Arviq had broken his left leg in two places and had sprained his right ankle. His helmet visor was cracked and damaged—yet still Arviq had pulled himself along to find the Enemy. He certainly had.
Though severely injured and at an extreme disadvantage, Arviq had slaughtered both of the Enemy soldiers.…
From their missions together, Barto knew that his comrade was utterly relentless, feeling no pain and no fatigue. Nothing would stop him from escaping the underground enclave. He would never give up.
And neither would Barto give up. He was the only thing that could keep this civilian paradise protected and intact.
He strode out and moved briskly along the corridors. His bootsteps ricocheted off the metal walls. Arviq had smashed windows and thrown loose objects from side to side, leaving a painfully clear trail—until he had learned better and sensibly stopped his rampage.
Then tracking him became more of a challenge. Barto called up a detailed implanted map of all the underground corridors, which Juliette had added to the information systems in his helmet.
Arviq was running blind, by instinct, just trying to escape, but his movements displayed a pattern. On the map gleaming inside his visor, Barto could see the best paths, learn where to go … where to intercede.
Arviq didn’t have a chance against a fully armed, fully outfitted soldier, like Barto.
He marched along, his senses tuned to a high pitch. He moved carefully in case the other soldier had set up some kind of booby trap or ambush. That was to be expected. Arviq must know Barto would come after him.
Because the other soldier was without his armor, his bare feet left a trail of infrared images on the clean floorplates. The marks were old and fading, but still identifiable with Arviq’s genetic signature: droplets of sweat, skin particles, even stride length gave evidence of his passage. The other man was still bleeding from one of the cuts he’d inflicted upon himself in escaping from the room; occasionally a telltale crimson droplet reinforced Barto’s tracking.
The control voice returned, insistent and self-confident. It comforted Barto, who had lived his conscious life hearing the words: “KILL THE ENEMY! KILL THE ENEMY! KILL THE ENEMY!” He no longer felt so alone.
According to the map display, Arviq had made it to within several hundred meters of the long access ladder that led up a shaft to the outside—the battleground where their squad had been killed.
But Barto also knew he had cornered his quarry.
At an intersection of the dimly lit corridors, a framework of girders and support beams held up the ceiling. The place had been long-abandoned by the underground civilians.
Barto’s visor-sensors detected a large smear of blood at floor level in a corner, as if Arviq had rested there … or as if he had encountered an Enemy, and they had struggled, hand-to-hand. The blood was fresh, wet, warm in IR—like a sign emblazoned there to draw his attention.
Too late, he realized the ambush. From the shadowed support girders above, Arviq let out a loud cry and dropped on top of him. Though he had no armor and no weapons, the other soldier crashed down upon him with brute force. Barto might have found the conflict absurd if Arviq hadn’t been so determined, so passionate—if the other man hadn’t been his own comrade for so long.
Arviq wrapped his left arm in a vice-lock around Barto’s neck, trying to wrench the helmet off his head. With his other hand he tried to grab one of the ID-locked weapons sealed in armored holsters on Barto’s hips.
Barto rose up like a tank, as if his armor gave him stimulus and energy, though Juliette had told him his artificial adrenaline pumps were disconnected from the suit.
Inside his ears, the helmet commanders shouted, “KILL THE ENEMY! KILL THE ENEMY! DON’T LET HIM ESCAPE!” With a weird disorientation, Barto thought the voice sounded like Gunnar’s.
Without letting go, Arviq fought like a wild thing, clamping his knees on either side of Barto’s armored chest, trying to tear the helmet off. When Barto staggered backward, slamming his comrade against the metal wall, Arviq let out an explosive exhale of pain and surprise. Barto recovered his balance and slammed him against the wall a second time.
Arviq struggled but would not let go. He continued pounding with naked fists against the impenetrable armor.
“Come with me!” Arviq shouted loudly enough to penetrate the heavy ear coverings, to break through the harsh command voice. “Let’s go back to HQ. Back to our lives, Barto! We don’t belong here.”
Barto bent over and butted him against the wall, hearing ribs crack this time. Arviq’s grip finally loosened. He wheezed in pain, coughed blood. “Let me go then. Just let me run from here. I’ll leave.” Arviq slumped to one side and scrambled to his feet. Blood from his raw wounds smeared Barto’s scuffed armor.
“Can’t let you do that,” Barto answered. “You must stay here. The commanders gave their orders. Defy them, and you’re a traitor.”
Arviq stood up, glaring at him. His face was uncovered, his emotions unmasked. “This isn’t what we were made for. We are soldiers. War is our life. Not this … where we’re pets on display.” Barto had never really studied his comrade’s face before. “What happens when they get bored with us?”
Barto pressed his gloved palm against the hilt of his ID-coded blaster weapon. The device detected its proper owner and released its grip in the holster. Barto yanked the weapon free, held it in his hand.
Not far down the corridor, he could see the tarnished rungs that rose up the dark shaft. It would take so little for Arviq to scramble up the ladder, pop the heavy hatch—and be out, all alone on the blasted battlefield. Without armor or weapons, he didn’t have much chance of survival—but Arviq seemed desperate enough to take that option.
Arviq gathered himself up, glared at his former comrade and stepped away. “I know what I am, and what to do.” With the back of his hand, he wiped a smear of blood from his mouth. “Which one of us is the traitor, truly?” He turned and, moving slowly, not threateningly, took a step toward the ladder, the escape.
Barto raised the weapon. “Halt.”
Arviq turned to look at him with flinty, determined eyes. “I’m dead down here anyway. If I can’t get back onto the battlefield, then you may as well blast me now.”
Barto powered up his weapon.
The other soldier took two more steps down the corridor.
Inside the helmet, Gunnar’s voice shouted, “KILL THE ENEMY! DON’T LET HIM ESCAPE. YOU MUST PROTECT US. KILL HIM!” Barto leveled the blaster at the target.
Then he heard another voice—Juliette’s—muffled and distant, but coming closer. She cried out, running down the long-abandoned corridors toward him. “Don’t shoot, Barto. You must learn not to kill if you’re going to stay here.”
“Kill! Kill!” Gunnar’s voice bellowed.
Arviq turned as Juliette appeared, all alone, her elfin face distraught. Then he used the moment of distraction to dash toward the rungs.
“KILL!” shouted the voice in Barto’s ears again. And he did.
Depressing the firing stud, he blasted his former comrade in the back as he ran. Arviq had no armor, no protection whatsoever. The bolt flared out and incinerated him, turning the other man into a smoking pile of burned bones and cooked flesh that fell in a heap on the floor, as if still trying to run.
“No!” Juliette cried out, but it sounded like a pout. Barto turned to see her standing there. Her expression was stricken, and then even more terrified as he faced her, the charged weapon still in his hand. “I wanted you to stay here with me,” she said. “It’s a better life, but you’ve got to learn not to kill. Stay away from violence. You’ve earned it. You could live here with me in peace and enjoy your life, escape the horrors of war.”
“They’re not horrors,” Barto said in a flat voice. He refused to take off his helmet. He was a soldier now, fully armed, ready to fight. “It’s the only thing I know.” He holstered the warm blaster. “I can’t stay here as a prisoner of war.”
“But you’re a free man among us,” Juliette pleaded, refusing to come closer. She seemed as much confused as saddened. She couldn’t understand why he would make this choice.
“I am still a prisoner,” he said. “War holds me prisoner.” He stood at attention, as if the feline spies were watching him from the shadows. “I must live by fighting, and I must die by fighting. I have no way to escape that.”
He understood now that this place, despite its comforts and its new experiences, could not possibly be for him. Not for a soldier.
He didn’t begrudge Juliette her civilian life, her pampered existence—and if these people were indeed the commanders in the war, if he was a soldier charged with protecting them, then he must go back and do his duty until death inevitably claimed him on the battlefield. And if he should happen to survive, then he would grow old and train other soldiers until the war was won and the Enemy completely vanquished.
There was nothing else for him to do.
Juliette watched him with despair, then a flash of anger in her brown eyes. Finally, her slender shoulders drooped in defeat. She said nothing else, just watched him with a flush in her cheeks.
Barto didn’t know what he had really meant to her … if he had merely been a trophy from the battlefield, something that increased her prestige among her people—or if she had really cared for him, in a way.
At the moment it didn’t matter. It was irrelevant information.
Leaving his dead comrade behind, sad that the bloodhounds could never retrieve Arviq and take him back to where he could be buried with full military honors, Barto climbed the rungs of the ladder.
It was a long way to the surface, but when he released the hatch and climbed out under the open, bruised sky, he stared for a long moment. He breathed the burnt air, studied the roiling dust from distant explosions.
He lifted his visor to stare out across the stricken field with his own eyes, then he shut the hatch behind him, sealing Juliette and her world underground, keeping her secret safe. And then he strode off, heading in the direction of his HQ.
It would feel good to get back to the business of fighting once again.