Comrades in Arms (3 page)
Authors: Kevin J. Anderson
— 5 —
Since he already knew what Deathguards were, Rader figured out the implications even before the counselor came and rather impatiently explained his new situation. He’d had enough time in the med-center bed to draw his own conclusions.
“Your family has been notified of your heroic death, and the Earth League gave you a funeral with full military honors.” He realized afterward that she did not use his name. “We sent home a clean packaged uniform, along with a posthumous medal of honor. The heirs designated on your enlistment form will receive a generous military combat pension.”
His throat made noises, and he had to try several times before he could form the words. “Thank you.”
She brushed the comment aside. She was rattling off a memorized speech and didn’t want to be interrupted. “I regret to inform you that you are a terminal case. What remains of you belongs entirely to the Earth League. We will provide and maintain the machinery that keeps you alive.” The counselor leaned closer to Rader. “We supply all of the equipment and components to make you whole again, temporarily. If you choose not to accept reconfiguration as a Deathguard, we will reclaim that equipment.”
“Expiration …?” He wanted to say much more, articulate a full sentence, but the counselor understood.
“How long will you last? Is that what you’re asking? It varies. Each Deathguard is different, depending on the scope of injuries that put you here and the quality of the interface between your remains and our equipment.” She looked down at a screen, touched a tab that activated his chart. “Not much left of you. I’m surprised you made it to the life-support bed on the rescue shuttle … in fact, I’m amazed they bothered to carry the scraps there in the first place.” Frowning, the counselor read further. “Ah. No other survivors from your squad. The Information Bureau must have needed to salvage something from the mission.”
Rader didn’t want to think about it, didn’t want to recall his family either, or his friend Cody, or Earth. He wasn’t supposed to have anything to look forward to. He was just an afterimage of his life.
“Look on the bright side, soldier. If you accept, you’ll have years, or months, or weeks to keep up the fight—extra time that you wouldn’t have had. When the Jaxxans try to understand our strategy and tactics, Deathguards are our ace in the hole, an element of random destruction they simply cannot predict.” He had seen more convincing smiles on plastic mannequins. “You could well be the key to winning this war.”
Rader had heard the pitch before, had even believed it when he went through basic training. He didn’t argue. Judging by the counselor’s flippant attitude, he imagined that she had little difficulty convincing other new Deathguards. He allowed them to put him back together again, Humpty-Dumpty in combat gear.
With the potential for malfunctions building day by day, the Base was anxious to get him tested and functional and back out onto the front lines. When they brought Rader up to speed on his defenses and prosthetics, he seemed to have one of everything he needed. The components functioned to design specs. He had his armor, his weapons, and his training.
Occasionally, during test exercises, he would catch glimpses of his skin, small patches that showed in between the armor plate. His flesh was so burned and scarred it looked like wadded, dried leather. He had no desire to see what he really looked like anymore.
He was trained to shoot automatically, accurately, and without remorse. A Werewolf Trigger had been implanted in his brain, activated by stress and perceived danger in a battlefield situation. And his self-preservation drive was dampened.
Without mentioning Rader’s name, Commissioner Sobel introduced him with great fanfare in a cheery patriotic broadcast sent out by the Information Bureau. “I give you the newest member of the Deathguard!” He raised Rader’s gauntleted arm. Cheers resounded from the soldiers who had gathered at the Base for the formal announcement.
Despite the celebrations, Rader knew he could never be around people again. The Werewolf Trigger was like a firing pin in his brain, a siren that sounded off at oddball times. A Deathguard couldn’t live back at the Base, nor bunk with other soldiers, not even fraternize with them. If something triggered his rampage, Rader could rack up countless casualties before he was terminated. From now on, he would be on his own.
The Commissioner’s voice grew more somber. “Unfortunately, peace negotiations have broken down. Neither side is talking, and I don’t expect the situation to improve. We’ll need our Deathguards now more than ever.”
More than a hundred of the deadliest, most powerful soldiers had been turned loose on the battlefield. Rader would join them, without comrades, in a last independent mission to create as much havoc as possible until his systems failed.
— 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?”
— 7 —
Tapping his fingers on the desktop (pressed fiberboard, of course—not real wood, not out here in this godforsaken asteroid belt), Commissioner Sobel pondered the news.
Very serious. An embarrassment. Incomprehensible.
One of his Deathguard had turned sour, abandoning his duty, killing two recon scouts—in the presence of an alien. Had the Deathguard been brainwashed somehow? The Jaxxans did have strange mental powers.
Or had the Deathguard suffered some kind of psychological breakdown? Sometimes, the cyborgs were so damaged mentally and physically that they were unstable, hence the impetus for turning them loose on the battlefield. Over the course of the war, four other Deathguards had failed spectacularly, and three had gone catatonic out on the front lines, where they were quickly killed.
But not a single one had ever cooperated with the enemy before! Sobel was infuriated. They had saved the life of this—he shuffled his papers, searching for a name—this Robert Rader. Earth League cyborg engineers had taken the burned, blasted remnants of a man, patched him up enough to keep going for a final stint on the battlefield. Wasn’t that what soldiers wanted?
He reviewed the records. Rader had suffered extensive damage, but he had agreed to the cyborg conversion; nothing exceptional had showed up on his psychological tests. Given a Deathguard’s typically short service life, it wasn’t cost-effective to waste months on extensive evaluations. The Deathguards were activated, pointed in the right direction, and turned loose on the battlefield.
As soon as the high command learned about a traitor among the lone-wolf cyborgs, however, they would crucify Sobel. The Commissioner didn’t understand it. What would make the man turn against his own kind and consort with the enemy?
Sobel punched a rarely used sequence on his communications console. The viewscreen shimmered before him, as if reluctant to reveal the image of his Jaxxan counterpart.
The desiccated-looking alien’s black eyes stared impatiently at him, trying to fathom the human’s expression. All the roaches looked the same to Sobel but, judging by the ornamentation on the rigid hide, he ventured a guess. “Warlord Kiltik?”
When the alien tried to answer, he broke into a coughing fit before he could speak. “Commissioner Sobel? Yes, it is you.”
At least the alien recognized him. “Warlord, you know I wouldn’t call you if the matter wasn’t urgent.”
Sobel looked past the alien, gleaning details from the background of the enemy headquarters. The walls were odd planes, tilted at random in the spirit of insane Jaxxan architecture, but his eyes were drawn to a spiny mass of crystals that hung in the air behind the warlord, like a thousand fragments of glass bound up with threads of light. Some kind of three-dimensional military diagram?
He cleared his throat. “Yesterday I received some very grave news: one of my Deathguards has apparently joined with one of your soldiers. If you have subverted him somehow, hijacked his programming, the Earth League will protest strenuously. Such mental attacks are specifically prohibited in the terms of our interim treaty.”
Kiltik stiffened, though Sobel couldn’t read any subtle change of expression on the alien face. “We have not broken the treaty terms. I myself received reports that one of our soldiers has deserted, possibly kidnapped by a Deathguard in clear violation of our no-prisoners protocol. Summon your cyborg back to base and release our captive soldier to us so that we can address the charges of desertion.”
“I can’t control or recall the Deathguard, Warlord.” Could it be that this wasn’t a Jaxxan plan? “It seems we both have a potentially embarrassing problem. For the past few months, my record here has been impeccable, thanks in large part to the Deathguard program. I can’t have one of them shooting his own comrades and fraternizing with the enemy.”
Kiltik’s staccato coughs interrupted his train of thought. The Warlord composed himself with an effort, then added, “Jaxxans do not break ranks. Jaxxan soldiers are tightly trained. But this deserter was not a member of the soldier caste. He was a holystal imaginer who was improperly reassigned.”
Sobel didn’t understand half of what the Warlord had just said, but he seized on one detail. “So, you’re saying you could be in trouble for this, too.”
“I have been assigned to the Fixion Belt since the beginning of the war. Although I will not lose my position here, I would prefer to avoid an ‘embarrassing problem,’ as you so delicately put it. My superiors will never send me back to Jaxx.” He broke off for a quick burst of coughing. “However, this war was getting tedious. What do you propose we do?”
The Commissioner hid his sigh of relief. “When I received the report, I immediately sent five special commandos to terminate the defective Deathguard. I assumed your deserter would be collateral damage.”
Kiltik did not sound unhappy. “Then the problem is taken care of.”
“Unfortunately, the Deathguard killed the entire team, with possible assistance from his Jaxxan ally. This morning I dispatched another seven on the same mission, but they are going to have a tough time behind your lines. If you send your own hunters, one of the groups should succeed.
The Warlord stiffened. “That is nonsense, Commissioner. A ruse on your part.”
Sobel hurriedly continued, “This matter concerns both of us, Warlord, and it may require all our resources to put an end to it.”
The Warlord coughed once before he spoke again. “The morale of our soldier caste will suffer when they learn of this, and henceforth they will doubt the veracity of our holystal projections that guide this war. I must ponder this further and consult my holystal, Commissioner. I will contact you shortly. Your line will be open?”
“Of course.” Sobel used his sweetest-sounding voice, but as soon as Kiltik’s image faded, he slammed his fist on the desktop.