Racers of the Night: Science Fiction Stories by Brad R. Torgersen (37 page)

“Silence!” snapped an armed guard.

We twisted and turned our way frantically down a further series of corridors. I couldn’t quite tell, but the floor seemed slanted. We could have been going up or down, I wasn’t really sure.

Then we suddenly emptied out into the blindingly bright sunlight, all of us cringing and raising our hands to shield our eyes.

A quick look around revealed the rubble of what had once been a
s’ndar
industrial district. I actually laughed as I realized we’d been prisoners right under the Expeditionary Force’s nose the whole time. The district had been leveled in the first month of the occupation, and declared off-limits. Barring occasional patrols, no human or
s’ndar
went in or out, except for these resistance fanatics, who’d obviously found a way to operate without being detected.

Until today.

A flight of jets screamed overhead—wide-winged ground attack planes with their payload doors hanging open. A cluster of bombs released and carpeted across the crushed factory complex from which we’d just exited. The blasts were deafening and the ground bucked hard under our feet.

I wondered if we could attempt an escape, and decided there were too many
s’ndar
for us to make it. Our duty hadn’t changed: we had to keep the Senator alive until we could transfer him to friendly hands.

We passed wrecked and burned-out vehicles, and the dried shells of
s’ndar
who’d been left where they’d fallen—their silenced mandibles hanging slackly by threads of dry tissue.

Then we were being herded down into a dry sewer, crouched and shuffling—while the round sewer pipe was somewhat more accommodating to the shorter, squatter
s’ndar
.

After twenty minutes the
s’ndar
ordered a rest, and we stopped. I tried to push up to where Kent was, but was shoved back and ordered not to move.

Petersen was doubled over, gasping.

“Sir,” I said. “Are you hurt?”

“No,” he said. “Just out of shape. It was the cell … the damned cell … nothing to do but go crazy.”

He looked into my eyes, and I realized the Senator might not have been speaking metaphorically. His gaze was awful. Stricken. Not quite
there
somehow. It occurred to me that, for all his slick, football player toughness, Petersen had probably never endured real deprivation before. Certainly not on the scale we’d been suffering since our capture.

I turned to the
s’ndar
. My TAD was gone, but theirs worked. “That air strike was just the first phase,” I told them. “They’re softening up the target before our rifle platoons get sent in to clean up. They know you’re here, and they won’t stop until they find you.”

A single
s’ndar
shape pushed its way back towards me. I recognized her torn raiment; it was the priestess.

“We will move forward rapidly now,” she said.

“Look at us,” I told her, waving my hand at Petersen for emphasis. “We’re in no condition to keep up the pace. In another hundred meters you’d be dragging us. So we’ll have to go slow. I hope that doesn’t scare you too much, but that’s the way it is.”

The priestess appeared to sag in on herself, if only a bit.

“Yes,” she said. “We are scared.”

She studied my face. “You hide it well, but my fear makes you happy.”

“Only because you’re the enemy,” I answered. Then I sighed deeply. “The shame of it is, you didn’t have to be. There was no reason for it.”

“I agree,” she said. “But of course I would:
you
invaded
us
. It is you who are the enemy.”

And suddenly I knew who the
real
enemy was.

“My sister died here,” I said, as the low rumble of more bombs filled the sewer pipe, then fell silent. “She was excited by the idea of your alien culture—and she was killed for her enthusiasm. But she wouldn’t have been here at all—none of us would be here—if not for the Conglomerate playing us off against each other.”

“The ‘deal’ you spoke of,” said the priestess.

“Yes,” I said. “Back on Earth we treat the Conglomerate like saviors. You know something interesting? We’ve never even seen them.”

Her eyes widened. “Never?”

“Just radio transmissions and text messages, and those robotic transport ships that show up in orbit. If they’re so advanced, it should be an easy thing for them to pacify a planet with or without human help. So what’s in it for them, using us like this? And why couldn’t they just leave your world alone? Why do they care if you’re at war?”

“Our particular hive has never known these answers,” she said. “And since the arrival of humans, we’ve never cared to know. We want you gone. That is the sole thing that concerns us.”

“Have you ever stopped to ask why humans would even want to be on your planet in the first place?”

The priestess was silent. As were every other
s’ndar
and human in the sewer. Petersen just looked at me, his limbs slightly shaking as the adrenaline from exertion began to wear off.

“
We’re
here because of them,” I said. “
You’re
fighting an invading force because of them. Maybe it’s time for both sides to take a deep breath and think about that.”

She stared at me. “Go on,” she said at last.

“If you stop fighting,
my
people have no reason to be here.”

“A truce?”

“It would give us time to find out what the Conglomerate
really
wants,” I said.

“And to prevent them from getting it,” added the Senator, who was quick on the uptake, despite his condition.

She turned to the Senator. “Do you have the power to order a cease-fire?”

He nodded his head. “I outrank every General Officer on this planet,” Petersen said, seeming to regain some of his former stature. “I’m sure I can convince our side to enter a temporary cease-fire.”

“What good is temporary?” she asked.

“It gives us breathing space while we each try to talk our superiors into making it permanent.”

“My superiors will assume you are lying to us,” said the priestess.

Suddenly Peterson smiled. “When we stop talking war and start talking negotiations, now we
are
in my bailiwick,” he said. “I propose a trade.”

“A trade?”

“I want you to come back to Earth with me as a good-will ambassador of your race, someone who can confirm what I have to tell them. View it as a public display of friendship and mutual trust.” He turned to me. “And Sergeant Colford here will stay behind in the same capacity and speak to your people.”

“Why me?” I demanded.

“Because you lost a sister in this war, and were incarcerated for some months. If
you
can forgive them and point to the real enemy, I think it will bolster the arguments of whatever
s’ndar
is speaking to his people on our behalf.”

I considered. Could a cease-fire agreement—made in a sewer pipe between a staff sergeant, a priestess, and a Senator who was light years from Washington—actually have any legs?

We’re now in the process of finding out.

I hope my sister didn’t die for nothing. I hope my months of being chained in solitary served some purpose. I hope the priestess can sway her people and the Senator can sway his. I even hope that someday I find out what the Conglomerate wants, and that I stop thinking of
them
as the enemy.

Mostly, though, I hope I can stop being a peacekeeper …

 … and start being a peacemaker.

Mike Resnick labored long with me, to bring this story up to professional spec. It was our first ever collaboration, back when I had only two short fiction publications to my credit. Mike’s number one point—through all the toil, much of which I am embarrassed to have put him through—was that any good story demands change from its key characters. Programs like Star Trek can get away with leaving the cast off right where they began, but for literary fiction to have the necessary emotional impact to make it compelling, the main people in the story have to arrive at new places in their heads and in their hearts. If not always physically, in their bodies.

I’ve tried to remember this lesson, when writing successive stories.

“Peacekeeper” obviously relies on my U.S. Army familiarity. Mike had an outstanding invitation from the editors of
The Mammoth Book of SF Wars
to give them a story, and since Mike had handed me my trophy at the Writers of the Future gala event just a few months earlier—me, decked out in my Army ASUs—Mike decided it might be a good idea to kill two birds with one stone: help a newcomer out with some teaching, and a new story sale, while also helping himself out by getting the chops of someone who was actually in the service; and didn’t just know military stuff through popular folklore.

An Iraq war veteran once told me that this story hums with verisimilitude, for the various iterations of Operation Iraqi Freedom. I chalk that up to having spent a lot of time with veterans of OIF and OEF; men and women who’ve been overseas and “seen the beast” as it were. I’m hopeful that this verisimilitude is present for civilian readers as well. I wanted something that would be gritty, but not cliché, nor Hollywood.

As for the moral theme of the story, that’s entirely Mike. Again, his teaching to me—like Mickey yammering in the ear of Rocky Balboa—was that the story wouldn’t be a story unless the main character underwent a significant change of heart. Earlier iterations had Sergeant Colford walking out of the mess more or less the same man as when he went into the mess. The story was thus a “picture frame” look at war (and prisoner-of-war life) on an alien world.

And yes, I wrote “Peacekeeper” before I wrote “The Chaplain’s Assistant.” There are similarities between the two—especially when you consider the changes Mike wanted me to make to the former. I consider it the privilege of the writer to revisit an idea or a concept more than once, without having to so thoroughly redress the movie set that things become exhaustively different.

Ultimately, Mike got a story he felt was competent by his standards, and I got a huge helping hand, in the form of a tough, old, experienced pro, reaching down to assist a fledgling guy who was still brand new to the publishing business. Mike showed a lot of patience with me, on this work. And I am grateful for that. It’s to Mike’s credit that he never lost his temper nor his sense of humor. Every time I goofed up, he simply pushed back and said, “I won’t give you the answer straight out, kid, but here’s a few clues to maybe take you in the right direction …”

***