Barry Longyear - Enemy Papers

"Your name, please?"

"Nicole. Major Joanne Nicole."

"I am called Leonid Mitzak. Major, please ask your charges to enter the lander. Time is precious."

"What if I don’t? What if they don’t go?"

"I was led to understand that this unit has surrendered. Isn’t this true?"

"If it isn’t?"

"Does this game amuse you, Major?" Mitzak looked around at the faces, then back at Nicole. "The fight will continue, if that is what you prefer. If you have surrendered, then have your men move into the lander."

She pushed herself to her feet. "Where are the Drac guards?"

"If you have surrendered, there is no need for guards." He looked again at the soldiers, then back at her. "Is there?"

She dropped the pill into the mud and let her hand fall to her side. "No. There’s no need for guards."

She began stumbling downhill toward the lander. One-by-one the soldiers in the mud stood and followed her. There were no wounded. The wounded had all taken the death drops rather than be taken alive to face the unknown. Everyone had heard about the tortures dished out by the terrorist Drac Mavedah on the planet Amadeen. For the same reason, many of the still healthy ones took the drops.

The war had killed millions of Dracs and millions of humans; and every human knew what he would do to a Drac given the opportunity. Pain. Endless, excruciating pain. And pronide brought on the ultimate anesthetic.

Nicole paused as she came to the foot of the lander’s ramp. There was a red-uniformed Drac standing in the dark of the bay’s door. The Drac waved its hand.

"Hasu. Benga va nu! Hasu, dutshaat kizlode!" Get in. You hurry up! Get in, half-sexed excrement-head!

And the excrement referred to was kiz; an animal native to the planet Draco that was so foul that both the species and the species' waste product carried the same name.

Several obscene retorts in Drac came to Joanne Nicole’s mind, but she resisted the temptation to reply in kind. Instead, she moved up the ramp and entered the lander. When everyone had settled on the deck, the bay doors closed, leaving the compartment in deep shadows cast by the lone light above the door to the craft’s bridge.

The human, Mitzak, and the Drac went through the door to the bridge, leaving the defeated soldiers alone. There was a quiet hum and Joanne Nicole felt the lander leave the soil of Catvishnu.

Joanne Nicole awakened from a dreamless sleep to find her gaze fixed on the compartment’s single light: trying to find some warmth, strength, in its feeble glow. She turned her head and saw that all the prisoners were buried in sleep or thoughts of their own.

All silent.

On some vague intellectual level they knew that somewhere out there the USE Force was creaming the hell out of some Drac command. Somewhere out there, the war was still far from decided: But in the total of the universe they could see, their universe, their guts all said the same thing: whipped. Defeated.

The compartment light was picked up and reflected by another set of eyes; eyes that were no longer defeated, but, instead, burned with hate. The eyes belonged to Sergeant Benbo.

Nicole settled back and watched him her eyelids barely open.

…She had just pulled her gown over her head, her lungs aching from the dust and smoke that filled the lower levels of the complex. A dark shadow filled the doorway to her quarters.

"Are you Major Nicole?"

In between coughs, she answered. "Yes."

"Then get your titties covered up, Major. You’re in command."

"Me?"

"You’re all that’s left, lady. Everybody else is dead." Benbo had tossed an object at her, and she caught it as it rebounded from her breast. It was a rifle. "Head for the east face surface, Major. Bring that with you; I’ll find another."

The sergeant disappeared into the smoke.

When she drew her right hand away from the weapon, she saw that blood covered the rough surface of the front hand-grip…

Nicole looked away from Benbo’s frightening silence and closed her eyes as exhaustion again pulled at her. Storm Mountain gnawed at her sleep.

…Sergeant Benbo. With curses, kicks, punches, and screams he had intimidated his collection of paper wizards and electron collators into becoming infantry soldiers in what must have been history’s briefest course in basic training.

…The noise-the sizzle of enemy weapons, the soldier screaming into the hiss of his radio, the others screaming in anger, the few screaming in pain, her own voice shouting orders-sound assaulting her eardrums from both inside and out…

…She couldn’t see whether the mud-covered creature cowering at the bottom of the trench was male or female. Its eyes were wide with terror.

Benbo slapped its face again and again.

"Get up! Get up on that line, goddamn you, and fire that weapon! Get up on that line, you chicken yellow sonofabitch, or I’ll slit you open and hang you by your own bleeding guts!"

A gleaming blade leaped into the sergeant’s hand and the soldier’s hand flapped in the mud until it found a rifle. Twice the rifle fired as the soldier tried to kill Benbo. The sergeant pulled the creature to its feet and flung it against the side of the trench, facing the advancing enemy.

"That’s the way, you dumb sonofabitch! Now try shooting at the yellow fellows!"

Benbo moved off into the rain, and the soldier opened up on the enemy, aiming through tear-filled eyes. Then Nicole recognized him: Lieutenant Morio Taiseido; gentle Morio…

The night of the Noraanka Dima.

…She did her best at walking briskly from the corridor into the I-section anteroom; but one does not walk briskly in a full-length ballroom gown.

Too much air resistance. One flows.

…the Noraanka Dima; the USE Force holiday in tribute to the five soldiers who had held an entire Shikazu assault group at bay for eight days during the war of the Four Stars. After the five soldiers had been killed, a brief truce was called, allowing honor guards from both the Shikazu Infantry and the USEF to attend the burial-the first Noraanka Dima.

Joanne Nicole pressed the signal panel next to the door and looked up into the sensor in time to hear an embarrassed cough. She glanced down and realized that the overhead sensor had a good shot down the front of her gown. Se glared up at the sensor.

"Not you, too, Taiseido?"

There was a mumbled apology as the security door slid open, revealing Storm Mountain’s intelligence center. Lieutenant Morio Taiseido and six ranks were on duty. Taiseido stood as she entered, while the ranks busied themselves studying their instruments.

"Morio why does the Force have to go crazy once each year?" She held out her arms. "Just look at this insane costume."

Taiseido grinned widely. "I have seen it, thank you, Major. And it should make a splendid display at the military ball. General Dell will be pleased."

"Sit down and stick your tongue back in your mouth. Any traffic?"

Taiseido resumed his seat, turned toward a screen, and called up an index of the signals overheard and processed by his watch. "Nothing unusual, Major." He turned back. "Why don’t you go to the ball and leave the peasants to sort the signals?"

-A sorter of signals. The next time Joanne Nicole saw Morio he was a killer…

…A break in the fighting.

Toadface backing off from Storm Mountain’s unexpected pimple of resistance as the first light of a grey, rainy morning pushed sluggishly at the shadows.