Jaym Gates - War Stories

Jassalan smiled tiredly, wrinkles forming around her eyes. “I know. Did you want to bring me in?”

Kay did. But these people might be able to help her get back to the base. That was all she cared about right now. “No.”

“Thank you,” said Jassalan. She studied Kay again for a moment. “Get in the truck. I’ll be along shortly.”

Duty satisfied, Kay went and sat in the truck. Soon, everyone was ready, and they left the blast site behind.

They drove across the pancake flatness of the desert in silence. Jassalan was preoccupied, Liss fumed, and Payl kept sneaking looks at her. The man, Yago, was blessedly uninterested in Kay and looked out the window at the featureless scenery instead. After a few hours they came to a small rise. Kay’s sensors detected slight emanations coming from it.

“You have a power source,” she said. She calculated their location and plotted it. “You aren’t on my maps.”

“We wouldn’t be,” said Jassalan dryly. The truck pulled into a little gully next to the hillside, and everyone clambered out. “We’re home.”

Liss headed to her workshop, still grumbling about her hurt wrist. Payl and Yago started unloading scrap from the truck. Kay followed Jassalan into the cramped, dark kitchen, unsure of what to do next.

“We can’t use too much power here,” Jassalan said apologetically, putting water on to boil. “So we cook things the hard way. Takes time. Do you eat?”

“No,” said Kay.

“You have a name?” Jassalan asked.

“My identification is MSID–609872–K,” said Kay. “But I call myself Kay.”

“Right, right,” repeated Jassalan, as if lost in a mantra. “Right.”

“I need to contact Ianas Alpha,” said Kay. “As soon as possible.”

“We–ell,” said Jassalan, drawing the word out as she dropped pods of bluish vat–grown meat into the boiling water. “You can try. Won’t be anybody there, though.”

“I don’t understand,” said Kay.

“You must have been cut off before the evacuation,” said Jassalan.

“What evacuation?”

“The Sovene Army’s gone, hon,” said Jassalan matter–of–factly. “Headed back to space.”

Kay reeled, shocked. The Army was militarily superior to the small pack of rebels making trouble on cold, dry Ianas, and the planet was not yet fully pacified. “You’re lying.”

“Afraid not,” said Jassalan sympathetically. “They’re gone.”

“Why?” Kay asked, still processing. This had to be wrong, some kind of trick.

“Hm,” said Jassalan. “The usual sorts of trouble. Politics. Money. A government that can’t make up their minds about who they want to massacre this month.”

“I see,” said Kay. “May I use your communications equipment?”

“Go ahead,” said Jassalan, pointing. A screen and touchpad was mounted on a wall. “Doesn’t reach off–planet. Liss might be able to fix it up, but we have no reason to call anyone who isn’t on Ianas.”

Kay, still certain her host was lying about the evacuation, punched in the code for the base.

The connection established, and something that might have been joy filled Kay’s belly for a brief moment. But then a message flashed across the screen: Ianas Alpha Decommissioned | Contact Sector 15 Command.

Something fell away inside her.

It was true. The Army was gone. Her companions, both human and Synthetic, were gone. The base she’d called home for two years was… was…

A terrible aimless feeling penetrated her half–synthetic skull. If the base was gone, the mission was canceled. There were no orders, no missions, nothing.

She had nothing to do.

A hand hesitantly touched her shoulder. “I’m sorry,” said Jassalan. “I don’t like the Army much these days, but I remember being in. They’re like your family, when you’re a part of it. I guess that’s true for you, too.”

“They may have just regrouped,” Kay said firmly. “They will return.”

“Maybe, but I hope they’re gone for good,” said Jassalan with a spark of anger. “The Sovenes have been nothing but trouble for this place.”

“But you’re a Sovene, too,” observed Kay.

“Well,” shrugged Jassalan. “Used to be.”

“You’re a deserter,” said Kay archly. To her there was very little worse than deserting.

“Sure,” said Jassalan, and waited. “Aren’t you going to ask me why?”

“I assumed you didn’t want to fight anymore,” said Kay.

That seemed to annoy Jassalan, and her frown deepened. “You have any idea what the Army does, Synthetic ? The kinds of things they do here? I saw all kinds of horror. Civilians bombed. ‘Terrorists’ targeted, even when there was no evidence against them. Rape. Murder. Torture. You haven’t seen that?”

Kay had, though she quickly reminded herself that she’d seen many good things as well. She accepted the situation as… complicated.

“The worst part of it is that it’s all in service of a government that lies to everyone,” Jassalan continued. “That controls every aspect of their lives without giving them any kind of say at all!”

“That is not true,” said Kay tartly. She had done a lot of study of the way Sovenes chose their leadership. “There is the yearly vote, and the local—”

“Don’t bother explaining the system to me,” said Jassalan. “I don’t want to hear it. People back home think they have a voice, but they don’t. I saw the light. I left. I’m no coward.”

“Are all of you deserters?”

“Just me,” said Jassalan. She poked the meat bubbling away in the pot. “Everyone else is family. So you don’t have to follow their orders.”

Orders. She tried to think of what hers would say now. “I must report in to Sector 15 Command,” she said after a moment.

“You don’t have to,” said Jassalan intently. “And you can’t, we don’t have the equipment. Come have dinner.”

“I said I don’t need to eat,” said Kay brusquely.

“I’m not saying you should,” said Jassalan. “Just… come be with everyone.”

The look in Jassalan’s eyes gave Kay pause. She’d seen it once or twice before in the eyes of people who wanted her for some reason of their own, and those situations had never ended well.

But she had nothing to do, and the thought of standing here thinking about how cut off she was felt like staring into her own personal abyss, so she followed Jassalan to the table.

The dinner conversation flowed around her, avoiding her as if she stood on a rock in the middle of a stream. They talked about the food, the weather (still dry), and the paramilitary groups that were steadily taking power from the provisional government.

Liss glared at her, while Payl gave her little smiles. Yago ignored her, scarfed down his food, and quickly left the table. Jassalan ate very little, and studied Kay when she thought she wasn’t looking.

After the meal was done Kay helped Jassalan clear the table, and the others left to do other things. Payl went outside to fiddle with the moisture collectors. Liss went into another room and started banging on something metal.

“So tell me,” said Jassalan, a little too nonchalantly. “What’s your function? All–purpose communications, that sort of thing?”

“You should know that,” said Kay, stacking a load of dishes neatly on a table. Her internal sensors whined that her arms and legs could use maintenance. She ignored them.

“I do, I suppose. So. Do you like it?”

Kay turned to her. “Yes,” she said, in what she hoped was an assertive enough tone to forestall any further inquiry. She knew where this was going. People liked asking her intrusive questions like: