Jaym Gates - War Stories

“I… I’m sorry about your wife,” said Kay.

Payl nodded. “Yeah. Hey… Dees was big on making her own choices. Even if part of you is her, she’d want you to do what’s right for you. Okay?”

“Thank you for picking me up,” was all Kay could think of to say to that.

Payl’s smile grew wide again. “You’re welcome! Find the rain!”

Kay must have looked puzzled, because Payl added, “That’s what we say when we hope someone gets lucky. There’s never rain!”

With that, Payl roared out of the village, and Kay was alone again.

She found her way to the store/comm shack and asked the man at the counter about an off–planet communications system. He glared at her; she couldn’t hide what she was, or her Sovene Army markings.

“I can pay,” she said hurriedly. She removed the currency she kept for emergencies. It seemed thin and paltry, but the storekeeper’s eyes widened.

“It’s expensive,” he warned. “Very expensive.”

She thought, then removed one of the sensors from her leg. It was full of valuable electronics and a few precious metals, even if it wouldn’t work without her input. He frowned, but he pointed the way to a console in a booth. She went inside and located the code for Sector 15 Command in her file system.

Her fingers hesitated.

Thirty–seven days in the heat and dust. Thirty–seven days of waiting patiently next to the rotting corpses of her friends, her systems damaged, her long–distance voice silent.

Thirty–seven days of being utterly alone for the first time in her life.

Why didn’t you come for me?

There was a knock on the outside of the booth. “I’m using this,” she said.

“Come out of there,” said a voice she didn’t recognize. “Now.”

She scanned and found six humans, all armed. They’d come quickly from the street and the back of the store.

She could fight, she could probably hurt them badly enough to escape, but what was the point?

Kay stepped out of the booth, hands raised.

They were going to kill her; she knew it with that cold, absolute certainty. There was no escape. Their leader, a man named Bolus, had ordered her tied her up in the back of the store with ropes and metal bonds generating electromagnetic fields to dampen her electricals. They’d been prepared.

Bolus sat on a chair in front of her. They’d kept her waiting for hours before he came back to see her. She saw only death when she looked at him. He was young, with beady, hate–filled eyes and a bushy beard worn in showy defiance of Sovene fashion and hygiene.

“So you’re a spy,” said Bolus. “Sovenes are coming back. They promised they wouldn’t, but here you are.”

“No,” she said, her voice badly slurred from her bonds’ interference. “I was part of a unit sent out before the evacuation. We were caught by a bomb.”

Bolus laughed. “One of mine, I hope. Good! Dead Sovenes, everybody’s happy. So what, you just waited? Like a good little drone? Ha! I bet you’ll just sit there while we peel you apart.”

“I have no technology you can use,” said Kay. “My systems are integrated; they won’t work without my brain.”

“Oh, I don’t care about that,” said Bolus. “We’ll take you apart because we can. And because it’s all the justice we’ll ever see from the Sovenes.”

“Justice,” repeated Kay dubiously.

“Yes, justice!” said Bolus, suddenly angry. “For Gorodan, and for Yellow Sands! There were children there! My brother was there.”

Kay had been at Yellow Sands, not long after. She pictured the long field in her mind, and the blood flecks on the prison wall they hadn’t quite been able to wash away.

But she also remembered such kindness. Soldiers giving kids the last of their rations, her unit taking in a family for a week, building schools and roads and sewers… she remembered that, too.

“It’s… complicated,” she said helplessly.

“Sure,” said Bolus.

“You’d be just like us,” said Kay, trying one last desperate tactic.

“I know,” said Bolus grimly. “Like you said. Complicated.” He opened the door, and his people filed in. The shopkeeper was among them.

“We’re ready,” said one.

“Good.” Bolus turned back to Kay. “It’ll be in the square out there.” He jerked his head at the window. “It’s no small thing to kill a Sovene Synthetic. We’ll put your armor up around the village, so people know not to mess with me and mine.”

There were nods all around.

“You’ll serve a purpose,” said a woman. “The provisional government is useless; criminal gangs and warlords are everywhere. When you left, you left anarchy. We need to be safe.”

“I could keep you safe better if I was alive,” slurred Kay.

“I doubt it,” said Bolus fiercely. “And even if so, who cares? I’m the head man around here now, and what I say goes. You’re gonna get dismantled. Is that death for you? Or are you already dead? Huh. Only the Sovenes would dig up the dead and make them fight.”

The light was bright, worse thanks to the magnetic fields dampening her vision.

“You scared?” Bolus taunted, as they strapped her to a pole. “Mighty Sovene! You scared?”

“Yes,” said Kay truthfully, her voice disintegrating into static.

The crowd murmured as Bolus’s people brought plasma cutters to take her apart, one slice at a time.

She tried to replay good memories. But they turned into bloody fields, stone prison walls, and so much else.

“I’m… sorry,” she said to one of them.

He stepped back a pace, and looked at his companion.

“I can’t do this,” he said, shutting down the plasma cutter and dropping it. “Look at her, just sitting there…”

“Damn it!” said Bolus, picking up the plasma cutter. “It has to be done! We have to be strong! The Curvatene boys will come through here and kill everybody if we’re not strong enough!” He tried to hand the cutter back to the man. “Do it. Make it quick and painless. Remember, it’s just a machine. It doesn’t care if it’s alive or dead.”

“I care,” said Kay. The words were barely audible. Only the man and Bolus heard them.

Bolus sighed and raised the cutter himself. He switched it on, and it hummed menacingly to life.

But at that moment there was a thunderous blast and the roar of an engine, and Kay saw Jassalan’s head over the sea of faces. She was riding in the back of the truck, manning a huge mounted gun. Payl was driving, and Liss and Yago leaned out the windows, rifles in hand. “Get back!” Jassalan hollered as the crowd parted. “Go on! Bolus, get away from her!”

“Well,” said Bolus. “Always knew you’d turn back to the Sovenes in the end, Jassalan.”

“They abandoned her,” said Jassalan. “You can’t just kill her in cold blood! She’s done nothing to you.”

“ She’s got no blood! And she’s no innocent, you know that. The Sovenes are all guilty!”

Jassalan shook her head. “Get away from her, or I blow you to bits.”

Bolus gave her a cocky grin. “Yeah?” He strode up to the vehicle, arms spread. “Go ahead.”

The village took a collective breath.

Jassalan shrugged and blew him to bits.

“I think that’s got it,” said Liss, tightening a bolt and running a scanner over the new connection. “How’s it feel?”

“Serviceable,” said Kay.

Jassalan stood in the kitchen door, nodding. “Good work.”

They’d scrounged the parts out of the village’s salvage yard during the aftermath. Liss, who was some sort of mechanical genius, had managed to cobble together enough old electronics to mend Kay’s broken long–distance communications equipment. It took weeks and she’d grumped the whole time, but by the time she was done she would wink at Kay when she thought no one else was looking.