John Shirley - A Song Called Youth

He stared at himself, thinking: That’s me inside.

He’d always had a deep empathy for children. And he remembered, when there were children in the Processing Center, how they had died of dysentery and cholera and malnutrition, shaking from spasms of endless diarrhea, puking when there was nothing left to puke, feverishly pleading for water; the dull anguish on the parents’ faces when they gave up trying to explain about the water ration; when they had to accept: I cannot help my child. I cannot even comfort the child.

Someone had been shot one morning for giving away their own water ration; for no particular reason, giving away your ration was forbidden. And the children, dying slowly, had begged, as their parents hugged and rocked them, and one of the guards had become annoyed and shouted, “Shut that brat up or I’ll feed ’er me boot!”

Roseland had seen what was happening that day in the Processing Center, and hadn’t the strength, then, to fight. Couldn’t say a word.

Maybe that was when his insides had shriveled to match his outsides.

He thought these things, staring at his sunken-eyed reflection, until Torrence said, “Here it comes. Let’s do it.”

Here it comes but still a ways off, between the buildings, the clean-edged, cold, crystallized steel arc of the hijacked Jægernaut, slicing up through the skyline. The distant, ringing thunder of its approach, coming through areas already war-ruined, or condemned.

They were in the prearranged positions in seconds, Musa and Jiddah and Bibisch and Roseland under Pasolini’s command; Musa with his RPG; Torrence rendezvousing with a second group taking out the guards.

Torrence came out of one alley down the street, while a third team on a rooftop opened up on the guards with armor-piercing explosive rounds. The cluster of guards meeting for the change in shift had the new kevlar-7 armor, more resistant than the old SA bull outfitting, and the rounds tended to explode on the armor or on the ground near them, with little effect; but one high velocity round hit at just the right angle and penetrated the armor. The guard fell writhing while his armor ballooned with blood. The others were staggering with the small explosions, trying to bring their rifles into play, the so-called “smart” rifles, computer-enhanced, except they were stupid because you had to perform two steps, accessing the firing chip and rangefinder, to get them to fire, and by then Torrence was on them with three others, tossing the explosive disks at them… one of the disks deflecting, the other two sucking flat on the armor and blowing. The NR to Torrence’s right going down, spinning, cut in half by a burst from a guard who finally convinced his smart rifle to defend him…

Roseland only glimpsed this in fits and snatches as he steadied Musa’s RPG-8 and stepped out of the way. Musa had brought three of the vintage twentieth-century rocket-firing weapons with him when he’d slipped into Paris, and a small truckload of rounds: a masterful stage-magicking act of smuggling. A survival skill handed down through generations of Mujahedin.

The RPG hissed exhaust from its vents, and the rocket went shuh-shuh-shuh directly to the third-floor window. Roseland prayed it was the right window. The rocket punched through the plaster and fiberboard patch over the window, detonating, obscuring the socket with a fireball—

Almost simultaneously another guerrilla RPG on the roof ripped the security-camera-and-machine-gun system to shreds—

The horizon’s battle-ax thundered closer—

The last of the outer guards went down, blown in half, his screaming amplified by his helmet PA system to echo around the street—

(There are men inside those mirror fishbowls, Roseland thought.)

A guard stumbled out of the front door of Processing Center 13, missing his helmet, coughing in the smoke that billowed after him, his face charred, but firing at them, bullets strafing up the street until Pasolini cut him down with a short, neat burst that punched his face into his skull.

Roseland couldn’t move.

You’re Point Cadre, he told himself. Go! But the monolithic bulk of the converted high-rise seemed to lean forward, as if poising to fall on him, to scoop him into itself, like some gigantic shell-creature eating a worm. How could he have come back here?

He looked at the tumbled ruins of 12, thought he could just make out a human skull and a yellowing, skeletal hand emerging from beneath the massive pinch of a boulder. Whose body?

Gabrielle’s, bulldozed there?

Pasolini kicked him in the tailbone. It hurt like a bitch, like the bitch she was, Roseland thought, but it was a blow that could have come from the other, angry part of him, personified.

“Get moving, asshole!” she shouted, saying what he was saying to himself.

And he remembered Father Lespere telling them earnestly, “All of us are already dead. That is what you must accept, and then you can begin to do the work.”

Jamais plus. Never again!

The dam burst and the rage poured through, carrying him with it, his rifle spitting fire and metal at the second guard staggering from the door. The bull’s armor deflected the bullets, sparking, but the firepower’s impact knocking him backward. Roseland was running at him, firing again, screaming something (What? Maybe it should have been: “Never again!” But it wasn’t. It was: “Die, you ASSSSSSHOOOOLLLLLLLLLLLESSSSSSSSS!”) as the guy got to his feet, only to be knocked back again by Roseland’s next burst. But still the guy got up, almost literally wading upstream against Roseland’s gunfire. And then Roseland’s clip gave out and his assault rifle lapsed into sheepish silence and the guy was firing back…

Pasolini shoved past Roseland, tossing a grenade, everyone flattening except the guard who reacted too slowly, the explosive flipping him through the air so that blood made a spiral against the wall behind him.

Roseland: Up and plunging into the building, running up the stairs, not allowing himself to think, not even stopping to reload (aware that Pasolini was yelling at him, cursing him in a mix of Italian and English), climbing over the body of a guard dying under a heap of imploded masonry. The guard’s crushed body giving a little under the slab that Roseland clambered over; the guard screaming with pain—

Then Roseland was past, kicking down the door, and there they were.

They were being punished.

Outside, Dan Torrence issued commands, sending guerillas into the building to begin evacuating prisoners as the articulated truck Musa had stolen that morning backed up to the door. Torrence moved across the courtyard, checking the blockades, moving from one to the next as they were set up: stolen cars blocking the street.

Behind him, Pasolini dispatched the wounded enemy. Torrence had given her the job because she’d argued for the necessity of it the night before. Torrence had argued that wounded men are a burden on the enemy; leave their wounded alive and you slow them down and force them to use resources and time and personnel. But Pasolini pointed out the SA Army was relatively small and most of them were racist fanatics. A greater advantage was had in reducing their numbers than in inconveniencing them. If these wounded recovered, they were a political and military resource for the enemy.

But killing the enemy wounded is not a sound political move, Torrence had said.

Oh, but it is, Pasolini said. It underlines our commitment. We’re more a force to be reckoned with…

She’d persuaded Steinfeld, and now it was done. Sometimes Torrence wondered if they hadn’t skirted the real issue: that he simply wanted to spare lives, and nursed some guilt over the act of killing; whereas Pasolini enjoyed killing.