John Shirley - A Song Called Youth

Steinfeld looked grim.

After the meal—it would be their only meal that day—Torrence stood a watch outside the cave. The clouds that had drifted in at midmorning had thickened, began to unspool thin streamers of sleet. Torrence trudged from one miserably uncomfortable spot to another in the shallow, open area of broken rock outside the narrow cave mouth, slipping on ice-glazed patches of gray snow. A faint wash of smoke drifted out of the cave entrance but was quickly sucked away by the drizzly wind. The wind burned his nose and ears, and the auto-shotgun was a dead weight on its shoulder strap.

He was dismally grateful when, an hour after sunset, just when it was getting really cold, Steinfeld sent out the dour, pallid Frenchman, Sortonne, to relieve him.

Torrence found Claire sitting cross-legged on the sleeping bag, cleaning a rifle, forehead creased with concentration. Danco had taught her how to clean the rifle just the day before.

Now Danco watched, grinning, as Torrence sat down beside her, his hands and fingers tingling in the sudden warmth from the campfire.

They didn’t speak for a while. Then Claire said, “The sky clear out there?”

“No. You wondering about the Colony?”

She hesitated, then nodded, frowning over the assault rifle. She’d put it back together perfectly. “No news. When I left, it was on the verge of anarchy. And the New-Soviets were closing in. I’m not even sure if the damn place is still up there. Just to see it…”

He asked, “You can see it with the naked eye?”

“If you know how to look. It looks like a star.”

“I guess you’re not used to being down here yet. Joining the NR is a bad way to readjust to the planet.”

She stared at her grime-blackened hands, her broken, dirt encrusted nails. She shrugged and looked around. “Actually…” She smiled sadly. “The cave is sort of comforting—the Colony’s corridors weren’t so different, really… God, I just wish I could know if…” She broke off, squeezing her eyes shut.

“Wish you could know if he’s dead?” Torrence asked.

After almost ten seconds she nodded, very slowly. “If Dad is dead.”

They didn’t speak again for nearly two hours. The fire burned low; darkness gathered itself around them. Steinfeld, Levassier, and Danco talked softly at another campfire nearer the front. Most of the others were asleep.

Torrence and Claire sat side by side on the sleeping bag, knees drawn up, hugging themselves for warmth. Suddenly she said, in a whisper, “It’s getting cold in here. But I… it’s like I can hardly feel the cold, like the feeling is in someone else. I left the Colony to get away from the fighting, and to get away from the way the place was falling apart—the place I lived all those years—and, shit. Look at me.”

“You could get to the States. Steinfeld could probably arrange it.”

Mentally adding to himself, If we get out of this alive.

She shook her head. “The Second Alliance took the Colony. Enslaved everyone there. It was bad enough I ran away from the cocksuckers once. I couldn’t live with twice. I want to stay where the fight is—the fight against the SA. And for Dad’s sake, this is my way to fight Praeger.” It was difficult to make out her expression in the dimness. “Maybe I should’ve stayed in the Colony. Fought them there.”

“What would have happened if you’d stayed?”

“I’d have been arrested. Interrogated. Probably killed. They’d have made it look like the rebels killed us, I guess.”

“So how can you feel guilty about not staying? You couldn’t have fought them, you were trapped, cornered.”

“Feelings aren’t rational. I mean, how many times in a person’s life do they feel guilty for something they can’t really control?”

He had to concede that. “Know what you mean.”

“And today I got so… I just felt fucked. Those things that weren’t even human were hunting us… those unmanned flying machines …” Her voice broke. “I was more scared than I thought a person could be without their heart blowing up.”

“Me too.”

“Were you?” She sounded surprised.

“Scared shitless.” He reached out, tentatively laid his hand on hers. Started to withdraw when he felt her move but she turned her hand palm upward, squeezed his hand, leaned toward him, and pressed her head against his shoulder.

Torrence had an overwhelming urge to embrace her—and he gave in to it. She returned the embrace. He felt her shaking as she sobbed softly.

He held her for a long time, being careful of the wound on her arm, till it was too cold to stay atop the sleeping bag. “Let’s get under the covers,” he whispered. “And sleep,” he added, to let her know he wasn’t going to make a move on her.

She nodded. They took off their boots and climbed into the double sleeping bag. Both of them smelled sour. But it had been a long time since that had mattered.

They held one another against the cold, and the fear.

He’d almost gone to sleep when he felt her moving against him, a kind of blind nuzzling of her hips. He felt his cock harden; she felt it, too, and pressed her crotch against it. Both of them ached, and her wound burned on her upper arm—but that made the caressing more piquant, a deeper relief. She unbuttoned her blouse and pressed his rough hands to her breasts.

There was some fumbling with zippers, and pants buttons, but in a few minutes they were joined, with Claire on top, straddling him, sighing softly, almost sobbing; she was very warm, and very wet, inside. And when she came, she pulled his face to her breasts and he was amazed—exquisitely amazed—to experience the sheer, silken luxury of them here, in this place, this animal’s den on the cold shore of a battlefield.

At ten the next morning Steinfeld, Levassier, Danco, and Torrence held a conference. They looked at maps on the glowing blue screen of a hand computer; they collated what data they had about SA, NATO, and New-Soviet troop movements and came to a bitter conclusion. To leave there was probably suicide. To stay there was to await execution.

They decided to go through the mountains. The wounded would have to be abandoned—or put to death. No one said this but everyone knew it. There was real sorrow in Steinfeld’s eyes.

They’d never had to do it before. Torrence wondered if they could bring themselves to go through with it.

The question was moot, because before the guerrillas could move out, the enemy came.

They heard the thudding of choppers, and an electronically amplified voice booming outside the cave entrance, its absurd verbosity echoing between the rocks: “ This is the Second Alliance Security Force acting on behalf of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization. Come out of your camp unarmed, with your hands on top of your heads. If you surrender, you will not be harmed. Repeat, if you surrender…”

There was no question of surrender. They would put them under extractors. You can’t keep anything back from an extractor. They’d know what Steinfeld knew, and that would mean arrests, hundreds of arrests…

Steinfeld looked almost relieved. They wouldn’t have to abandon the wounded.

They looked at Steinfeld. Steinfeld said, “Deploy for defense.”

Seen from Earth, it was a star. But inside…

Dan “Hard-Eyes” Torrence had a sister. He assumed she was safe in the same fortresslike housing project their parents lived in, near New York City.

But Dan Torrence’s sister, Kitty, had married while he was in Europe. She’d married a technicki, a black technicki in fact, and she’d emigrated to FirStep, the Space Colony, to be with her husband, Lester, who was a communications technician. That was just before the New-Soviets blockaded the Colony.