Someone pulled on the back of my pants and I turned to see an infantryman, older than me, his sunburnt face pasty and grey, lying on the two seats right behind me. I sat on the floor, wedged into the corner between the wall and the driver's seat.
"You're okay, mate," I said, no idea if I lied or not. I couldn't even see his injury.
"Got a nip?" He asked.
I gave him a gulp of the rum I still carried in a hip flask, and then took one myself.
"Shell took the whole arse end of the truck off," he whispered. "All them kids."
Nothing I could say to that.
"Wish I coulda met my kid one more time." I looked up at him, saw a tear run down his face. "She was a pretty little thing, just like her mother. Just wish I coulda seen how she turned out." He went quiet, eyes closed. Not dead. I could see him breathing. I stayed quiet and let him dream about his little girl.
We arrived back at the city garrison just after nightfall and evacuated the wounded. Last off was the youngster Ilyan had been comforting. I'd looked at her when we arrived and knew we didn't need to hurry. When the others had all been unloaded, I went over to Ilyan. He looked up at me, eyes red and sore.
"She kept calling me Dezi. I think he was her lover."
"Okay," I said, gently. I beckoned Diliph who came over and helped me move the dead soldier off Ilyan's lap. We carried her body out of the vehicle and placed her carefully on the ground.
"Dead one," I said to the medics collecting up the wounded. "We're empty."
The medic glanced at the dead girl as Diliph covered her with a blanket.
"Leave her for the snatchers," he said, referring to the crews that collected up the bodies after combat. He walked off. I flicked him the middle finger, and then got back aboard the transport.
Ilyan sat in near darkness, the only one still aboard. I couldn't sit down beside him, the seat was soaked with the dead girl's blood.
"Ilyan," I said, gentle as I could, seeing how pale and on the edge he looked. "Can I do anything for you?"
He looked up at me, eyes blank and bleak.
"You can get me the fuck off this planet."
Chapter 20
I didn't expect it to be so beautiful. In terms of fighting Chiamajan was even more hostile then Kitsnujitar. But the landscape...
Rolling hills of blue-green grass, or something enough like grass. Colourful patches of flowers, dotted around those meadows. Pools and rivers that reflected the colour of the sky. The blue sky. The exact right shade of blue.
It felt like coming home.
Except for one crucial difference.
As we stepped off the shuttle belonging to the smuggler who'd brought us here, we all looked around nervously in the bright sunlight. We'd become used to sneaking around under cover of darkness. But we couldn't do that here. Chiamajan had no night. Its orbit and twin suns kept the whole planet bathed in sunlight at all times. No darkness. No night. Ever.
The Chias didn't sleep. Nothing on the planet did. Ilyan explained that sleep hadn't evolved here since it conferred no advantage.
I'd met Chias back in the days when we fought beside them not against them. They used to sneer at humans and jeer at how weak we must be, needing to spend a third of our lives unconscious. That handicap meant we could never beat them in a war, they claimed. Since the 'sleepers' were currently kicking their arses here and elsewhere I think we could be entitled to a formal apology.
"We're staying on foot," Ilyan said, looking up from a map he and Maiga had been studying for ten minutes. "Humans are holding most of this area, fighting Chia hill troops around the edges of the plain." He waved a hand at the distant mountains. "We've got some locations. Let's go."
He strode off, easily shouldering his pack. A much larger pack than the little one he'd swapped with mine all those months ago now. I quickly fell into step beside him. The others, who had relaxed and put down their gear, now scurried to collect it together and catch up to us. Maiga waited for them and took rear guard.
I glanced at Ilyan as we walked ahead of the group. His face looked set and determined. He'd changed. Not only over those months since I met him, he'd changed ever since that day in the convoy.
"I was thinking about her again last night," he said. "I can't stop thinking about her."
I knew he meant the young soldier who'd died in his arms as we raced back to the garrison.
"I've never said we shouldn't fight," he went on. "I just want us to fight for ourselves. But now I have to wonder if I should be going further."
"If you mean telling people not to fight at all then I think that's going to be a less than popular approach."
"I know." He looked depressed. "I know. But perhaps it is the only answer. If the... If my prediction comes true and the aliens come after us perhaps it would be better not to fight at all. Perhaps we should surrender."
I almost choked. "Humans never surrender!"
"Give me your rifle!" Ilyan snapped suddenly in a commanding tone.
"Come and take it!" I snarled back, and then blinked, frowned. Pure ingrained reaction. A reflex now. You learned that when you turned twelve and they put a training rifle in your hands for the first time. A classroom full of high or quavery voices spitting back: "Come and take it!" when the instructor ordered "Give me your rifle!" You didn't even know how to fire it yet, but you knew you'd die sooner than hand it over voluntarily.
Ilyan sighed. "Right."
I thought about it for a while.
"Are you suggesting that if we surrendered and..." I could barely even say the words. "Gave up our weapons that they might leave us alone? Not destroy us?"
"It's one possible strategy."
I thought about it some more then shook my head.
"It can't work. They would never trust us. They know us too well. They know..." My hand moved too fast for him to follow and I popped out the knife Ilyan didn't know I had strapped to my forearm. The blade flashed in the sunlight. "They know we always have another weapon."
****
We walked until--well until it should have been night on any normal planet. We walked until we were tired and hungry enough to know it must be dinnertime.
After we ate, I lounged on the grass, head resting on my pack and let my eyes drift closed. Blue sky above me, outside my head and inside. The eagle circled, gliding as I lay on my back and watched it float on the air. Before it...
"No!" I sat up, gasping. "No!"
"Jadeth," Ilyan came to my side at once, holding my arm, talking soothingly. "Shh, it's just a dream, you're safe."
This place looked and smelled so much like back there I found it hard to shake off the dream. I closed my eyes again, gripped the sweet smelling grass in my hands. Sweet smell, blood smell. I didn't go back to the school barracks for hours that day. Got chewed out and assigned punishment detail for a week. After I'd been to the infirmary to get my hands bandaged.
I opened my eyes again to find everyone staring at me. Even the damn space ninjas looked at me if I'd gone nuts. Pretty rich coming from a couple of football bats like them.
"What am I, a cabaret act?" I snarled. They turned away, some of them at least looking embarrassed. Ilyan's hand pressed on my shoulder, pushing me to lie down again.
"Go back to sleep, Jadeth. You're tired."
I didn't fight him. I let him push me down on my back and started to drift again. Ilyan bent over me, outlined against the blue sky, his hair golden in the sun light.
Golden hair. Golden feathers. Gold. Blood. Death. Eyes closed, fighting the dream, I sank deep into the cold dark earth.
****
I slept for six hours and woke to find most of the others asleep too with Rish on watch. The only other one awake was Esha. She sat cross-legged with her eyes closed, hands resting on her knees.
I looked around and couldn't see Ilyan.
"Captain and Ilyan are patrolling," Rish said quietly. Esha opened her eyes.
"Together?" I asked and laughed. "Yeah, that'll work.
"
I stood up and stretched then pulled a clean shirt out of my pack. Esha watched me as I took off the old one and I made sure she got an eyeful of the muscles in case she might be having any thoughts about repeating the head kicking move.
"You really should have paid that man the money you owed him."
I spun to gape at Esha, my hand automatically covering the big scar on my side.
"How the hell do you know about that?" I demanded, speaking too loudly. People stirred in their sleep and Rish shushed me. Esha shrugged.
"We know everything."
"Yeah? You know what I'm gonna do to you if you don't keep it zipped?"
"I suspect I could make a fair guess." She didn't look remotely intimidated and I turned away from the little weirdo with a disgusted snort. I picked up my rifle.
"Think I'll go and see just how alert our perimeter patrol is."
****
Checking their alertness might be a chance to score some points off Maiga, but really I just hated to have Ilyan out of my sight. Sometimes I wished I could do without sleep like the Chias. Then at least I'd know he had someone I trusted watching over him all the time.
When I saw them, I stopped short and ducked down into the long grass. Ilyan and Maiga sat on a sun-warmed rock checking out the view across the plain to the mountains. Not in a 'planning our next move' way though, but more in a 'pair of lovebirds' way. He had his arm around her waist, holding her close. Her arm rested on his back and she ran her fingers through his hair.
His hair reached half way down his back now. The sergeant in me wanted to tell him to get it cut, but another part of me just wanted to watch it shimmering in the sunshine. Gold. Like golden feathers. I groaned. Why the hell couldn't I shake off the dream?
They kissed. I felt sick. Their affection should have been touching, but instead it disgusted me. The cheating bitch's kisses told him lies without words. I put my head down on my forearm and let the scent of the earth fill me.
When I looked up again they had gone. I glanced at my watch to see nearly an hour had passed. I must have fallen asleep. I got up, suddenly disgusted with myself, feeling like some kind of pervert for watching them. What would I have done if they had been about to have sex? Stayed and watched?
If I had then I doubt I'd have been able to keep down the last thing I ate.
Chapter 21
We hiked around that plain for a week, back in our familiar routine. Despite the beauty, the constant light scraped our nerves, making it hard to sleep properly.
We hooked up with several units of humans and most of them already knew us. Even said they'd been waiting for us. And I finally figured out why Ilyan had brought along the ninjas, as opposed to say tying them up and dumping them headfirst in the nearest septic tank. After he made his speech the soldiers would ask all of us questions, and the sight of that pair at work was a thing to behold. They laid it on thick as butter. They glowed while they talked. They convinced others with the sheer weight of their belief. So they had a use after all.
I found them bloody useful for taking the piss out of too. Especially when they did their morning exercise, taking up odd positions and stances, usually in unison. "Body control," Esha said, when I asked her why she was standing on one leg, her arms moving slowly from straight out in front to reach for the blue sky.
Their bodies looked fine. Their brains on the other hand... no comment.
****
It had to happen one day. I'm just surprised it took four planets and several months for it to happen.
"We're lost." I glanced back from point where I walked with Ilyan at my side. I spoke again. "Definitely lost."
"We are not lost," Maiga insisted, looking at her snapper. "Keep moving."
"We should have found the camp by now, surely?" Ilyan said.
"So they've moved on," Maiga said. "That does not mean that we're lost."
"Well I'm not going any further if we're lost," Tesla insisted, slowing down, starting to shrug off his pack. Maiga grabbed him by one of the pack's shoulder straps.
"Don't you dare," she snapped. She called ahead to Ilyan and me. "Keep moving!"
"Sure, Captain," I replied. "Road to nowhere is obviously where we're meant to be." I grinned at Ilyan, but he gave me a small frown in return.
"Stop it," he said quietly, and I at once went deadly serious.
"Right, boss."
We walked on, with mutterings coming from behind from Tesla. I didn't complain. What's to complain about when I'm strolling along by a stream with the sparkling water laughing over the stones, the sunshine warm on my face and nobody trying to shoot me? I could walk here beside Ilyan all day.
"We are lost," I said quietly to Ilyan, but he just shrugged, didn't seem to mind that we were heading nowhere. He did looked rather tired though I noticed. We all did actually, the continual daylight playing all kinds of hell with our sleeping patterns. So the part of me that wanted a good night's kip looked forward to getting off this planet. But another part of me would be happy to stay here for a good long time. We'd have to move on eventually of course. Ilyan hadn't talked about where we'd go next yet, but I think I knew.
Home. We'd go back to Earth and we'd have a lot of people behind us. High Command would have to listen. According to the news we kept getting in over the Snappers belonging to Akil and Esha, High Command had started getting very jumpy. Human units had already abandoned several small conflicts and remained unaccounted for. Ships refused to answer hails and intelligence reports showed them making the long trip home to Earth. Some rumours even claimed a sizeable fleet of Earth ships had built up around Neptune. Growing steadily. Waiting to move into position. Waiting to fight.
They needed only one thing now. A leader.
I glanced at Ilyan again. Did he feel the weight of destiny on his shoulders? Could he see the direction fate pointed? He'd been right all along. A grass roots movement had been the only way to do this, the only way. Because Earth was all any of us really had.
Right now Ilyan didn't look as if he was thinking about destiny. He had a piece of grass in his mouth, his hair hung loose stirred by the breeze and he hummed a tune, off key. He glanced at me, sensing my gaze perhaps and smiled, then looked ahead again and stopped suddenly, staring. I looked forward, my stance shifting, my rifle coming up. But I paused and frowned.
"What the hell?"
A cloud rose from the ground, ahead of us, then above us. Insects, wings the same blue green as the grass, shimmering in the sunlight.
"Butterflies," Ilyan gasped, and then laughed with delight. They swarmed like locusts, thousands of them, but did look more like butterflies. The beating of their wings made a low hum but no harsh buzzing.
I looked around at Jia when she laughed. She held out her hand and one of the insects landed on it briefly before flying off again. Tesla, still bug-phobic, looked less happy and swatted away any that came too near him. Tanashi scanned them; perhaps worried they would sting or bite. Maiga stood beside her, checking the readouts too. In a moment Tanashi shrugged.
"They're harmless."
One landed on the barrel of my rifle and crawled along it towards my hand. I watched it, marvelling at the delicate beauty of the thing. Despite the Doc's assurance, I still felt wary of letting it touch me. I didn't swat it, but when it crawled too close I shook my rifle until it flew off again. As quickly as it rose the cloud turned, as if blown by the wind and sank to the ground again, into the grass. A few of the 'butterflies' remained in sight, lost perhaps, hovering over the stream.
We'd all come to a halt, when the insects rose up, so Ilyan turned to the group, smiling and said, "Come on everyone, I'm not paying you to stand around."
"You're not paying us at all!" Vimal called back, brushing a stray butterfly out of Jia's hair and laughing.
"Nah, Vim, he's just not paying you." I grinned, teasing the lad. "The rest of us are all on big salaries."
"Then I wish to lodge a formal complaint," Vim said adjusting the s
houlder straps of his pack and grinning back at me.
"Are we moving then, or what?" Tesla asked, looking as if he'd prefer the 'or what.' I think I would too. I was hungry and ready for a nice snooze in the sunshine.
"Er, no." Maiga looked up from her Snapper. "Sorry, we are lost." She glared at me, as if it was my fault. She really hated it when I was right.
****
Sometimes I hated it when I was right. Like about Maiga and Tesla. The next day, or rather, nineteen and a half hours later, since "days" doesn't exactly apply around here, I finally decided to do something about it.
We'd got ourselves back on track and were now heading to a hospital unit. Ilyan liked field hospitals. Some of the patients would go back into combat; some would be on their way home for convalescence. All of them could spread his message, even from their beds.
Ilyan actually brought up the subject himself. The subject of Maiga anyway. He'd been brooding again, which he did a lot lately. That weight of destiny maybe. After a while sitting staring ahead he said he wanted to take a walk. I went with him. I went everywhere with him and Rish went everywhere with Tesla. I'd tried questioning Rish to see if he had suspicions about Maiga and Tesla too, but he said he'd noticed nothing.
Ilyan and me walked in silence for a while, moved well away from the others before he spoke.
"Jadeth, I'm glad you and Maiga have been making an effort to get along better."
"Mostly we've been making an effort to keep out of each other's way."
"Yes." He sighed. "Yes. Well I don't suppose I can force you to be friends. It's just, well things might come to a head soon. I don't want to have to worry about you two fighting."
I felt bad then, ashamed that I might have given him extra stress and worry.
"Ilyan." I hesitated, apologies not coming easy to me. "I don't want to do anything to make your work harder. If that's what you think I've been doing with Maiga, then I'm sorry. I will try to get along better with her."
"It would help me." He smiled. "I hate to think that two people I care so much about can't be friends with each other. You are both so important to me."