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When his Class III disrupter vibrated to life, Bertarr Bilji gave little visible reaction. Glancing at the confirming light announcing the remote activation of his weapon, the middle-aged Conscript absently noted the slight acceleration of his heartbeat.
Had he truly grown that used to the routine?
Clearing a suddenly dry throat, he scanned the other men gathered about the tables in the "dining" room. The dusty, unsmiling faces he knew so well reflected the arid sterility of the base to which they had been exiled.
"You all know what to do?" Bertarr asked.
Mumbled, sometimes resentful assents drifted through the still air.
Bertarr's gaze lingered on the determined eyes of his teenaged son, Seltin. An angry scar inflicted during the last Soldier training exercise scored a line down the left side of his face. "You all right?" he asked more softly.
A faint smile lifted his only offspring's lips. "Do I have any choice?"
The de facto leader of the current crop of Conscripts rose from his creaky metal chair. "You have your assignments. Find your partners. Make certain they're ready." He checked his battered watch. "Let's get to it."
As best he could, he encouraged the score of men who had been listening to his defense proposals. All day he had met with various groups in his quest to mold the disparate Conscripts into some semblance of unity and purpose. Some had arrived only days before, strangers to a life alien to their work-a-day worlds. Others had survived at least an encounter or two with the Soldiers.
None had endured longer than he and his son.
Bertarr paused near the doorway as all but one of the men plodded into the slanting, actinic rays of the Neklar sun. The few points of humidity that clung forlornly to the desert air did nothing to alleviate the
sucking voracity of the Burellin Desert.
Bertarr hesitated. "Coming?"
Gray-haired Sterr Sipnin fingered the dented barrel of his Class II crackler. "They probably won't be here for hours. Maybe days." A streak of defiance colored his voice.
"Or minutes..."
With half-lidded eyes, Sterr studied his fellow Conscript's expression. "No need for such an exasperated look. I'll be along soon enough."
A rebuke teetered on Bertarr's tongue. Expelling a long breath, he nodded and trotted after his son.
The sanguine light of the melting sun burned across the rocky landscape. His command for the men to find their partners had been superfluous. When the Monitors electronically removed the locks on the Conscripts' weapons, the vibration and light signals left no doubt in anyone's mind what was to come.
The cracked sandstone walls of the canyon in which the Conscripts lived lifted high above them on two sides. To the east, the broad floor rose in a series of wide steps towards a toothless range of mountains. The western entrance dropped into the hostile and empty expanse of the desert...empty, that is, except for the automatic weaponry that would hone in on a Conscript's ID implant. Should a Conscript foolishly challenge the sand and the creatures of the forsaken wastelands penning them in, those automated guardians would destroy him.
"Dad! Over here." Seltin waved from the relatively sheltered haven of a natural cave.
Bertarr lifted his rifle in acknowledgment. He would join Seltin soon. First, however, he had to reassure his reluctant followers.
The paired Conscripts knelt, sat, and stood about the compound and in the dilapidated metal shacks that sheltered them and offered additional targets for the soon-to-arrive Soldiers.
Flegler Honton nodded curtly and nudged his partner to stand as Bertarr approached. Their designated spot lay on a ridge overlooking one of the branches leading towards the canyon. A jumble of massive rocks crowned the ridge line.
"Flegler," Bertarr said in greeting.
"Bertarr." The middle-aged man hooked a thumb at the youngster restlessly scanning the dimming horizon. "Remember Lossit Tabler?"
"Of course. From the last group, right?" he said, thrusting out a weathered hand.
Blinking, Lossit focused on Bertarr as though only just seeing him. "Sure. Thanks." He gnawed on his lips. "They'll be here soon, right? Which way do they normally come? Is this going to work?"
Bertarr waited for the new Conscript to run down then placed a reassuring palm on the boy's thin shoulder. "Listen to Flegler. He's been here almost as long as I have. Follow the plan."
Lossit's gaze flickered between the two men. Flegler's grim expression offered little encouragement. "We're going to die. Aren't we?" Instant tears sprang to his pale green eyes. Faint sobs shuddered his chest. "I'm not going to make it. I'm going to --"
With more force than he'd intended, Bertarr shook Lossit until his teeth clacked against each other. "Listen to me!" he shouted. "Listen," he said more quietly. "You can't dwell on that. Don't make this a self-fulfilling prophecy."
In the parched atmosphere, Lossit's tears dried before they reached his cheeks. "It's true, though. I heard the others talking. Half of us are going to die. That's the average. They said so."
Calming lies did not spring easily to Bertarr's thoughts. "Many of us will be killed -- murdered -- yes." Back in Parum City and in the loving company of his wife, Treyna, the casual frankness of that truth would have sounded brutal even to him. Such niceties had been seared from his soul, however, by nine months of life as a convenient and unwilling target for the armored Soldiers. "You have two choices --" With savage intensity, Bertarr gripped Lossit's stubbled chin in uncompromising fingers. "Look at me, dammit!"
Trembling, the inexperienced Conscript fluttered his lids. His wandering eyes slowed and locked with those of the Conscript leader.
Shoving aside the whiff of shame nagging at him, Bertarr released his hold and stood close before the soon-to-be-bloodied Conscript. "You have two choices," he said evenly. "You can surrender before they attack and die for certain." His gaze danced towards Flegler's stolid expression. A faint dip of the man's head encouraged him to continue. "Or...you can choose to fight with every ounce of energy and power available to you."
Flegler's deep voice chimed in. "You can't always pick how you die," he said. A delicate tremor in his words betrayed the depth of his own fear. "You can decide how you'll live."
Lossit swiped raggedly at his eyes. For a long moment, he fixed on his weapon's blinking indicator. "Okay," he said resignedly. "...Okay..."
Bertarr winced at the sorry spectacle of this clueless student. The Enforcers had ripped this teenager from his comfortable academic life and deposited him in this hellhole from which none emerged.
He looked at Flegler as if to say, Well, I tried. He had others to check on.
Wrestling with the contagious melancholy projected by so many of the Conscripts, Bertarr completed his rounds and joined his son at the cave's entrance. A line of boulders torn from the cliff face by either nature or battle provided them a modicum of cover from direct fire.
Sipping at a dented metal canteen, Seltin watched his father settle in for their tense vigil. "They're getting worse, aren't they?" he asked, at last.
Bertarr chewed on his answer. "It seems so."
"It's no wonder given the dreck they serve up as education."
"'For the greater glory of Neklar,' I believe you said."
"That's just for openers. The complete indoctrination package is a lot subtler and more thorough than that."
"Simple slogans for simple minds."
"It's a wonder any of us escaped."
Seltin rested his disrupter on the rock. Intently, he searched the air for the flicker of red lights signaling an approaching troop transport.
"Maybe they'll come by ground this time," Bertarr suggested.
Seltin lowered his gaze to the shadowed desert. "Wouldn't surprise me." He snorted. "Dirty bastards." The curse harbored little overt animus.
Bertarr squinted out at where one day he would breath his final gasp. "They do like to keep us guessing."
"Last time they arrived within fifteen minutes." With an involuntary and subconscious gesture, Seltin's fingers traced the fresh scar disfiguring his once-handsome features.
"They gave us nearly the full ninety days, though."
"That's because they about wiped us out last time. Have to replace the fodder."
Bertarr noted the tinge of bitterness but did not comment on it. To what end? "Yeah. The forty days between that exercise and the previous one hurt us. Not enough time for the new Conscripts to adjust and be trained."
"As much as they can be..."
Bertarr lifted a brow. "There is that."
As the last traces of orange bled from the sky, the desert chill chased any remaining heat towards the endless, frigid realm of night. Bertarr shivered and drew his thin jacket tighter. If dawn found him still alive, he would pay with the stiff joints progressive arthritis had bequeathed him.
Stars arced across the heavens as time crawled inexorably into the past. The murmur of voices wafted towards their position.
Swiveling, Bertarr tried to pierce the moonless dark. "Damn it," he muttered.
Seltin stretched and yawned. "They're going in."
"This would be so much easier with radio communication."
Seltin barked a laugh. "As if they'd make things any easier for us."
"There just aren't enough old-timers to match up with the newbies."
"You expected self-discipline? Responsibility?"
"Some of us remember."
Seltin checked the charge on his weapon. The mindless blinking of the indicator mocked him. "Not enough," he murmured.
Bertarr's lips thinned. Abruptly he stood and slung his rifle over one shoulder. "Stay here. I've got to get them back on post before it's too late."
Trotting, the longest-surviving Conscript headed for the heavily reconstructed building that held their meager supplies of food and drink. Straggling lines of new recruits converged on that modest haven.
When he burst through the door, Bertarr found nearly three dozen Conscripts milling about. A pot perked on a ramshackle counter. Someone had raided the cupboards and passed around self-heating rations. Guilty looks greeted him.
"What the hell are you people doing?" he said with barely controlled anger. The fear underlaying that emotion he did not care to dwell upon. "The training exercise can begin any minute."
Surly silence answered him. Before Bertarr could continue his tirade, Sterr Sipnin pushed his way through the awkwardly self-conscious Conscripts. "Let them alone. They're cold and hungry. A break isn't going to change anything."
For two beats, Bertarr closed his eyes. Dragging patience into his words, he said, "This is dangerous. If the Soldiers catch you all in here, you won't stand a chance. Our best hope to survive this exercise is to --"
"Who the hell appointed you leader, anyhow?" Sterr said defiantly, advancing a step. At the older man's bristling glare, Sterr retreated across the dust-covered floor. "There are more of us than you," he said sullenly.
Bertarr ignored the implied threat. "The Soldiers always appear. Eventually."
"Yeah, but who knows when?" an anonymous voice called out.
Bertarr turned in the direction of the dissenter. "It's that randomness they depend on. Arbitrary approaches. Uncertain attack times. Disorder helps them and keeps us off-balance. That's why we have to --"
"We don't have to do anything but die," Sterr said, his voice rising above the low babble filling the room. "It's your duty to die."
A blond-haired man in his twenties -- Crisser Mears? -- chimed in. "Your life belongs to Neklar. If it demands that you sacrifice it, you have no choice."
Sizzling outrage rushed through Bertarr in a volcanic eruption. "It is not my duty to die. It is my choice to live."
Someone snickered. "How naive are you? Your life doesn't belong to you. It belongs to the people of Neklar and their voice, the Council."
Bertarr struggled to overcome the numb incredulity he felt at such pronouncements. He never learned how he would have responded.
The narrow beam of a Class IV crackler seared through the flimsy north wall. Any heads, arms, and chests that existed within that cone of concentrated energy vanished in a millisecond of vaporized plasma.
Reflexively, Bertarr dropped heavily to the floor. As he scuttled for the still-closed doorway, he caught a glimpse of Sterr's wide-eyed mask of terror. A second blast seared away the upper half of the frozen man's body.
Chaos clamped its fickle hand on the jumbled Conscripts. Booted feet trampled over Bertarr as the untried combatants stampeded for the exit.
An explosion smashed in that wall. A twin assault removed the supports from the south face.
Shrieks, moans, and cries mutely penetrated the insistent ringing in Bertarr's ears. Ignoring the trickle of blood stinging his right eye, he strained beneath the dead weight of fallen bodies. Whatever panic had energized the Conscripts had evaporated in the flames of battle and their own debilitating injuries.
"Seltin..."
Viciously tearing away the mental haze fogging his thoughts, Bertarr heaved his way clear of obstructions. Triggering his weapon, he tore an opening into the still intact wall nearest him. Only half-registering the streaks of weapons' fire, he stumbled into the fully operational training exercise. Precious seconds slipped away as he oriented himself. Honing in on the entrance to the canyon and the cave where he had left his son, Bertarr ran from one modest cover to the next. Crouching and firing at any armored suit within visual range, he twisted his way to his goal.
The Soldiers had little to fear from the Conscripts. Even if the targets' under-powered and overmatched weapons penetrated the armored suits and destroyed a spine or a limb, the Soldiers' implants could still manipulate the suits and deliver their deadly fire. How such disparate abilities prepared the Neklar forces for the invasion of the Freezone, Bertarr could not imagine. That minor fact did not concern the Council, of course. As Sterr and his cohorts had so forcefully indicated, the Council considered the citizens of Neklar as nothing more than interchangeable chips in their galactic power games.
A glimmer of hope flared within Bertarr when he witnessed the blue-green flashes of his son's weapon lancing towards the advancing Soldiers. At least Seltin had survived the first few minutes of fighting. Whether father and son could last until the Soldiers achieved whatever unknown "mission" the Monitors had assigned them continued as an open question.
A lone Soldier popped over a mass of boulders fifty yards to his left. A lightning calculation told Bertarr that if he maintained his present course, he would lead the lumbering enemy directly to his son. Without pausing, he veered, taking a sharp left and dashing towards the ridge where he had stationed Flegler and Lossit. If only they had not abandoned their post...
Panting heavily, Bertarr zigged and zagged as best he could. Perhaps in the anarchy of the moment the Soldier would take awhile to acquire him as a target. Then he would be able to --
The disrupter beam churned the ground at his feet. Flying sand and splintered rock engulfed him in a spreading cloud. Tears streamed down his face in a futile try at washing away the grit and dust. The near-miss would, however, shield him for a few precious moments from the invisible, probing beams of the Soldier's sensors.
There! The ridge. But no sight of the two Conscripts.
A ragged cry of anger tore from his throat. Deserters or dead. Either result spelled the same fate for him.
As he approached the spot they had prepared for this exercise, Bertarr leaped, straining. He crashed into the ground, sprawling, his starving lungs screaming for air after the jarring impact. Frantically, he felt around in the sand for his rifle. Pathetic though it was against an armored Soldier, the disrupter had saved him on more than on occasion.
This time, however...
The ungainly bulk of the cocooned Soldier loomed closer. An amplified voice echoed dizzyingly against the canyon walls.
"Shoot," the faceless Soldier said, mockingly. "If it'll make you feel better before you die, be my guest."
Trembling, Bertarr fought to calm his heaving chest. Sweeping the rifle up, he planted the butt against his shoulder. "Come closer, you bastard," he snarled. "Or are you afraid?"
The encased Soldier chuckled. "You should know that a Class III disrupter can't penetrate my armor. Didn't they brief you on anything?"
"I guess I'm simply too stupid to know any better."
The mammoth metal legs and feet set the ground to vibrating as they closed the gap. One step. Another.
When the full weight of the armor bore down on the planks covering the hole, a crack of splintering wood announced that the trap had sprung. Like a sinking ship, the Soldier plummeted into the ten-foot hole.
Bertarr wasted no time in celebration. Without Flegler and Lossit to finish the plan, the cursing Soldier would emerge unscathed in a handful of seconds.
Despite his exhaustion, Bertarr clawed at the steep path towards the ridge. He had no illusions of his chances. Though he did not want to die, he could at least savor the small triumph of leading this marauder away from his son.
Halfway up the path, his hands came down on something soft and wet. Even in the fitful light of combat, he could tell the cooling corpse had once been his friend and comrade, Flegler. Burying his sadness and pain until another time -- if there were another time -- he pushed ahead.
Heat from an ill-aimed disrupter beam splashed across the rock near his head. Cringing from the spray of ejected shrapnel, Bertarr glimpsed the dark form of the Soldier climbing from the ineffectual trap. Once his enemy gained a solid footing, the man would not miss a third time.
In disappointed frustration, Bertarr stared at the top of the ridge. Not enough time. Only time enough to die.
Composing himself, the Conscript dug his heels into the crumbly dirt and aimed his paltry weapon at the Soldier's helmet. Perhaps if he could destroy or at least confuse the sensors there, he might stand a chance to --
A sharp but small explosion ahead and above him snatched his attention from his target. A puff of white smoke billowed from the ridge and into the chill sky. For a frozen instant, the mound of boulders piled there stayed immobile. As the force of the triggering charge overcame inertia, a stony waterfall cascaded towards the still off-balance Soldier. The avalanche swept him back into the pit with a sickening crack. Not even armor could withstand the tons of sandstone burying the intruder.
When sound and motion faded into nothingness, Bertarr tore his gaze from the entombed Soldier. Peering into the gloom, he caught a vision of a pale visage, ghost-like, gone in an instant.
Puzzled, Bertarr reached the top. There, he found Lossit sitting on the hard ground, his hands dangling over his knees, his chin drooping to his chest.
"You stayed," Bertarr said. "Thank you."
In numb slow-motion, Lossit looked up at the other Conscript. Muddy streaks blackened his face. Moisture glittered in his eyes. "No. I didn't," he said flatly, mechanically. "When I saw you and the Soldier headed this way, I ran. Flegler tried to stop me. He... I..."
A wintry dread oozed through Bertarr. He tore the words from his mouth. "You what." It was not a question.
"I..." Lossit dropped his head. "I shot him," he breathed. "I shot him and ran." Twin streams of tears coursed along his cheeks. "But I came back," he cried. "I set off the trap. I saved you. Doesn't that count? That counts, doesn't it?"
For a timeless moment, Bertarr's hand hovered over the fresh Conscript's disheveled hair. Eventually, his fingers curled into a fist. Listlessly, he dropped his arm to his side. "Yes," he whispered. "It counts."
Crunching gravel alerted Bertarr that someone had joined them on the ridge.
"You all right, Dad?" The query came softly, uncertainly.
"Fine." Waving vaguely, Bertarr said, "I'm fine."
Below the trio of Conscripts, the battle sputtered to an end. Whatever objective the Monitors had decreed the Soldiers achieve had been won. A few days or a few weeks from now, new Conscripts would arrive to replace those torn apart in this training exercise.
Gazing down on the crumpled figure of Lossit, Bertarr drew Seltin closer. Unself-consciously, he hugged his son tightly.
There was nothing else he could do.
