When you see something that is technically sweet, you go ahead and do it and you argue about what to do about it only after you have had your technical success. That is the way it was with the atomic bomb.
-J. Robert Oppenheimer
"- goddamn stupid coffee machine!"
The light, high laughter that followed lilted through the room like sunlight. It was innocent, carefree, and knotted in his stomach – well, not yet, not just yet. Here in this time, he was oblivious, bent over his clipboard and working his way through an equation that seemed to have a personal grudge, just shy of snapping the pen he was chewing on in half.
"You graduate from college at seventeen, triple major, top of your class, only to lose daily to the coffeemaker." Her voice was wry, affectionate as she teased her colleague. She'd loved to make fun, play little jokes and keep them on their toes. "I think you're going senile. What do you think, Frederick?"
"I don't think unless I get paid to." He muttered, and there was more laughter. He winced at the bright lights, the sharp scent of disinfectant, the cascade of chemicals fighting for his attention – but he wasn't supposed to smell that yet, not yet. It was wrong, remembering this room with senses he hadn't had.
"So I hear we're going to get royally screwed by those Dutch bastards. Rumor is they cracked the chromosomal trigger problem last month."
"Like hell, they're bluffing." He shifted the pen to the other side of his mouth, regretting once again he hadn't taken a job as, say, a roadie, instead of working in a building with five clean rooms, six card swipes and two security guards between him and the nearest patch of open air. "Nobody loves throwing money around like the military – this answer's coming from the private sector. The academics haven't got a shot."
If he could go back, and stop it here and now, he might have had a shot – shred all his files, burn down the damn building. Or maybe it wouldn't have been enough, or maybe he wouldn't have, even if he'd known. So sure he could come up with the right answer, with enough time – that there was a right answer, that the mistake wasn't in doing any of it in the first place.
Maybe human progress was an unstoppable force of nature, like gravity or entropy, and this was really the only way it could have happened.
"Well, I hate to disappoint you all, but I'm taking off early. I have a date. With a real live man, even."
At least he hadn't brought her into all this. Of all the stupid, stupid shit, of everything that had happened before and after and all that he'd done, that one wasn't his to carry. She'd done it all on her own, made herself known. So damn smart, so damn young and so damn smart.
"Hey, while you're out there let me know if you see any... oh man, it's been a while. Girls. Yeah, I think those used to be pretty cool. Bring one back for me... well, two for me, one for Frederick."
Still a football game waiting for him at his apartment, and since he hadn't read the paper he didn't know who'd won, or who'd went to the playoffs. Weeks now, since he'd bothered to come up for air, to do anything but code and test and make it work, push that envelope. Funny how, even now, there were other things on his mind, the normal little details. He kept forgetting to get his mail, and the post office had apparently decided he'd died. He needed to send a card to one of his acquaintances who'd finally managed tenure – it never hurt, to stay networked.
The other scientist moved down to his usual spot at the end of the table, humming a little as he worked. Quietly, nothing annoying, and another image slid on top of it, just for a moment. The future, still a memory but further along than this. Everything bathed in pulsing red lights, alarms hollowly calling to no one. The man who was humming crumpled up on the floor, his head caved in, a bullet hole where his eye should have been.
But that wasn't this. This was when they still thought they could do great things. Impossible things.
He was going to change the world.
Sol snapped awake, breathing hard, palm already at his forehead, the familiar grooves of the metal band pressing against his skin. His other hand was on his sword, and he rolled his eyes at his own stupidity, at allowing the memory to dig that deep.
"Tch." He wiped a hand across his face, jerked the thin blanket away, letting the cold sting of morning wipe the rest of the dream away. He could hear the clump of boots passing by outside his tent, and a hundred quiet conversations past that, the familiar sounds of the camp waking up for another day. Sol swallowed, the bitter taste of old, stale coffee in the back of his throat.
Go away, old man. He thought, rubbing at closed eyes. Go away and die. No one needs you, no one wants you. What the hell good did you ever do for anyone, anyway?
No answer. Typical.
The dawn light was weak and cold, his breath rising in the air as Sol stepped outside, stretching, the camp just starting to wake up around him. It had been a quiet couple of days, probably a good idea to run perimeter. He usually went a little further than any of the soldiers were comfortable with, tried to shake things up with anything he encountered.
Quiet time only gave the bitch room to take stock and recover, the same as it did for their side, and Justice was remarkably good at moving her troops in silence. Until they'd started sending scouts out to flank enemy positions and keep track of what she was up to, they'd lost half a dozen battles and barely held through a dozen more, with impossible numbers of Gears seeming to swarm up out of nowhere.
"You going out, sir?"
He didn't much give a damn what they called him, but it seemed to make everyone more comfortable to give him some sort of rank, and as long as it didn't actually require any effort on his part, Sol could hardly complain.
"It's a nice day. I thought I'd go kick over a rock, see what's hiding underneath." The man looked nervously unenthused with the plan, and Sol grinned. "Don't worry, I'll make sure not to bring anything back with me."
"It's not that, sir. They're supposed to be bringing out the next commander sometime soon, is all."
"Shit, that's today?"
The other soldier laughed slightly, making a last-minute attempt to hide it. Sol was a terrible influence on the men. "We'd be happy to cover for you sir, if you don't want to bother."
"Another royal second cousin this time?" The last one they'd sent had been someone's brother, maybe. Mostly useless, except for getting caught in the largest of the attacking Gear's teeth long enough for Sol to barbecue the bastard and allow them to rout the rest. They'd sent back the man's sword, his bloodstained coat and one of his hands, which wasn't a bad haul, compared to the usual empty box, the letter. The postcard.
Broke it. Send another.
"He wasn't that bad, I guess. He had all that wine."
Officially, all his possessions had been shipped back with his remains, though the road was so far and so dangerous, with so many checkpoints full of thirsty soldiers that it had been far more sensible to mark the 'perishables' as lost and raise a glass to his memory.
"A shame it went missing." The soldier agreed, completely straight-faced. Sol was really a godawful influence on the men.
"So, do we have any idea what poor bastard they're sending out?"
"I heard his name was... Kiske, I think. Commander Undersn is accompanying him. He's supposed to be some sort of prodigy, they say. And with things in the South..."
The soldier trailed off, not at all happily. As of a week ago, they were the furthest position out that had successfully held the line, and it seemed likely that everything was going to be fixed around them, for the next push forward.
Sol already had a century's worth of proof, that it was a bad idea to do a good job, this was just one more to add to the pile.
One of Kliff's kids, though? Here? Sol's eyes narrowed slightly, sure the old man would have given that up by now, after all it had cost him over the years. He'd never thought the man one to tilt at windmills, but then Sol had never thought he'd be here now, and that had been Undersn's doing too.
An impossible war, he had said, when he'd made the pitch. Miserable conditions, irritating politics, and a good chance to die horribly in an unflattering uniform. Sol had laughed, and Kliff had bought the next round, and there it had been, and here he was. It wasn't as if fighting on his own had been getting him far, and Sol had been – concerned was not the right word, but there was freedom and there was nothing left to lose, that was the song, right?
It wasn't enough to fight against something, not with an endless battle like this. He had to fight for - he knew that - if he wanted a chance to get through it as himself, if he had any interest in staying sane long enough to see things through - and Undersn knew that too. It would be interesting to see this Kiske he was bringing with him.
Maybe there would be more to this one than a handful of pieces and an official condolence letter to send back home.
The journey was too much for a horse, the road far from anything that could be considered secure, and Ky couldn't quite understand why that meant they had to roar through the countryside at breakneck speed on the back of a transport that seemed ready to rattle itself apart at the slightest provocation, but there was little point in arguing.
Quinn, his unofficial ordonnance, grinned at him from the other side of the low back compartment, didn't bother trying to talk over the absurd roar of the engine and the howling wind. They were sharing the cramped space with a rather large and leaking piece of artillery, Ky shifting position every now and again to keep the dripping oil off his uniform. It wasn't exactly trumpets and banners, not that Ky needed the introduction. Better to just get in and start, if this was really going to be the most important new ground for the next stage of the campaign.
No one dared to call it progress yet, not wanting to be the one to make that mistake, but it wasn't quite desperation anymore. They could actually afford to blink twice, now and then, before making a decision.
The hills around them were mostly bare, blackened scrub and a few stubborn trees, a volatile border that ran miles deep, hotly contested from the very first days of the Crusades. Desolate as it was, Ky preferred it to where he had been the month prior. Fighting to reclaim land recently lost, and it was much worse to march past abandoned fields, half-harvested, through the splintered wreckage of silent villages, and for every place that had been warned, it seemed there were two more that hadn't been as fortunate
The transport maneuvered the final few curves through the hills and came to a bone-jarring halt that left Ky checking to make sure all his teeth were still in place. Quinn followed him off the back of the truck, stretching a little. Ky frowned, looking toward the horizon, knew they had pulled away from the Commander's vehicle, but there was no sign of him, nothing to be seen but the settling dust from their own trip through the hills.
"Where's Commander Undersn?" Ky turned, their driver already lifting the hood on his deathtrap, steam belching up and Ky wasn't going to think about what the brakes must have looked like, he was just going to send a silent prayer of thanks skyward and not think about it.
"Blew a tire. He radioed while we were moving, said you should go ahead, and that he would catch up. He said I should tell you not to wait."
Ky frowned, looking back to the hills. The Commander's transport had been the better of the two, and the more heavily guarded, but still-
"You know the only thing that will give him trouble is when he gets bored and decides to walk the rest of the way." Quinn said quietly, and after a moment Ky nodded. The Commander didn't like to be worried over, didn't want special treatment, whether or not it had anything to do with rank.
The camp was a good size, protected in what was more a notch than a valley, nowhere for the Gears to call a high ground, artillery set up for any of the airborne monsters that might want to make the attempt. Two men were standing a relaxed guard at the bottom of the hill, though they saluted well enough when Ky appeared.
He couldn't help but notice the decrepit state of their uniforms, surprised that such an important post hadn't been sent more regular supply shipments, though even that often made little difference, if the fighting was fierce. As much as Ky would not wish to speak against his superiors - especially those within the church – it had always seemed a bit questionable, insisting white was the proper color for a battlefield.
"My name is Lieutenant Commander Kiske. I'm here to see your commanding officer. I assumed he would be present."
The snort of laughter from the guardsman was neither professional nor comforting, though the man quickly got himself under control when Ky looked at him.
"Uh, sir... that is. We thought you knew, sir. We sent him home weeks ago."
"What we could find, that is," the other guard added, "sir."
It wasn't exactly surprising they hadn't heard the news, not the first time a message had skipped past him while he was in transit from field to field, unless, of course, the report had simply disappeared altogether. Ky nodded.
"I'll need to speak with whomever's in charge, then, and ask him why he isn't here."
Later, he would appreciate the strange look that passed between the two men. If he had understood it then, he might have reconsidered the benefits of running away screaming.
"I suppose, sir, you're going to want to talk to Badguy."
Ky was supposed to follow the music. He didn't quite understand how that was easier than actual directions, until he got down into the camp. The last time he'd heard music played quite that loud had been back in the capital, from a very old head of state who was incredibly deaf and tended to sit with his head practically inside his ancient gramophone.
Amazing, really, that anyone had managed to rig up anything out here to play music, let alone at such a volume, and Ky fought back a moment of irritation – important to be calm as he could in this moment of transition, as much the Commander's ambassador on this mission as a commanding officer in his own right.
The music was even louder with the tent flap flipped outward, and Ky grimaced, stepping inside. For such a tiny space, it was an impressive wreck, the cobbled-together radio taking up a good deal of the space, binders crammed with papers stacked haphazardly on top of ammo crates. A weapon that rivaled the Commander's was propped up against the center pole, and a very large man sat on a very small chair with his back turned to them, intently rocking out on air guitar.
"Excuse me."
He couldn't even see the man's face, hair entirely in the way as he bobbed his head to the music, fingers flicking furiously through the air. Ky took a deep breath, let it out slowly.
"EXCUSE ME."
The man swung around, fingers frozen on middle C, giving Ky an inscrutable look. His gaze was strange, carrying an unsettling sense of calm, of time stretching out slowly, to some distant horizon. Glaciers, or mountains might give him the same look, were they capable of it.
"Do you mind?" Ky said, refusing to gesture toward the radio because it really should have been obvious and he wasn't wearing gloves and he wasn't even going to give himself the slightest temptation of accidentally blowing it up.
"Yeah. I got, like, four minutes left."
Ky noticed after a moment, that his mouth was hanging open, and he shut it with an audible snap, certain if he kept searching he would find an appropriate response somewhere. The man stared at him for another moment, as if it might make him disappear, and sighed heavily, reaching out with one long arm to shut off the radio, and then the only sound was the creaking of the chair as he stood up.
Sitting down, he'd been impressive. Standing up, it seemed impossible the tent could actually contain him. Ky heard Quinn take a slight step back, but Commander Undersn had not allowed him to fight anything but the largest opponents for the last three years of his training. Ordered him against the strongest and most massive Gears in skirmishes, always. It was expected of him, to jump into that kind of a fight, to want it, and Ky realized Sol was watching him, seemed to be following his train of thought.
"I guarantee, I'm more than you're used to." He drawled, with a lewd, satisfied grin that suggested any number of inexplicable meanings. He reached down, dragging a dusty, wrinkled lump off the ground, slapping it a few times before slinging the coat around his shoulders. It was such an offense to anything that might be considered clothing, let alone a uniform, that Ky thought he might cry.
"Please tell me you're not Sol Badguy."
Ky wasn't usually so rude, had not intended the words, but the man ignored them completely, giving him another long, slow look over.
"I'll take a box of Trefoils and two Thin Mints." Ky knew he was staring again, couldn't help it, vaguely aware he probably should have been insulted. Sol shook his head. "Nevermind."