Chapter 2

From primary school on, every Gallian learns the ins and outs of the military. It's not enough to turn a man into a soldier, but it gives him all of the knowledge he'd need. Knowing doesn't make a man a killer, though. That's what boot was for.

I spent the three years before my enlistment working down in the mines. Every day I took the elevator down into the seam wondering if I'd still be around to take the ride back up. My father probably had similar thoughts on his final trip down. There were never any serious accidents during my tenure, but to me the mine was Hell. It wasn't fire and brimstone, but it was as cold, cramped, and lonely as I could imagine a place being. If Hell is distance from God, I knew the mine was the very center of it. That was before boot.

The first week and a half of the training was all physical. It was rough, but it wasn't difficult. Working in the mines was heavy labor, and I was in good shape. The days flew past. It was on the eleventh day that everything changed. Instead of marching the training platoon onto the parade grounds at the crack of dawn for morning PT, the drill instructors let us sleep in. At ten, we were led into a small assembly room. It was empty except for a projector behind the seats and a screen hanging on the front wall. When we sat, the drill instructors left. Nothing happened for twenty minutes. Then, just as I decided they'd forgotten about us, the senior drill instructor walked in.

His name was Gunnery Sergeant Taylor, but we called him Gramps behind his back. He had to have been at least sixty, and he always wore a smile that reminded me of my grandfather's. Taylor wasn't smiling when he walked into the assembly room. Without speaking, he turned off the lights and started the projector.

The first picture was of a man in an Atlantic Federation uniform sitting in the driver's seat of a half-track. His head had mushroomed out at the jaw-line. It looked like a blooming flower, except the petals were made of meat, bone, and an occasional tuft of hair. Blood soaked the front of his uniform, and it drained down onto his lap before pooling on the seat. The room turned silent. Only the drone of the projector continued. Fifteen seconds after the first slide hit the screen, the projector jumped to the second.

The show lasted an hour and forty minutes. After running through the last slide, Taylor turned the projector off and hit the lights. We never called him Gramps again. "The East Europan Imperial Alliance is going to invade," he said. "Some of you will die. More of you will kill. All of you will see combat. You better not be feeling much." Then he left.

That lesson stuck with me, but I knew it was a lesson I had never learned. I always felt. Every time. The moment my Mags's stock pressed into my shoulder and a man's silhouette entered my sights, the images from the projection screen flashed through my head. The pictures were supposed to desensitize people. That's all boot really was—there wasn't anything left to actually learn. It was meant to break people down to nothing and build them back up from there. Make them ready to kill. For most people it worked. The first confirmed kill I'd ever seen was credited to a sixteen year old girl. I still hadn't done it.

"Hey, Casanova!" Edy's berating pulled me out of my trance. "You going to call or what?"

We were sitting on the floor of an empty room. Rain was still pattering against the window. Nils and Theold were there, too, and they were all looking at me. I glanced down at the card I'd pulled. The suicide king. The picture on its face was what had brought my mind back to boot. It was a losing draw in every sense imaginable. "Fold."

Edy and Theold groaned, but Nils smiled and raked in the packs of cigarettes we'd been betting with. He had a pile of them in front of him. "Another hand?" he asked. "Maybe start playing with chocolate?"

"I'm done," Theold said. "Fuckin' cheater."

Nils shrugged and turned our way. "Milton? Nelson?"

Edy rolled her eyes. She was frustrated, and on top of that she hated Nils. I didn't like him much either, but I just shook my head. "You've bled me dry."

"And I enjoyed every minute of it." He made a show of pulling out one of the cigarettes, and held it in his mouth a few moments before lighting it. "You all have a good night."

I glanced out the window while Nils waddled to his own little corner of the room. The rain wasn't pouring like it had been when we arrived in the village, but the constant drizzle was numbing. I wasn't the only one feeling down. "This is great," Theold said, gesturing towards the window. "Three days of this shit, and now we're out of smokes." He pointed at me. "I blame you, Salinas."

"How is it my fault?" I asked. "You didn't have to play."

"You folded on the last hand," Edy said. "You might as well have just said, 'Oh, here Nils! I just woke up from a daydream, why don't you have all of our cigarettes? No, go ahead, I insist!' Were you thinking at all?"

The suicide king was still in my hand. I flipped it over a few times before tossing it to the floor. "Too much."

"But not about poker." She tried to hide it with a sigh, but I could see her smile. Theold wasn't smiling, though, and he stormed off for the corner opposite of Nils's. "I swear," Edy continued after he left, "you really are a dreamer."

"You know me." I rested my hands behind my head. She couldn't hold it anymore, and laughed. I couldn't tell her most of my dreams were of bodies. More than anything I didn't want to say it myself, regardless of whether or not anybody was listening. "Always looking beyond the horizon."

"And spouting one cliché after another." Edy pulled her notebook from her bag. She wrote song lyrics in her spare time. They were great. If she ever swallowed her pride and sold her lyrics instead of trying to sing them herself, she would have made a comfortable living. "How you manage to lure women into your bunk is beyond me."

"Well, first I—"

"No, stop!" Edy held out her palm. "I really don't want to know."

I was counting on her cutting me off. She wouldn't have been happy if she found out I was stealing her lines. "I understand. You want to find out first hand."

Her boot cut me off that time. "Go back to dreaming, boy." She didn't look up from her book. "I'll catch you in the morning."

"Yeah," I said, rubbing my thigh. "Sure thing."

I slunk over to my own corner. Theold was already crashing, and I assumed Nils would do the same when he finished his cigarette. Edy was the only one who seemed intent on staying awake. I couldn't blame her—I didn't want to dream either. I wondered what she saw when she closed her eyes. Stages and lights? Or maybe we weren't so different. She was stubborn, though. She'd fight it until she couldn't keep her eyes open. Turning away, I rested my head on my ruck and shut my eyes.

I was back in boot.

I dreaded sleep, but morning came sooner than I'd hoped. Once again, I felt a boot prodding my thigh. "Fuck, Edy," I said, throwing my arm over my eyes. "Ten more minutes."

"I already gave you an extra ten," a voice said. It wasn't Edy's.

Juno was standing above me. Her rifle was slung over her shoulder, and her arms were crossed. I scrambled to my feet. "Sergeant! Sorry, I just…."

I wasn't often caught flustered. She relished it. "Sleep well?"

I hadn't. "Like the angels."

She gave a curt nod. "Good. Then grab your gear. We're moving out."

Through the window I could tell the sun had risen, but the weather hadn't changed. Streaks of rain cascaded down the glass. "You mean we're leaving?"

"Not exactly," she said. "We're just…" Her hand moved to her hip. She was looking out the window, too. "Just grab your gear."

From the sound of it, we'd be spending at least another day in the area. Nobody was sure how long we were going to be there. Everybody was ready to leave. I didn't complain to Juno, though, and after I gathered my equipment I followed her through the door.

Most of the platoon was already waiting in the street outside. Juno hadn't given anybody else the courtesy of the extra ten minutes sleep. Edy shot me a wink as I stepped into the road, and I guessed she had asked Juno to give me some extra time before waking me up. I'd have to tell her not to do it again. I didn't want to be the one singled out for it, and from what I saw, I wasn't the one who needed the rest—Freesia was.

Freesia was standing in the middle of the street looking over a map with Lieutenant Gunther. She looked like she hadn't slept in days. Probably hadn't. While the rest of Squad 7 was taking turns on guard or patrolling the streets, Freesia was our only real form of communication with the locals. It was a round-the-clock duty. I'd seen her running from one end of the village to the other at ungodly hours, and even when she wasn't on the move, the Lieutenant was bringing people to her. It seemed like she was talking to everybody. Except me, of course. We hadn't spoken since I found the bullet in that villager's jacket.

I was determined to change that. When she folded the map and broke off from the Lieutenant, I made sure we crossed paths. She seemed just as determined to pass me by. "Hey Frees," I said before she could escape. "What's going on?"

She didn't stop. All she gave was a glance. "Not now," she said. "I'm kind of busy."

I had suspected something was wrong before, but now I knew. "Hey!" I grabbed her by the arm as she walked past. She spun, and we faced each other for the first time in three days. "Have you been sleeping?"

"I can hang," she said. Then she wrenched her arm away. "And I don't need any special favors."

The declaration was sharp. I cursed Edy for her concern, and Juno for granting it. They were looking out for me. I appreciated that, but I also felt like I was twelve. Did I really look that soft?

I didn't have time to come to an answer. After a few words with Juno, Freesia moved to the side. "We're headed out of the village on patrol," Juno said. "A local reported that whoever fired on that convoy earlier this week is keeping a weapons cache near the wadi east of town. Our job is to clear it. We'll move along an irrigation ditch a few hundred meters south of the wadi and close in from there."

Freesia looked disinterested. I knew she didn't want to hear the question come from me, but the report came from a local. I had to ask. "Ambush?"

Freesia didn't react. Juno shrugged. "Ambush or not, it checks out on our maps. We'd have to clear it either way." She motioned for Wavy and Rosie to form their sections. "Just keep your eyes open. We'll take it slow and safe."

Everyone save Freesia fell into their standard formation. She stayed with Juno. It made sense since she was our guide and translator, but it felt like a manifestation of the gap that had grown between us. She'd helped me keep my footing since the war started, and even if we were walking into a firefight I wanted to hold onto something that felt normal. Then again, nothing about our mission was typical. I pushed it from my mind as we left the village.

The irrigation ditch brought us out of the town's southern exit, then swung north before finally settling east. I woke up knowing that I was going to work in the rain, but my poncho did a good job of keeping me dry. It was comfortable enough. As soon as I saw the ditch, I knew that was going to change. The water leveled off at my knees, and soaked into my boots. Everything felt heavier. The mud at the channel's bottom made every step a struggle.

It wasn't all bad, though. Everything I'd seen of Barious had been wasteland. The ditch was alive. Shrubs and brush grew along its edges, and by the time we'd made it two klicks out of town they were all over. There were even flowers. I heard Jane call them Desert Lilies. They were white with six thin petals, and they were beautiful. Flowers had never been my thing, but I was amazed to see anything that could catch my eye in the desert. I thought we'd sucked it dry when we got Freesia. It was comforting. Sloshing through the water, I bent over and picked one off at the stem.

I had just finished tucking it into my lapel when I heard the first pop. Two more sounded before a clump of dirt shot off the top of the embankment and I dropped to the ground. I fell against the side of the ditch. Water was up to my waist. I barely noticed. With the cracks of a Gallian battle rifle ringing in my ears, I climbed to the lip of the berm. Oscar and Edy were on my flanks. "What are we shooting at?"

Edy looked as lost as I was, but Oscar was peering through his scope. "Shack," he said, leveling his rifle. "Three-hundred meters."

The land downfield was as barren as any other part of the desert. It was mud now, but still caustic. Nothing grew. In the distance, though, there was a shack, and just beyond the shack was the closest thing I'd ever seen to an oasis. The trees were gnarled, but they stood, and the brush between them was thick. We'd found the wadi. Raising my Mags, I disengaged the safety.

I always hesitated when I saw a man in my sight picture. The firing line was different. In a firing line, I could shoot off ten-thousand rounds, walk up on a hundred bodies, and claim indemnity. So I fired.

I was halfway through my third magazine when Juno called us off. We all slid deeper into the trench, and I took the time to reload. "What's up?" I heard Alex call.

"Keep your heads low," Juno said. Hunched over, she walked down the firing line. "I'm calling in a fire mission. Radio!"

Dallas had her radio ready when Juno made it to her position. The call didn't last long. After a few transmissions, Juno let out a frustrated sigh and dropped the handset. She didn't look happy, and I wasn't the only one who noticed. "When can we expect those shells?" Wavy asked.

Juno took a moment to wipe some mud off of her glasses. Then she fell back against the berm. "They aren't coming."

I saw Alex's head pop out over Edy's shoulder. "What do you mean they're not coming?"

"There aren't any batteries within sixty klicks. They need them up on the front lines."

"Oh, yeah." Alex's voice was dripping with sarcasm. "Where they're needed. Where it's important." He threw his hands in the air. "Then what the fuck are we doing here?"

It was a good question. I was thinking it myself, and I doubted Alex and I were the only ones. Juno didn't give us an answer. Instead, she called out to Jann. "Hey Walker, you think you could hit them with your Lancaar?"

Jann peeked over the top of the ditch. He looked like he debated with himself for a moment before dropping back down. "I can hit it," he said. "It's far, but I can make it happen." He didn't ready his lance. "I thought direct fire was out on civilian structures."

After grabbing her binoculars, Juno took another look. "Does it look residential to you?"

"No."

"Level it." She switched her binoculars out for her rifle. "If anyone throws a fit, I'll take the heat."

Jann ran his fingers across one of the shrubs above. It looked brittle. "I don't know if we can fire through this brush."

The foliage wouldn't stop a lance round, but it was a long shot. If he was going to make it he was going to need a good firing position. The ditch wasn't it. "Take it up and over then. We'll give suppressing fire. If you're nearby when Walker takes the shot, make sure you watch for the backblast." She lowered her voice a touch, but she was close enough that I could still hear her. "Still think you can do it, Jann?"

He smirked. "Only for you, honey."

When Juno gave the order we opened fire. For a few seconds I could see muzzle smoke from their position, but with an entire platoon's worth of guns lighting them up, it died away. The walls of the shack chipped and fragmented. It almost looked like the small arms fire would be enough to topple it. It wasn't.

Jann jumped out of the trench, and Nils followed. They took a knee a few meters downfield. While Jann steadied the Lancaar on his shoulder, Nils loaded a round. When the weapon was armed, he shuffled to the side and waved the rest of the platoon down. "Clear the back!"

Everyone behind them ducked below the berm. Some of them repeated the call. I was in the safe zone, so I kept shooting. What would I have seen if I could have looked out of the shack's window? A barren stretch of mud ending in a line of muzzle flashes? With the brush surrounding the ditch there was no way the men in the shack could see our faces. They were shooting at flashes of light in the scrub, just as we were shooting at plumes of smoke in a shanty. I liked the sound of it. Everything seemed less personal that way.

The ground shook when Jann fired. His round hit the building just left of the doorway. It probably didn't matter where it hit. When the walls buckled out, the roof collapsed straight down. If the explosion hadn't killed the men inside the structural damage did.

As the smoke from the backblast wafted across the field, I saw Jann pat Nils on the back. Nils shrugged him off, but he was smiling. Cheers erupted down the line—everything from a simple 'oorah!' to a 'take that!' and a 'fuck yeah!' I realized I was smiling, too.

Then I heard another pop. The dirt ahead of Jann kicked up, and he fell to the ground. "Covering fire!"

Juno's call was lost under gunfire. With the shack gone I wasn't sure what to shoot at. I picked a small section of the oasis and fired into it. When my magazine emptied I loaded another. By the time I ran through that, Nils had pulled Jann back into the trench. "Hold your fire!" Juno ordered. "Corpsman!"

Fina ran over. She'd already pulled out her medkit, but Jann waved her off. "I'm alright," he said. Blood soaked his pant leg at the calf. "Must have hit a rock or something. I just caught the ricochet. Nothing serious."

Fina nodded, but gave him a shot of Ragnaid anyway. He'd be feeling good for the rest of the patrol. "So what now?" I asked.

Juno was peering through her binoculars again. When she put them away, she looked at her watch. "We sit tight." She'd told me once that she didn't like fighting holes; they were too cramped. The ditch wasn't much better. She must have been serious. "The wadi is flooded. That makes the field between us their only route out of that cluster. We'll let them cook a bit. See what happens. We're not in a rush."

We waited in the ditch for forty minutes. Freesia was sitting next to Juno, but I knew that if I went over she'd shoo me off. Nobody was in the mood to talk anyway. I spent the time watching the ripples the rain made in the water that had pooled in the ditch. The sound of the beads hitting the stream droned, and I lost myself in the cadence. When I found myself again, I counted the number of Desert Lily petals on the flowers nearby. Including the six from the one in my lapel, there were one-hundred and twenty. Finally, Oscar broke the silence. "They're moving."

I grabbed my Mags and looked over the berm. I couldn't believe what I saw. Six men had stepped out of the oasis. They were walking towards the village like they were strolling home from Sunday Mass. "Alright," Wavy said. "Take aim. When we get the order—"

"Hold it." Juno lifted her head above the brush to get a better view of the men through her binoculars. "They're carrying something. What are they carrying?"

They all had things in their hands, and the one on the far left had something long resting on his shoulder. "They hit that transport with a lance round," I said. "That guy looks like he's got the Lancaar."

"No," Alex said. "Too small."

Juno was desperately trying to clean her glasses. She gave up after a short struggle. "Who's got eyes on it?"

Oscar was watching the men through his scope. After waving it across the group a few times, he stood for a better view. "It's a hoe."

"A hoe?" Edy asked.

"Yeah." He lowered his rifle. "Like a garden hoe. They're carrying farm equipment."

Nobody spoke. My thumb was pressing against my Mags's safety catch. If felt heavy. Then, Juno sighed. "We can't fire."

Alex looked like he nearly toppled over. "Woah," he said, catching his balance. "What do you mean we can't fire?"

Juno was looking at her feet. She was grimacing. It wasn't something I saw very often. "They're unarmed." Her shoulders sagged. "We can't shoot."

"Bullshit! We were shooting at them less than an hour ago!"

"ROE says we can't shoot, so we don't. What more do you want me to do?"

I was glad I didn't have to kill the men. I also wanted them dead. The emotions might have been mutually exclusive, but that didn't keep me from feeling both of them. I grabbed Oscar's rifle. He protested, but I didn't pay attention. Looking through the scope, I searched for a weapon. Even if it was just a handgun, I wanted to find anything that could clear us to open fire. They had nothing. I checked them over one by one. When I got to the last—the one with the hoe—I almost fell over myself. "Hey!" Without dropping my eye from the scope, I waved Juno closer. "I know that one!"

I heard two people wading through the ditch, and knew Freesia was following her. "You recognize one of them?" Juno asked.

"The guy carrying the hoe." For the first time in my service, I knew I wouldn't have any trouble pulling the trigger. I wanted to. Even looking at him through a scope. "He was with their town watch when they stopped us entering the village." The one I'd been staring down.

"You can't know that," Nils said from down the line. "They all look the same."

Freesia growled behind me. I tried not to imagine her face. I hadn't forgotten the town watchman's face, though, and I was positive he was the man in the field. "No, that's him. He's wearing the same fuckin' shirt and everything."

Freesia's growl hit a crescendo before it ended in a huff. It was the only thing that could have made me drop the rifle. When I turned, she was glaring at me. "You know that's probably one of the only shirts he owns."

I was too taken aback to respond. Nils did that for me. "Figures the gyp's going to take their side."

"I'm not saying they're right." Her focus had shifted to Nils, but as soon the words were out she returned it to me. The expression had softened. Her eyes were bleary again. Unfocused. "That's just how it is. They don't live here by choice—they were driven here. You see what it's like outside of Barious, then hop in the truck and come back to some shit heap of a village like this…" The glare was gone. It almost sounded like she was pleading. "You can't blame them for wanting the rest of Gallia to just leave them alone."

She wanted comfort. I wanted to give it to her. After what she said, I couldn't. "They fuckin' shot Jann!"

Freesia recoiled. I expected another explosion of anger, but she didn't recover. Jann hollered from down the line. "You can't blame them for that! Bullets follow beauty!"

He laughed. Nobody else did. Before anyone could throw another word in, Juno stepped between us. "That's enough of this. I don't want to hear it now." She yelled out for the rest of the platoon. "We'll give them time to get out of here, and then we'll head over and clear the cache. Take ten. Smoke em' if you got em'." Then she left.

Freesia still wouldn't look at me. She looked like she was going to cry. The only thing I had wanted that day was to figure out what had gone wrong between us and fix it. I'd blown that. "Frees, I—"

She cut me off with her middle finger. "Fuck you."

I watched her charge away behind Juno. Edy and Oscar shared an awkward glance, and then looked away. Defeated, I slumped against the wall of the ditch. There was too much on my mind. It needed clearing.

I reached into my uniform for a pack of cigarettes. The pocket was empty. Down the line, Nils was trying to light a cigarette in the rain. When he finally got it, he made a point of blowing the smoke in my direction. He was grinning.

We didn't find any weapons. Not even empty casings. In fact, we didn't find anything. The bodies were missing, too. "We had to have killed at least one guy in that shack," Edy said, turning over some rubble with her foot.

Oscar lifted a board next to her. "They weren't carrying anybody out. No guns, either. They had to be shooting at us with something."

Everyone in the platoon was searching the oasis except Nils. He was smoking another cigarette while we worked. I'd had enough of him. I couldn't take my frustration out on that man from the town watch, and taking it out on Freesia had only made things worse. Nothing bad could have come from venting on Nils. He didn't look at me when I approached, but he spoke before I could start yelling. "The wadi."

I stopped. My confusion outweighed my anger. "What?"

"They dumped everything in the wadi before they left. Who knows how far the current will take everything before it dries?"

The irrigation ditches had collected water, but the wadi had become a river. The current looked like it could sweep away a car. "Even the bodies?"

"What else were they going to do with them?"

Images of throwing my own friends' bodies into the wadi raced through my mind. I saw myself having to toss Edy or Freesia into the current. Their bodies bobbed in the flow before being pulled under. They didn't resurface. "That's disgusting."

Nils didn't take his eyes off the wadi. Taking a last drag of his cigarette, he flicked it aside and blew the smoke towards the ground. "Is a bag any better?"

The two of us stood and watched the river. Nobody said anything. Nils's final words seemed to linger in the air. I'd been asked a lot of things that day. I didn't have any answers, and the more I thought the more I realized—I barely even knew the questions.

It was early afternoon by the time we got back to the village. The Lieutenant met us near the entrance, and Juno gave her debriefing. I wasn't surprised to hear that the men from the town watch still hadn't returned. They knew we couldn't touch them, but I doubted they wanted the extra eyes watching all the time. I wasn't surprised to hear that our informant had gone missing, either. He'd disappeared an hour or so after our patrol left. Welkin sent out a couple of fireteams to look for him, but they hadn't come up with anything.

"Don't bother wasting your time," Nils said. "You won't find him."

Welkin looked up from his map. He'd circled a number of places they still hadn't checked. "What makes you say that?"

"He's in the wadi."

"How can you know?"

"That's what I'd do with him." We all stared. When he realized, he shrugged. "I'm just saying."

We spent the rest of the day patrolling the streets. I'd been hoping that if we cleared the cache we'd be ordered to move on. Since we didn't actually find anything, we were stuck. The general consensus was that the insurgents would have fought to the death before dumping everything they had. Apparently a Lancaar was worth dying for.

The sun had set before they told us we were done for the night. Almost everybody who had gone on the patrol ran for their bunks. Jann limped. I'd bought back a pack of cigarettes from Nils though—at five times their original price—and Edy and I stood outside sharing one before heading back into the building we quartered. It was worth every ducat.

She took a drag before handing me the smoke. I took one too, and then shielded it with my poncho. The rain had picked up again by late afternoon. After sundown it was pouring. "Are you doing alright?" she asked.

Edy was confrontational unless she knew she could get away with being genuine undiscovered. She might have asked to let me sleep in, but she hadn't claimed credit for it. It wasn't like her to show her concern. "Never better," I said.

She didn't joke or play coy. "Things got pretty intense today with York, huh?"

We'd spent our day wading through knee-deep water, only to get shot at and have to watch the gunmen stroll away like nothing had happened. They'd dumped their friend's body into a river. I wanted to say that had pissed me off more than anything, but standing in the rain, it was Freesia's recoil that hurt the most. "She's just tired."

"Yeah," Edy said, reaching for the cigarette. "Sure."

She didn't believe me. I didn't believe it myself. Lack of sleep wasn't our problem. "And about this morning? Don't do it again."

Edy dumped the water that had pooled in a fold of her poncho, and then lifted the garb to shield the smoke. "Don't do what?"

"Asking Juno to let me sleep in. Don't do it."

I could tell she was trying to read my expression. We stood for a moment before she smiled. Breaking eye contact, she shook her head. Then she flicked the cigarette into the street and put her hand on my shoulder. "Listen, player," she said. "I love you and all, but if I'm asking anybody for ten minutes extra bunk, it's going to be for me." She stepped back. "And speaking of sleep, I'm hitting the sack. Don't stay out too long."

Edy disappeared into the doorway. She dodged showing concern, but if anybody gave her credit for something they could owe her for, she'd take it. I believed her denial. When I looked back into the street, Freesia's silhouette rounded the corner. She was running off to the far end of the village. I watched until she disappeared down a cross street. "You gotta' be shitting me."

I smoked half the pack before stepping inside and out of the rain.