A/N posting a day early (sorry!) because I'm going to have a fun-fun medical adventure tomorrow. And I stupidly don't want to let people down (all like…three of you!) by not posting.

29. Deathwatch

USS Dreadnought.

Just another soldier fallen for the cause, Barricade thought. Guess it's always this way. Guess the soldier falling is the only one who feels this…dreadful isolation. This terrible friendlessness. I've never felt it before. I've cut ties as soon as they dropped off registry. Safer that way. Saner that way. You tear yourself up like this. Can't function. Only when it's you does it matter, only when it's you is it un-fraggin'-avoidable, and of course, then it's too fucking late isn't it? You want to yell, no, not me! I'm somehow worthy of escaping this. No one else, just me. I'm special. Well, let's check off the obvious: Too much to live for? Nope. Too many will miss me? Nope. I haven't completed my life's work? I don't even have a 'life's work' unless you count a mountain of mission logs I have yet to enter. Yeah, you're so fucking special. Can't blame the others for cutting ties.

Not that I think they're rejoicing in my death or anything. Even that's a kind of narcissism—that they'd care enough to enjoy my absence. Even notice my absence. Can't blame them for just letting another placeholder slip into line. When I've done it myself…how many times? When I've seen them do it. No harm no foul. Not that it would hurt them anyway even if I raged for cycles about it. Waste what little time I have left in impotent rage? Not my style.

Damn warrior philosophy about choosing how you meet death. Test time, no retakes, Barricade. Can you do it? Not on your knees. Die on your feet. He summoned a smile for Sternburgh, who had probably broken a thousand military protocols and common sense into a fine spray of splinters giving him the time of his now apparently imminent demise. He at least deserved a little effort on Barricade's part simply in recognition.

"I'm sorry," Sternburgh said.

Barricade shrugged. "Nothing you could do about it, really."

"I did everything I could think of." Sternburgh's face flushed. He was angry about something even larger than this, though…this seemed plenty large enough for Barricade. "And trust me, I've been around long enough to think of a lot."

"Not blaming you, human." Knew I was dead as soon as Ironhide hit me back at Tunguska.

"I know. Just bitching about my own powerlessness. Not my favorite feeling."

"Know that feeling." Barricade tried to stir himself. A torpor was beginning to seep into him, like water rising from the ground. Just sink down into it, it invited, become numb. Be dead already before they can kill you. Cheat them of that much. It is all the control you have, to take you out of your own death. So tempting. But no. Stay awake. Stay aware. Face it. See it coming. Stand before it. For once in your life, stand up to it. Don't try to wriggle away, take the easy way out, avert your eyes. This is your death. You only get one. See what you've inflicted on so many other mechs. See how you like it. See.

"We have a bit too much in common," Sternburgh said. He'd dropped off the chair and had settled himself on the floor, leaning against Barricade's lower leg. Barricade had originally thought Sternburgh did it as the classic 'violate personal space' thing. Now he didn't know what to think.

"I was just thinking that the other day staring at your alt mode. Wait a minute, you don't have one." We don't have anything in common. This approach won't work on me. Resist, Barricade. Resist EVERYTHING. Till the very end. It is all you can do.

"You're not scared?"

Trap question. Oh yes I'm scared. Terrified. Who wouldn't be? Who wouldn't be?—someone who can't be leveraged. Which are you? Deflect. "Would you be? What's the proper human response for this sort of situation?"

"Stark terror. Know soldiers who have pissed themselves when the gun comes out. You're doing much better."

"Haven't seen the weapon yet, have I?" Resist.

Sternburgh sighed. "No one has."

"Sounds like you're trying to win me over to terror." Don't succumb.

"It would be logical. I'd imagine you robot types would be all about logic."

Phuh. What he didn't know. "If we were so logical, would we fight a war nearly to our own extinction? Or better yet, would we be so inefficient about it?" Deflect.

Sternburgh nodded his head, thinking more than agreeing. "Funny, isn't it? We're buying into the whole 'machines are more efficient than we are' philosophy. That's the rhetoric on the surface at least. Honestly, I think most of it is because it's easier to sit in a building and push a button and watch a tv screen than to pull a trigger and actually see and hear and smell that round go through someone's head."

This was a little too close to Barricade. Frag it, what did he have to lose? It was philosophy, nothing more. Certainly not actionable intelligence. "Having done both, the distance makes it easier. But only in the short term. Sooner or later your cortex catches up with what you've been doing."

He hesitated. It felt like a betrayal of…something. But at the same time, it felt like an almost painful release of pressure, as though some tank somewhere had been overpressurized and had just vented.

Sternburgh studied his hands. "Not just with killing, you know?"

"Get to you, what you do?"

Sternburgh squinted at the far wall. "More gets to me what it's done to me, if that makes any sense. And what I can do."

Oh yeah, that made a little too much sense. "Started doing it as a hobby. You know. Keep in practice." Goading Starscream to screaming fits—he'd set speed records doing that.

Sternburgh laughed. "Oh yeah. Done that. I have everyone I know baselined. Baselined my kid's soccer coach just for the hell of it. You know, to see if I trusted my kid with him. Because yeah, youth league soccer calls for that level of paranoia." He ran a hand through his sandy hair. "They don't know, though. You know. Normal people. Like…I have my wife. And I love her. But I can't argue with her. I can't. I'd destroy her. I know so much about her and what works against her I could vaporize her ego in about five minutes. So I just…leave." He shifted against Barricade's leg. "I tell myself that I know I love her because I at least care enough to walk out." He looked down at his knees. "Pretty fucking stupid that I'm telling my marital problems to a goddam robot."

Barricade shrugged. "Got nothing better to do." Sternburgh gave a sad sort of smirk, using his hands to stretch his artificial leg out along the floor. Barricade felt the moment stretch a bit too long, and…all too unpleasant thoughts of his future crept back toward him, making him acutely aware how empty the silent moments were, and how fast they were slipping away. "So why do you do it?" he blurted.

"Me? Because I can, I guess. I mean, that I can, and me doing it means someone else doesn't have to." He ran his hands across what must be the join of his artificial limb. "I'm already broken."

Barricade started at the words, chilled at the echo from his own past. Desperate to trawl the conversation out of dangerous waters, he said, "Yeah, but you believe in all this 'my country is awesome' stuff, right?"

Sternburgh laughed. "Yes and no. Seen a bit too much of," he waved his hand and Baricade wasn't sure if he meant to encompass himself or the upcoming test, "this shit to really believe in our purity and virtue anymore, though. There's the pretty Army, that you see on the news: freshfaced America, straight out of high school, laying down their lives for the greater good while the average American gets pissed when McDonalds fucks up their McNuggets order. And then there's us."

"They still die, though." Barricade found himself thinking, uncomfortably, of the drones. Blank faced idiots. Couldn't help themselves. Fight and die. Pure in intention and action and belief, because single-minded.

"Oh yeah. Best I heard it put was from Yee. She thinks too much about shit like this. She says it this way, that they give their lives for the ideal of America: we give our souls for the reality." He shrugged. "Pretty fucking sad to say no matter what I love my country. Even so. Except I don't love the ideals. I love the people. Fuckin' Wal-mart at two in the morning. Reality television. The guy at the State Fair who will deep fry anything you can fit in his fryer. Kids with pants falling off their asses." His complexion reddened. He sucked in a wet sounding inhale. "Fuck it. Listen to me. Think it's me and not you, you know? So, what about you? You believe in your side?"

That was, of course, the question. "Not even sure what my side stands for anymore." When he tried to think about it, all he could think of was names, faces. Names and faces that had already purged him from their memory caches. Long lists of battles—victories, defeats, tactical ties—that all led…nowhere. No beautiful ideals here. No purity. No virtue. Then, what?

"So, why do you do it?"

Habit. It's what I was built to do. He shrugged. "Don't know," he said, finally.