Corporate Soldier

I'm sorry for the ending. (I'm actually not)

They deploy us seventeen kilometers from the fire.

They are beautiful, the rising flames, tinted from my dropship helmet.

“Coming, Casey?”

I shoulder my rifle, nodding. My ponytail is scratching the back of my neck, confined in my jumpsuit. Maybe I should have gotten a buzz cut like the rest of the girls in my company, but I couldn’t bear to part with it. It might be vain, but it felt too much like losing a part of myself. Of course now, thousands of clicks from home, standing in enemy territory with a gun on my back and the world exploding around me, it feels like fallacy. What does it matter, anymore?

“Come on, Case!”

I dip my chin in Extra’s direction, flipping the toggle on my helmet’s built in microphone. “Yeah, coming.”

He turns to move out, and I join the company, eyes moving upwards, past the fire, past the rubble and to the dark clear sky beyond.

“Incoming at your ten. Case, you and Gee handle it. Me and the boys will run interference.”

He kneels in the dusty red earth, activating his scrambler, and Tuck and Arturo do the same. I glance over to where Gee is readying her rifle, unslinging my own and aiming down sights.

The Trisk cruiser is coming in low, and I take a steadying breath, firing twice in succession. Blast shots, which are more powerful but mean my gun will be out of commission for the next ten minutes or so.

The ship catches fire, listing to one side and exploding in a shower of sparks as it collides with an outcropping of rock.

“Got it.”

“Good job. Let’s head out. Command says they have a drop shuttle. We’re getting the heck off of this rock.”

I let out a breath, relief filling me, unbidden. We’re not out of here yet but the thought of home, of spicy noodles and my Laolao’s scratchy voice and the bustle of Station Nine, is comforting. Twenty thousand known planets and named stations and the only one I care to return to is a slums in Northern Westpreston.

“We’re gonna make it, Case.” Extra calls to me, and I can sense his relief too, can see a glint of his violet eyes through the tinted visor of his helmet. I’ve heard that aesthetic feature manipulation used to be only for the wealthy, but nowadays it’s commonplace. He always told us it was because of his favorite novel character. He’s one of the only people I know who still reads physical books too. Says he likes the smell of paper and binding.

I nod, exaggerating the movement so he can see it. “I know.” I hop down from a boulder, boots raising puffs of copper-coloured dust when I land.

“What’s the first thing you’re going to do when you get home?” Gee’s voice fills my helmet. She sounds far younger than eighteen, and her round face and red hair fill in my mind.

“Sleep.” Tuck says immediately. We all laugh. “What? I wasn’t joking.”

“Fly my cruiser.” Arturo says. “I want to pilot ships, not shoot them out of the sky.”

“Hold my baby sister.” Extra adds, wistful. She was born during this mission. By the time he gets home she’ll be almost ten months old. “And you, Case?”

I hesitate, the words see my family balancing on the tip of my tongue. They no longer feel right anymore, for reasons I can’t seem to place. “I would breathe freely, knowing that my life was my own again, even for a short time.”

Silence on the line. Explosions rock the ground beneath us. I think of all the Trisk who lived here, worked here and died here. All gone.

And suddenly, I wonder if it will ever end. This war, this endless neverending battle. How many of our children have lost their lives for this? How many more will? I spend every night lying awake thinking about how close my friends are to dying. How we are one misplaced explosion or stray Trisk shot away from the end. How long before our ranks thin?

“Hey,” it’s Extra, hanging back from the others to fall into step beside me. “You doing alright?”

I glance up at the lights on my display. He’s switched us to a one-on-one line. “Just thinking too much again.”

He claps a gloved hand on my shoulder, “hey, don’t overthink it. We’re gonna be just fine, ‘kay? We’ll be back on the Novasol cruiser in no time. I’ll even let you read The Hobbit.”

“But only if I’m super careful and don’t dog ear the pages and don’t eat while reading it.” I spout, unable to help the smile that creeps onto my lips. “Yeah, I know the drill.”

“Hey, Tolkien books are rare. It’s probably worth eighty Nova credit.”

“Not that you’d ever sell it.” I roll my eyes, but he’s distracted now. I can tell he’s getting another call from the way his mouth moves inside his helmet. He’s closed out our line.

I wait until the light blinks back on. “Everything okay?”

He shakes his head, light going dark as he continues talking.

I scan the surroundings, but it looks clear for now. All the Trisk are occupied in the East with our bombers. The only reason they even deployed troops was to search for cimcells and to fight off Trisk salvage crews. Not that we had even done anything after all. Most of the ships had exploded on contact. It was always more important to destroy them than to preserve cimcells. Otherwise if the Trisk kill us they’ll get them. They tell us the war hinges on our donations and our support of Novasol, but really it’s all about cimcells. The more we have the more ships we can send against them and if they gather enough they’ll power up their tricannons and blast us all into a thousand pieces.

Extra’s light comes back on. He’s watching me, in that way he does when he doesn’t want to tell me bad news.

The rest of the company is hesitating, waiting for us. Gee and Arturo on overwatch, Tuck swiping his fingers in the air to synthesise commands.

“Spit it out, Extra. I can handle it.”

His sigh fills my helmet, and he moves closer so he can lean against mine, arm around my shoulder. “They’re not sending us home, Case.”

“What? They have to. It’s in our contracts! Mandatory home leave every six months. Read the manual.”

“Trust me, I know. Gcket says they’ve activated Emergency Orders.”

“Why?”

“Because the Trisk attacked Synth. They’ve stopped responding to diplomacy requests. We think they’ve changed tactics.”

“Which means they want us gone?”

His voice is tight. “Looks so, yes.”

“Where are they sending us? For how long?”

He grimaces, stepping back and fingering the gun at his side. “To Cleft Station.”

“You have got to be kidding me. Cleft is just an old mining station. There’s nothing there!”

“I don’t know. They didn’t tell me specifics. I expect we’ll get a file when we get home.” He swears softly and I jump. Doing so could result in serious punishment, ever since the Quality Act of 3342. I don’t even know where he learned the word.

“Stay there a sec. I’ll tell the others.” He turns to the other three and I sink down onto a nearby rock, trying to calm myself. It’s probably just a routine check, something simple. Then they’ll let us go home. Only another couple of weeks and I would be sitting in my own living space, Jett teasing me and ruffling my hair, Mom cooking up hot pot and Dad playing his ship fiddle and Laolao telling me how proud she is of me, smile making a map of her wrinkled face. . .

“Come on. Case. We gotta go.” Extra holds out his hand and I take it, rising to my feet. We’re all subdued as we troop back to where the carrier is waiting for us, filing aboard with leaden feet and mounting our rifles on their chargers.

I sit heavily on my assigned seat, electronic label glowing with my designation. F-17:23. I watch the others do the same, faces downcast, looking as crestfallen as I feel.

Extra takes the seat next to mine as the loading hatch seals shut, opening our private line again. He doesn’t speak for a long time, but I can hear his quiet breathing, which is strangely comforting.

“C’est un dommage, oui?”

I glance at him, trying to remember the right words to respond. My French is highly questionable at best. “Le fraises ne dort pas.”

Extra chokes on his laughter. “They most certainly do not.”

“I still don’t see why you speak a dead language. What’s the point?”

“The point is that it’s a beautiful language and I don’t want to see it die completely.” He buckles his restrainer belt with a muted click and reaches over to do mine as well when I make no move to. “Sometimes that’s good enough reason.”

A tinny beep and a robotic male voice informs us that the cabin is now fully pressurized and oxygenated. The others remove their helmets one by one, shoving them away in overhead bins.

I leave mine on for another moment, leaning back against the wall with a click.

Extra hesitates, hand ready to remove his own. “It’s going to be alright, Case.”

“I know. I know it is.” I take the helmet off, watching him call command, letting the subdued chatter of the others wash over me, gripping the armrests as the shuttle engine roars to life, shaking the vessel as it launches, rocketing towards the vast unknown.

I watch Krivasti-5 grow smaller behind us in the rear window, rocked with technicolor explosions and it strikes me that if we had not been there, everything would have turned out exactly the same.

~

The transport rocks violently and I clutch the armrests, glancing out of the window at the starry sky beyond.

“Probably just turbulence.” Tuck says.

“Don’t be an idiot.” Gee smacks him on the side of the head. “There isn’t turbulence, we’re in space.”

“Is something wrong with the ship, you think?” Arturo sits up straighter.

Extra takes out his personal comm and sticks in the earpiece. “We all good?” His face darkens with concern as he gets a reply, “got that.” He rips it out, schooling his features as he studies us.

We wait for him to speak with bated breath.

He drags a hand over his face, fisting both in his lap. “There’s Trisk fighters coming for us.”

I’m hit with a sense of shock. “What? Why? We’re an unarmed cruiser, why. . .?”

“Because they’ve stopped playing, Casey.” Extra meets my eyes, resignation in their violet depths. “They’ve decided to hit us wherever they can, and they’ve decided to stop playing clean. This war just got a whole lot more real.”

And we’re going to be the first casualties.

I can see them in the rear window now, a swarm of Trisk ships jetting towards us. Too fast.

Not fast enough.

“Why in heck don’t they put guns on these things?” Arturo leans forward in his seat, going pale.

It’s Gee who answers. “Because space capable weapons are expensive. And we’re not.”

The truth of it hits us. There are millions of people struggling to pay off debts in Novasoul held systems, which means a near endless supply of child conscripts collected as backfill.

They will write off the lost cruiser and send our families stock message clips and some medals of cheap aluminum for our service and then they will move on. More teenagers will be sent to die for them, thrown against the enemy until all the Trisk are dead.

And then they will rebuild and wait for the next war. Nothing will ever change.

Gee is crying silently, leaning against Tuck, shorn red hair still in disarray from her helmet. Arturo still looks disbelieving, folding and unfolding the corner of his uniform.

A pressure at my wrist causes me to glance up, meeting Extra’s eyes. He moves his gloved hand further, entwining his fingers with mine. I hold onto him tightly, one last solid thing in my life. Something to cling to, at the end of all things.

“He gets a happy ending.” He whispers, voice catching. “Bilbo. In The Hobbit. He lives happily ever after, til the end of his days.”

I hold the vision in my mind, imagining him happy and free, living a simple life in a simple world rooted in the ground.

And then my gaze moves towards the window just before the glass shatters, pierced by Trisk guns as the fuel tank explodes.

A sudden pain and then it’s all over.

And I wonder if any of it ever even mattered after all.