Chapter Four

Day 1,503 of the War:

“Please.” Dr. Copan walked across the carpet to two chairs, gesturing to one of them. “Sit down.”

She knew what to expect, but could never stop that first reflexive look around the bare room. The walls were painted a soothing pastel shade of green-blue, matched to the darker carpet. The comfortable chairs were covered in thick black fabric. A clock, always showing the same time, was on one wall, sandwiched between two small square abstract paintings.

The doctor watched her as she sat. He was a tall man, tanned and clean-shaven with straight greying hair brushed back from a high forehead and candid blue eyes. There was nothing singular about him. He was tall but not overly so. His skin was not remarkably dark or pale. His eyes were more a muted than vivid hue. He matched his surroundings perfectly, blending into the room’s microcosm of calm.

“It looks just like your office on Tatrex,” she commented, more to fill in the silence than anything else.

“You always say that,” he smiled. “I can’t recall, is this one of our scheduled visits or a stress-related one?”

She grimaced. “A bit of both.”

Copan leisurely crossed one leg over another, letting his elbows relax on the armrests. His hands hung over the edges, long buff-coloured fingers with prominent knuckles.

“So, how goes the war?”

“Well.” She hesitated. “Slower than I would like.”

“Do you still dream of home?”

“Occasionally. Maybe only twice since my last visit.”

Her sessions with Copan were usually four to six weeks apart.

“And what was the tenor of those recent dreams?”

“Positive. Some childhood memories, holidays by the mountains. The usual.”

Copan nodded. “And how’s Koul?”

She smiled, a mixture of amusement and exasperation. “He’s a very predictable man.”

“Still fighting you?”

“I’m amazed at how much energy he has,” she admitted. “I thought the Sab-Iqur affair would have made us allies, but it hasn’t worked out that way.”

He tilted his head to one side. “Because you thought committing a war crime would strike a chord with the way he thinks. Make him respect you.”

It wasn’t a question. She and Copan had discussed the topic extensively just after it occurred, but she still felt the guilt from the decision she made that fateful evening. A hot flash of anger raced through her.

“You keep bringing up Sab-Iqur,” she protested, her voice tight. “I thought we dealt with that.”

“On the contrary, you’re the one who brought up the subject. Despite our previous discussions, it’s your subconscious that keeps reacting to the reference.”

Copan’s voice was calm and sensible, but she couldn’t shake the feeling that he was somehow judging her, condemning her for her actions. And he was right. She had been the one who initially mentioned the incident.

Incident.

She closed her eyes, cynically admiring language and its ability to deceive. “Incident” sounded like a glass of spilt liquid, or a brief squabble with a friend. But Sab-Iqur was a magnitude, a universe, beyond that.

She reopened her eyes, harnessing her anger and using it to override her guilt. “There were good reasons for doing what I did. To establish my authority in front of Koul. To simultaneously progress the Perlim war effort. And give the Menons another reason to hate the Empire.” She exhaled a deep breath but refused to look away. “All it took was one massacre.”

“It was an extreme act,” he agreed, “but not unprecedented.”

“Nothing the Fusion won’t forgive me for,” she muttered.

Copan eyed her shrewdly. “I don’t think it’s the Fusion’s forgiveness we need to worry about here.”

She had ordered footage from the village to be sent to her because it was too dangerous for her to be there in person. And she sat in the isolation of her office and watched what was sent until her eyes felt seared to charcoal. It helped, a bit, that the dead looked like marionettes. Despite her self-imposed penance, she was able to distance herself from the mass images of carnage by concentrating on their puppet-like poses. It was when those limbs appeared with no distractions—a severed leg, or a hand with rings on the dead fingers—shredded flesh, often surrounded by nothing but stained, bare earth, that the enormity of what she had done hit her. Maybe her darkest thoughts were true. Maybe she was no better than the garbage she was fighting.

Copan used the small silence to shift position. “Are you sorry you accepted this assignment?”

Every session with Copan came back to this one question. It was the axis around which her mental equilibrium spun.

“The Perlim Empire is old and corrupt,” she finally said after a heavy silence. “They don’t believe in a fairer redistribution of wealth, equal participation of their citizenry or equal access to social policy. They can afford all of it, but have made conscious decisions to do otherwise. They are a harsh feudal structure that’s outlived its usefulness.”

“That’s not what I asked,” he rebuked gently.

A small smile flitted across her features, conceding the point. “I won’t deny it’s exciting. Me, against an entire empire. While it’s critical and political to the Fusion, I have to admit I approach it more as a game. No, I’m happy enough that I’m here.”

Then something intervened and she frowned. A face in her mind’s eye.

“There’s another issue?” Copan inquired a split-second later, an eyebrow lifting.

The AI psych-kernel was quick. If this was a physical interaction, she could have masked her reactions. But “Dr. Copan”, a realistic avatar of her Fusion briefing officer, was inside her head in a very complex cognitive construct with links to several areas in her brain. The program wasn’t sophisticated enough to read her mind but it had a good idea when vulnerable thoughts surfaced and took action accordingly.

“I have a new aide,” she finally conceded.

“Long overdue,” he nodded, “considering your accident occurred two months ago.”

“Koul found her.”

Copan’s eyes brightened. “Koul? Her?” He didn’t have to ask how she felt about that. The question was stamped on his face.

“She’s very attractive.”

“Your type?”

She remembered the warm welcoming eyes, the smooth skin and high cheekbones, the full lips and delectable curves. She looked away from the psychiatrist.

“Yes. She’s my type.”

“Unfortunate. One reason we chose you for this assignment, Laisen, was because of your sexual predilections. A heterosexual woman in such a homophobic, male-dominated environment could have led to complications. Ones you, presumably, wouldn’t have caused.”

“I’m well aware of that.”

“And the fact that Koul found her is also suspicious.”

“Yes, I know that too.” Her voice was testy. Irritated.

He paused. “I’m only trying to help. However,” he sat back, “looking at it differently—with the assumption that you’ll not act recklessly, that you’ll be discreet, and maintain your cover—the Fusion has no issue with you establishing an intimate relationship with this woman. You’ve been without sexual contact for several years. As your psychologist, I consider intimacy with another person to be very healthy and grounding.” He softened his voice and she met his gaze.

“To my mind, the fact that you desire someone, find her attractive, despite Koul and despite the war, means that you’re still coping well in a very stressful and isolating environment.”

The mood in the room changed to something approaching camaraderie and she instinctively recoiled. Nothing she said to the AI Copan would be forgotten. Everything, from the words she spoke to the way she said them, would be recorded in a self-contained, removable neural patch for later analysis.

“Are you approving my wish to fornicate with a junior officer, Doctor?” she asked dryly, distancing herself from the AI’s friendliness.

He smiled and shook his head. “This isn’t the first time you’ve handled missions like this. We wouldn’t have put you here if we didn’t have the utmost confidence in your abilities. Pursue a temporary relationship with this woman. You know the risks. The Fusion won’t stand in your way.”

“No, but common sense will.”

“Koul’s involvement is a complication,” he agreed. “Do you think there’s a link between him and your aide?”

“I hope there isn’t, but Koul is as twisty as a grapple-vine. I wouldn’t put it past him.”

“Do you think he knows of your sexual preferences?”

The woman the Fusion called Laisen Carros shrugged in a gesture of ignorance.

“What will you do?” Copan asked.

“What can I do? She’s my aide, so I can’t avoid her. And getting rid of her too quickly will also tip off to Koul that something’s the matter. But, in the meantime, I’ll be watching her very closely.”

And how closely is that, my oversexed Laisen?

Copan nodded. “Sounds like a sensible plan. Good luck.”

She wished she was a soldier.

Cheloi kept her expression serious as she walked the northern edge of the camp later that morning. As a soldier, all she had to do was fight and die. It was straightforward. Simple. With dust in her face and stones in her boots, life had an immediacy that kept other, more disturbing, lines of thought at bay. Having no say in the wider strategy of war was also liberating. Soldiers bitched about everything knowing that they lacked the responsibility to do anything about it. The food, their weapons, the supplies, the weather, the accommodation, their commanders. They could do very little about any of them. Life came down very simply to two paths, live or die.

On the other hand, being a commanding officer was complex, often beyond sensibility. She had that ultimate responsibility. If not for the weather itself, then certainly for the food, the weaponry, the supplies, the accommodation, the exploitation of weather and the commands that would send living beings to their possible deaths. It was up to her to juggle conflicting priorities and strained resources in order to carry out her orders from a cadre of men who were too old, too divorced from reality, to remember what it was like to share a cramped room with nine others, breathing in each other’s air while they waited for the word that could end their lives.

And if that wasn’t bad enough, she was a traitor. She might be a Perlim officer, but she wasn’t Perlim. Instead, she was an operative for the empire’s sworn enemy, the Fusion.

A twisty grapple-vine.

She might have used that term describing Koul to Copan but it also applied to the Fusion. Even though they were rich and powerful, they never directly attacked any of their enemies. The Perlim might fear such a threat, but that was only because they didn’t know how the Fusion really operated. Why initiate a frontal attack when a giant game of strategy could be set up instead? It was like boxing a playful magician. The Fusion danced around pulling tricks out of its sleeves, threatening with one move, feinting with the other. It took more time but they won more times than they lost.

But out of all the missions she had undertaken, this had to be the most audacious yet. She had been planted by the Fusion two territory commands before and briefed on the eventual possibility of taking command of the Nineteen. How did they know she would even get here? She could have been killed at any time over the past two years and the Fusion’s entire plan for the planet would have crumbled.

Central Control could have chosen someone else to replace the then-commander of the Nineteen, an incompetent Senior Colonel by the name of Samnett.

She could have been transferred off planet.

The Nineteen could have been captured by rebels while she was still at the Thirty-Five or Eight.

Yet, here she was, exactly as predicted. In fact, a little ahead of schedule.

The mission the Perlim Empire gave her was clear: hold the Nineteen and repel any rebel attacks.

The mission the Fusion gave her was also clear: bring down the Nineteen and do it in a manner that would make rebuilding difficult, if not impossible.

It was up to Cheloi to find a way to do both before escaping with her life and, while she was pondering the contradictions, her gaze was caught by a movement to one side.

Lith. Cheloi knew that she and Rumis had been on a tour of the hospitals earlier that morning. She turned and waited as her aide approached.

“Colonel.” Lith saluted and snapped her feet together, sending small clouds of dust into the late morning air.

“Lieutenant.”

“We’ve just come back from delivering the minor citations, as ordered.”

Cheloi turned and continued walking. Lith stepped into rhythm beside her.

“And what did you think?”

“Colonel?”

“About the facilities. About the wounded.”

She imagined that she felt, rather than heard, Lith swallow.

“It was, not pleasant,” she said, her voice husky.

“Did you notice the smell?” Cheloi asked.

Out of the corner of her eye, she saw Lith shoot her a shocked glance, before subsiding.

“Y-yes. Almost immediately.”

“I think that’s what surprises everyone the most. That smell of infection and decay.”

She, who had been on countless planetside missions, could still be startled by it. She could only wonder about the Perlim reactions.

“Our battles have usually been space-based,” she explained, the dry ground crunching under her feet. “Vacuum, temperatures near absolute zero, massive explosions. Fatalities are high and most survivors end up with auto-cauterised wounds. The corpses, what’s left of them, are conveniently frozen by the absolute coldness of space.

“Menon IV, on the other hand,” she said, looking around, “is a hot planet, ripe for the incubation of millions of microbes. Soldiers dodge death when they’re injured, then have to dodge it again while being treated. Fatalities are lower, but we end up sending back thousands of permanently scarred soldiers to their families. In the meantime, they wait here, festering and sweating in primitive facilities, wondering if they managed to survive an artillery barrage only to die from an unchecked infection. The smell of contagion and desperation,” she said, “is…soul sapping. ”

She didn’t need to add that the more expensive options of advanced treatments and integrated AI-prosthetics were only available to senior ranked personnel. Certainly not to the average soldier or junior officer caught by the jagged skewers of combat. Those unfortunates had to make do with whatever meagre help was offered to them.

“You feel sorry for them!”

Cheloi looked at Lith, startled by the surprise in her voice. “Of course I feel sorry for them. I regret the loss of potential of every Perlim soldier.”

But that didn’t seem to be enough. Her aide searched her eyes with an intensity that was disturbing. Cheloi felt as though Lith was trying to peer into her soul.

“Lieutenant,” she frowned, trying to discourage the examination. It didn’t seem to be working. Questing eyes looked deep and Cheloi felt herself being stripped bare. A stroke of pain pierced her chest. “Lith,” she entreated softly.

That did the trick. Lith stepped back, embarrassment on her face.

“I’m sorry, Colonel. I didn’t mean—”

“No, it’s quite all right,” Cheloi interrupted. “Touring the facilities can leave anybody a bit, disconcerted.”

The silence lengthened between them before Lith cleared her throat. “I, er, originally approached you to let you know I was back from the hospital tour. And to ask if there are any duties you have for me this afternoon.”

Duties. Of course.

“You’ll find a series of instructions on my desk that need to be sent to the sector commanders. And, ah, a bottle of something to be taken to Senior Colonel Chinwoh of Territory Seventeen. I’m aware I could send it via the normal service, but I’d appreciate a more personal touch.”

“Yes, Colonel.”

“I think that should keep you occupied for the rest of the day.”

“Yes, Colonel.”

Lith turned to leave but an impulse had Cheloi calling to her. “Lieutenant?”

She ran her gaze down Lith’s face as she turned, noting how the sun lightened her hair and turned the colour of her eyes to liquid gold. Talk of the medical facilities made Cheloi’s mind run riot. She imagined Lith lying mangled and bleeding somewhere. Vivid images from Sab-Iqur superimposed themselves over the lithe figure of her driver.

“Territory Seventeen contains some rough terrain. Please make sure you come back in one piece.”

She tried to make her voice sound flippant. She even smiled, but feared the gravity in her eyes overrode attempts at levity. Lith, too, seemed to pick up on the unspoken plea below the joke.

“Of course,” she replied. After a small hesitation, she turned and strode to the nearest aboveground exit.

Cheloi watched her as she walked away, noting the gentle sway of her hips and the suppressed energy of her gait. Why had she inured herself to the pull of desire for years only to have it tug hard at her groin now? Now, when she was immersed within the most inconvenient intersection of space and time in the known galaxy? Cheloi continued her constitutional but her serene contemplative mood was gone. Shot to pieces by a pair of probing eyes and a light soothing voice.

She looked down at the tremors that suddenly began shaking her fingers and clenched her hand into a fist. The sun was bright and hot and she welcomed its warmth. That was a good start. She was on Menon IV to do a job. Once she did her job, she could go home, although that too was a puzzle. Stay on Tatrex or….

She pulled her focus back to the here and now. She promised Rumis she would petition Central Control for more updated medical facilities and, if she was quick, she could get her suggestion included with the afternoon despatches.

Happy that she had kept her demons once more at bay, Cheloi disappeared into the cool of the command complex.