How can we be so different from the humans, yet so alike? We can use the same weapons, wear the same rags, eat the same food, scratch at the same rashes and slap at the same parasites. After decades of close horror, we even speak each other’s language. But, breathing the same air―that is something that demands death.
Varo Pina and Skis Adoveyna are waiting for the order, their eyes tired and yellow, staring at the top of the bank. I can see that Pina already sees its own death. I want to touch its hand, to tell Pina that we will survive, but my friend would reject my words. My friend Varo Pina knows it must die. It has talked about nothing else for days. I think it wants to get done with the experience. "I am calm about death," Pina once said to me. "Waiting for death is the strain."
Once, in the dust of memory, Pina and I loved. Neither of us conceived. The humans have us there. If a Drac is certain it will be dead or otherwise unable to care for its young, it cannot conceive. To humans, though, the prospect of death and deprivation seems to drive them into a rutting frenzy. We are told that it is a primitive survival mechanism to preserve the species. They also live longer than Dracs, barring traumatic intervention.
I no longer have those feelings for Pina, and Pina has no feelings left for me. I wonder if any of us have any feelings left for anything.
Without speaking, Chaki Anta puts on its helmet and signals Miati Ki and me to take the front. I do not hesitate. Instead I take my energy knife, climb the bank, reach the lip, and begin crawling through the rubble, checking automatically for remote sensors and probes. It has been a long time since any of us saw a working remote or probe, but we stay cautious. Assuming they are all down or destroyed seems to jinx them into existence. There are still scanners and missiles. Humans also have eyes and those big ears.
I note the position of the sun. By the time we reach the bunker it will be behind us, burning our hacks but glaring into the eyes of the humans.
I can see the bunker by peering through a crack in the ruin of a stone wall. The heat radiating from the wall washes my face. The fortification is to my front, the bluff farther on and more to my left. To my far left is a low hill. To my right stretches the lake named Sharing in both Drac and human languages. The lake was named a long time ago, before the war, back in a fantasy time when Dracs and humans were supposed to have lived and worked together.
"Yazi Ro," the voice link scratches into my ear membrane. "Keep moving."
My head is filled with so many minds, but my body follows Anta’s orders as though it has its own will. I crawl from behind the broken wall, around a pile of still smoking wreckage, until I reach the body of one of the Twelve’s fallen. A primitive projectile caught the Drac beneath its left eye. The back of its head is missing, exposing an ochre goo that was once a brain.
What do you leave behind, comrade?
A parent?
A child?
Did you have someone who loved you?
Does anyone care how you died? that you died? for what you died?
What did you die for, my nameless comrade? If I meet my own death this moment, I am at a loss to say for what I died. I am an automation; a creature that responds to orders. Perhaps I die for glorious habit.
There must be a grander way than that to record me in my line’s archives, if they still exist. The language Dracon, however, is suited more to facts than fantasy. There are few ways to express an event except with truth. To spin dreams the language English was designed. Here lies Yazi Ro, dead because it couldn’t go no mo'. Pooped, perhaps, from a penchant for proclivity.
Yazi Avo, my parent, taught me my English. Avo once said that if there is ever to be peace, we must first talk. I laugh at this now. All either species knows how to do with words is to wound. My parent had a crippled foot, mangled in an Amadeen Front raid when it was not even half a year old.
I look at the body of my comrade. The young one, barely an adult, was given to the Twelve just before the battle to fill out our number. Young, but a good soldier, nevertheless. I saw its knife take down at least three humans before the bullet found its mark. Dead bodies: a strange way to measure occupational proficiency.
Two paces beyond the nameless Drac is a nameless human who must have been dead for quite awhile. I cannot tell if it is male or female. Its skin is swollen and black, the eyes crusted with thirsty greenflies, their swollen iridescent bodies like so many droplets of jade.
Human dead turn black when they lie in the sun for a few days. The odor is beyond description. I make a wide path around it. To the human’s side I see the white flash of an anksnake beneath the body, out of the direct sun, feeding on the corpse’s guts. They only go for decaying flesh, so I am in no danger from the snake. But it might have startled me. Had I cried out, or raised up, or used my weapon, that would have been the end for all of us. But I do not draw attention to myself and must pay attention to the instant.
Again I face the bunker. It is an ugly fire-blackened shelter of poured stone. It has rounded corners, gun ports, and a huge hole blasted into its left front. To the right of the hole a deep red rose is painted, the sign of the Amadeen Front. The three remaining weapon ports are spaced evenly to the right of the hole. Between the bunker and my position is a field of rubble. I see a dark shape just for an instant. It runs from in front of the bunker to a position among some rocks part way up the bluff. I am not certain, but more than one human seems to be there.
I glance to my left and wait until I catch a glimpse of Ki forty paces away. Ki turns its head toward me for a moment and I raise my hand and point. Ki looks forward, sees the rocks, and nods. It begins bearing toward the left and the rocks, while I continue toward the bunker.
So many times have I faced death to do more death. And after the effort and sacrifice there are still more humans to kill, more comrades to watch die, more fire to burn, more things to destroy. The bunker ahead of me is part of a village that exchanged hands four times this year alone. How many hundreds or thousands of lives has this ruined heap of debris cost? I cannot even guess. And for what reason? It sits astride a road crossing with surfaces impossible to traverse by wheeled and tracked vehicles that no longer function.
My knee strikes a small rock which clatters into a larger rock. I freeze. Motionless, no breathing, willing my heart to quit its pounding. I am almost afraid to move my eyes for the notice their motion might draw. Still my gaze quickly searches the ground between me and the bunker. Broken walls, rubble, twisted towers of metal. I can see nothing threatening.
The pebble had not made a loud noise, but if the humans have a listening post out or a sensor buried nearby, the noise would be loud enough. Without looking at it, my right hand steals down the length of my weapon one finger’s breadth at a time. It reaches the power switch and I energize my knife. Neither the switch nor the weapon powering up make a sound, but I can feel the power pulse. I am grateful I took advantage of the time in the sun waiting for Anta’s return to add to the charge. The touch gauge shows seventy-three percent.
My voice link crackles in my ear, startling me. It is Miati Ki reporting to Chaki Anta. "Anta," Ki whispers to the old fighter. "There are four of them in those rocks behind and to the left of the bunker. Their field of fire covers almost all of the ground in front of Yazi Ro." The words, once I allow myself to understand them, make my skin writhe.
Another crackle, then Chaki Anta’s voice. "Ki, have they seen you?"
"No, but they see Yazi Ro. They are staring at Ro this moment, weapons trained. I think they wait to see the rest of us before they open fire."