"What weapons?" asks Anta.
"Two rifles and a captured energy knife. I cannot see what the fourth has."
"Stay in place, Ki," answers Anta. "I’m coming up on your left with Pina and Adoveyna."
By the breath of a kiz, I am fisher’s bait! I fight down the urge to bolt and run. It seems insane. As the battle started there were hundreds in this sector. Now it has come down to four humans and five Dracs? Is this when I die, when it is all but over?
"Stay in place, Ro," comes Anta’s voice. "Give no sign that you are aware of the humans in the rocks."
"As you order, Anta." Fine words from my leader and a terribly brave response, but I have already given a sign by signaling Ki. How do I take that back? Perhaps no human saw it. Or if one of them did, perhaps that one mistook my gesture for something else. "Look, the Drac is saying hello."
A mind in fear takes comfort where it may.
I swallow against the moisture in my mouth. Human mouths grow dry with fear. Dracs fairly drool. I occupy my mind trying to figure out which is worse. To drool or not to drool, that is the question.
My grip on my weapon has my fingers aching, but I cannot relax them in fear of the movement. I need to void. I know it is only the fear and I force the feeling away. Only the urge to void goes. The fear remains.
There is no more communication on the voice link. With patience that threatens to tear my neck muscles, I turn my head so very slowly to my left, my eyes straining to see around the left frame of my visor. It takes forever, but once more I can see where Ki had been concealed. Instead of Ki, however, there is Pina. It is crawling very rapidly toward the rocks. Anta must have already passed. Adoveyna follows Pina without a pause. Will they take down the humans before the humans become impatient waiting for me to make my move? It is said that some humans pray to gods. I feel the lack.
My view of Adoveyna is just as it crawls behind some rubble. I slowly turn my head to face the bunker but I stop as I see something above and far behind where I lost sight of Skis Adoveyna. The small hill is little more than a support for shattered stumps and the remains of a few smashed dwellings, a thin smoky mist rendering everything in shades of gray. Earlier in the day the rise had been roasted and pulverized. Still, there was something that shouldn’t be. A fifth human? More? Had I seen a piece of wire or cloth waving in the slight breeze? A stray beam of light reflected from―
"Anta," I whisper into the voice link. "Anta, to your far left, up on that hill, I saw movement."
"Where?" it asks, but before I can answer, the kow-kow sounds of a human rifle shatters the silence. The sounds are soon joined by Pina screaming into the link and the humans in the rocks opening up with the energy knife, the broad swath of its blade coming right toward me. Someone screams, "Kill them!"
Quickly I roll until a large block of cut stone is between me and the knife, still giving the humans on the hill a view of me. Two of Anta’s remaining knives fire at the rocks beneath the bluff while the third fires irregularly at the hill. I turn, place my back against the stone block, aim my own blade toward the hill, and press the trigger. I feel the tremendous energy pulses as they warm my hands. When I am certain the humans are at least down, I jump up and turn to run toward the bunker. A deafening explosion erupts in front of me, blinding me for a moment, filling my lungs with choking dust and gasses.
Before I open my eyes or check to see if I have all of my limbs, I realize that the fourth human in the rocks has a missile launcher. My eyes open and the sky above is gray with dust and smoke, cut with the green glowing blades of energy knives and the white streaks of pulse weapons. As the deadly silence ends, returning my hearing to me, the feeling comes back to my body. The first of it is a skull-cracking pain in my head, a stinging tingle all across my skin. I cautiously lift my hands to feel my head, grateful to find that it is still covered by my helmet. I sit up, then kneel as I pick up my weapon. It is still charged and operative.
Without thinking, I climb to my feet and spring forward, the breath coming hard in my lungs as I braid my way among the broken stones and twisted metal. A loud kang sound from a piece of metal near my head catches me by surprise and I recoil from it, roll to my left, and come up aiming my blade at the bunker. There are two, no five flashes from the dark opening. The ground around me erupts with geysers of stone dust as shattered bits of metal buzz around me. An energy flash from behind comes close enough to sear the flesh on my left shoulder. There is at least one more human with a knife. I throw myself into a slight depression, whirl about, and fire my knife at the hill once more. Twice, three times, and I see my blade catch an energy pack. There is a blinding blue light, then nothing but a steaming hole in the ground.
There doesn’t seem to be anyone left firing from the rocks or the hill and I roll to my right, jump up, and wash the bunker opening with my knife. After I release the trigger, I squat behind some wreckage and check the hill as I touch the knife’s charge indicator. Still nothing on the hill and my weapon is at forty-nine percent. I glance a little more to the right, and look at the rocks. They are black where before they were reddish tan. I see no movement. "Anta?" I call into my voice link. There is nothing but static.
"Anta? Ki? Pina? Adoveyna?" I get to my feet and try again.
"Tsien Siay, report!"
They cannot all be dead. We have been at this far too long, endured too many things. If the human demons that spawned this hell have any sense of justice, all of the Twelve cannot be dead.
With my chin I switch the sensor in my helmet to read thermal input. Looking at my visor I see a bright orange place on the hill where I laid on my blade causing the human’s energy pack to go up. There is another bright orange place among the rocks where the second knife was. When it went up, the four humans went with it. Below the rocks there is a dimming orange dot, the cooling body of a dead human. In the rubble field below, where my comrades were hiding, there are another four orange dots, dimming, as the heat leaves their bodies. Before feelings crush me, I remind myself that the lack of an exploded energy pack sign means that in all probability, their knives still work. I must disable them before I leave.
I am alone.
For a moment I am confused about what to do. Should I rage and throw myself into the monster’s mouth to avenge my dead comrades? Do I cower in terror, hoping that no one will notice me? Do I surrender and trust to the good intentions of the Amadeen Front? Do I simply abandon this place, go backto Lurack and say, "Mission accomplished, Ovjetah. Everything is dead."
—I hear a sound from the bunker and I whirl around, my knife at the ready. The heat sensor shows two beings dead in the ragged opening. Farther inside are at least six older dead and deep inside are two hot live ones, very close together. I realize I am standing in full view of the bunker, and I squat down, amazed that I am alive.
Perhaps the two humans who are alive are wounded. For some reason they didn’t take me out when they could. I want to call Anta’s name again, see the bodies of my comrades with my own eyes. I rebel at relying on a mere instrument to tell me my comrades are dead. But what would be the purpose? Then, what was ever the purpose of any of it? How can a being tremble in fear of losing its life one moment and care not a dot the next?
I stand in full view of the bunker, my weapon held at my side, and walk toward the opening, hardly curious at the form my death will take. At the opening I step over the lip of the hole torn in the wall and walk in. I pause inside and look around.
It is still. After six days of battle, there is something obscene about so much silence. It allows too many things to be felt. They stand before me in a row: fear, sadness, outrage, emptiness, and hate. Indifference and a terrible tiredness. How I long to rest my head upon my parent’s lap and beg Yazi Avo to quiet the buzzing in my brain.