I explain what we are told—about the surprise attacks on our networked computer systems, and the warheads launched on our cities, and about what little I know about the Widows—and he nods as he listens, but otherwise his face is strangely expressionless. When I have finished, he tilts his head slightly, and he blinks a few times before he speaks again.
“It isn’t like that everywhere,” he says. “Not every colony was nuked. Destroying us wasn’t their objective. I think the picture They painted was intended to control you, to make you fight—to put your back against the wall.”
He stares again at the maps laid out in front of us and, for a little while, he is silent. When he speaks again, it is quietly and deliberately. I can detect the tremor in his voice, the edge to his words. He is trying to prevent emotion from overwhelming him. “Their objective was always to annex the human race—to dominate us, and to acquire our territory and resources. Some of the colonies were destroyed by thermonuclear attacks, this one for example, but most were not. What’s left of humanity—far more than you have been led to believe—is now governed by Them. We were offered a place in their caste system. We have become part of Their empire and must follow Their laws. Those who are able try to continue with their lives as well as they can. Most have been enslaved and put to work. Others collaborate and receive their favour. All of us are, in truth, prisoners.”
“But yours is a path of resistance. That was your choice.”
He looks at me as if he cannot understand my meaning. My words make no sense to him. “Humanity should be free,” he replies.
“Can They be defeated?”
“Does it matter?”
“Everything you do impacts on the rest of humanity.”
“There are reprisals for our actions, yes.”
I say nothing. I have been fighting an unwinnable war for a long time, and I have died a thousand times doing it. Yet, the war I was fighting was different—I stood between humanity and its extermination. But is it better to live a life of subjugation, even enslavement, rather than face extinction?
He wants to say more, but something prevents him. He does not trust me; it’s more than hate for the murders committed by my kind. He’s right not to. Even I don’t know what link there might be between my own thoughts and the Penrose, or wherever it is I have been all this time. There is more to their resistance than I know. More than I want to know. More to this world which is unfolding behind me, out of sight.
So I focus my rage in the only place I know I can.
We have to travel on foot, which means the hike to our insertion points takes several hours. I could move more quickly and, as we get closer, I will; the plan is for me to attack from the opposite side, to distract. Breaking away from the main team will give me the opportunity to scout the terrain and examine the compound. I have seen holographic diagrams and images, so its physical layout will be nothing new, but seeing the reality is always different.
I examine the men and women around me as we move. Most studiously avoid looking at me, set to one side from them as I am, but some cannot prevent themselves from throwing me looks filled with enmity. They don’t want to be fighting alongside me, but they know they cannot win this particular battle without my help. Some are young, some are old. All carry the scars of war on their weathered faces. I see no fear there, but their beating hearts betray the anxiety they are all feeling. Blood vessels are contracting, redirecting the flow to the heart, lungs and muscles. Airways dilate to allow more oxygen into the lungs. Glucose production is increasing. Their bodies know what is coming.
They are better equipped than I expected. Each carries an adaptive combat railgun with under-slung grenade-launchers—smaller, modular versions of my own weapons—as well as bandoliers of grenades. I wonder for a while how they came to be in possession of military hardware, then push those thoughts from my mind.
I have forced myself not to consider the truth as told to me by my interrogator. I cannot say it does not matter to me, because of course it does, but it is not essential to the task ahead. Memories of my past life have always eluded me, and I was always glad they did because they could only serve to take away my focus. The same can be said now of the truth of the war I am fighting—the future of humanity. What is happening on other colonies is irrelevant, I tell myself. There is only one battle at this moment—the one I face right now.
They have five minutes in the compound. My interrogator set the time. If they haven’t found what they need by then, they leave. I don’t know what it is; I don’t want to know.
I reach my own insertion point, ahead of them reaching theirs by around ten minutes. I hunker down and scan the compound from a high ridge. My low-light optical systems give me vision as good as daylight, and magnify the images I’m seeing. A high fence is charged with electricity. Inside, a dozen low buildings, some bigger than others. At one end sits a phalanx of what look like tanks—sleek, dark armoured monsters, resting silently, each with a single long turret from which a host of gun barrels extend. A small dome sits on top, probably housing communications and scanning equipment. Vents project from either side of that wide, black hull. These beasts are an obvious objective. As soon as I enter the compound and start shooting, they’ll wake up and take me down. I might as well hit them first.
A clutch of red motes eventually appear on the periphery of my vision and I know the time has come. The swell of emotional energy in my consciousness is overwhelming. It is a jarring experience—a human reaction to combat which is, for want of any other way to explain it, alien to me. I am afraid, yet charged. I know if I die here then there will be no awakening. My life, such as it was, is over. If I die here, the men and women behind me, readying themselves across the ridge for the most important battle of their lives, will almost certainly lose their lives with me. I have died a thousand times and fought more battles than I can remember. Each of them, the sum of all those experiences, will subconsciously drive every move I make.
I will not fail.
I launch ten grenades high into the night sky on a looping trajectory which, compensating for the wind, will take them right into the tanks and heavy artillery.
Then I run.
The first grenade hits as I reach the perimeter of the compound and break through the fence. The explosion floods the compound with an incandescent white brilliance for a half-second, then vanishes. The armour on the tank it strikes buckles, but it takes a second grenade in the same place to breach it.
At that moment, the other tanks begin to stir. An energy field ripples across them and, as the rest of the grenades come down and the explosions rock the ground beneath my feet, they lift. There is an electromagnetic disturbance beneath them which appears on my retinal imaging as a shimmering, pulsing haze. The turrets on these smooth, armoured beasts whine as they rotate, searching for their enemy. On the other side of the compound, there are twenty men and women who fit that description.
My purpose is to give the tanks just one.
I sprint towards them, the last of the explosions still unfurling as I channel everything I have into the Widow’s legs and jump. I land on the turret of one of the tanks and slam one great fist into the armour, down by the edge of the curvature of the unit.
It yields with the force of the blow, contorting into a twisted dent. I hammer my fist down again and again until the curve of the turret is so warped it stops turning. I jam a grenade into the gap between the turret and the hull.