Barry Longyear - The Last Enemy.pdf - Barry Longyear - margozap

THE LAST ENEMY [086-066-5.0]

by: Barry B. Longyear

Synopsis:

No synopsis available

Barry B. Longyear

PO Box 100,

New Sharon, Maine 04955

Tele. (207) 778-6739

For Jude, Jannettja, Tony, and Sophie;

Fay, Mike, and Jeremy,

And Jean.

Battles won, victories in progress.

A tribe is no more

Than a thought

Chaining the thinker

To eternal war with those

Fettered to thoughts

Of a different sort.

Hissied-do'timan, Meditations on Blood

CHAPTER 1

Miati Ki hides in the rubble above us at the lip of the dry strea

bed. I see only its right boot and the top of its energy pack. The sun

is hot and the heat radiating from the desert sand and boulders flails

my face and steals my breath. Only the dense humidity remembers that

this was once a jungle. There are no birds, no flowers, no trees.

Everything beautiful and gentle that once flew or grew here left this

part of the Shorda countless lives ago. Still, the stinging greenflies

have survived. They will outlive us all. Pina is eating the last of its

share of the rations we captured. As it took its share of the rations,

Pina made a joke, holding it to its lips. "This is the fruit of the

Irrveden, for which the Mavedah fought, that we eat at the second

repast." I laughed with the others at the words of the repast ceremony,

from times when there were formal repasts, tables, and food. Back

before any of us were born. When I was very young, before my parent's

death, Yazi Avo would recite the ceremony at meals, when there were

meals. I laughed, but Pina's joke made me want to cry. I hold to my ear

the little receiver I keep in my pocket. Its screen is broken, but it

still produces audio. The Mavedah station at Mijii Heights still sends,

which means the eastern flank of the Front's invasion of the Shorda is

still stalled. The music is that rapid effervescent confusion of human

and Drac folk music we call zidydrac and the humans call mancho. The

recording was made before the war. I scan for the Amadeen Front's

mobile station, or one of the others. Sometimes I can get the Black

October station, but not today. Nothing new supporting the rumors of

another attempt at a truce. Even if a truce should take place it would

be only a matter of days before The Rose, Black October, or some other

uncontrollable faction of the Front violates it, throwing us all back

into war. Still, there would be a day, possible more, without death.

Ki's hand makes signs to us. First the fist, one finger pointed down,

then all three fingers together followed by a fist. Chaki Anta is back.

There had been an explosion at the bunker. We all heard it, saw the

smoke and dust carried by the wind over the lake. Qat Juniki told us

about it before it died. A human had come out of the bunker, his hands

above his head, and Chaki Anta took the man's surrender. The human's

hands were held as fists. "I saw the wire," said Juniki. "I told the

man to open his hands before he came any closer. I told him in English.

I told him again. When he opened them, the world vanished." A walking

bomb with a dead man's switch. Such a human way of killing. Juniki

thought Chaki Anta had been killed, but now Anta is back. As I turn off

the receiver I am relieved. Anta is an old fighter, a survivor of many

raids and battles. It helps me to know that not everyone dies in this

war. My relief is mixed with dread, for when Anta comes back, our

killing and dying resume. We will soon move into a fight. No one says

any of this but it is in everyone's eyes. We swallow the last of our

ration bars. I see Pina take a touch of happy paste with its tongue.

Its eyes close as the drug spins Pina away on a transitory cloud of joy.

I look at my ration bar and wonder why food is so scarce but happy paste

is everywhere. In the end we will probably die of malnutrition within

the mist of a spittle dream. We looted the ration bars from the humans,

but they are good to eat. They are viyapi rations the humans looted

from us. Some of the human rations are good, too. I like the

containers of fruit and the candy bars, but they are rare. There is

something in plastic envelopes called scrambled eggs and ham that even

the humans refuse to eat. For that reason, of course, scrambled eggs

and ham are all that they have left. Their rations, like ours, are left

over from the war. Chaki Anta slides and stumbles down the dust of the

stream bank, followed by Ki. Anta's face is deep ochre, an old scar

along the left side of its forehead. Although our commander smiles with

its mouth, its deep yellow eyes betray all of the dead they have seen.

Anta nods as it points toward the east with its battered energy knife.

"Only a few left in that bunker at the foot of the bluff. I heard

firing coming from inside. They were not shooting at me or at anything

outside the bunker." Its brow climbs in an expression of hopeful

possibility. "I think they were fighting among themselves." His cold

smile becomes a cold grin. "We will get Taaka Liok a present and end

them this time." Chaki Anta's eyes narrow. "We are the Twelve."

"The

Front Twelve," we mutter back more out of habit than pride. Our

eagerness drowned in oceans of blood years ago, buying presents for

Taaka Liok with our blood. My whole life in the Mavedah has been spent

serving at the pleasure of this mysterious warmaster, who in turn serves

at the pleasure of the Denvedah Diea. I glance down at the helmet in my

hands. It carries on its once sand-red surface the scars of thirty

years of death. Only five of those years are mine. The sensors and

readout still work, but the voice link is scratchy. I can do without

the voice link. Hand signals are silent, instant, clear, and do not

send out electro-magnetic pulses for eager probes to pick up. Besides,

I prefer to dedicate my hearing to my immediate surroundings. That is

where the threats to my life lie. The helmet is military issue, of the

Tsien Denvedah back in the war. It is twice as old as I am. The names

of seven Mavedah soldiers are scratched in the surface exposing the dull

brown fiber beneath. Ritan Vey Ada Nitoh Lioseh Akiva Ivat Mikotath Sed

Tura Riwis Achavneh Enot Fal. We all know the stories of the great hero

Ritan Vey, once second warmaster of the Tsien Denve of the Ninth

Shordan, conqueror of New Aetheria. Only a few of us remember Enot Fal.

Fal's first day after training saw it crushed beneath the treads of an

Amadeen Front tank in the attack on Stokes Crossing in the Southern

Shorda. I had no helmet of my own, so I claimed Fal's. I wonder who

will get the helmet after I am gone. It is irrational of me, but I am

afraid to scratch my own name into this pathetic monument. Besides, the

seven names already there are burden enough to carry. We are the Front

Twelve, Anta had told us long ago. Tsien Siay. The pride of the Okori

Sikov. There are only five of us left now. Ragged, tired, and thin

from meager rations. We were twelve at the beginning of the battle six

days ago. When the last of us falls, perhaps there will be another

twelve to replace us. Children, ancients, and fools. Onward marches

the grand Mavedah. I slip my shoulders into the straps of my energy pack

and adjust the piece of plastic foam between the pack and the small of

my back to ease the chafing. Something I learned from a dead human. I

glance sideways to see if my few remaining comrades somehow detect the

treason that echoes in my thoughts. Anta is positioning its energy

knife in the harsh sunlight to absorb that last bit of energy before we

go. Miati Ki is strapping on its equipment, most of which was salvaged

from dead Amadeen Front soldiers. 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 the same rashes and slap at the same

parasites. After decades of close horror, we even speak each others

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 fertile

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. 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 backs 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 of five years,

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. 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

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'm 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. 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 allowed myself to understand them,

made 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."

"What weapons?" asks Anta. "Two rifles and a

captured energy knife. I cannot see what the fourth has."

Barry Longyear - The Last Enemy.pdf

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