Stephen Goldin - The Eternity Brigade

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The Eternity Brigade by

Stephen Goldin

Prelude

Hawker knew war in all its perverse permutations. He knew the killing

and the pain. He knew the endless waiting in darkness for the enemy

attack to begin, that helpless frustration when his fate was in the hands of

others. He knew the swift battles, with quiet death and meaningless

destruction flaring all around him. He knew the quiet and the noise, the

calm and the panic. He knew the hatred for the enemy, the scorn for his

own superiors, the mystical friendship for his comrades-in-arms. He'd

faced the paradoxes of combat and hacked his way through the overgrown

jungle of its eternal contradictious.

He was a master at the fine art of mass killing. His original training in

slaughter had been on members of his own race, but he had long ago

broadened his education, to the point where he could kill any intelligent

creature his superiors told him was an enemy. Numbers were

insignificant; he could kill thousands at the impersonal touch of a button

or execute an opposing sentry with his bare hands. Means and motives

were immaterial. His superiors had molded him into what they hoped was

the best fighting machine possible. Just point him in the right direction

and let him do his job.

If Hawker had any opinions of this, his superiors had long ago stopped

asking him what they were. He was a creature living solely for war; he had

no other purpose. No one knew this better than Hawker himself. There

might be peace when he closed his eyes, but there would be fighting when

he opened them again.

This occasion seemed little different from the countless others that had

preceded it. There were bright lights and noises; Hawker could tell that

even with his eyes closed. The ground shook with the force of explosions,

but they were either mild or far away. There was no immediate threat, but

the situation could not be good.

He prepared himself for the training probe, that sharp mental stab into

his mind which, in a fraction of a second, could implant all the

background material he'd need to comprehend the current situation. He

knew from past experience that the information would flash through his

brain in an instant, the mental equivalent of playing a tape recorder back

at far greater than normal speed. When the probe was gone, he would be

dizzy for a moment, and then anything he needed to know about the

current troubles would be at his fingertips.

But the probe didn't come. Hawker stood in his place, muscles tensed,

but nothing happened for almost a minute. Then there was a string of

profanity uttered by someone in front of him. Most of it was in a language

Hawker couldn't understand, but he was fluent enough in the art of

imprecation to recognize the pattern perfectly. Annoyed that they'd

changed procedures on him again, Hawker opened his eyes to face reality

once more.

He had to blink, at first, at the brightness of the room. All around him

he could sense his fellow resurrectees reacting in a similar fashion. There

were rumblings and muttered curses, the rustling sounds of small

movements multiplied hundreds of times. There was an acrid smell in the

air, a smell of something burning, perhaps something that had once been

alive. Despite the burning, though, the room was cold and Hawker was

naked. That was the part he disliked most. He had long ago given up being

self-conscious about his body—most of his comrades were from races that

didn't care how naked humans looked, anyway— but he hated the feeling

of vulnerability that came with the lack of clothing. Anything covering his

body—be it as simple as a toga or as complex as a personal force

field—would make him feel safe, but this nudity was uncomfortable.

As his eyes adjusted to the brightness, he took in his surroundings with

a professional detachment. He was standing in a crowd of other

resurrectees, perhaps as many as two hundred. A third of them were

humans, male and female, the rest of various races. All were oxygen

breathers, all were from planets with similar gravities and environments.

Little details like these could tell an experienced soldier like Hawker more

about the situation than his superiors would have guessed possible.

He knew, for example, that the world he'd be fighting on was basically

Earthlike; he could breathe and move around without too many

restrictions, which was at least a small blessing. The mixture of races

made it seem more like a civil war than a war of expansion or conquest; in

the latter, high command preferred to use platoons that were

homogeneous because it was easier to instill in them a feeling of racial

antagonism. In a mixed group like this it was counterproductive to stir up

feelings of alien prejudice.

Since high command had gone to the trouble of selecting members of

races that could survive in the same habitat, Hawker knew that this was

likely a battle on a relatively small scale. For larger actions they would all

be issued battle suits of one kind or another, suitable for creatures from

any environment. There was also the implication that this side was losing

the battle, or at least poorly equipped. High command would seldom

select a ragtag bunch like this unless there was no other choice.

He reached these conclusions without conscious thought. He had

fought so many battles in so many wars that the conditions of fighting

were second nature to him. It hardly mattered any more; nothing did.

Winning and losing were merely opposite sides of the same coin, and he'd

lived with pain and deprivation so long they were as much a part of him as

his left arm. Even death itself was scant respite; he had probably died

hundreds of times by now, though fortunately the resurrection process

spared him the memories of those incidents.

The room they were in was large and drafty, brightly lit with a diffuse

glow from walls, floor and ceiling. There were many doors to both the left

and right, while the entire front wall was a holographic screen. The screen

was filled with symbols and lines, a surrealistic map of some place Hawker

couldn't even guess at. The symbols made no sense, but they rarely did, to

him. Hawker was no strategist or tactician. He was a fighter.

A sergeant stood before the troops. It was an alien, tall and

barrel-chested with arms looking powerful enough to tear a man in half. It

wore an unfamiliar uniform, with insignia Hawker couldn't identify, but

there was no mistaking that it was a sergeant. Even though the title of

sergeant had disappeared centuries ago, along with all the other rankings

as Hawker had first known them, the role of a sergeant remained

unchanged. Someone had to goad the fighters, instruct them, lead them

into battle. Titles could change, beings could change, but sergeants went

on forever.

Even as Hawker was looking about himself, sizing up the situation, the

sergeant barked an order in some language Hawker did not understand.

There was no mistaking the command, though. The entire room snapped

to attention.

The sergeant looked them over with the same air of disdain sergeants

have always affected. Then, when he was satisfied that the troops were in

hand, he lectured them in the same incomprehensible tongue he'd first

spoken. Hawker stood there, naked and cold and progressively more

annoyed at the bureaucratic fuck-up that created this farcical situation.

The troops weren't even separated according to language, and no

translator sets had been provided! Hawker had taken hypno implants of at

least two dozen languages at various times, and this one still did not fall

within any of them. The situation in this war must be very bad indeed for

high command to screw up this badly. The sergeant spoke for twenty

minutes, making frequent references to the holographic map behind him.

Sometimes he spoke matter-of-factly, sometimes in a bellow of

exhortation. Hawker stood in place like a good soldier, listening to every

incomprehensible word and not even bothering to make sense out of it.

He'd long ago given up on that. War never made sense; you just blundered

through it any way you could.

During the sergeant's speech, the ground continued to shake. The

enemy bombardment, if that was what it was, grew closer. Neither the

sergeant nor the troops took any notice of it, but there was plenty of

commotion outside the doors on either side of the briefing room. Running

footsteps, shouts, practically an odor of panic seeping in under the cracks.

Things were not going well at all.

None of that was Hawker's concern. His only job was to fight, and it

didn't matter whether his side won or lost. The fighting was all that

counted, and it would continue to the end of time. The merry-go-round

wouldn't stop, and there was no way to get off.

His briefing finished, the sergeant dismissed the troops. Those who had

understood him turned to the left and began filing out the doors on that

side. Those who hadn't—and Hawker was far from the only one— followed

the others' example. No one spoke much until they were through the door,

out of the sergeant's immediate sight. Then a flood of babble broke loose.

"Anyone here speak English?" Hawker yelled into the general din. When

there was no response he asked again, then worked his way down through

the list of other languages he spoke with some degree of comprehension.

Finally, when he had worked his way down to Vandik, he got an answer.

"Here."

Hawker and his answerer kept shouting at each other in Vandik,

closing the gap between them by fighting the crush of confusion on all

sides, until they finally drew together. Hawker found himself confronting a

female humanoid who came barely to his shoulders. She, too, was naked,

but covered with a yellow-green downy fur. Hawker tried to remember the

name of her race, but found he couldn't. They had been enemies at one

time in the distant past, but had long since become allies.

"Could you understand what he said?" Hawker asked in his imperfect

Vandik.

The female answered in an accent so thick he could barely make out

what she said. Her grammatical structure, too, seemed

strangled—although his knowledge of Vandik was centuries old and God

only knew what had happened to the language in the interim.

"Is civil war," she said. "Is being this town fighting on all sides around.

Bunker is this in which we are. Is will be fighting up top. Is must for us to

hold off fighting for six hours. Is reinforcements will be coming at then. Is

now for us to go get uniforms and weapons. This way."

Sorting through her speech, Hawker translated freely that they were

currently in a bunker beneath a besieged town during a civil war. They

had to fight a holding action until reinforcements could

arrive—hopefully—six hours from now. That might explain a lot about the

desperate atmosphere within the bunker and the slipshod conditions of

the resurrection.

Hawker followed his tiny compatriot to the supply line, where uniforms

were being doled out by laconic quartermasters. When his turn came, the

being in charge gave him no more than a quick glance and reached behind

him onto a shelf. He thrust the uniform and mess kit into Hawker's face

and brushed Hawker aside to deal with the next man in line.

The uniform was a chocolate brown, one-piece jumpsuit with a

pressure seam up the front and a red armband on the left sleeve. Hawker

struggled into it, hopping first on one leg and then the other while being

jostled by the other soldiers around him, all struggling to get into their

own uniforms. He found that the jumpsuit was at least a size and a half

too large, and almost found himself wishing this were a world with a

hostile environment; at least the army took slightly better care to see that

battle armor fit the wearer.

The only place where the size of this uniform was crucial was in the

gloves; he'd be handling weapons, and he didn't want the excess material

getting in his way. He pulled the gloves down as tightly as he could,

making a slight tuck at the wrists to hold the fabric in place. The

fingertips were still too long, but there was little he could do about that

right now. Maybe if he was issued a knife he could cut the tips off

altogether.

He fastened the mess kit to his waist and hurried after the woman he'd

spoken to. He found himself standing in another line—this time for

weapons disbursement. Two other soldiers had gotten into line between

her and him, though, and he had no languages in common with either of

them, so he could only stand impatiently and wait for his turn at the head

of the line.

When he finally reached the front, the clerk asked him a question.

Hawker shook his head to indicate he couldn't understand. Nodding, the

clerk half turned and gestured at the rack of weaponry behind him.

Obviously Hawker was being given a choice of what he wanted.

Unfortunately, Hawker didn't know the precise conditions under which

he would be working. He didn't know how close he'd be to the enemy, nor

what their arms or defenses would be like. He'd have to choose

general-purpose weapons, ones with the broadest possible application,

and hope to use them to his advantage. His choice was limited, too, in that

there wasn't much selection. His side, the forces defending this town, were

obviously pressed to the wall, and were trying to hang on with the

scantiest of resources.

Of those weapons with which he was familiar, he chose four grenades,

an energy rifle, a wide-dispersion laser pistol and a pair of throwing

knives. He would be prepared to fight anything coming within a hundred

meters of him; beyond that range, it was someone else's concern.

Dressed and armed, now, he looked around to see what came next.

People were organizing themselves into squads of ten. Hawker looked

about and found the alien—a Spardian, he suddenly recalled—who had

talked to him in Vandik. Her group was not yet complete, so he went over

to join her. If worst came to worst, he'd at least have one member of his

squad to talk to.

The leader of this particular squad was a human, but Hawker quickly

established that the two of them had no language in common. Once again

the Spardian was pressed into service as a translator, informing Hawker

that their squad had been assigned to defend Sector 14 against possible

breakthroughs by enemy troops. Hawker nodded. There wasn't much

more he needed to know; he could take his lead from the rest of the squad.

When everyone was outfitted, the sergeant reappeared and said a few

more words—probably last-minute instructions and/or words of

encouragement. No one really listened; each squad was busy trying to

make itself into a fighting unit rather than the random assortment of

individuals it actually was. Perhaps the sergeant himself finally realized he

was hindering more than helping, for he shut up abruptly and let the

squad leaders do their job.

There was little enough time for that. All too quickly, the troops were

pointed to the elevators and brought to the surface, where they would be

dispersed to their particular sectors.

Hawker's first glimpse of the surface confirmed all his suspicions to

date. The town they were defending was in bad shape; in fact, to all

appearances it was lost already.

The sky overhead was dark, despite having two suns above the horizon.

Clouds of black smoke hung over the city, evidence of fires wrought by

enemy weapons. Although the air on this planet should have been

breathable, the stinging sensation of smoke made it far from pleasant.

There were tears in Hawker's eyes, and he wished there'd been gas masks

available; rubbing at his eyes with the backs of his hands, he followed the

rest of his squad to their designated sector.

All about them was rubble and desolation. Hawker had no idea what

world he was on, what the original inhabitants had been like or how

splendid their town had looked before falling to the ravages of this war. He

could only see the end result: no building over four stories stood intact,

and even the smaller ones had windows shattered by the constant

bombardment of enemy artillery; large impact craters dotted the streets,

hindering progress; vehicles abandoned, overturned, burned; dead bodies

lying everywhere, some killed directly by enemy fire, others indirectly by

being trapped under a collapsing building. And nowhere, other than his

fellow troopers, could Hawker see a sign of life. Everyone capable of fleeing

had already deserted the city, leaving the opposing armies to decide the

issue.

Let the soldiers fight it out, the citizens said by their actions. Then tell

us what the outcome is. At times like this, Hawker often wondered what

was the difference between cowardice and common sense.

The squad moved quickly through the empty streets, crouched low to

avoid possible gunfire and taking cover behind deserted buildings along

the way. Overhead, an occasional ball of blue flame would drift lazily

through the sky. Hawker had never seen anything quite like them in battle

before, but he hardly had to be told they were dangerous. His guesses

about them were confirmed when one of the blue fireballs brushed lightly

against the top of a building several hundred meters away. The structure

promptly exploded, knocking the entire squad to their knees and

showering the area with tiny bits of rubble, hardly more than a fine dust.

Hawker instinctively covered his head, but he needn't have bothered; the

blue fireballs didn't leave pieces big enough to cause any damage.

Their sector, it turned out, was an area of some ten square blocks near

the outskirts of the inner city. The neighborhood had been oriented

toward small businesses and shops, with few tall buildings and only a

scattering of residences. As a result, it had fared better than some other,

more important target areas. Only a couple of structures had suffered even

minor damage, there were no casualties lying about, and the streets were

quite passable.

Probably too passable, Hawker thought, surveying the scene with a

professional eye. The enemy could march a battalion through these

streets, and all we've got is a ten-man squad to stop them. He was

already making mental notes of the most effective places to use his

grenades to block the streets, should it be necessary.

They came to a halt and the squad leader broke them down into

two-man teams, each to patrol its own area within the sector. Since the

Spardian was the only squad member Hawker could communicate with,

he found himself teamed up with her again. They said little as they

marched out to their post, at the most forward area of the sector. Hawker

surmised his squad leader wasn't happy having someone he couldn't talk

to, and had purposely assigned him to the front lines. Hawker was the

most expendable person in the group.

He and the Spardian woman scouted their area and quickly found a

secure vantage point in a narrow stairway leading down to a cellar.

Peering over the top they had an almost unobstructed view of the street in

both directions, while being reasonably safe themselves. With that

accomplished, they settled in to wait.

He tried to talk some more with the woman, to find out whether she

knew any more of the situation than he did. Their mutual command of the

Vandik language, however, was only good enough for the most basic

communication, and the woman was not very talkative anyway. Perhaps

she resented being sacrificed at the front lines merely because she was the

only one who could communicate with Hawker. She told him tersely that

she, like he, was a resurrectee, and that the sergeant had only sketched the

situation briefly. Then she reverted to sullen silence, implying that Hawker

should do the same.

Hawker settled back against the wall and waited for the enemy to make

its move. He'd learned long ago that a soldier has to cherish any quiet

moment he can find. From the way this battle seemed to be going, things

wouldn't be quiet for long.

He pawed through the mess kit they'd given him, looking for a

cigarette. It was, by now, a vain hope; he hadn't seen any tobacco for

centuries. There were other drugs to act as mild stimulants or

euphoriants, but he'd never found them quite the same. Damn! You

wouldn't think it was that hard to duple a fucking cigarette, would you?

All they'd need was one, to get the pattern right, and they could duple

everything from that.

He sighed. The army never did anything right; why should he have

expected them to start with that?

There were three tubes of the pasty stuff they called food. Each tube

was a different color, and each had a written description of what it was.

The descriptions were naturally in a language Hawker couldn't read. He

wasn't particularly hungry at the moment— resurrection always recreated

him at a state roughly halfway between lunch and dinner—but he'd

learned to grab a meal when he could. The attack might begin at any

moment and last for hours, with no chance to snatch a bite while the

fighting was going on. Hawker sucked on the tubes of paste, again

reflecting on how uncaring the army was. It would have been just as easy

for them to duple good food as it was to duple shit like this. But what did

they care whether Hawker's taste buds were happy? He was probably

going to die soon anyway.

Two of the tubes filled him up, and he was debating whether to open

the third when he saw his partner tense. He hadn't seen any motion

upstairs himself, but the Spardian was facing the opposite direction.

Hawker quickly stuck the unopened tube back in his kit, fastened it

securely to his belt and took up his energy rifle.

Any animosity the Spardian had felt toward him vanished now. They

were a team whose lives and continued well-being depended on how well

they could work together. The alien woman spoke a few words into the

commer on her wrist, to let the squad leader know something was

happening here, then raised her own weapon in readiness. Cautiously she

crept up the stairs until the top of her head was barely even with ground

level. Hawker was content to let her take the lead in these matters; his

spirit of adventure had evaporated long ago.

The Spardian motioned for him to come up close behind her. When he

had done so, she whispered for him to stay there while she ran to a

vantage point across the street, where she could get a better view of what

was happening. Hawker nodded comprehension and brought his rifle up,

ready to cover her during her charge, if need be. The woman braced

herself, then darted out from cover onto the street and across the way to a

recessed doorway where she would be safe. The instant she left, Hawker

was up with his rifle ready to fire, aimed down the street where his

partner had been looking. But he saw nothing, and the Spardian made it

across the street without drawing any enemy fire.

Hawker lowered his rifle, but did not relax. Something had spooked the

Spardian, and he was not about to take chances. He peered through the

smoky gloom that pervaded the city, even here in this untouched

neighborhood, looking both ways along the street for the slightest signs of

trouble.

There was a movement back in the direction from which they'd come.

Hawker spun, rifle at the ready once more. A tall, thin figure was making

Stephen Goldin - The Eternity Brigade

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