Dangerous Skies

Chapter Ten | Remote Base Liberty13

Lieutenant Colonel Maxim Pierce spoke in front of the Military Academy of the Republic, ten years after Butcher's desert campaign and said, "The only thing staring back at a man is his soul. In the end he must answer to his heart."  

Sergeant Orion Major stood at attention. "I brought you into hell to fight my war. This is not Caesar's Rome. This is not the war to end all wars. This is checkmate!" said Colonel Bill Butcher. Orion saluted. "Yes, Sir."

"Dismissed," said Butcher when he reached for his flask of warm bourbon. He was angry. Orion exited and stepped into the glare of the desert sun. A ring of perspiration soaking through his utility cap. Orion surveyed Liberty13, a remote base outside of Timbuktu, located at the intersection of death and danger. Its gray concrete walls stood six meters, a full meter in thickness, and razor wire ran atop the wall. Orion turned to look back at straight rows of tan-colored tents. It wasn't home. Military police, wearing blue and gray uniforms, gazed from portable sentry towers. A surveillance drone flew above. Nothing stared back except fear.  

Butcher was drinking too much. That's rumored. The colonel was under pressure from the Department of War to succeed where others had failed. Butcher screamed at his flesh and blood soldiers calling them cowards. He spat on synthetics. There was no safe haven from his rage and it was leaking out all over the camp. The colonel was command questionable and Orion only obeyed because of army regulations.

Life within the fortified walls couldn't escape Butcher's wrath. Orion was dying from the inside out. His heart was rotting like a dead carcass laying exposed in the afternoon heat of this forsaken desert. Orion understood it. Everyone knew it. They were all dying. 

*** 

A storm gray, windowless troop transport powered by a pair of mini helium-three fusion reactors rumbled along on the treads of its recycled rubber. The tires the size of a grown man churned sand into dust. The machine was destined for the motor pool in need of firmware maintenance before its next mission.

Soldiers shuffled like the transport: Slow. Rumbling along.

Orion looked into the eyes of new draftees who had arrived just a few weeks earlier. Nothingness returned his inquisitive gaze. Orion wanted to yell. He couldn't. Orion realized their willingness to fight had been reduced to zero. He felt sorrow. A kind of desolation that settles like the dust spewing from the treads of the troop transport. At first barely perceptible but over time, it blankets one's soul, eventually suffocating the essence of life. His only job was following regulations and not to question those regulations. He'd taken an oath. He'd given his best to the Republic. He was sworn to follow those appointed over him and the rules that govern them. Yet?

A draftee bumped into him interrupting his thought. "Sergeant, those machines. They're taking over." "Are they?" shouted Orion. The young man was a fresh recruit straight out of basic training, his hair cropped close to his pale skull. No hint of beard stubble. Fear haunted the eyes of the young draftee. Command had shortened training time and the draftee arrived on base ill-equipped and ill-prepared. "Shortages back home" that's what the colonel had told him. 

Orion stepped off the walkway. He didn't understand Butcher, neither did the old man understand him. The colonel was a career man, a graduate of the Military Academy of the Republic. Orion volunteered before the draft: an enlisted man.

He'd serve out his contract then bolt for his promised university education. That's it.

Three storm-gray, independent functioning machines exited the base with there flesh and blood occupants. The middle troop transport carried A.I. Minotaur soldiers manufactured by Corporis of LAX. A part of Orion wished he were inside. Another part of himself trembled. He was, what was called a short-timer, with a few months remaining on his enlistment contract. Orion wanted to get back to the world in one piece. That's all.