Defiance

Chapter Five

Mother ship Perseverance, docking bay 7

K-3864 studied every face waiting in line to board the gunships. All of them were helmeted, but none showed his squad's familiar colours. They all wore the same armour, the same helmet—but one way or another—they were all strangers.

"Move it," the loadmaster shouted. He gestured side to side for them all to get in. "Come on, people!"

The gunships dropped down in clouds of dust and soldiers embarked, pulling their comrades along to quicken the pace. There was no reason to scramble for it. They'd done it a thousand times in training; extraction from a real battle was what they had trained for. This wasn't a retreat—they had won.

The gunships' downdraft kicked up the Minia sand into the air. K-3864—Trickshot—swiped the dust off his leg plate. He noted the new scratch marks on them. The loadmaster turned to him. He was one of the very few outsiders that Trickshot had seen up close.

"Are you embarking or what?

Trickshot continued to wipe his leg plate of sand. "I'm waiting for my squad."

"You shift your shiny backside now." The loadmaster said firmly. "We got a schedule."

Trickshot brought his gauntlet carefully under the loadmaster's chin and held it there. He didn't need to eject the blade within, and he didn't need to say a word.

"Well, whenever you're ready." He glanced uneasily at him, then stepped back to let others pass. It wasn't a great idea to upset a soldier, especially not one that had come from adrenaline-high combat.

But there was still no sign of the rest of his squad. Trickshot knew there was no point in waiting any longer. They hadn't reported in. Maybe the had comm failures. Maybe they had made it onto another gunship.

It was the first time that he had felt really alone.

He waited another half hour anyway, until the gunships became less frequent and the lines became shorter. Eventually there was nobody standing in the loading dock except for him, the loadmaster, and two squads' amount of soldiers. It was the last lift.

"You'd better come now. There's nobody left unaccounted for. Nobody alive, anyway."

Trickshot looked at the horizon one last time, still feeling that he was turning his back on someone that was trying to reach out to him.

"I'm coming," he said, and he trudged to the end of the line.

As the gunship lifted, he watched the sand and rock formations dwindle and fade completely.

He could still search the Perseverance. It wasn't over yet.

~~

The gunship landed in the Perseverance's giant docking bay. Trickshot looked down onto the cavern full of armour and orderly movement. The first thing that struck him when the gunship killed its engines, was how quiet everyone was.

In the crowded bay full of soldiers, it was so impossibly silent that if he hadn't noticed the injuries, he wouldn't have thought that anything significant had happened in the last few hours.

The deck shook under his boots. He was still staring down at them, looking at the reddish Minia sand on everything, when a pair came into his view.

One of them scanned his wrist, which held his number and division.

He could see them checking him over, then writing no significant injury on their data pad. They let him pass, concentrating on the injured, ignoring the ones too badly hurt and the ones who could help themselves.

"Are you listening? Talk to me." The one of administration people waved a hand in front of his face. Trickshot realized that he was standing in the middle of the line, blocking traffic.

"K-3864. I'm okay, sir. I'm not in shock. I'm fine." He realized nobody was going to call him by his nickname ever again. They were all dead, he knew it. As a last ditch effort, he asked, "Sir, any news on K-3833–"

"No," said the man, who obviously had heard similar questions every time he checked someone in.

"If they're not listed on the admission or in medbay, they didn't make it."

It was stupid to ask. Trickshot should have known better. Soldiers got on with the job. They lost brothers all the time. Their training commanders had told them that this was their duty, and that doubt never need trouble them. He had never really knew doubt until now. No amount of training could have prepared him for this. Now he would learn the hardest way of all.

Trickshot was confident that he was one of the best soldiers trained in the DA. He was undistracted by the everyday concerns of normal citizens, which his trainers had said he was lucky never to know. But now he was alone. Very, very, alone. It was very distracting indeed.

He thought about this for a long time. Surviving while the rest of your squad was killed was no cause for pride. It felt like what his trainers would call shame. He found a crate in the bay and sat down. Another soldier sat down next to him, briefly clunking armour plates against his. They glanced at each other. Trickshot didn't usually see other soldiers unless they were in his division. He noted the red markings the guy had on his helmet, the 483rd.

"Job done?"

"Yeah," Trickshot said quietly. "Job done."

The guy didn't say anything else. Either he had caught on that Trickshot didn't want to talk, or he just didn't know what else to say. They'd both been trained to fight, but neither had been trained to live apart for their squad brothers.

The landing ramp of Perseverance lowered, and the sunlight reflected off the water and streamed in. He stood up and in an orderly line, waiting to disembark and be reassigned to a new squad.

So this was the aftermath of victory. He wondered how much worse defeat might feel.