The Light Brigade by Kameron Hurley

Author:Kameron Hurley [Hurley, Kameron]
Language: eng
Format: epub, azw3
ISBN: 9781481447973
Google: EdRrDwAAQBAJ
Amazon: 1481447971
Publisher: Saga Press
Published: 2019-03-19T07:00:00+00:00

19.

T he light between things.

Why do people keep going when they know they should stop? Why do we fight for something, even when it starts to come apart?

I’m not stupid. I don’t believe everything they pump us full of. I don’t believe all the networks. When I came apart, covered in Landon’s blood, my mind was not a blank tapestry, a blackness. Time passed there, in the space between things.

I considered the São Paulo Blink. Why did they pick São Paulo? And, why did these aliens come down from Mars but the others didn’t? And, the question Tanaka had posed, which was how Mars had done something like São Paulo with tech they had never used again. Tech that looked a lot like how we traveled. But most of all—that NorRus logo on the ship that fired at us. Who were we really fighting?

They don’t like us to ask questions. They try to train it out of you, not just if you’re a corporate soldier, but for citizens and residents, too. The corp knows best, right?

When I was dating Vi, we talked a lot about sociology. Or, rather, she talked and I listened, because it was pretty interesting, and I’m bad at small talk. She said there’s this thing called escalation of commitment. That once people have invested a certain amount of time in a project, they won’t quit, even if it’s no longer a good deal. Even if they’re losing. War is like that. No one wants to admit they’re losing. To end a war, you have to give them some way to save face, to pretend the sacrifice was worth it.

You know what you are. What you’re becoming. And you can’t stop it. You’re committed. It doesn’t matter how much people scream or how many you kill whose faces look like yours. This is your job. This is what you’re trained for. It’s who you are. You can’t separate them.

I came back together still shaking. My rifle hung beside me. A soft wind blew, making the rifle clack against my helmet. All around me, the other soldiers looked the same, though the way they were spaced out, it didn’t appear to be many of us had made it back from whatever our last drop was. Their suits were well-worn, their armor threadbare and patchy.

I pulled off my gloves and used them to wipe the blood and viscera from my face. It was sticky, still fresh.

The blue coms indicator blinked at the lower left of my eye. I brought up our platoon map, wondering where the fuck in space and time I was. Was I changing anything, jumping around like this? Or was it all decided already, like running through an immersive?

“Dietz?”

I minimized the map. Swung my head.

Jones had taken off his helmet. He stared at me. “What . . . where’s—? Shit, Dietz.”

I flung my arms around him. “You’re alive. You goddamn bastard.”

“What the hell are you covered in? What’s this?” He pulled away. His hand knocked the piece of Landon’s scalp off my shoulder.

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