Tantas took deep breaths, trying to calm, trying to push down that tumbling fear that would be the death of him. Him so focused that him gasped when Sergeant Connell laid a hand on his shoulder.
The sergeant's visor was flipped up. What could Tantas read on his face? Resignation? Relish for the approaching fight? Certainly not fear. Sergeant's right eye quivered, the liquid metal changing as it gathered data, scrying the battle to come. “This is it then, Private.”
“Yes, Sergeant,” Tantas murmured. Him must find his own emotions. Sergeant had taught him a lot, but he couldn't teach this.
“Looks like there's a couple of hundred,” said Sergeant. “We number a thousand. This going to be smooth and easy.” Sergeant had a reassuring manner. You trusted him.
Tantas dared a scan of the enemy. Them a little closer now, five minutes closer. You could see the shimmering metal of their hive interface helmets.
“You ready for this?” asked Sergeant
“No, Sergeant!” Tantas snapped out the response, hoping to make the sergeant grin.
The sergeant's good eye rolled towards Osiris. “Do your best, Private. I got a feeling that you going to get through this.”
It was a feeling Tantas didn't share.
Sergeant strode off, shouting encouragement to the five quints him directing. Five times five, in a makeshift battalion of a thousand men and women. Tantas wondered how many were proper soldiers, and how many were like him: amateurs fighting for their life.
Him didn't want to let the sergeant down. It made him 'shamed to recall how him had chaffed against military discipline in them first few days of training.
“But I'm not a soldier,” Tantas had complained. “I don't see why I should have to…” Like a child, ridiculous, whining at unfairness.
“All you need to do is to be able to point and shoot, and follow orders, can you do that?”
“Yes, I suppose, but I'm not quite sure…”
“Yes, what?”
“Look, I'm obviously off-world, Sergeant,” him explained.
“So,” said Sergeant. “You think this no your fight?”
“I'm a poet,” explained Tantas. Well, him waited tables. Not much money in poetry. That's why him moved to Lyceum, the last stop on the galaxy's underground. Cheap to live out here, on the fringes of the conglomeration. Plus him thought that it would be romantic, on the frontier. Them lots of artists types living in Capital, or at least there had been.
The sergeant had sighed. “Just fight, when time comes, Private Jackson.” Him looked so weary, that it made Tantas 'shamed. Think on, Tantas. Who the sergeant lost? Capital's military base had been assimilated in the first wave.
If it wasn't for Sergeant, Tantas no be here. Dress it up anyway you wanted, but that was the truth. The hivers swept through Capital like locusts, consuming everything in their path, everything.
Only because of Sergeant trundling through Capital streets, gathering up survivors into that armoured bus of his had Tantas survived.
Map took his place alongside Tantas. Map was Acting Private Clayton Shalm, a middle-aged food corp executive. Him showed an aptitude for parsing the spatial topography of the military helmets and it was him who'd take direction from Sergeant during battle.
“This will give you something to write about, Wordsworth,” said Map.
Once the quint had found out that Tantas was a poet, the nickname was inevitable. Give someone a tag and you built up a connection, a shared knowledge that kept you separate from the rest of the world.
“Do you think that friendship is a necessity of war, Map?” asked Tantas.
“You do talk rubbish, mate,” said Map.
Tantas smiled. Him said it to wind Map up. Him too straight for Tantas' liking, what with Tantas being a poet and a bohemian, and all.
Him said it, also, to remind himself that he was himself. Tantas didn't think like most of the soldiers, amateur or regular. Except maybe Joy. Maybe there was only two people on Lyceum who could name Phobus and Deimus. Maybe there were a few more who could sense them, maybe.
“I'm glad not to being going back in there,” said Tantas pointing to the trench room which they shared with three other quints.
“Yeh,” agreed Map. “Too many women in too small a space.”
“No such thing as too many women, my friend,” said Tantas. A lie. It had been difficult for Tantas, to be holed up in the trench room. It wasn't just the display of flesh. It was the intimacy, the smells, the sound, the sighs of sleep. It had been curiously un-sexual for Tantas.
“We sitting ducks,” said Map. “Them could just lob a bomb in.”
“They don't do that,” said Tantas. “Everyone is valuable to them. They don't want to kill us. They want to assimilate us.”
Map was sweating. “You reckon it's true that them harder to kill than us?”
Tantas shook his head. “It's just propaganda. If we believe that they're indestructible, it does half the job for them.”
“I just hope that I no see anyone I know,” said Map.
Just imagine that. Someone you knew, bound into the terrible concordance of hiver thought. Someone you knew, who you had to kill. Tantas leant to one side, heaving up thin bile.
“Better out than in,” said Map, slapping him on the back.
Joy, Trigger and Barns joined them. Tantas had never took a liking to Trigger and Barns. Didn't matter no more because the signal on the internal screens flashed for the push.
“This is it,” said Barns, squeezing Trigger's hand.
“Go. Go. Go,” shouted Map.
Scaling the trench. Running towards the enemy. Tantas firing his laser-gun, thrumming.
“Keep to the quint,” Sergeant had told them. “That way you be over-lapping circles of power. Keep to that and don't think about what you have to do.”
Tantas watched his laser firing, slicing into the body of a hiver. The hiver's arm sliding off, obscene. No sound. Them died. Them were flesh. Once them human, but now them silence.
Casually almost, a hiver stepped in front of Tantas. A woman. Him fired his gun, looking into the woman's eyes. Eyes crazed with fractured lines and a smile on her face. The hiver breathed, releasing the viral particles, all the weapon them had. Tantas cut the woman down, praying that his helmet mask was functioning, filtering out the assimilating breath.
Them moved ahead as a quint, protecting each other, moving into the centre of the melee. By chance avoiding assimilation. That was all it was, just chance. A certain proportion of them were marked for Atropos' shears. It didn't matter.
“Keep going to the right. To the right,” shouted Map. Him getting on Tantas' nerves. Even though him knew that Sergeant was directing their progress, and Map was a relay. Sergeant had a little baby computer in his head, able to process all the data. Him sending them into the optimum place for attack.
Tantas cut down another hiver. Them sickened him. Them, the silent enemy within the battle field, dying quietly, utterly inhuman. Them hive insects, linked by metal cankers. Them unfeeling. Only the swarm mattered.
The quint advanced, to the right, always to the right. Tantas saw the other members of the battalion freezing like statues. He shouted wildly, “What's happening, Map?”
Map put a hand to his helmet. “Them sent a freeze virus into the armour,” he said. “Get it off. Get out of your armour or it'll be in your coffin.”
Quickly Tanta stripped off. Him stood in his vests and shorts, almost naked, cold, on the field. The rest of is quint did likewise. “What do we do now?” Him clutched the gun to chest. The hivers had lost cohesion. Them were moving erratically.
“One of the sergeants manufactured a confusion counterattack. It'll hold them for a few minutes,” said Map.