Trainer felt herself flush. “We’re not talking about my job,” she said. She licked her lips. “We’re talking about…”
“Killing,” said Stanton. “We’re talking about what you do. We’re talking about what I’ve done.”
Trainer keyed in on the words. “What you’ve done. You’ve said that before. You said that I didn’t know what you’d done. What would happen if I did know, Captain?”
“I don’t know.” Stanton looked askance. Trainer saw the small muscles working along his jaw. “Maybe it’s more that if I say it, out loud, it becomes real. Not that you can judge me any more than I hate myself.”
Trainer sensed she was close to something. “Why? Why do you hate yourself, Captain? What have you done that’s so terrible?”
For a moment, she didn’t think he would answer. And then his face quivered, and broke apart, and he was crying from what she knew was an awful, limitless grief.
An overwhelming feeling of compassion for the man washed over her. Tears stung her eyes, and she blinked the tears back. “Captain,” she said. She put her hand on his knee, just the slightest touch. “Captain, tell me.”
“I…” Stanton said, his chest heaving, his voice hitching, “I… I killed… I killed the enemy.”
“But, Captain, you… you were just doing your job.”
“No,” said Stanton, and the haunted look of loss and misery in his eyes would stay with her for the rest of her life. “No. Not when it’s… your daughter.”
No. She was prepared for anything but not this. Brother against brother. Father against daughter. And Jonathan against… Horror left her numb and speechless, and she could only watch Stanton weep out his grief and loss. A little while later, she ordered sedation for Stanton, and then she left the Quonset. She couldn’t bear anymore.
That evening, at dusk, she stared at the volcano. The flow of casualties had diminished—either because they were getting luckier, or there were no more soldiers to kill. The clouds were closer now, and there were lightening-like tracers of weapons fire all along the near slopes of the volcano, as if a swarm of fireflies had gotten loose.
McDonald was coming. And if Jonathan was with his regiment? Or if he lay dead on the battlefield? How would she know? She felt helpless and so small she wanted to curl up into a little ball and hide.
Stanton’s Zeus stood a kilometer from the camp: a brooding, hulking, silent machine.
• • •
No casualties arrived the next morning. The bank of clouds that Trainer had seen advancing the day before filled the sky. Their underbellies were heavy and gray. By ten, McDonald’s forces were spreading across the Plains, like a wall of advancing water: two Banshees, a Berserker, and lastly, a King Crab. Foot soldiers and armored tanks milled around the legs of the ´Mechs.
The camp had a deserted feel to it. The patients they couldn’t move were gathered into three Quonsets. Sidearms were distributed. Trainer put hers in a desk drawer. Ramsey strapped his holster around his waist. Trainer arched an eyebrow when she saw that. “I thought you didn’t want to get shot at.”
Ramsey shrugged. “Never hurts to be prepared.”
They stood together, watching the machines and soldiers come. Trainer craned her neck. “I don’t see any of our ´Mechs.”
“That’s because there are none left,” said Ramsey. He turned aside and spat. “Hell.” And then he shaded his eyes; it wasn’t very bright out, but the gleam of the diffuse light of the morning off the advancing ´Mechs set up a white glare. “Oh, Jesus.”
“What?” Trainer squinted. “What is it?”
Ramsey pointed. “Look.”
Trainer’s gaze followed in the direction he indicated, and then she gasped. “Oh, my God.”
It was Stanton, sprinting for his ´Mechs , too far away for anyone to stop him.
“Stanton!” Trainer screamed. They’ll think we’re going to put up a fight! “Stanton, stop! It’s too late for that! Not now, not now!”
But either Stanton couldn’t hear, or didn’t care, because in a few moments, he disappeared into the bowels of his Zeus. Trainer waited in an agony of suspense through a minute, then two. There was a loud whirr, and then the Zeus quivered to life.
Horrified, Trainer watched the huge machine’s cockpit pivot in a hot start protest of metal and gears. Its huge legs creaked, then pedaled in a backward walk. It lumbered around to face the oncoming army, its arms up and extended. There was a flash, and then Trainer was nearly blinded by a ruby-red blaze of laser fire from the Zeus’s left torso. The laser ripped across the right leg of the nearest Banshee. There was that peculiar shriek metal makes when it’s being torn in two, and a smell of ozone in the air, and then the Zeus followed with another sizzle of laser fire that cut a swath across the Banshee’s chest. Caught off-guard, the Banshee teetered back and slouched right, its weight buckling its damaged right leg. But then there was a high hum, and Trainer watched as the Berserker put on speed and flew forward, its massive titanium hatchet upraised.
“Run!” Ramsey shouted.
Trainer felt as if she’d been jolted awake. She spun on her heel just as the Berserker reached the Zeus. A lance of laser fire from the Zeus went wide, and then the Berserker’s hatchet came smashing down, caving in the Zeus’s right shoulder with the first blow.
Suddenly, there were shouts; medical and support personnel went flying off in all directions; and the air was filled with laser and weapons fire from the advancing soldiers. Slugs whistled by her ears. My God, McDonald thinks it’s a trap, that we’re trying to trick them! Trainer’s burning lungs pulled in air that was choked with smoke and the scent of burning flesh, and she sprinted for the far side of the camp, aiming for the relative safety of the medical Quonset.
She almost made it. Then, suddenly, she felt a blossom of pain bloom between
