Sarge

“I can’t sit in this stinking camp on this stinking planet looking at your stinking faces for one more stinking second,” Sgt Fortas growled.

None of the soldiers were stupid enough to reply.  Sgt Fortas was as big and mean as the Interplanetary Corps made them.  The only reason he was sitting waiting in the hospital camp for his turn to get a replacement limb was that having just one leg reduced his combat effectiveness. 

Fractionally. 

He wore all his other holes, scars and burns like postcards of where he’d fought people and other... things, lots of other things.  Some people were bakers, others were pilots. 

Sgt Fortas was a killer.

“I’m going for a walk,” he said, staring out the window.  His squad tried to look at each other without looking like they were looking at each other.  “I’m going to…” He didn’t even know the city’s name, only its military grid reference.  “…the battlefield.”

“Sarge.” 

Sgt Forta’s gaze swivelled to a beefy soldier like heavy artillery being brought to bear on a target.

“There’s no way you’ll make it back on time for your turn.” 

The grunt, who was missing both arms and still looked plenty scary, scowled right back at Sgt Forta, who looked singularly unimpressed.

“C'mon, Sarge, I want my turn.  I can’t even scratch my…”

Corporal Naesant stepped between them before things got messy.  “Sarge, he’s just saying if you miss your slot for a limb replacement, the whole squad will  miss their turn.  We’ll all sit here another week, easy.  They allocate spares by unit, you know that.  Is that area even secure?”

Sgt Fortas got up, bashed open the door with a crutch and headed out of camp towards the city. 

Crutch, crutch, step. Crutch, crutch, step.

*

The battlefield was further away, the landscape more parched and the air hotter than Sgt Fortas remembered.  He made good time, all the same.  He stopped in a park, or at least a square with less rubble in it, to catch his breath.  The city was silent but for drops of his sweat patting on the dusty ground.  The place had been beautiful when they first advanced.  Broad boulevards, soaring, graceful glass towers glittering in the sunshine, ornate carvings everywhere, the majestic if squat building in the centre of the city. 

“We really trashed this place,” he said out loud, grinning.

Something rustled on the far side of the park.

Crutches or not, his sidearm was in his fist before he was even conscious of reacting.  He raised the fully charged tau anti-neutrino generator and started to squeeze the trigger.

A pair of Shara, the planet’s indigenous species, froze in his sights. 

They weren’t even two thirds his height.  With their long backs, short legs and black and white downy feathers, they reminded him of Old Earth penguins.  The resemblance ended with their human like hands and their ungainly, oversized heads. 

He lowered his weapon.  It was their city.  They were non-combatants.  He lived by a code, after all.  The war was between the Kharg and the Humans, not the Shara.  He killed, sure, but only as and when ordered.  He was as much a weapon wielded by the Corps as the pistol in his hand.  He was a professional, not an animal.

They stared at him.  He didn’t remember anything about them except that they were highly social and oviparous, but he’d had enough sullen, resentful looks in his life to know when was getting glared at.

“My squad cornered some Kharg just over there, in that big brown building,” he said, not that they’d understand.  “All the other buildings were made of those crystal bricks.  They didn’t give any cover at all.  That big building, on the other hand, was a tough one.  We tried to bring the whole thing down on their heads."

They kept staring at him.

"In the end, we had to concentrate our firepower and take it down floor by floor.” 

The Shara made clicking and whistling noises to each other and shuffled off towards the city centre.  He followed them for something to do. 

Crutch, crutch, step.

“My leg’s over there somewhere.” he said.  “Your glass towers made some great shrapnel.” 

*

The pair Sgt Forta was following joined a crowd of Shara in front of the remains of the big brown building that his squad had levelled.  The Shara had dug a hole to get inside the wreckage.  Sgt Fortas, feeling curious, followed the Shara down the hole right inside the building.  He’d never made it that far during the fighting.  The Kharg counterattacked before they finished destroying it, boiling out of the debris like a nest of angry wasps.

He was disappointed when he got inside. After the ornate decorations of the rest of the city, the dim interior was dull and featureless.  Some of the Shara were collecting pieces of white ceramic and small piles of feathers; others were sifting through the rubble.

One of the sifters chattered loudly.  The others stopped and turned to watch as it pulled a white, semi spherical object from the pile.  It was unbroken.  The Shara fluttered and stepped from side to side.

Sgt Fortas sagged.  The truth hit him like a plasma bolt between his eyes.  Oviparous, that meant they laid eggs. He had deliberately and methodically knocked down a nursery.  He'd destroyed floor after floor of their children.

He turned away and fell to his knee.  The sound of his retching gave way to the sound of his sobs.  After a while, a Shara came over and put a blanket around his shoulders.

He stayed there until a beam of light shone over him.

“Sgt Fortas?”  A tall human in an officer’s uniform was at the entrance.

Sgt Fortas came to attention like a button had been pressed. 

“Yes, Sir.”

“We’ve been looking for you.  You should have checked in.”

“Yes, Sir.”

“Your leg’s ready.”

“Yes, Sir.”

The sound of Sarge's crutch, crutch, step, crutch, crutch, step gradually tapered off.

*

Revised: 1,005 words