Galactic Truth

Who thought the latticework of Terag could hold such horror? Promenades and parades soaked with the chaotic artwork of battle, the prismatic array of neon lights dulled by splatters of blood and shattered glass. Maybe if the Home-Hold Alliance had attacked a few hours later, the streets would have had their final injection of salty, half-charcoaled vatmeat grilled over the violet flames of Stretan fuel, or the aroma of drinks spiced with Kalabar and enriched with the fruity gases of euphoric orbs. But they hadn’t. Lunch had never come and instead the babble of Teragian civilisation was replaced by silence. Chilling, eery silence that Paul Kalman thought was louder than a jumper punching through atmosphere.

“Alright, Sergeant Yoren, you win.” Paul spoke to the vacant expression of a Teragian slumped against a shop doorway with half their innards streaked across the pavement, but really he addressed himself, because salvage duty was a lone task.

Behind him, suspended by trapped M-spinners, hovered a cargo wagon some three times larger than what ancient civilisation would have classed as a shopping kart. It sailed over the dead like some haunted ship and already contained several valuable weapons, hacking equipment, armour, and a few defence devices which had taken little damage during the initial slaughter. As it came to a stop beside him, the upturned boot of a HHA trooper slid along its hull and then flopped with a wet thud into a pool of blood.

Paul grimaced and gave the Teragian corpse another quick onceover, before marking it with his scanner and hauling himself out of a squat. From the wagon came several arms of dark steel, four of which grasped hold of the body and another four that took hold of its armour. Over the top came a thinner spindle and Paul tried to block out the sickening noise as its end drilled through the Teragian’s skull, burrowed into the body, and liquidated flesh and bone, until there was nothing left and the drone of the wagon’s vacuum died away.

He was about to turn away as the equipment was craned back into the wagon, when a holo-stick fell from one of the empty gloves and landed by his boot. He picked it up – more out of habit than curiosity – and studied it for salvage availability. The moment his fingers wondered over the front strip of metal, the projectors shone white and an image of four smiling people stood in thin air.

A family. The very last thing this soldier had wanted to see. Even though they must have been in excruciating pain, even though their comrades were falling around them and explosions and lasers and shrapnel were tearing the street apart, this soldier had desperately reached into his equipment and with shaking hands stared at what he cared about most, maybe even smiling. And now that smile and this loving soldier had been sucked through a black pipe and collected into a dark incubation tank.

Paul barely managed to rip off his helmet before that morning’s breakfast aboard GSS Lightpath painted a bench in yellows and pale oranges. He was not stood there long when he realised his vomit was dripping through the gaps in the bench and onto the melted remains of a head hit by AP-virus. It was then several minutes later that he found himself once again hunched over, this time over a galvanised planter which held the trunk of a tree unfortunate enough to have stood in the path of a weaponised laser. Its scorched top was cut clean at a horizontal angle and the head lay crushed against a set of steps, burnt to black charcoal.

His breakfast had run out. All that Paul could do was dry heave a bitter, white drool into the small swamp he had created amongst the soil. With one last cough and gurgling spit, he spun around, slammed his backside onto the ground, and leant against the planter, his arm flopping down to rest on the first of the steps.

Paul swore. A dozen bodies were strewn across and up the stairs to his right, but his throat was too painful to be sick again. He averted his eyes, following the terraces of flats all the way up until they disappeared into the darkness of the skyscrapers above. Bridges crisscrossed the haze, some with the indistinct shapes of limbs and weapons flopped over their edges. And everywhere, the vibrance of low neon lighting and holographic advertisements gave the place a false feeling of calm.

Paul swore again, sighed, and wiped the sweat from his face.

“This is my last tour,” he muttered to the steel heavens. “Damn you, Sergeant, and your punishments.”

There was a small tap. Paul turned his attention to the step he had his arm slung on. He started.

That can’t have been there before.

He flicked his eyes around the hellish promenade, looking to see if someone was there. Nothing. He swivelled back to the step, to the lighter and cigarette placed neatly by his splayed hand. He picked them up and again scanned his surroundings. Still no one. The cargo wagon had stopped by the galvanised planter and was completing a self-scan, and the observation drone was flying just above it, eyeing Paul with its empty, circular void of a lens.

One deep puff of caltarkian tobacco had Paul relaxing back against the cool metal. Another had him stretching his aching legs out. A third had a chrome black figure materialize not two feet from him.

Paul shot to his feet, his AP-virus was nestled in his hand a split-second after.

“What do you want?” he demanded, failing to hide the quiver in his voice.

The chrome black figure shifted in its seated position on the steps. Its arms, which were slung casually over its knees, clasped their digits together and the gloss sheet of a helmet looked up at Paul.

Suddenly there was a loud crash that almost made him pull the trigger and he snapped behind him, only to get a glimpse of the cargo wagon and drone in a dark pile on the ground, before he trained his weapon back on the figure.

“You have five seconds before I melt your ass!”

“No way to thank someone for a light, especially in these parts,” said the figure, gesturing to their blood soaked surroundings. Its voice was clearly computerized.

“No way to sneak up on someone… in these parts,” countered Paul. He was surprised at his own wit considering the situation.

The figure’s shoulders moved as if chuckling and it reached up to its helmet. “Just so we’re face to face,” it said, when Paul’s hands tightened on his AP-virus. There was a hiss and pale skin appeared, moving up to a sharp jawline and piercing blue eyes, fine eyebrows and luscious blonde hair pulled back into a militaristic bun, until finally the piece of armour had been removed and a beautiful woman was staring at Paul. “There, that’s better.”

Paul did not lower his weapon. He was young, but he had served long enough to know that beauty made for perfect distractions. “You still haven’t told me who you are… and time’s ticking.”

“Witty and forward. Well, Corporal Kalman, my name is Sarah and I’m a war writer for Galactic Truth.”

“Bollocks. Galactic Truth is made up, it doesn’t exist.”

Paul knew it, he was dead. This was a Teragian assassin and right about now her partner was set up in their knew nest, a scope trained right on the back of his skull. But his fingers refused to pull the trigger.

What if she was telling the truth? He had never really known who to believe. The heads of the HHA outright declared Galactic Truth to be the enemy’s platform for propaganda, and half the civilians away from the solar systems at war accepted that fact and refused to read it. The other half believed the opposite; that Galactic Truth were their eyes and ears into the horrific bloodshed taking place. Every soldier Paul had met, though, didn’t know what to believe. No one had ever seen a Galactic Truth war writer, and those very few who claimed they had glimpsed a flicker of one were met with sceptical listeners. That was until the rumour spread around the barracks that the heads of the HHA wished to cover up the war from the public to sustain recruitment, claiming the writers used invisibility tech to evade capture and get the truth out. Paul had taken this rumour much the same way as all the other newly made privates; that these seasoned soldiers just wanted another reason to hate the higherups who sat comfortably away from the battlefield. That was until Paul had been space-dropped into his first warzone.

“Your hesitation, I think, speaks for you,” came Sarah’s voice.

Paul blinked and watched as she placed the helmet down and reached for the still lit cigarette he had cast aside.

“If you are what you say you are, why show yourself? And how’d you know my name?!”

Sarah inhaled deeply, leaned back and blew the smoke straight up. It took a moment before she spoke and by that time Paul had lowered his weapon to a ready position by his hip.

“The answers to your questions require you to make a choice, corporal.”

“What kind of choice?”

“First, did you really mean it? Is this to be your last tour?”

“If I live long enough, yes. I’ll be on the first starship home.”

“And have you tried leaving before?”

“I… I haven’t, no.”

“Well at least you are no liar. Once you’ve signed their little contract, they have you by the balls. I’m guessing you didn’t read every piece of fine print above that line which said: ‘sign here’?”

“I read that every soldier has the right to leave when their tour is over.”

“And the HHA have the right to send any soldier to a two-week recuperating course should they judge them to have lost the will to fight, as an opportunity to persuade them otherwise. You would be surprised at the technological advancements they’ve made in neurological remapping. The HHA will never let a soldier leave until every current war and all those in the foreseeable future are over; or the HHA are beaten outright, an outcome that would likely result in your death anyway. You’re lucky I overheard you when I did. Had that observation drone docked with any HHA terminal, it would have sent the footage of your little confession to the nearest officer and you would have found yourself being called in for a meeting.”

“You expect me to believe this? To trust a complete stranger?”

“I do not, hence the choice.” Sarah flicked the finished cigarette away, picked up her helmet and stood. “You can either finish this punishment – I won’t stop you – and return to your barracks, trusting in your military and hoping they’ll allow you to return home.” Here she took a step closer to Paul. “Or you can leave it all now. You can leave the HHA, come with me, and join Galactic Truth.”

In the distance there was an explosion that made the very city shudder. Paul knew it meant that the frontline had made it to the Haloni river and the HHA were now launching their atomics across the water. His orders were to salvage from the Panakar district north until he hit the rear guard, who he would join as they reinforced the frontline thirty minutes after a water crossing was established. He had no idea how long it would take the nuclear warheads to punch through Terag’s most heavily fortified HQ facility, but he assumed he was behind on schedule. Another explosion made the concrete tremble and as he turned back to Sarah, he swore he saw a flash of light cut shadows from the ranks of tower blocks.

“Why would you want me? I’m no good writer.”

“Were you a good shooter when you joined the HHA?”

“No, but that’s different.”

“How is it? If you train and work hard enough at something, you become good at it, do you not?”

Another two explosions shook the city, one after the other, with the second sounding closer.

“The choice is yours. I am merely offering you a way out of this; to try and do some real good by freeing the truth of these horrors. You see what it does to people,” she gestured towards the shopfront where the Teragian had spent their last moments thinking of home. “Do you want to be someone who causes that much suffering?”

No, Paul knew he did not. But still he hesitated, staring at the place where the soldier had been slumped and seeing the holo-image. How could it be so simple? How could he just abandon the war he had been fighting in? How could trillions of people be brought to end the slaughter all because… because of some words?

“You may not know it, Paul, but writing is the weapon of this war,” said Sarah, as if reading his mind. “Do you not wish to stop it?”

If there was indeed a way to end this without using violence, he would make every effort. He would follow a stranger he had just met and tell his story to anyone listening; recounting what atrocities were being committed and how similar their supposed enemy was to them; offering that wisdom he should have had before signing his recruitment documents. They were all souls in this universe after all. All with this one life. All deserving of a chance to live it in peace. So, Paul looked Sarah square in those piercing blue eyes and said, “Of course I do.”

“Then come with me and I can show you how.” She held out her arm for him to follow her up the steps, just as the city withstood its final atomic. “We’ll have to get a move on too, those companions of yours will have completed their reboot in the next minute.”

Paul kept pace with her as she leapt into a jog, taking two steps at a time and disappearing down a dark side street. And just like that, he left his life as a soldier. But little did he know what he was truly hurrying towards. Neither did Sarah. Galactic Truth may have been a universal article fed to the hundreds of worlds kept within the Inner-Edge, but that was its perfect disguise. The Hope Front rebels, who had twenty five planets – including Terag – on their side and who were the only ones valiantly refusing to bend to the HHA and its tyrannical rule, used Galactic Truth as an invisibility cloak for their secret code. Yes, the authors would still bravely venture into the middle of devastating warzones and they would write about the horrors they see and they would hope to persuade the Home Holds to abandon their hunger for dominance and end these wars. But the HF rebels would have it written in such a way as to embed their secretive information. It was the one final piece keeping the struggle in a stalemate. All the conditioning and the torture and the spying and blackmailing and bribing, murdering, hacking, all of it could not give the HHA one clue as to how the rebels happened upon their unprotected space convoys or appeared in formation without receiving any orders over Tunnel-Drive. And it was all because of one, little article posted every twenty-four standard hours which they deemed insignificant.

But Paul was yet to worry about such deceptions.

Maybe the matter fields would fail soon and the rain would trickle down to wash all this away, he mused, following Sarah across an inactive highway which had been heavily contested. And for the first time in his life, Paul did not feel his stomach churn as he walked amongst the corpses of war.