A Fight For Peace

When the clouds come around you,

You will reach for the sun,

When life tries to force you, stay true,

You will learn to find peace when the day is done,

When the danger engulfs you, don’t run.

By saving their lives you will conquer all harm,

When you see, you will die in my arms.

The words played in August’s head as the blue sky soared above him, through the dappled leaves of the yard’s oak. He sat in its lowest branch, as he always did with his free time, content to daydream. Before he could spend time considering the words, his older sister May ran out to him. Her little ponytails bobbed as she approached.

“Let’s go pick some berries from the forest,” she said. August got to his feet and followed her into the thicket. They pushed past the branches that scratched and tore at their bare legs, and found the berry patch, one of their favorite places to spend the day. After stuffing themselves, they lay on the ground.

The western lands stretched out seemingly infinitely, but the children knew that the ocean lay just out of sight to their south. They shared the dream of wanting to see it, but emerging, exposed, at the other side of the forest was simply too dangerous.

“What do you want to be as an adult, August?” May asked.

“I don’t know. I think a poet,” he replied slowly. Wasn’t eight too young to decide? Besides, their land, Lucacia, was being invaded, and their father, the High Councilor, was on the run from the Patiores, the invaders. Each day they feared their mother’s little cottage would be discovered and they would all be taken captive. Though Suprina did her best to hide the danger from her children, they could sometimes see soldiers treading past the trees that masked their house.

“What do you want to be?” he asked. She was ten. At least more reasonable for choosing a profession.

“I want to be a writer too. That way, if we can’t repel the invasion, at least people will know who we were. And maybe they won’t judge us too harshly, if they understand us.”

Ten years later

August strapped on his gas mask and prepared himself for his final moments. His potential final moments, rather. So much for becoming a poet! he thought as he looked out the open bottom of the fighter plane. As soon as he’d turned sixteen, the Patiores had enlisted him, just as they enlisted every sixteen-year-old. May had escaped by faking her own death and running to Kcizky, Lucacia’s northern neighbor. August had figured the trick wouldn’t work a second time, and now here he was, crashing to Kcizky’s soil from thousands of feet in the air. He deployed his parachute and jumped, nauseated from the dizzying height and furious to die in an invasion he hated. He felt the sheer drop into nothingness, the air he landed in dropping out from under him, again and again and again. He could see the plane spinning and spiraling to the ground; he could see that he was headed indistinctly in a different direction. Then everything went black.

. . . He awoke groggy and uncomprehending in a blue-sheeted bed. A white, square room swam around him. A professional looking blond woman appeared above him with a wet washcloth, rubbing it on his forehead. He panicked, but was too sore and tired to jump and run.

“What’s going on?” he asked.

“You fell from 20,000 feet,” she said calmly. “Your parachute saved you.”

“Oh.”

“Do you want to join our side? We know here that many of you Patiores were drafted.”

It could well be a trap to test my loyalty to Patior, he reasoned. But he had had enough of serving his oppressor. He felt a warm light shine around him as he made his decision, the light of purpose. “Who are you?” he asked.

“I am a Kcizkian lieutenant, Dahlia Rhoder.”

“I ask for proof of loyalty. Fetch us a penknife, and we will mark ourselves as servants of the just side.”

“Very well.” She got up and returned shortly with the requested tool. Each made a small mark on their palm.

“Loyal to death,” he said.

“Loyal to death.”

Kaffire, General-in-Chief of Patiore Armies, viewed the map his second man Renald spread before him of their successes and failures. The Kcizkian capital, Marawo, was bright red, indicating that the enemy completely dominated it. Most of the rest of the country was silver, one of the colors of Patior.

Kaffire was in his fifties, and for most of his life he had viewed this war like a long, grueling game of chess. His grandfather had first started Patior’s string of conquests, and they had been raging since. No country since Kaffire was born had fought as well as Kcizky, and at first he was glad to sit across the board from a skilled opponent. But now he was tired, and all he wanted was to end the war victoriously, by any means. “If we take out Marawo, will Kcizky fall?”

“Assuredly,” Renald replied. “There are 500,000 people in the city, though at least half of them are civilians.”

“And we have the set of explosives that can blow up the city?”

“Yes, but the manufacturer died, so if something goes wrong–”

“Nothing will go wrong. It cannot. This war has been too long. I sometimes forget why we even do it. I suppose because if we do not invade them we will be invaded.”

“Foreigners think our customs are too harsh, I suppose, that religion and profession shouldn’t be bound by the law. They are the savages, ignorant and weak. Patior is the only nation there is, in my mind.”

“Enough, Renald. We will send out the Spy to do the mission.” He spoke of the bulky silver and blue fighter jet, pride of Patior’s air fleet. “We will appoint one of our Meheres to the job; anyone of a higher rank cannot be afforded. The mission will of course be fatal to the commander.”

“I would like the honor of serving,” Renald said timidly. “You know you can trust me, and I would gladly give my life for Patior.”

“I said a Mehere and a Mehere I will send! You are too valuable, and the Meheres have pledged loyalty just as you have. They have enough power to be invested in the cause, but not too much. We will send Bry.”

“When?”

“He returns from his current mission in a month.”

. . . On board the Defiant, white with golden tips, August cast a glance at his seedling. He kept it in a terracotta pot on his dashboard, to remember. The vibrant green little leaves, so fragile yet so determined to survive, reminded him of his own country. His own people. His sister, his parents, his house, and forest. This seedling was from an acorn from that mighty oak in his yard. When he thought about how it might have been destroyed, and surely was, he felt a pang. Yet, as he looked at this tough plant, all the booms and shouting around him seemed to still, and he remembered that long-ago dream he had had that he never quite managed to erase. To be a poet.

The Defiant, a skyship functioning primarily as a ram, was equipped with all the regular features of Allied and Patiore aircraft. She had a trapdoor for parachuting through, and hundreds of windows for watching the enemy. Her main vulnerability was her thin side-walls.

August quickly brought his mind back to the present and listened for Lieutenant Rhoder’s voice in his headset. The sound shorted in and out, and he could hear only snatches of what she said. He felt his heart beat faster as he listened.

“You must fly out of the country. . .” She paused and sounded out of breath, as if she were running. “They. . .” Something banged in the background. Someone groaned. The sound shorted out. “Have courage, August. If I don’t get out. . .” Someone began yelling about Patior. “Until. . .” The connection died.

. . . “Captain, they are about to destroy the capital!” The muffled voice came through August’s headset, which had been dysfunctional for a week, since what had evidently been Rhoder’s capture.

“Who is this?” he asked. The device was shut off from the other side.

A vague plan formed in his mind: arm and refuel the Defiant, then overtake the Spy and demand a fight.

Early the next morning, he found himself in the ceiling rafters of the enemy airport, watching the drama play out from above. The short, chubby man he recognized as Renald walked to the front of the crowd, his steps echoing through the vast airport. “There has been an unfortunate issue regarding this assignment. The Mehere in question did not return from yesterday’s mission, and we are forced to request a second. I am aware that many of you do not feel the patriotic fervor I harbor, so I would like to ask instead if there are any volunteers.”

A blond woman stepped forward. “I would like to offer myself. I am ready to prove my patriotism.”

August’s mind reeled. It looked too similar to Rhoder, but it was impossible. . .

She held up her hand and said, “With this slash on my palm I swore that I would be faithful to death.”

No mistake. However she had gotten away and infiltrated the Patiore army, she was close to either saving or destroying the whole Kcizkian remnant. He had no choice but to trust her, and she had not said to which country she had pledged loyalty. He had been there; he knew. She would not die for the enemy, but for her native land, her native people.

He hurried to climb back into the Defiant to ensure what he thought.

. . . Renald watched in suspicion as the Defiant and her five sister planes slipped into the clouds, clearly within sight of the Spy, but making no move to attack. It could mean only that the Mehere volunteer was a traitor. He yelled into his headpiece. “Get me to Kaffire! Change of plans! I am going to attack that agent disguised as a Mehere! Send a replacement immediately! I am lifting off in the Chase.”

. . . August accelerated after the Chase as it plummeted for Rhoder. Rhoder was guiding the train of aircraft straight towards the ocean, despairing of all chance of survival. The truth stung August’s brain, horrifying, undeniable, inevitable. There was no way the Spy could outrun the Chase. And once it was caught, Renald would board, and kill Rhoder, and drive the plane straight for the capital. . .

August shouted at his crew to prepare to ram Renald’s airship. “Turn to port! Yes! More, more! Forward!”

The ground beneath them seemed to rise into the sky and clutter it with planes. Renald’s reinforcements were taking off. August swore and continued shouting. “The rest do not matter! Ignore them! Attack the Chase! Destroy it at all costs!”

Fifty black planes clouded around the Defiant like a swarm of wasps. August could no longer see his target. “WHERE DID IT GO?” he roared. A quiet voice that seemed to come from no human answered, Look to your left.

He did so, seeing the blue and silver streak zipping through the swarm of enemies. But they were headed due south, straight for the ocean. . . Lucacia’s southern ocean. He looked down to see his own land 50,000 feet below, his native soil, his native province. . . He accelerated the plane as fast as it could go. Through his windshield, the starboard side of the Chase hurtled closer and closer. “Prepare for impact!”

The crash deafened him, metal tearing through metal, unknown-of explosives bursting in the bellies of both planes. He could hear Renald’s frantic shouts, the pounding of feet and gushing of air. He felt the conjoined airplanes dropping through the sky like birds that died mid-flight. He felt pain burst through his body. He realized that his parachute, at his side, had melted. He dropped himself, defeated, to the floor of his vessel. Around him, a few soldiers skirmished and died. Renald and the rest prepared for evacuation via parachute.

All was over. The crews of the Defiant and the Chase had fled, save for one boy who knelt by August’s side. “You are wounded, sir? Take my parachute and save yourself; the doctors can easily save you.”

“No, my friend, keep it. Go now and tell our story; tell the world that peace is the only solution; tell them that August Ressem and his crew lived and died in the name of peace. Go!”

Tears gathered in the boy’s eyes, but he fastened his parachute, shook the general’s hand, and jumped.

. . . Now he was all alone. Through the tiny window of Renald’s plane, he could see the Spy descending towards the ocean, saving the capital at the cost of her life. He wondered how Rhoder was spending her last seconds, if she knelt in silent prayer or stood proudly like a captain at the helm. What were her last thoughts, her last words, her last hopes? Did she fear the end, just a little, or did the glory of her sacrifice drown out all but splendor?

Now the Spy dips beneath the blue waves, now August stares unseeing into the blue sky. Yet now something green catches his sight: The little oak seedling has been hurled from its pot, but it remains erect in the soil clinging to its rootball. I will grow for you. It is the same voice that directed him a few minutes ago. The same voice, he realizes, that spoke the words he thought he heard so many years ago, beneath this patch of sky. . .

Suddenly he sees; he knows who was speaking, who has been waiting for him all these years. As the plane approaches the half-burnt-up forest from his childhood, August pushes himself through the plane’s open trapdoor. The oak catches him in its soft leaves; he sits on its lowest branch as he did when the world was kind, for now the world is kind once more. He has conquered. Dawn rises over man and tree; now all is light.