Stone Blade (13 page)

Tiber waited until Micah nodded. Again she spoke against a struggle.

“Micah think about the background. The sounds.”

“Relaxing,” he said, “Soft sounds. Equatorial was hot and dry and silent. They played water sounds. Birds. Things you don't know you miss 'till they're gone.”

“What else, Micah. Think. Dig.”

Micah blinked. The thing in the back of his mind started forward.

“Sometimes it was screams,” he said, “Screams and plasmas going off. The hiss. It's not really like water, not that close.” Micah felt his fists clench hard.

“Screaming,” said Tiber, “and death. All mixed with something relaxing. When you were asleep, Micah. Asleep and receptive. Tired. Open to suggestion. What else, Micah?”

“The... The hissing. Artillery. Smites going off.”

“What else? What else was there?”

Pain overwhelmed Micah's senses. He heard the voices now, horrid voices. Terrible voices. Voices speaking horrors to him...

“Micah! Micah, come back! You're not there, Micah! Let it go. Let it go!”

Micah found himself weeping hard, racking sobs. Something warm and soft held him. Tiber held him until the storm passed, whispering soft comforts, urging the worst of it away from him. After an eternity Micah's control returned. Tiber released his restraints and handed him a wet cloth.

“Good, Micah. We've taken a very important first step. Now you need to rest.”

***

Micah woke the next morning well before Tiber arrived. Restive yet restricted to his bed by a scowling medic, Micah managed to cajole himself a library terminal. He knew within broad tolerances what he wanted. He found it. Strange dreams troubled him. Not nightmares but not far from them. Rather it seemed his dreams told him things he already knew and in the telling purged something vile. Micah studied with his full concentration.

“Good morning.” Tiber took her chair, turned it backwards and settled into it. “Someone has been studying.”

“They won't let me up.” Micah tried not to growl and Tiber smiled at his lack of success.

“Even League medical technology needs time to work, Micah. That was no scratch.”

Micah tried to hold a stern expression but it soon faded.

“Subliminal conditioning,” said Micah.

“Yes,” said Tiber, “You've studied it.”

“The Warren Conglomerate,” he replied.

“Five billion people packed on a planet hard-pressed to support three. Still one of the major influences on Metropole. Still programming the masses.” Tiber made a sour face. “The hades of it is without the conditioning they would probably have the highest crime and suicide rates in the League.”

“It made their soldiers fight hard.”

“That and the juice.” Tiber looked uncomfortable. “It literally took an act of the League Senate to force them to stop. Did you read any further?”

“No.”

“Don't. It's horrible and it might be detrimental.”

“So I've been conditioned,” said Micah.

“Micah, yes. But...”

Micah heard the pain in her voice and understood it.

“So can we undo it or do I need counter-conditioning?”

Tiber gave him a look of horror, either for his matter-of-fact tone or for his second idea.

“We'll have to find out what it is,” she finally said, “And that won't be easy. Apparently they don't want us to.”

“Is that the price?”

Tiber nodded.

“I'll pay it, Eva. I have to.”

Micah twiddled his fingers. The dex projected a hologram before him and he focused all his concentration on it. After a moment he managed to exclude anything else. Eva talked and he responded but Micah let his mouth work while he concentrated on the dex's twisty shapes. At times they distorted wrongly and he corrected them. Other times they just drifted. That was the secret. The pain stayed away if he focused it within the datafractals.

After two days of being consciously himself Micah was allowed mild exercise. Then a bit more of it. After a week he no longer felt six months dead. His side still hurt a bit and the medics assured him he'd have yet another scar. There was, after all, only so much they could do. Micah grinned inwardly at this; his medics took personally any ailment they could not cure completely and without a trace.

Eva brought the dex two visits before this one. She tried several things before, all of which left Micah with his head splitting and his arms and legs struggling against the restraints. Now he rarely felt the pain and when he did he had no trouble shunting it away.

Micah found in Zeke Brumley a man he warmed to instantly. When he finally spoke, Brumley claimed to hail from “... the most average planet in the League.” He detailed that particular point with considerable eloquence and humor. He'd tried for Drop but transferred to Support after an incident with a malfunctioning HRAT. From him Micah learned the whole of what happened after the lead banger shot him.

“I can't tell you I read the report,” Brumley had said hypothetically, “since I don't have access, but a good Marine
knows.
 

“After that bottomfeeder shot you you took him apart totally. There were quite a few torqued-off bangers but enough civs gave corroboration to clear you and the others. After you went down someone called the Shore Patrol. You were about dead then. They were working to stabilize you when you woke up. You grabbed a field medic by the throat and started squeezing. They hit you with a stunner. Quarter blast, then half, then full. You shook it off like nothing. Then they gave you a hypo that knocked you out. When they got you to the base and put you under a neural damper you almost got one of the orderlies. Flaming near took out two more after surgery when you shook off the tranqs.” Brumley lowered his voice. “Fact is, only your three buddies were brave enough to sit with you here. And that was under restraints.”

Micah looked away and tried to hide the awful feeling inside him. Not long before he'd have taken pride in it.

“You can stop now, Micah.”

Micah pulled his fingers out of the dex and powered it down.

“Are we making progress?”

“Yes.” Micah knew Tiber fought hard against her inner demons. “Do you still want... It?”

“Please, Eva.”

Tiber held a sparkling, glowing something before his eyes.

“Concentrate Micah. When I count three, you will remember. One.”

Micah took a breath, relaxed and concentrated. They'd been discussing his missions.

“Two.”

By the look on her face this would be something truly abhorrent. Tiber had an abundance of empathy and a sensitivity Micah could not fathom.

“Three. Remember, Micah.”

***

Micah remembered! He remembered everything! The voices, the sounds, the feelings. He remembered every mission he'd ever taken. He remembered every detail. He remembered the pirates, the rebels and the traitors. All the crunchies and meats...

The people. People! They weren't all criminals. They weren't even mostly criminals. Or traitors, or pirates. That was the justification fed to him while he slept.

Micah heard the voices now. He heard them pleading, begging, desperate for their lives. He heard them screaming as he cut them down. Underneath it all he heard the voice speaking to his sleep. The voice woven into the sounds and the noise around him.

Micah saw every person whose life he'd taken. Brave men and women - not meat! - fighting and dying because the Commonwealth of Caustik deemed them less valuable alive than dead.

The eyes stared at Micah openly now. Now he knew why and what and who. Some of them brimming with hope others with certainty. Some of them so filled with terror...

Micah remembered the blood. The fear he'd caused. The men and women and...

“No. No! NO!”

Micah remembered what he'd fought so long to keep forgotten. All of them killed because the highcarders on Caustik didn't want to be bothered with their lives...

Micah felt the hot wetness rolling down his cheeks. He squeezed his eyes shut as hard as he could but they eyes didn't go away. The faces. Pleading...

“Micah! Come back! Now! On the count of three... One.”

Micah tried to look away. He fought their gazes but to no avail.

“Two.”

No reason for them to die other than being in his way at the time.

“Three. Micah, come back NOW!”

Micah blinked. He still remembered but now with a small sense of history. Still...

“Micah, we can deal with this!”

Micah felt a familiar clench. One he'd not felt in far too long. Straining against the bands holding him down he thrust his head sideways, turned and vomited.

“Micah,” said Tiber, “this is not a bad thing. This is good.”

Tiber must have read the disbelief in Micah's eyes; he couldn't speak.

“It is,” she affirmed, voice warm now, “Micah, you have a very high social conscience. Now that it's finally making itself felt we can help it along.”

“Eva... I can't. It's... That's...”

“Micah, I can't change the past. No one can. You can't stop what's already happened. But you can learn from it! You can change, Micah. You can change!”

The sincerity and honesty with which she spoke helped Micah more than the words themselves.

“Listen, soldier,” said Brumley, sounding like a drill sergeant, “The first time I killed someone I spewed so hard I couldn't eat for three days. It's only bad when you stop feeling it.”

Micah managed a small smile.

“Thank you. Both of you.”

***

Over the next week Tiber spent most of the day with Micah. They went over his memories, then over them again. And again. All of them. What he'd done made Micah sick but they were his and they were a part of him. Tiber managed to give him a blessed sense of distance but Micah vowed never to let this distance grow too great.

The day before Micah's release he had a visitor. Dale Jeffers, dressed in civ clothes. Jeffers refused to meet Micah's eyes.

“They broke me, Micah.”

Saying that cost Jeffers a great deal and shook Micah.

“Dale...”

“I couldn't do it. I tried. Bix and Paige, they wouldn't let me slide but...”

Micah felt a sadness both for Jeffers and for himself.

“What will you do now?”

Jeffers shrugged.

“I can transfer my enlistment to the Patrol.”

Micah tried not to think 'crunchies.'

“They'll transfer a lot of my training. We shouldn't have anything more than customs patrols or some anti-piracy missions. And rescues! I'll be saving lives.”

Jeffers held out his hand but Micah embraced him.

“Dale...” Micah knew what he wanted to say but the words left him. Finally, “Rumor says that you and Paige and Bix were the only ones with stones enough to stay here with me. You have more than they know, Dale.”

Jeffers chuckled at this.

“If you're ever near Goldensheaf, Micah, look me up. I mean it! Maybe I'll have some stories for you.”

Micah smiled and held it until Jeffers left. No longer. He felt as though a part of himself had gone.

The next week found Micah back in harness and working twice as hard to make up the time he'd missed. Micah's CO informed him he could delay graduation if he so chose but Micah chose otherwise.

What free time Micah had he spent working over his memories. Tiber gave him a strict regimen of exercises, mental and meditative, along with a schedule of visits to the base counselor. She herself saw him occasionally.

After hearing Bixby's, Jeffers' and McCree's account of their brawl the others in the barracks regarded Micah as something more than human. He found himself elevated from the platoon's 'wise old man' to something near to a true Corps officer. That distancing hurt but McCree and Bixby helped him through it.

Nor did help flow in a single direction. Though the recruits had mostly finished Basic they hadn't attained the spiritual hardening they'd need to fight in the field. The drill and practice turned away from the mostly physical to those mental and spiritual aspects. Micah lost count of the nights he spent helping a raw boot through the harsh times. Or, in several cases, helping make the decision to leave. That hurt Micah more than the recruits he'd counseled and after one particularly harrowing evening none other than Sergeant Taylor congratulated Micah on his touch.

Micah fit himself into the physical rigors of training the most easily. They were slightly harder than the ones on Caustik but Micah was harder and he pushed himself harder.

With the medics' assurance that he'd purged the Flame from himself Micah attacked his physical training. He conditioned himself to the point where Flame had taken him and, with considerable effort, beyond it! Tiber's exercises helped there, which surprised her when Micah told her. Micah learned to ignore pain without Flame and he learned to focus himself past mere physical fatigue. When he finally succeeded Micah discovered a new clarity of thought and a freeing of mind. He found his reserves and measured them, apportioning them as necessary toward whatever task he faced. By the end of Basic Micah could perform as well as ever he had on Flame, consciously and with no cloudiness, hazed memories or baggage afterward.

With this clarity of mind came another thought, plain, simple and clear.

Micah knew he could not be a League Marine.

***

Micah performed drills and training flawlessly. He learned and reinforced his skills and consistently scored well on the numerous tests and exams. Tiber's de-programming finally bore fruit, though. Micah knew to the core of his being that he trained to kill. In that respect League training differed from Caustik's not at all. He was good at it. Very good at it. The more he thought about it the firmer his resolve became. Micah vowed to himself that he'd have no part of killing ever again. The eyes still haunted him but he knew they'd go away when he forbore ever killing another person.

Sergeant Rothling, one of Micah's most brutal instructors, looked at the form before him.

“This is a drop form, Maggot Stone!”

“Yes, Sergeant!”

“What the hades is it doing in my face, Maggot Stone?”

“I wish to withdraw from training, Sergeant.”

Micah stood at stiff and proper attention, eyes focused above and far beyond Rothling.