The Eternity Brigade Read Free

around to see what came next. People were organizing themselves into squads of ten. Hawker looked about and found the alien—a Spardian, he suddenly recalled—who’d talked to him in Vandik. Her group was not yet complete, so he went over to join her. If worst came to worst, he’d at least have one member of his squad to talk to.
    The leader of this particular squad was a human, but Hawker quickly established that the two of them had no language in common. Once again the Spardian was pressed into service as a translator, informing Hawker that their squad had been assigned to defend Sector 14 against possible breakthroughs by enemy troops. Hawker nodded. There wasn’t much more he needed to know; he could take his lead from the rest of the squad.
    When everyone was outfitted, the sergeant reappeared and said a few more words—probably last-minute instructions and/or words of encouragement. No one really listened; each squad was busy trying to make itself into a fighting unit rather than the random assortment of individuals it actually was. Perhaps the sergeant himself finally realized he was hindering more than helping, for he shut up abruptly and let the squad leaders do their job.
    There was little enough time for that. All too quickly, the troops were pointed to the elevators and brought to the surface, where they’d be dispersed to their particular sectors.
    Hawker’s first glimpse of the surface confirmed all his suspicions. The town they were defending was in bad shape; in fact, to all appearances it was lost already.
    The sky overhead was dark, despite having two suns above the horizon. Clouds of black smoke hung over the city, evidence of fires wrought by enemy weapons. Although the air on this planet should have been breathable, the stinging sensation of smoke made it far from pleasant. There were tears in Hawker’s eyes, and he wished there’d been gas masks available; rubbing at his eyes with the backs of his hands, he followed the rest of his squad to their designated sector.
    All about them was rubble and desolation. Hawker had no idea what world he was on, what the original inhabitants had been like or how splendid their town had looked before falling to the ravages of this war. He could only see the end result: no building over four stories stood intact, and even the smaller ones had windows shattered by the constant bombardment of enemy artillery; large impact craters dotted the streets, hindering progress; vehicles abandoned, overturned, burned; dead bodies lying everywhere, some killed directly by enemy fire, others indirectly by being trapped under a collapsing building. And nowhere, other than his fellow troopers, could Hawker see a sign of life. Everyone capable of fleeing had already deserted the city, leaving the opposing armies to decide the issue.
    Let the soldiers fight it out, the citizens said by their actions. Then tell us what the outcome is. At times like this, Hawker often wondered what the difference was between cowardice and common sense.
    The squad moved quickly through the empty streets, crouched low to avoid possible gunfire and taking cover behind deserted buildings along the way. Overhead, an occasional ball of blue flame would drift lazily through the sky. Hawker had never seen anything quite like them in battle before, but he hardly had to be told they were dangerous. His guesses about them were confirmed when one of the blue fireballs brushed lightly against the top of a building several hundred meters away. The structure promptly exploded, knocking the entire squad to their knees and showering the area with tiny bits of rubble, hardly more than a fine dust. Hawker instinctively covered his head, but he needn’t have bothered; the blue fireballs didn’t leave pieces big enough to cause any damage.
    Their sector, it turned out, was an area of some ten square blocks near the outskirts of the inner city. The neighborhood had been oriented toward small businesses and shops, with