The Eternity Brigade Read Free Page B

come up close behind her. When he had done so, she whispered for him to stay there while she ran to a vantage point across the street, where she could get a better view of what was happening. Hawker nodded and brought his rifle up, ready to cover her during her charge. The woman braced herself, then darted out from cover onto the street and across the way to a recessed doorway. The instant she left, Hawker was up with his rifle ready, aimed down the street where his partner had been looking. But he saw nothing, and the Spardian made it across the street without drawing any enemy fire.
    Hawker lowered his rifle, but did not relax. Something had spooked the Spardian, and he was not about to take chances. He peered through the smoky gloom that pervaded the city, even here in this untouched neighborhood, looking both ways along the street for the slightest signs of trouble.
    There was a movement back in the direction from which they’d come. Hawker spun, rifle at the ready once more. A tall, thin figure was making its way through the haze toward the Spardian. It was not any member of their squad, that Hawker knew for certain. A memory sparked in his mind, an image of an army of these gaunt figures charging up a hill at him—quite unmistakably the memory of an enemy.
    The Spardian was busy watching the front; she wouldn’t see the creature approaching her from behind. Hawker thought to yell out a warning, but didn’t want to betray both of them to any enemy within earshot. Lifting his rifle, he fired one quick bolt at the approaching figure, and the alien toppled to the ground, dead.
    Hawker’s partner saw the flash of his rifle and turned in time to see the victim fall. At first she froze; then, after checking the front to make sure she wouldn’t be seen, she left her doorway and ran back to the dead body to check it out. She knelt beside it for a moment, then shook her head and ducked for cover once more inside a storefront. She spoke into her wrist comm again, and this time her voice came out of the unit built into the fabric of Hawker’s sleeve. “Why did you that?”
    “That was a ….” Hawker strove to remember the name of that creature’s race. “A Cenarchad. We fought them not long ago.”
    “Is being fifty years past. Cenarchads to us are allied.” Her tone made it clear she thought him almost as bad a menace as the enemy troops out there.
    “Well how the hell was I supposed to know?” Hawker exploded. “I was trying to save your fucking life. You sure as shit didn’t bother telling me how to tell the difference between friend and enemy. If you don’t want any more fuck-ups, you damn well better explain a few things.”
    The Spardian was quiet for a moment, probably translating his outburst into terms she could understand and then holding in her own temper. When she did speak, her words were well modulated and controlled. “Is being civil war now almost one year whole. Other side leaders stealing our records, dubbing our people. We having only back-up patterns. Old knowledge is ungood—is friends, enemies on both sides.”
    Hawker paused to consider. If the enemy did have a copy of the soldiers’ molecular patterns, the battlefield would be utter chaos. “How do we know who to shoot, then?” he asked.
    “Is look at armband. Red is us, blue is they.”
    Hawker looked at the colored band on his left arm. Thinking back on it, all the uniforms issued in the bunker had red armbands. Checking more carefully, he could see that the band was just loosely basted on. “What’s to keep someone from changing armbands?”
    Across the street, he could see the Spardian shrug. “No one liking being shot by own side in accident.” She paused. “Not even Cenarchads.”
    Hawker ignored her sarcasm. True, it would probably be easy enough to change armbands and infiltrate the enemy lines—but imagine the irony of returning to your own side and being shot as the enemy. It was probably being done, but Hawker had no