DAWN WATCH

© Dana W. Paxson 2005

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DAWN WATCH

1544 4D

Mentrius‘s boot awakened Andrew just before dawn the next morning, ending his three hours of sleep. “Your watch, Luce, quit acting so tired. Get your butt out to the rail line.”

Andrew crawled out of his shelter, geared up, and stumbled off to the trackside in the purple blackness. “Luce here,” he mumbled to the watch barker, a young woman with a sharp face and stubbly hair. He rubbed his fingers across his tender throat, trying to massage away the soreness.

Luce? You from Sobi?” The barker‘s face frowned over her dim-lit datasheet.

Andrew Luce.”

“Yeah, you’re Wranmar‘s son, right? Message for you from home. Here.” She flicked at the datasheet a few times, handed it to him.

He thumbed it, and Leil‘s face appeared, looking worried. She said, “Andrew, I heard about the Abridor massacre, and they told me you were all right. It was so terrible about NuruminNexi‘s not doing very well. Please comm me back and tell me yourself you’re okay. I miss you and I want you home again.” She hugged herself. “That much and more.”

Then she said, “My father is getting pushy now — he wants me to move in with him and Mother while you’re away. I’ve said no, but it’s hard here. At least I can be glad Raul is keeping an eye out for me in the streets. You’ve got good brothers, ‘Drew.”

She moved closer and kissed the screen. “Come home safe, Andrew. I love you.” The screen shaded to darkness.

He stared off into the bare suggestion of dawn light on the horizon. Above, the stars still shone bright as beacons and jewels. He had to get Leil out here, away from the cramped and toxic City.

He took a breath, thumbed the datasheet again, and said, “Leil, I miss you. I came through fine, and so did Alliji and Nexi, but it’s terrible about Nurumin.

“But things are so beautiful out here, so new and clean, and I want you to be out here with me. I like the way these people are. There’s room for a big family, and a farm, and anything you want.

“I’ll be done out here soon and then I’ll be back telling you and Engel all about the animals I’ve seen, the sky, the stars and the moons, the flowers and the fruit and — there’s so much. Here’s my love for you, and for Engel, and take good care of yourself, and count on Raul and Norwell and Martin. If they don’t take care of things, I’ll cook them all. Here.” Andrew smooched the screen with his lips, thumbed off the sheet, and handed it to the barker.

She made a face and scrubbed at the screen with her forearm. “You guys make this thing a mess. Why don’t you kiss a woman instead, and let her pass it on, like chain of love, you know?” She grinned, then pointed. “Don’t answer that. Just get out up the line to where you see that small green light flickering. Yeah, there. Four hours up there — just keep eye out and comm in every ten minutes, or whenever you pick up any movement.”

Andrew shouldered his large beam gun and walked up the concrete trackbed to where another soldier stood, holding up the flickering signal stick.

“You took your shuck-ass time, brodo.” A mocking tone; it was Hings-Wen, a squat muscleman with long braided hair, a Kai Ren Coll guy.

“Yah, Hau Man, I always do for you.” Andrew took the signal stick, twisted it back to dim blue, clipped it to his sleeve. Hings poked Andrew‘s bicep with a hard finger as he left. The Kai Ren were okay; Andrew had worked with several on one of his conduit teams, among them Hings’s older brother.

He took up the boring task of scanning the darkness for movement. No warhelms here, no nightsight bioenhancements, and that meant he would have to let normal dark adaptation and a good pair of ears do the job.

The time passed so slowly he could see the stars set and the light begin to shade up the eastern sky. Gradually the horizon defined itself better: a confusion of tall grass blades hiding the distance behind them. The tracks made a steel-straight line off in both directions, bisecting the world; the station humped, dark gray, behind Andrew; on the far side of the tracks, a wall of dim grass opened here and there into black tunnels under the roofing growth.

In one of the grass tunnels, something flicked silver, and vanished.

Andrew fingered his comm, said, “Luce here. I’ve got movement in the grass across the tracks. It might be an animal.”

The comm spoke. “Watch it and keep open comm. If it moves again, we’ll send a squad.”

Andrew scanned the openings in the grass, straining to see. A slight shift in the darkness made him look into one smaller patch of black; as he stared, a man emerged, waved to him, and walked away east beside the tracks.

“It’s a man,” Andrew said into his comm. “He’s headed down the tracks toward the east. He looks like one of the locals.”

“Headed away from you?”

“Yes.”

“Fine. Let him go. Keep watching the openings.”

Andrew checked the grasses, then watched the walker fade slowly into the night. To be free like that, to walk under the stars as far as you wanted: it had to be a wonderful thing.

Shouts interrupted his reverie. They came from the deep grass tunnels; Andrew readied his weapon and commed in, “People yelling in the grass. I don’t see anything.”

No immediate response. He nervously checked his beamer‘s load and peered at the shadows, looking for any sign of movement. When a group of men tumbled, fighting, out of the grass, he nearly fired, then froze. They were soldiers from his unit.

He didn’t know what was going on. Six or seven soldiers all were trying to restrain another man who was fighting all of them. The knot of bodies rolled out by the tracks.

The lone man shrugged off three of the others, backhanded away two more, and stood up with his hands around the last man’s neck. He was very big. He twisted the man’s head sharply; Andrew heard a horrible crack, and the victim fell like a rag. The big man leaped toward Andrew.

Luce, shoot him! Shoot him, for bloodsake!” It was Mentrius‘s voice.

Andrew raised his beamer and got off one quick shot that fired the night with a brilliant yellow blaze. The giant staggered, fell, almost at Andrew‘s feet; the soldiers gathered themselves and stood around the fallen figure. One shined a lamp at the big man. Two others ran to their fallen companion.

“He killed Monrote too,” one called.

“This thing’s still alive.” Mentrius said. “Now we can find out what he is.”

Andrew, still on post, rubbed his half-blinded eyes and scanned their surroundings for further movement. Then he looked down. The lamp illuminated a young man’s broad face.

The lips moved. “Why?” came a soft ragged whisper. “Why do you want to kill me?”

Andrew, when we found him he was eating Monrote‘s liver.”

“What?”

Mentrius came up behind Andrew. “That was a damn good shot. Isn’t he dead yet? Luce, finish him off.”

Andrew stood staring down into the big smooth questioning face looking up at him in the lamplight, then looked down at the burnt hole he had made in the man’s chest.

Luce, kill him. Whatever he is, he’s deadly.”

Andrew reluctantly slung his beamer and got out his ballistic autorifle. As he readied the weapon and raised it, the big man started to sit up.

“Now, Luce!”

“Please don’t—" the man gasped, raising a hand.

Andrew put three shots into the center of the man’s chest.

The figure slumped back to the soil, spatters of blood from Andrew‘s shots staining its face and neck. It lay still.

Another soldier came to look down at the body. “He took out Franks. Broke his neck. Damn near broke my arm.”

Two others limped nearer. One called, “Is he dead?”

“Yeah,” came the voice of Hings-Wen. “Luce nailed him.”

Andrew couldn’t stop looking at the face of the man he had killed. It seemed peaceful, even with the blood on it.

“Get the medics,” Mentrius said. “We’ve got to cut him open and see what’s inside.”

“Why?” Andrew turned to Mentrius. “He’s a guy like us, maybe just crazy. Why do you want to mess with his body?”

“You just keep doing what you’re told to do, Luce,” Mentrius retorted. “You were doing fine with the gun, so don’t try using your mouth instead. Medics!”

Two medics, a man and a woman, arrived; they knelt over the body with probes and laparotools, and began a closed-body autopsy. The woman flipped down her eyepiece and inserted a scope into the ribcage to inspect the heart and lungs. “So far it all looks normal,” she reported.

The body sat up. The movement yanked the scope out, and both the woman and the man backed away in alarm. The mouth stated to move, forming words, but no sound came out.

Mentrius snatched Andrew‘s gun and in panic emptied an entire coil of high-velocity rounds into the body, nearly severing the head at the neck, and almost hitting a small knot of soldiers gathered on the far side of the body. The soldiers dived away, swearing; the body, ripped apart, flopped back to the ground like a rag.

Mentrius‘s hands shook as he handed the gun back to Andrew. For a few moments no one said anything.

Something awoke in Andrew. “Where’s Monrote‘s body?”

Hings-Wen said, “They took it over to the station.”

The pre-dawn light showed Andrew the way. He entered the station and went to where a group of soldiers stood over another body. Its abdomen was hollowed out into a bloody cavity, fringed by red-brown where the ragged edges of the uniform hung.

Andrew stared, and stared some more, groping in his mind for a missing connection to something else, something very old and very big… no. It was gone.

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