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I frown. “That’s singularly unhelpful.”
His expression drops, big brown eyes full of remorse. “I am sorry this is not helpful to you. Perhaps you could ask a more specific question?”
I think about it for a moment, wondering what line of questioning would be the right one to take. But my mind keeps wandering back to that room, the panel of commanders. It doesn’t feel like the most pressing thing to remember, but I don’t have any other starting points. A scientist whose face I can barely recall. Some vague sense that there were others on the team that came out here. There’s nothing to grip, no thread I can pull at.
So I guess I have to start with the commanders.
I focus my mind’s eye, try to summon the memory with enough strength. Around me, the scenery shifts and changes, warping away from the forest where I’m currently sleeping to that bland Mercenia conference room. All dark or metallic colours, straight lines. Black tiled floor, silver walls, chrome table for the commanders to sit behind. They had papers in front of them. Actual papers that they leafed through. Why that stands out in my mind when so much else is a pit of nothing, I don’t know, but I remember being intimidated by those papers. Only the very wealthy and powerful would have the means to physically print anything out.
“Brooks,” the one in the centre says, not even addressing me by my rank.
I bristle now as I did then, but step forward to the point on the floor - marked out by the slightly whiter grouting between two tiles - where I’m supposed to stand.
“Brooks, this is your name?” my alien friend says.
I roll my eyes. “I remember that much.”
The commanders don’t respond to our words, almost frozen in place, as if waiting for the scene to resume as it did in real life.
“Officer Brooks,” the one to the left of the central commander says. Commander Richter, I remember. Commander in charge of the Enforcers. “This is most unusual.”
There’s something sharp and sly about the tone of his voice, setting me on edge. I stand perfectly straight, still. He’s not going to come at me with the kind of blows I can defend against physically, but there’s something about standing ready for a physical kind of attack that makes enduring a mental one a little easier.
“Such a rushed, last-minute request shouldn’t have been entertained, but…” Richter inclines his head. “You do have an exemplary record. And someinterestingqualities.”
This is only coming back to me as it happens, but I bristle at the way he says interesting, something about it putting a deep knot of discomfort in my stomach that’s somehow separate from this moment. Of the moment me is mostly breathless with relief that they aren’t going to dismiss me outright.
“Thank you for your consideration, sirs,” I say, the words rising up on my tongue as if I have some kind of teleprompter in front of me.
Richter leans back in his chair, steepling his fingers before touching them briefly to his lips as he considers me. Then he turns to the central commander. I struggle for his name for a moment, but it comes back to me when he speaks.
“What is a soldier if not his duty?”
Commander Valentin. High Commander of Mercenia’s Central Division. The man over Richter, and probably all the other men at the table. His rumbling baritone is instantly recognisable the moment he says more than just my name.
I’m sweating now. I’m sure I must have been sweating then.
How in the hell did I end up in front of the High Commander?
Valentin’s tone makes it clear that he doesn’t expect or want an answer. Eyes black as coal drill into me as he continues. “Your own duty is integral to the continuation of Mercenia’s governance. Without a strong military tier, what is there to stand between the insurgents and the kind of chaos they wish to inflict on the world? The kind of chaos Mercenia lifted the human race out of. Do you know your history, Brooks?”
“I do, sir,” I answer, pleased that my voice doesn’t tremble.
“Then you know what the world was before Mercenia shaped it for the better. And yet you would still seek to abandon your duty.”
I flinch. Both now and then. Duty is everything to a soldier, and I have always performed mine.
“Why am I here?” I say to my alien friend. “What is he talking about, ‘abandoning my duty’?”
“I am afraid I cannot help you with those answers, linasha.”
“Then what is the point of you being here?” I snap.
His expression grows pained, and for some reason, I feel terrible about it.
“I would help you any way I can, linasha,” he says, his tone imploring. “But this… My knowledge of your world is limited.”
“Then how can you help me?”
