One Year Earlier
My name is Josh. Second Lieutenant Joshua C. Blair, technically, one of the highest ranking adults in the CLAW's war efforts. It took quite a bit of time for the CLAW to trust me - when I first joined the army, I was already 23 years old. One of /them/, as far as the Children's Provisional Government was concerned. At best, I was a man in danger, threatened by the eternal possibility that some horribly abused kid would see me as one of his aggressors and make me a "friendly fire" victim out of me. At worst, I was a spy, sent by a totalitarian adult government to crush the rebellion beneath it's heels.
But I was lucky. I had child friends who would vouch for my loyalty and my usefulness. And I had commanding officers who were willing to give me a shot, who realized that they themselves would be adults someday and that a fight for equality was pointless if they were about to perpetrate the very discrimination that had drove them to the war in the first place. I rose through the ranks, and I was decorated twice by Colonel MacNamara herself, a stoutly built fourteen year old girl with a scar across her cheek and a prosthetic arm. It was the second time that she decorated me that she'd asked me to come into her office afterwards for new orders.
"You wanted to see me, ma'am?" I asked, standing at attention in front of her desk.
"At ease," the Colonel ordered, gesturing to the seat in front of me with her good arm. "Please, have a seat."
I did so, wordless waiting for news of why I'd been summoned. When I sat, the Colonel standed, pacing around the room as she spoke.
"The last eight years, Lieutenant," she began, "have been very much about getting the adult governments of the world to take us seriously. To be something other than rebellious property to be shaped and controlled as they see fit."
"Yes ma'am," I agreed, keeping my tone formal. "I was raised under such conditions myself."
The girl nodded. "Some of the younger soldiers don't know what it was like," she conceded. "To have someone try to reprogram you as they would a VCR because you don't conform to their standards is bad enough. To have it done when you didn't sign up for it, to be unable to disassociate yourself from those who do it to you..." She shuddered.
"It was horrible," I said. I hesitated a moment, before deciding I couldn't just leave it at that. "Yet... there were happy children, before the war. Those whose adult overseers did not control them, merely offered advice and let them make the final decisions."
The girl closed her eyes for a moment, and for just a moment I saw her as I would a girl of the 1990s... I could see the desire on her face, desire for the kind of life I described. To have someone love her and guide her and respect her at the same time. She'd known those feelings, I had no doubt... but never from the same source. But the moment passed, and the girl's face hardened as her eyes opened again.
"We seem to have finally succeeded, albeit in a somewhat morbid fashion." The colonel moved to her seat and retook it. "I've received intelligence reports from the city outside the north barrier. The United States and Chinese governments have begun relocating all 'minors', as they call us, to internment camps for the duration of the war. I expect the other world powers will do the same shortly."
"That's going to make our recruiting efforts a lot harder," I replied. "But it would likely increase sympathy for us among the friendly adults in the world."
The flicker of a smile crossed her face. "Actually, having a whole slough of kids in one place seems to be an aid to their liberation. They've done it to us before, if you recall. They tried to hit one of our maturation centers, almost took one thousand infants and toddlers away from us."
I nodded sadly. "I remember."
The colonel's face was a bitter one. "Any other war, they'd have recognized a building full of infants as a civilian target. But for us..." She sighed. "Anyway, I'm putting together a special operations team to go outside our barrier and liberate one of their orphanage facilities. I want you on it."
I nodded. "Command?" I asked curiously.
The colonel smiled. "No, you'll get your chance, Lieutenant, but not yet. I'm putting Captain Christopher Paxton in charge of the unit."
I whistled. The name was one I knew well, but only by reputation. Twelve years old and already a veteran of twenty-four different strategic invasions, most of them at least partially planned by him as well. Most of what used to be Ohio, Kentucky and Tennessee were under our control thanks largely to his strategic insight.
The colonel could see the look of admiration on my face. "The Captain will be arriving via portal at nineteen hundred hours." A quick glance at the wall clock behind her told me that that was less than twenty minutes away. "I would like you and the rest of the team to be down at the gate to meet him then."
"How large is the team?" I asked.
"Including you and the Captain? Five members." She must have seen the look on my face, because she added, "This isn't a frontal battalion we're talking about, Lieutenant. If we went into any of these operations with a large force, we'd risk the adults just gunning down all of the hostages and blaming us for it. This is going to require having those groups armed and on their way out before the enemy even knows what's happening." She stood up, offering her good hand to shake.
"Dismissed."
I shook her hand and left the office. On my way out, two guards in front of the door saluted me. One had a bright smile; the other, a sneer. The colonel hadn't told me, but I knew... I knew I was the only adult on the team.
I stepped out of the building and onto the base proper. The noon sky seemed a strange hazy blue, as if I were wearing a pair of sunglasses. The protective shield that encompassed the fifty mile radius around our installation. Our technology, at least twenty years ahead of the rest of the world's, was one of the major reasons why we hadn't lost to the adults when this war first broke out. My implant, a tiny device that was injected into me when I joined the army, was the thing that allowed me security clearance into the barrier, and also into and the base headquarters. It was attuned solely to my height, weight, hair color, eye color and blood type, making it highly unlikely for an enemy to kill me and use it themselves... and impossible for them to impersonate a dead child soldier.
Without it, the field was one way - things could leave it, but nothing could come into it. What that meant was that weapons could be fired out from behind the screen while the enemy's return fire bounced harmlessly against it. It could be expanded by minute proportions at will, allowing us to take over a new town block by block with minimal, controlled resistance. It was the crown jewel of our military ability, the reason attempts by the United States to retake it's cities had failed. And if Captain Paxton didn't invent it, he at least knew more than I did about where it came from.
A shuttle veered off from it's flight path and swooped down, opening it's rear door for me to enter.
"Lieutnenant Blair?" the driver asked, a dark haired youth of fifteen. His eyes matched his hair so perfectly that I could barely make out the pupils within the iris.
I nodded.
"I'm Corporal Reese Forhart, sir. I'm here to take you to the portal." I nodded solemnly, stepping inside to take my seat across from him. His fingers flew across the keypad and the shuttle responded, lifting off and breezing off-base, arcing around downtown Scranton and finally landing just outside the city limits on the other end. During the ride, the boy seemed... quiet. Distant. Try as I might, I couldn't come up with a suitable conversation starter, and he didn't seem interested anyway. But he made the shuttle spring with life, spinning and twisting it like the professional he clearly was.
When I got out of the shuttle, he got out too, standing a little over five and a half feet tall, as I did.
"You're on the team?" I asked curiously.
"Yeah," he replied, "I got my orders this morning. I was a little bit surprised about 'em."
I glanced briefly away from him to look at the portal bars, two large poles approximately twenty feet tall and twenty feet apart. A way to safely move between barriers without having to cross through enemy territory, the portals were huge energy drainers, even moreso than the barriers themselves. It was only practical to use them once a month at most, and even then only for mass transits.
"Surprised?" I asked curiously, turning back to him. "Why?"
"Because he wouldn't hurt a fly, Soylent Green," a prepubescent voice behind me said. I spun around to face a young boy in full uniform, his light gray cap accented with strange wiring along the sides. A cigarette sat nestled in the crook between his ear and his hair, another half-smoked in his little mouth. His boots were polished and laced to such perfection that he might as well have taken them straight out of the box, but the two stripes on his collar indicated at least a few months' experience. Next to him walked a girl with long red hair pulled back into a ponytail, her sleeves rolled up to the shoulders. Neither looked more than ten or eleven years old.
"Name's Thomas," the boy said, blowing out a smoke ring. "Corporal Tyler Thomas." With a look to the pilot, he added, "You can call me Deuce. Everyone does." To me, he added, "Cept you, of course. You can call me Master." It wasn't entirely unexpected harassment, despite the fact that I outranked him. Fortunately, it was an attitude in which he was the minority.
"That's out of line," the girl next to him complained, scowling at the young Corporal. She held out a polite hand to me. "Sergeant Sarah Paxton, at your service, sir. I'm the Munitions Officer."
"A pleasure," I replied, shaking her hand gently but firmly. "Lieutenant Joshua Blair, and this is Corporal Ree..."
"We know who he is," Deuce interrupted curtly. "He was the Chaplain for the 33rd. Damned pacifist is what he is. Bad enough they wanna send five of us on a suicide mission, think they'd at least send five folk who actually know how to shoot guns."
"I know /how/ to shoot one," Reese stated tersely. He seemed about to say more, but again, Sarah stepped in.
"He's also a damned good medic and one of the best shuttle pilots there is, Deuce," the girl declared, between chews of whatever concoction was in her mouth. "You of all people should know there's more to a mission than shooting guns."
I glanced the girl over carefully, already finding myself in awe of her outspokenness. Then the name clicked. "You're the Captain's sister, aren't you," I stated, more for affirmation than to actually ask.
"Yes, I am," she agreed proudly. "And here he comes, I think," she stated, her eyes drawn to the portal bars as they began to glow with the white hot light of matter become energy.
"Atten-TION!" I commanded, and the three children (yes, even Deuce) followed my order, lining up in a single file for our new Commanding Officer. First three shuttles flew through the portal, arcing out into the sky beyond, all bearing the marker of the unit in the Hague, Netherlands, where the other end of the portal was located. Then two dutch ground squadrons came through, a hundred boys and girls in all. The Netherlands government was one of the first to acknowledge and establish relations with the Childrens' Provisional Government. Now, under their shield protection as allies, some of the Hague's younger citizens were joining the fight to liberate the rest of the world.
Finally, three boys stepped through behind the squadrons, and I caught my first sight of him. A brilliant, glowing angel! He had his sister's red hair, but like the boy he was, he wore it short and slightly disheveled. The spackled gray camoflauge of the boy's uniform seemed accentuated by the light dusting of freckles that streamed haphazardly across his face, practically glittering even at my distance from him. Despite years of war, a bright smile creased his lips, the vague sound of boyish laughter echoing to me as he reacted to some unheard joke told by one of his compatriots. His skin looked almost delicate, smooth and silky.
With a brief salute, he left his companions behind, idly tugging at the sling strap around his shoulder, the one holding his rifle and backpack, and moved over to us. "At ease," he ordered, authority ringing through every syllable of his prepubescent voice. We obeyed.
He looked each of us up and down appraisingly, biting his lip in thought as he surveyed the group that was his to command. From Reese, to me, to Deuce, and finally to his sister. At the sight of her, he cracked a smile. "Good to see you again, Sarah."
"Thank you, sir," she replied, still rigid and formal.
Coming back down the line, his eyes rested on Deuce. "This would be Corporal Thomas, then," he asserted, idly pushing the cigarette in the younger boy's ear a little further down into it's ridge.
"You've been good to your girlfriend, right boy?"
"Yes, sir!" Deuce replied stiffly. I kept the look of surprise off my face like the professional I was.
Captain Paxton looked back to his little sister. "He speaks the truth?"
"Yes, sir," she affirmed. "Deuce is good to me, sir."
The captain looked back to the boy curiously. "Why do they call you Deuce?" he asked.
"Because," Sarah answered for him, her first display of informality as she cracked a small smile.
"They say he thinks in binary code."
The Captain returned Sarah's smile, surveying the boy one last time. "Good skill for a computer officer, Deuce. I'll make use of it. Promise."
"Thank you, sir," the boy replied.
The Captain moved along to me. "You must be my new executive officer..."
"Yes, sir," I replied, keeping my eyes forward. "Lieutenant Joshua Blair, sir."
"Yes," the Captain agreed, nodding. "Your record is exemplary, Mister Blair... for a grownup."
This last comment was delivered lightheartedly, with a smile, which put me at ease. At least the Captain was not one for bigotry. It also had the added sensation of putting butterflies in my stomach, but I quashed those as best I could... he was my CO, after all.
He moved on to Reese. "Corporal Forhart," he declared, grin bright on his face. "I'm glad to see the Colonel was able to accommodate my request."
This caused the surprise to ripple across the group. "You requested me, sir?" he asked, astonished.
"I did," Captain Paxton acknowledged, a curt nod of his head. "Your flying skills are legendary, we're going into an environment where any one of us or our liberees might be hurt, and most importantly, we could use a little prayer for. You were the best person for all those jobs."
He turned his attention to all of us. "As you all know, my name is Captain Christopher Paxton. I am here to lead you on a series of strategic operations, starting with the liberation of the new orphanage facility in Dickson City." He began to pace up and down the four of us. "Make no mistake, this isn't like being on the lines behind the shield. We'll be behind enemy lines, the bullets will be real, our advanced technology will be nothing more than small parlor tricks in the field. Our job will /not/ be to charge boldly in. We are a stealth team, and we'll be trained and used as such."
He stopped and settled on me, and gestured to Deuce. "If I ordered you to kill him, right now...
would you?"
For a moment I couldn't breathe. I tried to speak, but words failed me. "Sir...?"
Deuce looked similarly disturbed.
"You heard me, Lieutenant," he said, looking between us. "If we're caught in the field, possibly our only chance for survival would be for the enemy to assume you as one of them. To convince them of that, you might have to shoot him... or me." He paused a moment, letting the weight of his words sink in. "Can you do that?"
Again, I hesitated. I glanced at Deuce, then back at Chris. I didn't know what to say. I didn't even know what the answer was. Could I do that? Would I? And what did the Captain want to hear? I was saved by, of all things, Deuce's sarcastic streak. "Hmph," he mumbled. "Shouldn't be hard for /you/, Soylent Green."
The Captain exploded, spit flying from his young mouth. "YOU WILL ADDRESS HIM AS 'LIEUTENANT' OR 'SIR', DO I MAKE MYSELF CLEAR?!?"
Needless to see, we were all shocked. Mostly Deuce. "Y-yes, sir," he stated, looking back at me angrily. As if it was /my/ fault that he didn't know how to treat an officer.
"Make no mistake..." Chris declared, pacing back over us again. "Your lives, /our/ lives, are in each other's hands. If any of you thinks that they can't save any of the others, or sacrifice themselves for any of the others, let me know now. Saves me the trouble of killing you in the field." He waited a few moments, presumably for someone to speak out.
No one did.
"Good," he said, his smile flickering back onto him as he stopped pacing. "Remember... our mission first, our lives second, everything else third."
He moved in front of me again. "I want to see you in my office HQ tommorow at oh-nine-hundred hours." He turned his gaze around to the others. "And I want to see all of you in the mess hall for training starting at eleven hundred hours. Dismissed."
I left formation both excited and nervous to be serving under the young great leader. The only thing I knew for certain was that, one way or the other, our destinies were about to become permanently intertwined.
How right I was....
Okay, I've had this story in my head for a loooong time, so it's cool to finally see it out there. I'll warn you now, this is going to come out /sporadically/, so I'll try not to leave any major cliffhangers out there like I did with my last story. If that means saving up a few chapters and posting them all at once, that's what I'm going to do. Believe me, you'll thank me for it later.
Comments and questions to arin@mudnet.net are welcome as always. Requests for me to hurry up will be ignored, but everything else will be seriously considered and responded to.
My other online works: "Arin" in the Gay Male -- Adult-Youth section of http://www.nifty.org/ http://fly.to/highflight/ http://www.fanfiction.net/sections/books/index.fic?action=story-read&storyid=224135