Rogue(118)

“Not really,” I said. “About average, really, though at the time I’d have commended them as a matter of course. We were all decorated after the fact, as were your troops who dropped kinetic kills on our bases and nuked New Hilo, not to mention the bio weapons scientists. It’s not relevant to what we’re doing now, and I’d hope we can all put all of it behind us.”

“You are very reasonable,” he said. “That makes me personally hate you even more, that you’re dispassionate over it.”

What would he say to the inner me, screaming, weeping, shivering?

“I don’t think there’s any attitude I could have that would help,” I said.

“Probably not,” he said. He was as cold and dispassionate as I. Here we were, discussing the mass slaughter of billions, and the hand-to-hand slaughter of hundreds, with nary a raised eyebrow.

“So how dangerous is he, then?”

“If surprised, you’ll lose tens, and he’ll disappear. Try to trap him, he’ll do what he did on Caledonia. You heard?” He nodded. “Chase him, you’ll never find him.”

He said, “I would accuse you of arrogance, but I have no reason to doubt your statements.”

“Well, I went home, eventually, and into hiding. I wanted nothing to do with the military, or the people who sent me, after the fact. There’s a line between infrastructure damage with collateral casualties and mass slaughter. I ran over it in a tank.”

“It’s a shame you didn’t decide that beforehand. But go on.”

I shrugged.

“He came home and went freelance. Eventually, our people figured that out. Later, they found me. I trained him, so I have a chance of bringing him in, or down.”

I realized at once he hadn’t known as much as he let on. He’d lulled me into talking.

“You were in charge of the entire operation?” He prickled as he asked it.

Liquid nitrogen chills, phosphorus burns, high-voltage jolts and earthquake tremors hit my nerves all at once. I wasn’t worried about dying. I was worried how long it would take me to die.

Then part of me decided, if that would appease them, at least I could die with a clear conscience.

“I was. I was directed to plan, train, insert and await, and then after the attack and occupation of our system, I was ordered to implement.”

“This was done in anticipation?” he fairly shouted.

“Wasn’t your own attack? Four million on our planet, wasn’t it? Does the number of zeroes matter?”

I realized that “zeroes” could refer not only to the hordes killed, but to the insignificant people making up those hordes. Except I knew that no one was insignificant to themselves and their friends.

This asshole felt some kind of moral superiority because “only” millions had died on his government’s orders, and he hadn’t done it personally. No one had. They’d pushed buttons. I’d been angry and belittling of them when I mentioned our bombardment controllers to Andre, but here was the other side, where that was considered perfectly acceptable. For me to engage personally was dirty.

Is there really much difference between shoveling shit and handling it?

I suddenly didn’t know how I felt, or how I should feel. I wanted to feel justified, I wanted to feel remorse, and I wanted them to at least share some of that remorse. They did strike first, they did cause the deaths of near four million people, but they wanted to use me to let them claim the moral high ground.

I was not going to be anyone’s poster child or talking point.

I stared back at him and waited for him to tell me I was going to die, or just have me coshed and hauled off to be tortured. I no longer cared at all, about anyone on any side. We were all murderous fucking criminals, we were all pawns, and I suddenly knew why Randall was doing what he did. It just didn’t matter, and a few more dead assholes of the class of people who implemented this stuff was no loss to the human race at all. It might even be a benefit.

I wasn’t, and never had been the person to do such things myself, but I had never pretended that I really cared about dead politicians and spammers, and in this case, I’d been correct. No one should care.

Then I remembered back to the surgery on my arm and the artificial opiates that had obliterated my memory for most of a day.

I understood why people would do that. One could be alive, and just not there. When life was too hard and death too easy, massive amounts of drugs could destroy you temporarily, so you could try it again later, reliving and escaping the world in turn.

He intruded into my philosophical musings with, “How do you rate your odds of stopping him?”