The war dragged on – war, of course, being a catch-all kind of word for any engagement that involves the movement of armies and the expenditure of munitions. As yet, apart from that inexplicable spate of abductions, the machine worlds of the Ansurrection had done nothing more than resist the Cielo’s incursions wherever they occurred. They confronted and pushed back the incoming enemy, but they didn’t do anything beyond that. It was as if they only acknowledged the existence of organic life when it got in their way.
The 432nd Heavy Infantry, like most Cielo units, was fully engaged in these asymmetrical sorties, so Essien Nkanika had seen first-hand the terrifying reality of Ansurrection combat strategy. His first tour of duty was on a world designated A917, which seemed to have no sky because the air was as full of enemy installations as the ground was.
Essien even got to see the Ansurrection heavy destroyers in action. When his unit arrived on A917 in support rotation, they were just in time to witness one of the destroyers materialise in the air above the battalion they were meant to be supplying. The destroyer, a great black slab like a dead god’s sarcophagus, unleashed its beam weapon, which dissipated and discorporated all matter underneath it. A dozen Cielo missiles ripped the destroyer apart a moment later, but by then it was too late. Five thousand men, gone in an instant. Not just dead but gone, rendered down to their component atoms.
And Essien hadn’t just seen this terrible thing, he’d felt it. To be a Cielo trooper was to be a tiny part of something huge that never stopped embracing you. Through his armour’s empathic field he was aware of the vast web of comrades all around him, and of his own place in it. So he experienced the exact moment when that fullness became emptiness. It was like some catastrophic surgery that excised most of his being yet somehow left him intact and able to suffer.
But the Cielo’s coercive approach to esprit de corps would have been poorly designed if it caused viable units to go into clinical shock because of deaths or injuries in the forces around them. Essien’s brain flooded with artificial neurotransmitters. He went into a kind of trance of chemically induced stoicism and was able to retreat in good order.
Back in barracks, the remains of the regiment were put under 72-hour CoIL monitoring, their thoughts sifted for any ideation relating to self-harm. Suicide attempts, whether by individuals or entire units, were common under such circumstances. The drug gabber, officially proscribed but widely tolerated, was made freely available, and any soldiers in emotional distress were encouraged to take as much as they liked. Essien scored enough to knock himself out for most of those three days. It didn’t entirely erase the memories – nothing was strong enough to do that – but it blunted their edges to the point where he could go on functioning.
It wasn’t like a bereavement. It was more sickeningly intimate even than that. It was like losing all your limbs at once, and then losing them again every time you moved. The space around him screamed with absences. His mind was full of the severed ends of nerves that had once touched thousands of comrades.
But he survived. Most Cielo did, at the end of the day. Unless you ended yourself with exemplary thoroughness, the medical corps could usually find a way to drag you back.
Rumours abounded. The war was about to be won. The Cielo high command was on the verge of deploying the ultimate weapon everyone knew they were working on. Or the war was already lost, the machines ready to take the Itinerant Fortress itself. Or a third force had entered the conflict and was close to wiping out the Pando and the machines alike. Triumph was imminent: disaster too. Life was a high wire suspended over a bottomless pit. You put one foot in front of the other and you didn’t look down.