The Siege Against Tolkeen

Jack Perrin opened his eyes, the dim realization that he was still alive dawning upon him. He managed to look down at the rest of his body, and saw that it was still blackened and shattered. Oddly enough, he didn't feel anything other than some dizziness and a bellyful of nausea. Perrin then looked up, and for a moment he thought that he had indeed died and gone to hell. A pack of doctors in oxygen masks and blood-smeared surgical gowns and caps were standing over him, poking him with needles and slicing him apart with laser-edged knives and circular saws. "Nurse!" cried one of the surgeons. "He's opened his eyes! We need more gas!"

"We can't give him any more, doctor!" replied a harried female voice. "It'll kill him for certain!"

"Most of the new systems are in already. He can stand it!"

Despite this disturbing talk, Perrin felt oddly detached from the scene, as if it was something that he was watching on television rather than something that was happening to him. The knowledge that he was being carved up like a turkey on an operating table, hanging between life and death, didn't disturb him in the slightest.

"Do you think he's going to make it?" the female voice asked again.

"Too early to tell. Getting him into a new body shouldn't be too bad, but he's sustained bitch."

Perrin suddenly felt a cold, hard mask clamp over his nose and mouth. He smelled an acrid, antibiotic smell, and tasted something sour in his dry mouth. He felt himself become much dizzier, and suddenly passed away into the darkness of sleep.

"Impressive," said Karl Prosek, as he looked out upon the victory rally. Thousands of the Coalition's citizens had gathered here in the Imperial Square of Chi-Town, a large plaza built for the sole purpose of such celebrations. Some of the wealthier people in attendance had paid thousands of credits for choice seats.

"The ratings are through the roof, sire!" said Bill, an elderly man who worked on Joseph Prosek II's staff. He had been outfitted with special cybernetic sensors which allowed him to monitor the television and radio usage of all Chi-Town. "Practically everyone is watching!"

"Excellent," muttered Karl, gazing out over the plaza. Some of the rabble from the HFA were sitting in chairs on the stage, most of them decked out in borrowed armor or finery. Two IAR-4 Hellraiser robots stood at attention at each end of the stage, while a company of Dead Boys in carefully polished armor stood in front of the platform. Holograms showing scenes of the CS troops sacking Tolkeen flickered in the air of the stadium. Massive banners bearing the insignia of the Coalition States hung from the walls. Above the podium was a sixty foot tall television screen, so that even the people in the back could see. And best of all, Shaard's cleaned and polished skull was in a case on the stage, where everyone could see it. "You've really outdone yourself this time, Joe," chuckled Prosek to his son. "I'm going to raise your allowance when this is over."

Joseph Prosek II laughed. "Gee dad, you're swell! Now get out there. You think the setup is impressive, you should see the speech that I've written for you. If this doesn't get the proles behind us, nothing will!"

Karl Prosek strode out on stage, to wild applause and cheers from the audience. The large TV screen showed a close-up of his beaming face, full of phony love for his people. On his way to the podium he tapped the case holding Shaard's skull, and felt a great sense of accomplishment. Tolkeen was gone, razed to dust, and it was all due to him.

Pity he went into politics, thought Jack Perrin, watching the Emperor from his reinforced chair. The bastard would have made a great actor. Suddenly, Perrin winced, as his head suddenly filled with modem noise and electronic snow. Ever since his bionic conversion he had been getting static in his thoughts. It had been really bad at first, to the point where it was hard to maintain his train of thought for more than a few minutes. The doctors said that it would eventually become much less noticeable, but that he'd never get over the problem for good.

As the static went away and the Emperor started warming up the crowd with a rant against demonkind, Perrin began contemplating this new body of his. The doctors had given him one which looked reasonably human, and he was grateful for that. His cyborg body was tall and broad-shouldered, but not unreasonably so. His artificial flesh was cool to the touch and didn't have quite the right texture, but at least it was better than bare metal. Still, nobody would ever think him to be a normal human. His arms and legs were too rectangular and disproportionate to be organic, and a network of plugs and wires sprouted from the back of his head, like fiber-optic hair.

Worst of all, Perrin himself knew that he wasn't entirely human anymore. He couldn't taste or smell things anymore, everything sounded like it was broadcast over a PA system, and whenever he touched things it felt like they had been wrapped in cotton. Voices in his head were constantly giving him system updates and reminding him to change his filter caps, clean his neural uplinks, or perform similar acts of maintenance. Bar graphs and pie charts in the upper right corner of his field of vision kept him apprised of how well his body was working. It was unsettling, to say the least, to have to change the batteries in his eyes every few weeks.

Looking over his shoulder, Perrin saw some of the other Human Freedom Alliance who had survived the final battle against Shaard. Donald Hartman and Hubert Possman were sitting on the stage in CS dress uniforms, neither of them looking entirely comfortable under the harsh spotlights, along with about a dozen low-ranking HFA thugs in borrowed finery. Hans Reiser wasn't at the ceremony. Perrin had heard that the German had already booked passage on a cargo flight back to Europe. Sonja wasn't here, either. She was at Lone Star for detoxification and medical treatment. From what Perrin had heard, she'd probably make it, although the drugs and the battle had done some serious damage. Sonja would live, but she'd never be quite whole again.

The crowd suddenly burst into fervent applause and cheering, and Perrin suddenly noticed that Prosek was gesturing at him to come forward. The pilot, realizing that it was his turn to give a speech, slowly got out of his chair and walked up to the microphone.

"So, Jack," asked the Emperor, the old man's face glowing with insincerity. "How did it feel to save millions of human lives?"

"It was very gratifying," replied Perrin. "When I saw that the people of Chi-Town had been saved, I knew that everything we had suffered and every battle we fought had been worth it. And when I had recovered from my wounds, I was doubly gratified to hear that the military had taken Tolkeen with a minimum of bloodshed." Inside, Perrin chuckled, hoping they would never find out the reason why they had been able to take Tolkeen itself with so little bloodshed.

"Hey," growled Joseph Prosek II. "That isn't the speech I wrote for him."

The Emperor seemed momentarily puzzled by the war hero's divergence from the prepared speech, but went on anyway. The last thing that he wanted was for the TV cameras to pick up his confusion. "Do you have anything you'd like to say to everyone who's watching us today?"

"Yes. My experience in Tolkeen taught me, above anything else, that life is precious. We can't afford to waste any moments of our lives, when death and tyranny are all around us. Don't just sit there in your living rooms with your televisions and your holovids and your synthetic food, scared to experience anything that hasn't first been homogenized, sterilized, and stripped of everything that might possibly offend you. Get up! Think! Live! Because in an uncertain, imperfect, transient world like this, you never know how much longer you have."

There was a smattering of polite applause. Oh well. Perrin hadn't been expecting an overwhelmingly positive response. After all, here he was, at the Coalition's moment of triumph, telling people that the Coalition was wrong. Still, there were millions of people watching this. He was bound to have reached at least a few of them.

"Son of a bitch," muttered Joseph Prosek II. "Nobody gets away with talking like that on television. Put Jack Perrin on the secret list of suspected enemies of the state. And if he ever comes back here, he goes right onto the list of confirmed subversives. I will not put up with criminal talk like that."

A few hours after the ceremony. Perrin walked into the Soldier's Tomb, a memorial designed to honor the fallen warriors of the Coalition States. It was a simple (some would say stark) little room, with walls made of marble and a statue in the center depicting a human warrior clad in full Dead Boy armor. Dozens of wreaths, letters, and tiny flags had been placed at the base of the statue by mourners. Although Perrin suspected that the room was bugged, it didn't matter much. He'd already earned the enmity of High Command, and would be gone in a few hours anyway.

"Perrin, Elizabeth," he said. There was a faint whirring sound as a computer mainframe in the base of the statue ran through its database. "Perrin, Elizabeth," replied a cold computer voice, as the dead woman's holographic image was projected over the statue's head by hidden devices. It was just a file image of Elizabeth, and not a tremendously flattering one. Still, Jack's heart was warmed by the sight.

"Hi, honey," he said quietly. "I've come to say good-bye. I'm leaving the Coalition, and I don't think I'll ever be back here again. W-we were wrong, Elizabeth. D-Bees aren't the enemy. Mutants aren't the enemy. There's some that are bad, some that are good... just like humans. We spent our lives fighting people who weren't even the bad guys. We weren't fighting for the future of humanity or any crap like that. We were fighting because some assholes sitting around on the upper levels wanted to add some more territory to their borders. You shouldn't have had to die for that, honey. Nobody should have." Perrin knew that if he was still made of flesh and bone, he'd be crying like a baby. Renouncing his entire life was a painful business.

"When I was in Tolkeen, I saw things that I had never seen before. Amazing things. There were plenty of terrible monsters over there, but there was great beauty alongside them, beauty I'm never going to find in Chi-Town. I want to see sights like those again. I want to learn about the things which they refused to teach us here. And I want to see if redemption is possible for someone who's seen as many atrocities as me. I'll always remember you, Elizabeth, but... but we were wrong." As the holographic image of Elizabeth faded away, Jack walked out of the room, knowing he would never return.

Jack Perrin walked out of the armored gates of Chi-Town, all his possessions stored in a backpack slung over his shoulders. Mutant dogs and Dead Boys manned a maze of machine-gun emplacements, turnstiles, and barbed- wire fences separating the Burbs from the city. Once he crossed out into the wilds beyond the CS, there could be no turning back. But turning back was the farthest thing from Jack Perrin's mind.

The war hero maneuvered his way through the barricades, trudging through the checkpoints and weapons detectors one by one. A small army of people were gathered at the customs booths, asking for permission to enter Chi-Town. Jack was the only one who wanted to leave.

As he entered the Burbs and its squalid jungle of tarpaper shacks and cinderblock houses, Perrin looked over his shoulder one last time. Maybe looking back wasn't the smartest thing to do, but he knew that he could never completely turn his back on such a large part of his life. Most of Jack's life had been spent in grey, ugly little places like Chi-Town. It was long past time for him to get a look at the rest of the world. Jack slowly turned his gaze away from Chi-Town and towards the horizon and the setting sun. He had a lot of catching up to do.

THE END

By David Haendler.

Copyright © 1996, 1997, 1998 David Haendler. All Rights Reserved.

Info