The planet’s name was Lunga. The area where we were to land was jungle, low, swampy ground, ideal for defenders’ ambushes and difficult for support from orbit. There were extensive oceans, rugged mountain ranges. No intrinsic intelligent life-forms: the highest order of living creatures was tree-dwelling nocturnal animals about the size of lemurs.
The enemy were humanoid in form, but much larger in build than any of us. Two and a half meters tall, they averaged, and very solidly built. They were not professional soldiers so much as a whole race of nomadic warriors. They called themselves the Skorpis, which in their language meant “Bred for Battle.” Where they came from: unknown. Why they had allied themselves to our enemies: also unknown. They were starting to build a base on Lunga. Why, I was not told. What strategic value the planet had was also not in my briefing. My job, as Aten had told me, was to set up the transceiver and hold it. Or die.
We boarded the landers in squads, twenty-five young men and women per squad, each of them in green camouflage armor and helmets, bristling with weapons. Not much talk as they filed into the landers’ narrow, cramped compartments. Most of the troopers looked grim, lips pressed together, doing what they were told by the numbers and trying not to let their fears show in their faces.
There were a few wisecracks, of course. Some of the kids covered up their jumpiness with wretched attempts at humor. And the usual gripes.
“How come we have to be the ones to go in? Why can’t they send some other team? Why’s it always have to be us?”
” ‘Cause we’re all heroes,” came a reply.
“Yeah. We’ll all get medals for heroism,” someone else said, sourly.
“What’s the matter, soldier, don’t you like the army?”
“Maybe he’s not happy in his profession.”
“Well, you know what they say: You’ve gotta be born to it.”
At that they all laughed, even the one who complained. Their laughter seemed harshly bitter to me.
“Can it, you mutts,” growled their sergeant. “Find your places and strap in. This isn’t a joyride.”
Kids. From my physical condition I was not much older than they, but I knew I had led many lives, died and been revived time and again. The Skorpis were bred for battle, were they? I had been created for battle. Aten built me to be a warrior, a hunter, a killer.
And so had these youngsters, Aten’s briefing told me. Cloned from long-dead ancestors, gestated in artificial wombs, they were trained from birth to be soldiers and nothing else. They were raised in military camps, never seeing anything except military life, never allowed to mix with the civilian society that they were created to defend. They knew nothing but war, except for the brief periods between battles when they were trained for their next mission.
Some of their senior officers had been born naturally, to normal families, and joined the military voluntarily. But very few, even among the top officers, had homes and families outside the military. Like me, these troopers had been created to fight, to kill, and then to fight again until they themselves were killed.
I remembered the Sacred Band of ancient Thebes, the warrior troop made of pairs of lovers, men who would die fighting rather than let their partners down. And they had died fighting, down to the last one, when Philip’s Macedonians met them in the battle of Chaeronea. I had been there with Philip and his son Alexander. I had taken part in the hand-to-hand butchery.
What about these youngsters? Would they also fight to the last man—or woman? I recalled the words of an ancient general to his men: “Your job is not to die for your country. Your job is to get the other poor sonofabitch to die for his country.”
My job was to see to it that these young men and women won their battles with as few casualties as possible. I did not know them, not individually. Yet I was determined to be as good a commander for them as I could be. How good would that be? Would I be good enough, or would I get them all killed?