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Description
It was such a simple tactic, I was surprised that no one had come up with it before. It all equaled a nice, perfect sum in the end. Everything was happening for a reason, there were the reasons, then there was the answer. There was every reason but the one reason to question the reasons present in the equation.

How do you start a war?

Simple.

All you have to do is create an Enemy. That’s the easy part. It didn’t take a genius to come up with the idea, and that’s a good thing at that since governments usually aren’t run by geniuses.

So they created an Enemy. They just chose a far off planet that no one knew about and exploited it. They used propaganda, and said that the people of that poor planet were against God, against freedom! How could the people argue with that? They wanted to fight, and fight they did. They fought with pride and fear all mixed in to the equation that produced the result that I am now living with.

It’s been over two hundred years since the war began. No one even remembers what it was about in the beginning. The history books and videos are long gone; but we don’t need them, not in this education-less society. Our world should be overflowing with new technology, but the only advances we’ve made are in the military. New weapons and better space travel, what else could we possibly need?

I remember when I turned four years old, my parents were so proud, well, my mother was anyway, but she would tell me that my father was proud of me too. I believed her, she knew my father, I didn’t. She just didn’t know where my father was. When I would ask she would look up at the sky and say, “he’s protecting his land and the people that we love.” I would ask who he was protecting them from, and she would just shake her head and say, “You’ll understand when you’re a little older.” Then she’d wrap her one arm around me and hobble us off to bed on her amputated foot.

I never thought it strange that my mother was missing an arm. I thought it more strange to see people that had two arms, or two legs, and no scars on them. These were the freaks of our society. I didn’t understand that people were meant to have two arms and two legs, I just naturally assumed that when you got older they fell off, like when your teeth fall out. I didn’t understand that these were battle scars, that the only people left on our world were those that were no longer physically capable of fighting.

So was my life and the world that I lived on in my childish bliss until I turned four. That’s when my mother took me to a building one day.

“School,” she said, squeezing my hand with hers.

At this time I didn’t know anything about school, and she told me that it’s where I went to learn how to be the best I could be, to do the job that I was born to do, to live my life for the world that I lived in, and to protect the government and the people that made it possible to live on a world that still believes in freedom. It was the slogan that the government had come up with to promote the war in the beginning, and it had stuck, somehow.

I didn’t understand then, but I do now, and it makes me sad to know that my mother lost her limbs trying to uphold such a lie.

It was then that she left me, in that building, that ‘school’, with a few hundred other children between four and seven. That was eight years ago and I haven’t seen my mother since.

---

All I had to do was flash my I.D. card and say, “it’s for the war,” and they gave me the bottle of VasRegard. Lagg and Jehdin laughed at me as I tucked the brown bottle under my uniform green coat and we ran down the tin covered cross way. Ducking into the alleyway we crouched down and I pulled the bottle out.

“Man, Flinks would flip if he found out what we were doing with our free time,” Lagg said, as I handed the bottle to him. With two years more experience than Jehdin and myself, he cracked the seal and took the first drink.

“You think he’d flip more if he found out what we were doing with our I.D.s,” Jehdin said as the bottle was passed to him. He was a year under Lagg, and a year above me, making me the youngest in our trio.

“I didn’t even need the I.D., she had the stuff out for me by the time I got ‘it’s for the war’ out of my mouth,” I took a drink, then passed it back to Lagg. I didn’t even really want the stuff, but it was easiest for me to get it, I was the only one with enough balls to get it.

We sat in the alleyway drinking for a few minutes before our wrist-coms went off in unison. Lagg dropped the bottle and the brown liquid spilled out of the open neck as it rolled across the metallic surface of the road. I held my arm out and hit the flashing green button. We all stood and saluted the four foot tall hologram that protruded from the com on my wrist.

“Basion 0089, 0189, 0289! Your location and activities! Report!” The hologram spat out at the boys.

Lagg stepped forward, his hand pressed to his forehead in salute still.

“Sir! Location Lat. 0584, Long. 3984, Burndonk Street, Station 0048! Activities include Rest and Relaxation! Sir!” Lagg spat out then sank back in line with his friends.

“R and R is over 0089, 0189, 0289! Report back to Station 0050 by 2300 hours or you’ll be running laps and scrubbing things that you don’t want to even think about scrubbing!” The hologram flickered out with the boys last salute.

“Damnit,” Jehdin said, kicking the now empty bottle against the wall. Glass breaking on metal, he swore again.

“So much for some free time,” Lagg said, walking out of the alleyway and back to the walk way that would lead them back to Station 0050.

I didn’t say anything. I was the youngest in the group, and even though they respected me, they didn’t like to admit that they did.

It’s been eight years since my mother dropped me off at the ‘school’. It’s been eight years since I’ve seen her, and it’s been eight years since I knew what it was like to live a ‘normal’ life. Not that the life that I lived up until I was four years old would be considered ‘normal’, but it was the only life I knew.

Once I got to that school I learned what life was really about.

War.

Fighting.

Soldiers.

First I learned how to read. I didn’t learn how to read much, just enough so I could read tactical reports and battle charts. Then we started training. Military training. As a four year old I didn’t quite understand what was going on, but I guess that’s why they started us young; we couldn’t oppose what was going on, and we couldn’t rise against what was going on.

Now I’m older, now I can.

When we were still four and five they made us play games. Simulations, fun things that kids like to play. We were really playing war games, killing people, people we didn’t even know. We had no clue, we were just having fun, being told what to do by the people who controlled our lives. We really didn’t know any difference.

By the age of six we were put into combat training. Hand to hand, weapons, space and land machines; they had us all try out, then placed us where we worked the best. I placed into a special unit for armed hand to hand combatants. I was the youngest to ever be placed into the Basion Unit. This is where I met Lagg and Jehdin. Flinks was our commander, at the age of seventeen, he was already a veteran solider. Our Unit consisted of ten boys, seven girls, and Flinks. We were a specialized unit, so we were small and elite. My specialties were a virtually un-masterable hand combat form known as Kagen no Jutsu, and sword-saber play. I wasn’t very skilled with a gun, blaster, or beamer, but I could use anything long and sharp.

Lagg was a master of the beamer, a gun that shot out exploding shells that could be switched to laser beams with the change of a carbine, and he was proficient in Bounku no Jutsu, another high level hand to hand form that only one of the elite could master. Jehdin was the only one in our Unit that could use both a beamer and a blaster at the same time, so he developed his own two handed combat style, mixed with as much Ribuon no Jutsu as he was able to master.

As the youngest, I was constantly having to prove myself. I think that’s why I made myself master the Kagen no Jutsu. It had never been done before, not by anyone my age that is, and I was determined to be the first one to master it.

After the training and the combat exercises, there were the games. Some were simulated, some were against other Units.

Ours always won.

Always.

And we never knew we were actually killing, fighting the war, from the time we started to play the games, we were fighting.

We eventually got back to the station, Lagg and Jehdin went off to their room to get back in their uniforms and I went ahead to the call area to report into Flicks.

Only, Flicks wasn’t there.

“Yo kid,” a tall boy with an eye patch over his left eye nodded at me, arms crossed, his uniform blue shirt un-tucked.

I just blinked at him.

He was sitting in a chair, his legs crossed at the ankles. He slowly nodded at me.

“You Taiga?” he asked.

I nodded, unsure what to say. This guy was sitting in Flinks chair. He was wearing the same uniform blue shirt that Flinks, and all other commanders, wore.

He stood up, extended a hand that was missing a few fingers. I took it and we shook.

“Names Kavla. I’m the new commander of your little unit, starting today,” he sat back down and I immediately snapped to attention.

He laughed, slapping his hand against his kneecap.

“So you’re the youngest, the brightest, the all mighty prodigy student eh?” Kavla snapped at me.

“Sir! Yes Sir!” I clicked my heal against the floor. It made a metallic echo.

Kavla shook his head.

“Knock it off kid. I don’t like this formal shit. Me and you, we’re alike, so just act like it.”

I dropped my hand to my side, felt my mouth want to fall open with surprise.

Who the hell was this guy?

“Where the hell is the rest of the unit?” Kavla rubbed his hand over his chin, a chin that was covered with stubble. He reached up and toyed with the metal ring that was looped through his ear lobe, it flashed blue in the light.

Flinks would have never let this guy get away with earrings and not shaving. Flinks was anal about all things when it came to professionalism. This guy didn’t seem to give a care.

Suddenly, it hit me. My eyes widened and I had to ask.

“Sir, how old are you sir?”

Kavla had his elbows resting on his knees, fingers entwined together, he looked up at me through thick black hair that hung down past his eye brows.

“I’m nineteen kid.”

Nineteen.

No way, there was no way a nineteen year old was in charge of Basion Unit. We were the only unit that had never been commanded by anyone younger than twenty five. Most of the units are commanded by younger commanders, eighteen and nineteen were the common ages for many of the space/air and ground combat units, but our unit was different. We were specialized. We had to have someone with experience, someone who knew how to utilize our specialized skills. There was no way a nineteen year old could command us.

“What happened to Flinks?” I asked, dropping the ‘sir’. It felt strange.

Kavla smiled, crossing his arms over his chest. A button flashed silver as he moved.

“He got moved. I dunno where or why, but does it even really matter? This damn war, things happen that don’t make sense, and no one questions anything. Ever wonder why?”

I shook my head and Kavla smiled at me.

“I told you that we’re alike. I didn’t start to question things until I got to be about a year older than you are now. So don’t worry, it’s okay that you’re just blindly accepting things as they are. It’s not your fault,” Kavla stood up and tucked his uniform blue shirt in. I looked over my shoulder and saw that Lagg and Jehdin, followed by the rest of the unit, were making their way down the hall.

I looked back at Kavla, and he winked at me. From that moment on, he was all business.

---

Kavla worked us harder than Flinks ever dreamed of. The Unit soon came to hate, but respect Kavla. I think I was the only one who liked, but didn’t respect him.

Kavla was always professional when he was leading our Unit through the daily routine; wake up, exercise, eat, exercise, go over battle schematics, simulation, eat, work out on our own practicing our own specialized combat skills, exercise, and then sometimes we’d have another simulation or a game against another Unit. After that we were free to do what we wanted until lights out.

It was when we weren’t working as a Unit that Kavla came over and gave me hell.

“You know I almost mastered Kagen no Jutsu, that was until I lost my big toe. Now I can’t quite get the execution kicks out like they should be. Even though I’m still as effective as you, might even have more grace, and I defiantly have more experience than you… you still hold the claim to ‘Master’. Should I bow to you and ask you for some pointers?” Kavla would poke at me, dodging my moves as I pumped my fists and feet at him. We would spin around together, he would throw verbal shots at me, I would parry back with physical ones.

And he would always land me on the ground, my face in the plastic mats that covered the training area.

And I would always stand up and try again.

And again.

And again.

I would go to bed with my face beaten in, my hands curled up into fists that would not open up, and feet that were cramped so badly that I hobbled.

I was utterly and totally defeated.

I hated Kavla.

And I loved him.

Every night I would lay in bed, replaying my loss over and over again in my mind. It was beginning to be more than just training for the war. I didn’t even think of the war anymore. I was a zombie in the simulations, merely putting myself on auto pilot so I could think ahead to the impending battle between Kavla and myself.

“Don’t you ever ask yourself why you do this, day after day? Don’t you ever question what your life would be like without constant fighting, training, the war even?” Kavla would ask me questions ask he would beat me into the floor mats.

“What would there be if there wasn’t a war?” I asked one day, landing a two fingered jut-Jutsu jab into Kavla’s left shoulder. He grunted, the only sign that he had even felt my hit. He parried with another question.

“Well, think about this. If you weren’t fighting me right now, what could you be doing?”
Kavla stepped back and my double kick blew past him. I caught myself, landing my foot on toe point, spinning around to face Kavla, arms up and palms out.

“What are you talking about? What else is there to do?”

Kavla shrugged his shoulders, his stance loose and ready for me to come at him.

“Why don’t we create something else to do? Don’t you ever get sick of getting your face beat in by me? Don’t you ever get sick of killing people by playing games? Don’t you ever get sick of fighting this fucking war for this fucking government? Don’t you ever ask why? Damnit kid, don’t you?” Kavla’s fist clenched into balls and veins stuck out along his neck. His teeth were clenched together so his words came out in a strangled whisper.

The second Kavla’s guard was down, I went for it. I jabbed forward with my palm, landing it in the middle of his chest, stuck a double around his ankles and then stuck my knee into his back, shoving his face down into the mat.

“Why would I question the only thing I’ve ever known?” I asked. Kavla relaxed under my hold, and I got up.

I had finally won.

Or so I thought.

That night while I was laying in bed, I didn’t think about my victory over Kavla, and I didn’t think about ways to improve myself so I could win against him without taking a cheep shot like I had. It had been his fault, letting his guard down, but in a real battle, that was the difference between life and death. I was just teaching him a lesson.

No, what I really began to think about was what he was talking about. At first I never paid much attention to what he had to say, but the more he talked about how he wanted things to change, the more I began to pay attention to what he was saying.

I had the feeling that Kavla knew something that no one else knew. He kept talking about how we should be doing other things, better things than fighting the war. I knew that if anyone other than myself heard him talking like this, he would have been taken to the government and executed as an enemy. This anti-war talk made me mad, but it also made me curious. I began to wonder, what could there be to life, other than war. I began to think that maybe, just maybe, there was a time when there was no war. Maybe people didn’t fight all of the time, maybe people didn’t train all of the time. Maybe people even lived together, in peace.

I thought of my mother then, for the first time in eight years. I thought about how pretty she was, and how she could have been even prettier if she still had her arm, if she still had skin that was scar less. I now knew that arms and legs didn’t just fall of, but they were taken off in the battles of war. I knew that my mother once was pretty, once had flawless skin, once had both of her arms. I began to wonder how long it was going to be until I began to lose limbs to war, and I began to think that I didn’t want that to happen. I didn’t want to lose anything to this war.

The things that Kavla had been saying slowly began to start making sense. Kavla knew something, he knew how to live without a war. He knew that we didn’t have to fight this war; he knew how to end the war.

---

“Taiga, wake up.”

I rolled over, moaning, and something poked me in the side again.

“Stop,” I said, slashing out with my hand.

Someone blocked me and I retaliated with a downward side roll punch.

Someone grabbed my arm and held it.

I struggled, then finally opened my eyes.

“What the hell?” I said, sitting up and pushing away with my feet.

“Shut up you idiot, it’s me.”

I blinked my eyes and night vision kicked in.

Kavla.

“What in the hell are you doing?” I began to shout, but Kavla pressed a finger against his lips and I brought my voice down to a whisper.

“It’s time,” Kavla said, releasing my arm. I brought it up to my chest, rubbing where his fingers had twisted my skin.

“Time for what?” I asked, glaring at him.

“Time to tell you the truth. Time to get out of here, time to stop this bloody war,” Kavla sat down on my bed, bringing one leg up to rest next to my crossed legs.

“What in the hell are you talking about?” I asked and he silenced me again.

“Do you ever think about anything other than fighting and the war?” Kavla asked, bouncing me on the head with his fist.

I scowled, shook my head no, but then slowly changed it nod yes.

Kavla nodded his head as well, “Good, I was beginning to think that they were wrong, that you weren’t one of us.”

I gave him a questioning look.

“What do you mean?”

Kavla turned so he was staring directly at me. The dim light in my room played with shadows against his face, his eyes were narrowed and serious looking, it was almost scary.

“You, me, we’re alike.”

I nodded, he’d already pointed this out to me.

“Haven’t you ever wondered why?”

I shook my head no again.

Kavla bounced me on the head again.

“Think about it.”

I sighed, then began to think. Before I could come up with any conclusion on my own Kavla interrupted.

“Never mind, it’ll be easier if I just tell you. Kid, Taiga, we’re not from here. We aren’t from this education less bloody war celebration planet. Don’t you ever feel like you just don’t quite belong?” Kavla’s eyes were sparkling in the shadows.

I then thought back to all of my time spent with Lagg and Jehdin, all of the times that they would want to do something, and I would do it. All of their enthusiasm for the war, all of their pride, all of my apathy. I’d never thought about it before, but I’d never really thought about much of anything before Kavla.

“I guess I’ve never really been one of them,” I said and Kavla nodded, a smile cracking on the corner of his mouth.

“That’s because you aren’t. You, me, and a few others scattered across this land, we aren’t from here,” Kavla’s smile grew.

“Where are we from then?” I asked, curious, and surprised at myself. I was actually interested in what he had to say, and for some reason, I wanted to believe what he had to say.

“We are from the other side of this war.”

I looked up at Kavla with slight disbelief, but changed my expression. Why should I doubt him? Hearing this was the first time I had never felt apathy towards the subject at hand. I was actually excited for once in my life.

“Do you even know why this war started?”

I shook my head.

“Then I’ll tell you. It was all this worlds doing actually. Two hundred years ago, the economy of this world was in trouble. There was unemployment, famine, world crime rates were higher than they’d ever been. The government was at the brink of being overthrown. So they had to do something, anything. So they started a war. War is very good for the economy. It gave people jobs, gave people something to do, and strengthened nationalism. People had something else to fight besides themselves now. The government was no longer in danger, and they had power over the people again.

Did they have reason to start a war? Hell no. They had no enemies in space. Space travel on this planet was brand new, they didn’t even have time to set up treaties or space boundaries. They just shot some military platoon out into space, landed on a planet with intelligent life, and started a bloody war. Then they broadcast news all over this world about the ‘enemy’. They didn’t even give the enemy, our people a name. It was easier to call them ‘the enemy’ and be done with it.

Two hundred years this war continued, and why not! The government had complete control over this world. They had the money, they had the power, and the economy was blooming. As it should be with everyone working for the war. Schools were turned into training facilities, so funds were cut for real schools. Books and anything that was used to better people, to help them to learn, was destroyed. Education as it once was, was no longer. But they didn’t need it. No one needed to learn anything that wasn’t military or directly involved with the war. With out education and schools, without written words, without history and books, no one on this planet even knows how the war was started. All they know is how to fight in it.

But on our planet, where you and I are from, it’s different. We still have schools, people still learn, and they still teach about how this war was started. Every new generation knows, everyone remembers. We only continue to fight for the same reason we started to fight; self defense.”

Kavla stopped talking and let the words sink in. I blinked a few times, hardly believing what he had told me. Yet I took it for the truth. Something inside of myself was telling me that what Kavla was saying, had been saying the entire time, was all truth.

Kavla looked at me, begging in his eyes. He wanted to know if I took his word for truth. If I didn’t, he would have to kill me, right here and now.

I blinked a few more times, then opened my mouth to speak, but before any words came out Kavla threw his arms around me and held me close.

“You believe me, you know deep down inside that what I speak is true.”

I could have easily pushed Kavla off me, but I let him hold me for a moment, let him have his joy, let him know that I did indeed believe him.

“So if we’re from there, how did we get here?” I finally asked as Kavla pulled away from me.

“Our parents.”

I tiled my head, thinking, trying to come up with the answer before Kavla could speak it.

“We’re siblings,” I said and he nodded.

I could believe it, I had a brother.

It suddenly made sense. Mother’s looks at me, her pain and sorrowful looks. Her talking about father as if he was dead, but the feeling that he really wasn’t. Her missing arm, her sullen beauty.

“They met on our planet. Mother was from here, but she didn’t believe in the fighting. It was something that she just had to do, there was nothing else to do on this planet. Then she was captured, captured by our father. He meant to kill her, but she convinced him not to. He told me that she didn’t want to fight, that she begged him to spare her, that she wanted to live and experience what his world had to offer. He didn’t know what to do with a hysterical woman, so he knocked her out and took her home with him.

They learned from each other, learned that they were alike, both human, both wanting nothing to do with the war that had consumed their life. Mother learned about what life could be like if there was no war. She learned about education, about what her government had done, what had started the war.

They came up with a plan then. A few others joined them, but there was a trust factor going on. Fathers people thought that she was tricking them, that she was going to destroy them, and she had to find a way to prove them wrong.

They had me, back when she first began living with father, and by the time their plan was consummated, she was pregnant with you. She swore on our lives that she was not going to betray her new life, her new planet, and she had father cut off her arm, then send her back to this planet, with us.

She enrolled me in training, and what do you know, I was the best they ever had. I mastered things that they never thought I could. I was the youngest do to anything, the brightest, the prodigy child. Just like you. Know why?”

I nodded my head.

“They were superior to us. Even though they were humanoid, they were still better than us.”

Kavla nodded.

“That’s why we haven’t been defeated yet. That’s why we have stood strong and defended our world for two hundred years. And that’s why you and I are going to tear this place down.”

“How are we going to do that?” I asked, and an alarm went off. It was followed by another, and another.

“It’s all mothers plan. And it’s starting now. Common Taiga, we’ve got a job to do.”

Kavla grabbed my hand and pulled me out of bed. I quickly dressed in my uniform greens, grabbed my weapons, and asked, “now what?”

Kavla smiled, taking out his own beamer, flipped his black hair back from his eyes and said, “Taiga, you and I, we’re gonna burn this whole bloody place down.”

Description
It was such a simple tactic, I was surprised that no one had come up with it before. It all equaled a nice, perfect sum in the end. Everything was happening for a reason, there were the reasons, then there was the answer. There was every reason but the one reason to question the reasons present in the equation.

How do you start a war?

Simple.

All you have to do is create an Enemy. That’s the easy part. It didn’t take a genius to come up with the idea, and that’s a good thing at that since governments usually aren’t run by geniuses.

So they created an Enemy. They just chose a far off planet that no one knew about and exploited it. They used propaganda, and said that the people of that poor planet were against God, against freedom! How could the people argue with that? They wanted to fight, and fight they did. They fought with pride and fear all mixed in to the equation that produced the result that I am now living with.

It’s been over two hundred years since the war began. No one even remembers what it was about in the beginning. The history books and videos are long gone; but we don’t need them, not in this education-less society. Our world should be overflowing with new technology, but the only advances we’ve made are in the military. New weapons and better space travel, what else could we possibly need?

I remember when I turned four years old, my parents were so proud, well, my mother was anyway, but she would tell me that my father was proud of me too. I believed her, she knew my father, I didn’t. She just didn’t know where my father was. When I would ask she would look up at the sky and say, “he’s protecting his land and the people that we love.” I would ask who he was protecting them from, and she would just shake her head and say, “You’ll understand when you’re a little older.” Then she’d wrap her one arm around me and hobble us off to bed on her amputated foot.

I never thought it strange that my mother was missing an arm. I thought it more strange to see people that had two arms, or two legs, and no scars on them. These were the freaks of our society. I didn’t understand that people were meant to have two arms and two legs, I just naturally assumed that when you got older they fell off, like when your teeth fall out. I didn’t understand that these were battle scars, that the only people left on our world were those that were no longer physically capable of fighting.

So was my life and the world that I lived on in my childish bliss until I turned four. That’s when my mother took me to a building one day.

“School,” she said, squeezing my hand with hers.

At this time I didn’t know anything about school, and she told me that it’s where I went to learn how to be the best I could be, to do the job that I was born to do, to live my life for the world that I lived in, and to protect the government and the people that made it possible to live on a world that still believes in freedom. It was the slogan that the government had come up with to promote the war in the beginning, and it had stuck, somehow.

I didn’t understand then, but I do now, and it makes me sad to know that my mother lost her limbs trying to uphold such a lie.

It was then that she left me, in that building, that ‘school’, with a few hundred other children between four and seven. That was eight years ago and I haven’t seen my mother since.

---

All I had to do was flash my I.D. card and say, “it’s for the war,” and they gave me the bottle of VasRegard. Lagg and Jehdin laughed at me as I tucked the brown bottle under my uniform green coat and we ran down the tin covered cross way. Ducking into the alleyway we crouched down and I pulled the bottle out.

“Man, Flinks would flip if he found out what we were doing with our free time,” Lagg said, as I handed the bottle to him. With two years more experience than Jehdin and myself, he cracked the seal and took the first drink.

“You think he’d flip more if he found out what we were doing with our I.D.s,” Jehdin said as the bottle was passed to him. He was a year under Lagg, and a year above me, making me the youngest in our trio.

“I didn’t even need the I.D., she had the stuff out for me by the time I got ‘it’s for the war’ out of my mouth,” I took a drink, then passed it back to Lagg. I didn’t even really want the stuff, but it was easiest for me to get it, I was the only one with enough balls to get it.

We sat in the alleyway drinking for a few minutes before our wrist-coms went off in unison. Lagg dropped the bottle and the brown liquid spilled out of the open neck as it rolled across the metallic surface of the road. I held my arm out and hit the flashing green button. We all stood and saluted the four foot tall hologram that protruded from the com on my wrist.

“Basion 0089, 0189, 0289! Your location and activities! Report!” The hologram spat out at the boys.

Lagg stepped forward, his hand pressed to his forehead in salute still.

“Sir! Location Lat. 0584, Long. 3984, Burndonk Street, Station 0048! Activities include Rest and Relaxation! Sir!” Lagg spat out then sank back in line with his friends.

“R and R is over 0089, 0189, 0289! Report back to Station 0050 by 2300 hours or you’ll be running laps and scrubbing things that you don’t want to even think about scrubbing!” The hologram flickered out with the boys last salute.

“Damnit,” Jehdin said, kicking the now empty bottle against the wall. Glass breaking on metal, he swore again.

“So much for some free time,” Lagg said, walking out of the alleyway and back to the walk way that would lead them back to Station 0050.

I didn’t say anything. I was the youngest in the group, and even though they respected me, they didn’t like to admit that they did.

It’s been eight years since my mother dropped me off at the ‘school’. It’s been eight years since I’ve seen her, and it’s been eight years since I knew what it was like to live a ‘normal’ life. Not that the life that I lived up until I was four years old would be considered ‘normal’, but it was the only life I knew.

Once I got to that school I learned what life was really about.

War.

Fighting.

Soldiers.

First I learned how to read. I didn’t learn how to read much, just enough so I could read tactical reports and battle charts. Then we started training. Military training. As a four year old I didn’t quite understand what was going on, but I guess that’s why they started us young; we couldn’t oppose what was going on, and we couldn’t rise against what was going on.

Now I’m older, now I can.

When we were still four and five they made us play games. Simulations, fun things that kids like to play. We were really playing war games, killing people, people we didn’t even know. We had no clue, we were just having fun, being told what to do by the people who controlled our lives. We really didn’t know any difference.

By the age of six we were put into combat training. Hand to hand, weapons, space and land machines; they had us all try out, then placed us where we worked the best. I placed into a special unit for armed hand to hand combatants. I was the youngest to ever be placed into the Basion Unit. This is where I met Lagg and Jehdin. Flinks was our commander, at the age of seventeen, he was already a veteran solider. Our Unit consisted of ten boys, seven girls, and Flinks. We were a specialized unit, so we were small and elite. My specialties were a virtually un-masterable hand combat form known as Kagen no Jutsu, and sword-saber play. I wasn’t very skilled with a gun, blaster, or beamer, but I could use anything long and sharp.

Lagg was a master of the beamer, a gun that shot out exploding shells that could be switched to laser beams with the change of a carbine, and he was proficient in Bounku no Jutsu, another high level hand to hand form that only one of the elite could master. Jehdin was the only one in our Unit that could use both a beamer and a blaster at the same time, so he developed his own two handed combat style, mixed with as much Ribuon no Jutsu as he was able to master.

As the youngest, I was constantly having to prove myself. I think that’s why I made myself master the Kagen no Jutsu. It had never been done before, not by anyone my age that is, and I was determined to be the first one to master it.

After the training and the combat exercises, there were the games. Some were simulated, some were against other Units.

Ours always won.

Always.

And we never knew we were actually killing, fighting the war, from the time we started to play the games, we were fighting.

We eventually got back to the station, Lagg and Jehdin went off to their room to get back in their uniforms and I went ahead to the call area to report into Flicks.

Only, Flicks wasn’t there.

“Yo kid,” a tall boy with an eye patch over his left eye nodded at me, arms crossed, his uniform blue shirt un-tucked.

I just blinked at him.

He was sitting in a chair, his legs crossed at the ankles. He slowly nodded at me.

“You Taiga?” he asked.

I nodded, unsure what to say. This guy was sitting in Flinks chair. He was wearing the same uniform blue shirt that Flinks, and all other commanders, wore.

He stood up, extended a hand that was missing a few fingers. I took it and we shook.

“Names Kavla. I’m the new commander of your little unit, starting today,” he sat back down and I immediately snapped to attention.

He laughed, slapping his hand against his kneecap.

“So you’re the youngest, the brightest, the all mighty prodigy student eh?” Kavla snapped at me.

“Sir! Yes Sir!” I clicked my heal against the floor. It made a metallic echo.

Kavla shook his head.

“Knock it off kid. I don’t like this formal shit. Me and you, we’re alike, so just act like it.”

I dropped my hand to my side, felt my mouth want to fall open with surprise.

Who the hell was this guy?

“Where the hell is the rest of the unit?” Kavla rubbed his hand over his chin, a chin that was covered with stubble. He reached up and toyed with the metal ring that was looped through his ear lobe, it flashed blue in the light.

Flinks would have never let this guy get away with earrings and not shaving. Flinks was anal about all things when it came to professionalism. This guy didn’t seem to give a care.

Suddenly, it hit me. My eyes widened and I had to ask.

“Sir, how old are you sir?”

Kavla had his elbows resting on his knees, fingers entwined together, he looked up at me through thick black hair that hung down past his eye brows.

“I’m nineteen kid.”

Nineteen.

No way, there was no way a nineteen year old was in charge of Basion Unit. We were the only unit that had never been commanded by anyone younger than twenty five. Most of the units are commanded by younger commanders, eighteen and nineteen were the common ages for many of the space/air and ground combat units, but our unit was different. We were specialized. We had to have someone with experience, someone who knew how to utilize our specialized skills. There was no way a nineteen year old could command us.

“What happened to Flinks?” I asked, dropping the ‘sir’. It felt strange.

Kavla smiled, crossing his arms over his chest. A button flashed silver as he moved.

“He got moved. I dunno where or why, but does it even really matter? This damn war, things happen that don’t make sense, and no one questions anything. Ever wonder why?”

I shook my head and Kavla smiled at me.

“I told you that we’re alike. I didn’t start to question things until I got to be about a year older than you are now. So don’t worry, it’s okay that you’re just blindly accepting things as they are. It’s not your fault,” Kavla stood up and tucked his uniform blue shirt in. I looked over my shoulder and saw that Lagg and Jehdin, followed by the rest of the unit, were making their way down the hall.

I looked back at Kavla, and he winked at me. From that moment on, he was all business.

---

Kavla worked us harder than Flinks ever dreamed of. The Unit soon came to hate, but respect Kavla. I think I was the only one who liked, but didn’t respect him.

Kavla was always professional when he was leading our Unit through the daily routine; wake up, exercise, eat, exercise, go over battle schematics, simulation, eat, work out on our own practicing our own specialized combat skills, exercise, and then sometimes we’d have another simulation or a game against another Unit. After that we were free to do what we wanted until lights out.

It was when we weren’t working as a Unit that Kavla came over and gave me hell.

“You know I almost mastered Kagen no Jutsu, that was until I lost my big toe. Now I can’t quite get the execution kicks out like they should be. Even though I’m still as effective as you, might even have more grace, and I defiantly have more experience than you… you still hold the claim to ‘Master’. Should I bow to you and ask you for some pointers?” Kavla would poke at me, dodging my moves as I pumped my fists and feet at him. We would spin around together, he would throw verbal shots at me, I would parry back with physical ones.

And he would always land me on the ground, my face in the plastic mats that covered the training area.

And I would always stand up and try again.

And again.

And again.

I would go to bed with my face beaten in, my hands curled up into fists that would not open up, and feet that were cramped so badly that I hobbled.

I was utterly and totally defeated.

I hated Kavla.

And I loved him.

Every night I would lay in bed, replaying my loss over and over again in my mind. It was beginning to be more than just training for the war. I didn’t even think of the war anymore. I was a zombie in the simulations, merely putting myself on auto pilot so I could think ahead to the impending battle between Kavla and myself.

“Don’t you ever ask yourself why you do this, day after day? Don’t you ever question what your life would be like without constant fighting, training, the war even?” Kavla would ask me questions ask he would beat me into the floor mats.

“What would there be if there wasn’t a war?” I asked one day, landing a two fingered jut-Jutsu jab into Kavla’s left shoulder. He grunted, the only sign that he had even felt my hit. He parried with another question.

“Well, think about this. If you weren’t fighting me right now, what could you be doing?”
Kavla stepped back and my double kick blew past him. I caught myself, landing my foot on toe point, spinning around to face Kavla, arms up and palms out.

“What are you talking about? What else is there to do?”

Kavla shrugged his shoulders, his stance loose and ready for me to come at him.

“Why don’t we create something else to do? Don’t you ever get sick of getting your face beat in by me? Don’t you ever get sick of killing people by playing games? Don’t you ever get sick of fighting this fucking war for this fucking government? Don’t you ever ask why? Damnit kid, don’t you?” Kavla’s fist clenched into balls and veins stuck out along his neck. His teeth were clenched together so his words came out in a strangled whisper.

The second Kavla’s guard was down, I went for it. I jabbed forward with my palm, landing it in the middle of his chest, stuck a double around his ankles and then stuck my knee into his back, shoving his face down into the mat.

“Why would I question the only thing I’ve ever known?” I asked. Kavla relaxed under my hold, and I got up.

I had finally won.

Or so I thought.

That night while I was laying in bed, I didn’t think about my victory over Kavla, and I didn’t think about ways to improve myself so I could win against him without taking a cheep shot like I had. It had been his fault, letting his guard down, but in a real battle, that was the difference between life and death. I was just teaching him a lesson.

No, what I really began to think about was what he was talking about. At first I never paid much attention to what he had to say, but the more he talked about how he wanted things to change, the more I began to pay attention to what he was saying.

I had the feeling that Kavla knew something that no one else knew. He kept talking about how we should be doing other things, better things than fighting the war. I knew that if anyone other than myself heard him talking like this, he would have been taken to the government and executed as an enemy. This anti-war talk made me mad, but it also made me curious. I began to wonder, what could there be to life, other than war. I began to think that maybe, just maybe, there was a time when there was no war. Maybe people didn’t fight all of the time, maybe people didn’t train all of the time. Maybe people even lived together, in peace.

I thought of my mother then, for the first time in eight years. I thought about how pretty she was, and how she could have been even prettier if she still had her arm, if she still had skin that was scar less. I now knew that arms and legs didn’t just fall of, but they were taken off in the battles of war. I knew that my mother once was pretty, once had flawless skin, once had both of her arms. I began to wonder how long it was going to be until I began to lose limbs to war, and I began to think that I didn’t want that to happen. I didn’t want to lose anything to this war.

The things that Kavla had been saying slowly began to start making sense. Kavla knew something, he knew how to live without a war. He knew that we didn’t have to fight this war; he knew how to end the war.

---

“Taiga, wake up.”

I rolled over, moaning, and something poked me in the side again.

“Stop,” I said, slashing out with my hand.

Someone blocked me and I retaliated with a downward side roll punch.

Someone grabbed my arm and held it.

I struggled, then finally opened my eyes.

“What the hell?” I said, sitting up and pushing away with my feet.

“Shut up you idiot, it’s me.”

I blinked my eyes and night vision kicked in.

Kavla.

“What in the hell are you doing?” I began to shout, but Kavla pressed a finger against his lips and I brought my voice down to a whisper.

“It’s time,” Kavla said, releasing my arm. I brought it up to my chest, rubbing where his fingers had twisted my skin.

“Time for what?” I asked, glaring at him.

“Time to tell you the truth. Time to get out of here, time to stop this bloody war,” Kavla sat down on my bed, bringing one leg up to rest next to my crossed legs.

“What in the hell are you talking about?” I asked and he silenced me again.

“Do you ever think about anything other than fighting and the war?” Kavla asked, bouncing me on the head with his fist.

I scowled, shook my head no, but then slowly changed it nod yes.

Kavla nodded his head as well, “Good, I was beginning to think that they were wrong, that you weren’t one of us.”

I gave him a questioning look.

“What do you mean?”

Kavla turned so he was staring directly at me. The dim light in my room played with shadows against his face, his eyes were narrowed and serious looking, it was almost scary.

“You, me, we’re alike.”

I nodded, he’d already pointed this out to me.

“Haven’t you ever wondered why?”

I shook my head no again.

Kavla bounced me on the head again.

“Think about it.”

I sighed, then began to think. Before I could come up with any conclusion on my own Kavla interrupted.

“Never mind, it’ll be easier if I just tell you. Kid, Taiga, we’re not from here. We aren’t from this education less bloody war celebration planet. Don’t you ever feel like you just don’t quite belong?” Kavla’s eyes were sparkling in the shadows.

I then thought back to all of my time spent with Lagg and Jehdin, all of the times that they would want to do something, and I would do it. All of their enthusiasm for the war, all of their pride, all of my apathy. I’d never thought about it before, but I’d never really thought about much of anything before Kavla.

“I guess I’ve never really been one of them,” I said and Kavla nodded, a smile cracking on the corner of his mouth.

“That’s because you aren’t. You, me, and a few others scattered across this land, we aren’t from here,” Kavla’s smile grew.

“Where are we from then?” I asked, curious, and surprised at myself. I was actually interested in what he had to say, and for some reason, I wanted to believe what he had to say.

“We are from the other side of this war.”

I looked up at Kavla with slight disbelief, but changed my expression. Why should I doubt him? Hearing this was the first time I had never felt apathy towards the subject at hand. I was actually excited for once in my life.

“Do you even know why this war started?”

I shook my head.

“Then I’ll tell you. It was all this worlds doing actually. Two hundred years ago, the economy of this world was in trouble. There was unemployment, famine, world crime rates were higher than they’d ever been. The government was at the brink of being overthrown. So they had to do something, anything. So they started a war. War is very good for the economy. It gave people jobs, gave people something to do, and strengthened nationalism. People had something else to fight besides themselves now. The government was no longer in danger, and they had power over the people again.

Did they have reason to start a war? Hell no. They had no enemies in space. Space travel on this planet was brand new, they didn’t even have time to set up treaties or space boundaries. They just shot some military platoon out into space, landed on a planet with intelligent life, and started a bloody war. Then they broadcast news all over this world about the ‘enemy’. They didn’t even give the enemy, our people a name. It was easier to call them ‘the enemy’ and be done with it.

Two hundred years this war continued, and why not! The government had complete control over this world. They had the money, they had the power, and the economy was blooming. As it should be with everyone working for the war. Schools were turned into training facilities, so funds were cut for real schools. Books and anything that was used to better people, to help them to learn, was destroyed. Education as it once was, was no longer. But they didn’t need it. No one needed to learn anything that wasn’t military or directly involved with the war. With out education and schools, without written words, without history and books, no one on this planet even knows how the war was started. All they know is how to fight in it.

But on our planet, where you and I are from, it’s different. We still have schools, people still learn, and they still teach about how this war was started. Every new generation knows, everyone remembers. We only continue to fight for the same reason we started to fight; self defense.”

Kavla stopped talking and let the words sink in. I blinked a few times, hardly believing what he had told me. Yet I took it for the truth. Something inside of myself was telling me that what Kavla was saying, had been saying the entire time, was all truth.

Kavla looked at me, begging in his eyes. He wanted to know if I took his word for truth. If I didn’t, he would have to kill me, right here and now.

I blinked a few more times, then opened my mouth to speak, but before any words came out Kavla threw his arms around me and held me close.

“You believe me, you know deep down inside that what I speak is true.”

I could have easily pushed Kavla off me, but I let him hold me for a moment, let him have his joy, let him know that I did indeed believe him.

“So if we’re from there, how did we get here?” I finally asked as Kavla pulled away from me.

“Our parents.”

I tiled my head, thinking, trying to come up with the answer before Kavla could speak it.

“We’re siblings,” I said and he nodded.

I could believe it, I had a brother.

It suddenly made sense. Mother’s looks at me, her pain and sorrowful looks. Her talking about father as if he was dead, but the feeling that he really wasn’t. Her missing arm, her sullen beauty.

“They met on our planet. Mother was from here, but she didn’t believe in the fighting. It was something that she just had to do, there was nothing else to do on this planet. Then she was captured, captured by our father. He meant to kill her, but she convinced him not to. He told me that she didn’t want to fight, that she begged him to spare her, that she wanted to live and experience what his world had to offer. He didn’t know what to do with a hysterical woman, so he knocked her out and took her home with him.

They learned from each other, learned that they were alike, both human, both wanting nothing to do with the war that had consumed their life. Mother learned about what life could be like if there was no war. She learned about education, about what her government had done, what had started the war.

They came up with a plan then. A few others joined them, but there was a trust factor going on. Fathers people thought that she was tricking them, that she was going to destroy them, and she had to find a way to prove them wrong.

They had me, back when she first began living with father, and by the time their plan was consummated, she was pregnant with you. She swore on our lives that she was not going to betray her new life, her new planet, and she had father cut off her arm, then send her back to this planet, with us.

She enrolled me in training, and what do you know, I was the best they ever had. I mastered things that they never thought I could. I was the youngest do to anything, the brightest, the prodigy child. Just like you. Know why?”

I nodded my head.

“They were superior to us. Even though they were humanoid, they were still better than us.”

Kavla nodded.

“That’s why we haven’t been defeated yet. That’s why we have stood strong and defended our world for two hundred years. And that’s why you and I are going to tear this place down.”

“How are we going to do that?” I asked, and an alarm went off. It was followed by another, and another.

“It’s all mothers plan. And it’s starting now. Common Taiga, we’ve got a job to do.”

Kavla grabbed my hand and pulled me out of bed. I quickly dressed in my uniform greens, grabbed my weapons, and asked, “now what?”

Kavla smiled, taking out his own beamer, flipped his black hair back from his eyes and said, “Taiga, you and I, we’re gonna burn this whole bloody place down.”