The panoramic view of the battle included the whole cracked, parched field, a tiny patch of the once serene if tourist-infested, the once wet, the once fish-filled, mosquito-breeding Grand Lake. Under a vast cloud of pale red dust, the soldiers danced their desperate dance. They waved guns that discharged bullets designed to wound, not kill. They wrestled with rocket launchers that delivered vibrant, fearful, non-lethal explosions. They yelled and gesticulated. They completed their moves like the experts they were, avoiding the bullets and bombs and manoeuvres of the enemy, a battalion from Shine. This particular battle was going poorly for the soldiers of Rise, which meant that it would go very well for the hungry people of Rise.
Soon enough, the film homed in on a single soldier: Sergeant Sala, a veteran of many campaigns. Sala was pushing thirty, a ripe old age for a foot soldier, or so her friends in the battalion enjoyed telling her. She wore a hard plastic helmet that covered the top and back of her head, including most of her black hair, but which left her face exposed and filthy.
Sala crouched behind an isolated boulder. Perhaps she was waiting for the right moment to retreat. Perhaps she was preparing to launch a daring and futile counterattack. Whatever her intentions, she was trapped.
‘Fall back. Fall back now,’ yelled Holland, Sala’s commander.
A hero to the people of Rise, Holland had stood beside Walker and Barton when they created the New Time. These days, he went to war miked up. Malee, watching from the central business district, and Geraldina and Flake, watching from home, heard Holland loud and clear. But Sala, the person who most needed to fall back, heard nothing but artillery and an all-too-familiar ringing in her ears. It had reached the point where she could hear the ringing and not much else, even during the long hours between battles, even when she was on leave (not that she liked taking leave). It was an occupational hazard, the army medics had told her, which might, just might, pass in time once she stopped going to war. And if not, she’d need a soundtrack planted in her head.
Her audience knew nothing about the ringing in Sala’s ears, but they could see that she was trapped. As she peered beyond the rock, rifle at her shoulder, a bullet thumped into her cheekbone. She grabbed at her face with one hand while aiming her rifle with the other, letting loose a burst of shots — brilliantly close to her target, given the circumstances — as she sprinted to the trench and leapt into it. As she fled, the enemy chose not to shoot her in the back. It wasn’t that sort of war.
Sprawled in the trench, her legs twisted sideways beneath her torso, she held her bloody head in her hands. For a moment, it seemed as if she might stay passively where she had fallen, waiting for someone to come and carry her to safety. But Sala roused herself. This was, after all, the moment she had trained for, the exact reason she’d chosen to become a soldier. She stood up and dropped her hands to her sides, ensuring that her audience could see her face. Walking purposefully — not dawdling, not rushing, and with her rifle slung over her bloodied shoulder — she picked her way through the trench.
Soon enough, she found the rest of her battalion. A few of them were nursing minor wounds. Some of them were hacking up dust, and some of them were staring up at the sky, a sure sign of shock. One by one, they saw Sala, saw the blood, saw the skin on her cheek flapping about. Each of them knew that this was Sala’s moment. Her friend Kall was the first to break down, and then the rest of them — Duncen, Graice, Benn, Noot, and the others — joined the chorus of wails. Commander Holland himself, clearly deeply moved but far too distinguished to cry in public, held a white cloth to Sala’s face.
On autoscreens everywhere, the people of Rise now saw a replay of the shooting of Sergeant Sala. When viewed in extreme slow motion, the bullet entered her face almost tenderly, easing back the skin above her cheek. Frame by frame, that side of her face broke apart. Then the people saw the moment of impact from behind: the jolt of Sala’s head, followed by a spray of blood, bone, and cartilage, framing the helmet. Then they saw it from above, the best view for the splatter pattern. And then the screen blurred and the people heard the sound of bullet hitting flesh, followed by the low grunt that Sala deigned to emit.
As the autoscreens slowly turned to black, the chorus of the famous song ‘Let’s Be Tender’ swelled. Once the image had vanished completely, the song faded too. The autoscreens stayed entirely black for a long moment, until a message flashed: ‘Thanks for watching. We hope you have enjoyed your meal.’ After a moment, a second message flashed: ‘Thanks be to Walker. Thanks be to Barton.’
***
Walker felt nothing as he watched ‘The Battle of Sergeant Sala’, although he certainly, and not for the first time, admired the quality of the young woman’s soldiering. It was a fine film. Perhaps, in time, long after his hunger had finished him off, it would be a classic. But it wasn’t helping, not in the least, the vast emptiness in his gut. As it finished — ‘Thanks be to Walker. Thanks be to Barton’ — and as the screen slowly gave way to the panoramic view of Rise, he shook his head, beaten again.
‘Well, that was pointless …’ He paused, gazing at Hail. ‘Oh, hell, what’s wrong with you now?’
Hail massaged his temples. ‘That was extraordinary, wasn’t it? Extraordinary. As good as I’ve eaten in years.’ He gathered himself. ‘Well? How was it for you?’
Walker shook his head.
‘Nothing?’ Hail asked.
‘Not a thing.’
‘But that poor woman —’
‘Soldier.’
‘Yes, that poor woman soldier. Her face, that awful moment … didn’t it make you want to …’
‘I didn’t feel a thing, I tell you.’
‘It hardly seems possible,’ Hail muttered.
‘I agree: the footage was brilliant. A bright spot in a ho-hum year. But it did nothing for me.’
***
As the autoscreens in the central business district faded, the people recommenced walking, riding, driving to wherever they needed to be. The cacophony of noise, the sudden teeming embrace of peak hour, was momentarily harsh, but almost immediately settled into its normal hum. Malee shuffled towards a tall building, a relic of the Old Time, now reclad in green tiles: tasteful or garish, depending on the mood of the sun. She’d eaten, same as everyone else, and she was grateful. Truly she was. But she felt hollow as she took the elevator to the thirty-fourth floor.
A work colleague, Peeter, nodded at her, and the new woman whose name she couldn’t remember gave her a friendly wave. She didn’t have anything against her co-workers. They worked hard and worked well, and she respected that. And they were all in the business of survival together: she honestly believed that. But she’d tried to chat and be friends with them and go out with them and watch battles with them — Peeter, for a time, had been particularly keen on all that — and she’d just found it too hard. Too false. She was happiest by herself, lost in herself, she’d decided, even if she was lonely.