ARIS

The Truth

I sighed as I rolled a small marble along the control board, its glass was well worn with age, and from sitting in my pocket. The orange cat's eye inlayed within the sphere was still vibrant against the scratched glass. I don't remember where I had found it, or when I had acquired it, it had just always sat in my pocket. If I didn't feel it pressing into my leg throughout the day I knew the day was going to be awful. It felt like my good luck charm. It had been there when I had graduated training, and there the first day I had touched down on the battlefield. It was a part of me.

The broad control panel reflected onto the window in front of me. The lazy flashing of the red of the open airlock button was lulling me into a dreamlike state. The mundane job of controlling entrance into dune station was one I did not want. Shore leave they called it, furlough from the army. It was a desk job, and I was a flight risk.

Every time I closed my eyes I saw them. The bodies littering the ground, the Younglings. I shuddered involuntarily, images of death, of war, floating through my memory. The faint screams of the Lieutenant commanding me to stand down circulated the room, like faint whispers in the otherwise silent room. The gunfire rattled against my skull, the crimson spray of blood behind my eyes. The family falling from the armoured transport, the human children still and lifeless on the sandy ground. Their blood staining the terrain.

I blinked hard, the wailing of the cargo alarm waking me out of my hallucinations. I glanced out the window, the usual cargo ship nowhere in sight. I looked over at the calendar's digital face, the red neon spelling out the date, days away from the new moon. The military transport was early, they only shuttled the bodies back on the new moon - so why were they here now? I slammed the heel of my palm over the air lock, the towering doors grinding to a close. A sweat broke over my skin, my entire body feeling clammy as the door slowly shut. I tapped my thigh impatiently as I poised myself at the door.

I tugged the heavy metal slab open and sprinted down the stairs two at a time. I scanned the docking bay for someone, anyone to tell me what was going on. I was greeted by the frantic buzz of conversation and I ran onto the tarmac. Men littered the floor, some missing body parts, others limping, each one a survivor. The pneumatic door of the cargo ship hissed, releasing a gust of wind, my hair fanning out behind me. The door lowered and I strained to see into the small gap that was appearing.

The morgue team approached, pushing me aside as they congregated around the door, some with stretchers in hand, others with body bags. My stomach churned painfully as I watched. The door shook the tarmac as it made contact, the morgue team all clambering up it with urgency.

I could hear shouted instruction from the inside. Instructing the teams of two to gather bodies, and take them to either the infirmary wing or the morgue. The morgue, the one place on Dune Station that I refused to explore when I was a Youngling. The soldiers that got sent there weren't really soldiers anymore. Faceless, limbless creatures taken from the battlefront, rescued a little too late.

For more than a thousand years the Norse had been fighting a war, so long I wasn't sure if they remembered what they were fighting over anymore. The Thousand Year's War had claimed more lives than we could produce. They had started taking the Younglings and sending them to the battlefront without completing their training. With the falling numbers and the century-long deadlock, the Norse grew desperate. The decree had come over the wires and had torn apart families. The children came back in pieces, what was left of them was not enough to show their parents.

I watched in apprehensive curiosity as the first of the stretchers was rolled down the ramp and onto the tarmac. The body was not covered, the dried blood had turned almost black against the stark blue of the child's skin. His head had been blown clean off, left now only with empty space and a bloodied neck. Bile rose in my throat and sat dangerously close to my mouth. I clenched my jaw, praying to not vomit. I had been on the battlefield, I had seen the death that plagued the sands below but never had I seen a child so small on the stretcher.