The Man Who Would Be Nyder

Nyder sat on the bank of the river, under a bush, and shivered. His hands touched the worn pommel of his service dagger for reassurance, counting the many notches cut into it, radiating out like a starshell burst from the centre. He was wet and cold; even his feet were wet. The far bank of the river was almost hidden in the mist, and nothing seemed to be moving there, but he had a bad feeling.

What a perfect place this riverbank would be for an ambush: with the river on one side and the high clay bank on the other, there was nowhere to run and hide, unless you wanted to dive into the river and dare the grups. He could see their filthy black snouts poking out of the filthier water on occasion: great bullet-shaped swimming mammals, meat-eaters and fierce.

What Nyder was wondering was if he should tell his officers about his feeling. He had not actually seen any Thals over on the far side. There was not a track, not a sound, not a whiff of smoke, not a single wink of dawn sunlight on metal to tell him that there was anything over there. But still, he sensed there was someone or someones. Waiting.

His new section's commander was Lieutenant Frenn, and Nyder hated him with a passion. The man actually seemed to be enjoying the war: he was forever coming up with strategies and plans and cunning attacks, and Nyder and the rest of the men were the ones who had to sweat and bleed and die for them. The Lieutenant was like a fighting machine: if Nyder broke his head open, he imagined he would find nothing but wires and gears and ticking machinery inside. Now Frenn was planning on moving his men along the riverbank, fast, to get around the latest Thal troop in this sector and take them from behind.

Nyder couldn't care less that Frenn's strategies were a success. That he was freeing more and more territory from the Thals, and possibly weakening them in this sector permanently. All he cared about was that he'd been in three times as many fire fights under this maniac as he had with his previous units, and there had to be a way to stop it. Nyder had already been rotated back to the Dome once, to recover from a spear wound through the calf that got infected. If the calf had not healed up to full strength, he could have been culled on the spot.

He could ask for transfer to another unit, of course. He could ask for the moons as his playthings, if he wanted, but he wouldn't get them. Or he could desert, or simply cut his own throat: both would kill him just as surely.

But if Nyder went back, and reported that the riverbank seemed safe…and the unit all went through here, with the Lieutenant at the head as always…maybe he would get a chance to transfer after all. Especially if he said he was scouting the back trail, and let most of the others go over the top first.

* * *

Nyder was right. There were Thals on the other side of the river, but they didn't have bows and rifles; they had grenade launchers and rockets and two field cannon. Lieutenant Frenn had been hitting them hard in this sector, and they'd pulled out the heavy equipment to stop him once and for all.

The riverbank exploded, raining down death and fire. Nyder seemed to see the debris moving in slow motion; he jumped to one side, evading a rolling boulder twice his size, and started to scrabble away, grimly keeping his head down. There was no point in going back and trying to help: he could hear no firing from the Kaleds, only the thunder of the Thal cannon and the screams of dying men, and the deep grunts of the grups as they fed.

He crawled backwards, over a body that sat up and looked him in the face and shouted, "Private!"

It was Frenn, of all people. He must have been blown clear over the ridge by the blast. His uniform was in tatters, and his hair smoked, but his voice was still sharp with authority…and he had no weapons in his hands.

Nyder's hand was on a rock, nicely sized for gripping.

It turned out that there weren't wires and gears in Frenn's head after all. Just brains, wet and white and loose after Nyder cracked his skull open.

He spat in the dead man's face, and ran.

* * *

He was back in the Dome, giving his report to one of the droning clerks, no different from the dozens of other clerks spread out through the great room, typing away at identical mechanical typewriters as soldiers gave their statements.

Nyder breathed in clean air, slowly measuring each breath. He was feeling very close to breaking right now, very close to just running around and screaming and that would be bad. Very bad. Behaviour that on the battlefield would be treated with a slap and being tied into your sleepbag for the night could get you culled in here.

But he tasted the air, and it tasted like home. Home, the only home he had ever known. He wanted to be here, here where the sky wasn't always above you threatening to drop rain or snow or mortar rounds on you. He wanted a decent ceiling above him, and tile floors that did not hide mines or serpents or traps. He wanted to stay here in the Dome. And this clerk, grey-haired and narrow-eyed, he must have been here for years, decades even, he must know a way!

"I'm sorry, Private," the man said in the same even tone he had used throughout the interview. "There's no possibility of you not taking a new assignment." His eyes were a flat dead brown, and he sat very still on his chair, a bit too still. If Nyder had been in better condition, not so tired and desperate, he would have read the man's lack of body language as being the sign of a deeply ill man.

But instead Nyder kept talking, trying to find the words that would unlock the door. He knew that he was probably making a miserable impression, in his mud and tatters, but he couldn't seem to shut himself up. "I've been out in seven different assignments with no breaks! Seven different units…aren't I at least due some leave?" He tapped his hands together on the edge of the desk, as though clapping nervously and silently.

"No leave until the current emergency is suspended," the man said, his fingers rock-steady on the heavy keys. "The emergency is up for review in nineteen-"

"I can read, you know." The man stopped, and Nyder went on desperately, "Read the letters, not just the Approved Words. And I can count pretty well, and I know all about the war, about fighting, about the Thals. Shouldn't I be here, teaching the new trainees, instead of out there?" He gestured wildly with one hand, then caught one of the scowling guards' eyes and put it back on the desk, flat out as though pleading a little. "Shouldn't I be here, to tell them what it's really going to be like, what they really need to be ready for? There's so much I could teach them-"

"Of course not," the clerk said. "Do you have an exceptional skill or talent that you could demonstrate for the Education Board, that would allow you to be a teacher?"

Nyder was silent at that. He wasn't a great hand-to-hand fighter like Erem, or a flawless marksman, or a great strategist. He had no real idea why he had lasted this long. Being small, and willing to duck, keeping his head down and his feet dry - those couldn't be the secrets to survival, could they?

But the clerk was still talking. "And the last thing we need is someone riling up the students with what it's really like outside. They'd all hang themselves, and then where would we be for soldiers?" He squeezed the casing of the typewriter, and it creaked: the clerks were in the habit of picking up the heavy machines and putting them down, using them as impromptu exercise equipment in-between interviews. The clerk's hair might be grey, but his shoulders and arms were thick with muscle under his official tunic.

"Shouldn't I get a promotion?" People did get promoted, eventually, and there was always the dream of making a level that would get you transferred to Command Complex. "Someday?" His voice broke as it had not in years.

"You are bothering me." The clerk suddenly leaned forward, and his eyes showed white all around the edges. "You should not be bothering me."

Nyder was so tired that he didn't react to this menace; he just leaned forward a little in turn, closer to the man, both hands out as though pleading, and asked, "Can't you just-"

The clerk stood in one swift motion and with that same motion picked up his typewriter as though it were a foam-light pillow. Nyder stared at the man, and did not react as the great square metal weight came smashing down onto his own hands.

There was pain: pain too great to be comprehended all at once, pain that froze him in his seat when he should have leaped or run or just fallen backwards. He was in the Dome, he was supposed to be safe here, this couldn't be happening to him, why-

The clerk raised the typewriter, now horribly wet along the bottom, and brought it down again; this time Nyder could hear the wet creaking of his bones splintering. He could also hear the guards shouting, other clerks shouting and moving, but louder than all of them was the clerk above him hissing, spittle dotting Nyder's cheeks as he spat, "Stop bothering me!"

He couldn't get his feet out and up to kick at the man; they'd never taught him how to fight around a desk. Before he could decide how to defend himself, the pain struck him like a grenade blast, and he fell, screaming. The clerk was screaming as well, howling mad obscenities, before the guards came and hauled him off. Tired of Nyder's thrashing, someone from Medical finally pressed a syringe to his shoulder.

* * *

Nyder woke up in hospital. He knew hospital, the smell of it, but this wasn't like any ward he had ever seen. It was a single long room, stretching out of sight in a curve; it might even be against the inside of the Dome. Which made no sense: why put a hospital ward where it was most likely to be contaminated?

The hospital beds were lined up with the heads against the wall down one side, and the beds were all occupied: but there were no intravenous drip bags to be seen. No limbs raised with slings or casts, no medical machinery. The smell of iodine and disinfectant was fainter here, somehow: but the smell of rot and piss was twice as strong. The men in the beds around him just lay there, still, too still; the one next to Nyder had his eyes half-open, but didn't even twitch at Nyder's movement. He was still wearing his uniform.

There were no doctors. He craned his head upwards from the thin pillow, and saw that the doorframe was painted black. He lay back and squeezed his eyes shut, as hard as he possibly could, to keep the tears trapped.

This was the culling ward. This was where they brought the wounded men with Level One injuries. Injuries that meant they could never be soldiers or machine operators or clerks. Or teachers. Injuries like damaged eyesight, head trauma - and non-repairable limb injuries.

His hands…

The doctor would come, a different doctor every day according to the rumours. He would work his way down the row of men, starting with the ones who had been here the longest, and use a poison injector to end their lives. There were only so many bodies that the Dome recycling plants could handle in one day. And when the recycling limit was reached, he would stop; they would take away the dead bodies, and move all the beds sideway, along the wall. There would be new wounded moved in, every night. And when Nyder's bed reached the head of the line, the needle would slide into him and his life would come out. Would he feel it?

He went to clench his fists: a mistake, because the pain roared awake in his hands. He did not scream, but every nerve in him howled as he felt the torn muscles and broken bones move, like a dead flopping animal at the end of his arm. Two dead flopping animals. He looked down: they'd put his hands on his chest and wrapped them loosely in red-stained bandages, but that was all. No splints, no signs of surgery.

He thought that if he screamed, they might bring him painkiller. Or they might tie him to the bed and gag him; he could see others along the row fastened that way. Or just poison him out of hand, and let his corpse be rolled up the line. They were only leaving him alive to keep the smell down.

So he lay immobile, with his eyes half-closed as though in a stupor, forcing his muscles still. He lay with his eyes half-open, ignoring the pain and the thirst and the itching, watching as the medical assistants rolled new beds into place, moved his bed closer to the head of the line, opened and closed cabinets. He had to make sure that it was a different assistant every time. Make sure that there were no cameras here, nobody to watch. He lay there in his own filth, burning in the fires of his crushed and possibly dying hands, and counted to himself. Two, three, five, seven, eleven, thirteen, seventeen, nineteen, twenty-three, twenty-nine….

When it was night-cycle and the culling ward was dark and quiet except for the rasping breaths of the dying, he slithered out of the hospital bed. He landed badly, on elbow and knees and one hand, but he did not cry out. His hand left a red mark on the floor, and he carefully wiped it up with his sleeve before it dried.

He read the clipboard at the foot of his bed. Squinting in the gloom, he read the other clipboards. They were all the same, annotated by hand with name and culling basis and admission date. His eyes desperately looked for a way to mark the forms Return for Surgery, or Transfer, but none of the little boxes said anything like that: only a place to record his biomass for the rendering machines.

The blank forms were kept in a locked cabinet. It was a pushbutton lock, and he'd seen the bored-looking medical assistants push the buttons, but Nyder couldn't. His hands were useless, his elbow was too big, his nose was too soft, his tongue wasn't strong enough. And there was no way for him to get his boots off and use his toes - even if he could somehow stand on one leg for long enough.

He lay down on the floor. He pressed the side of his face to the cold tile floor and cried, holding his broken hands to his chest. There was no way to leave: the door was locked, there were cameras all through the Dome, and he couldn't fight or scavenge or survive without hands. He rocked himself back and forth. He was cold and shaking, and he hurt, and all he wanted to do was lie down and sleep and never wake up.

Live, said a voice inside of him. You're too good to die like this, live!

He went over the entire ward, and finally found a pen with a splintered shaft, discarded behind a recycling bin. He toed it out into the light, and examined it. There was ink left in it, a little ink. And there was enough of the shaft to clutch in his teeth and push the cabinet buttons. The splinters bit into his gums, but he didn't care; he could swallow the blood.

While that ink lasted, he had a chance.

* * *

After the debacle in the interview centre, it took a few days for Nyder's computer record to be updated with his current status: Level One injuries, sent to be culled.

That update set an alarum off inside the Dome computers: a silent alarum. A day later, a sheet of paper spat out of a printer in the Kaled Elite Bunker, and was brought to the desk of Davros' second in command, Security Commander Slai.

Slai read the short cryptic message, // SPIRE PRJ // NYDER 42018861// L1I - Cl // and frowned. Davros had set the computer to give alerts at changes to six records: those of Eisel, Lett, Nyder, Marb, Borr, and Nettek. If he had the opportunity, Slai was supposed to interview them. But this one was already marked Cl for Cull, and the update was days old: he was probably gone. When Slai had gone to interview the last one to return, Nettek, he'd found the man with half his face shot off, too drugged to speak.

Also, it was night-cycle: Davros was not available to consult. But Slai was a bit curious, and a bit bored, so he decided to go see if this Nyder was still alive.

He had no problem getting the passes to enter the Dome, and he knew the master code for the culling ward. He opened the door, took one step inside, and bent over, comically far, to prevent himself from tripping over someone. That someone was a young man, very young, who knelt on the floor and stared up at Slai with huge dark eyes. The man's hands were cupped protectively against his chest, and there was something clenched in his teeth.

Slai got his balance back, then reached down with one hand and plucked the thing out of the man's teeth. Those teeth immediately started chattering with fear. He looked at it, and saw it was a shattered pen. He looked at the empty bed, the last one in the row, and the clipboard at the foot of it, and the pen, and he began to laugh.

Slai had a great booming laugh, befitting his size. He laughed and laughed, feet apart now and hands on hips, as the dying stirred and muttered at the noise, and the man who could only be Nyder cowered at his feet.